Group Working To Promote South Dakota Region. Development Agencies Have Different Shapes, Sizes

Rural communities will be the first to admit that they are in a struggle for survival.

Statistics show that young people are leaving and that the overall population is declining in rural areas. Schools are struggling with decreasing student numbers, and Main Streets are battling the steady out-flow of customer traffic to larger shopping centers.

People may also learn more about GLAD’s goals and strategic plan from its web site (http://www.gladsd.com) and provide input via e-mail. Click on the Contact Us area and there is space for comments and ideas.

Full Story: http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1971&dept_id=175429&newsid=16939640&PAG=461&rfi=9

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A Review of the Federal Role in Regional Economic
Development

Mark Drabenstott
Vice President and Director, Center for the Study of Rural America, Federal Reserve
Bank of Kansas City

Globalization is forcing regions throughout the nation to find new competitive
niches in rapidly changing markets. The resulting quest for new economic engines is
different in every region, driven by a region’s distinct economic assets and the specific
markets it can tap. At the same time, economic experts have discovered a whole new set
of strategies that offer the greatest potential in helping regions compete in the global
marketplace.

These new strategies focus more on the region itself, namely, helping
entrepreneurs and skilled workers innovate and seize new market opportunities—an
approach strikingly at odds with past strategies that often aimed at recruiting industrial
facilities to a region.
Amid these tectonic shifts in how regions grow their economies, federal policy for
economic development goes on largely unchanged. The federal development effort is
carried out through nine federal departments and five independent agencies, forming a
sort of Rube Goldberg policy apparatus cobbled together over the past 50 years or so.

There is no unifying purpose to this legion of federal programs. New questions are being
raised about this policy apparatus, however. With big deficits in prospect for the federal
budget, every federal program is under new budget scrutiny. The Administration’s recent
proposal to redesign economic development grant programs in the federal budget was
perhaps the first effort to call attention to how the federal government shapes regional
economic development. It will not be the last.

This report frames in broad terms what the federal government’s future role could
be in regional economic development. Three steps are essential in framing that role. The
first step is to confirm what regional development policy is today. The second step is to
identify what makes regional economies grow in the 21st century. The final step is to
consider how federal policy might change to help regions grow in the future.

Full Report: http://www.kansascityfed.org/ruralcenter/ruralstudies/FederalReview_RegDev_605.pdf

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Development Agencies Have Different Shapes, Sizes

Individual cities, counties and regions of the state have agencies tailored to that area’s needs.

Story by Beth Gorczyca

Any economic development expert will say there is no perfect way to woo jobs, create businesses or kick-start an economy.

Along those same lines, no single blueprint exists for counties to follow to create economic development agencies.

West Virginia has smorgasbord of different types of economic development entities. Some represent just one county, while others represent several at the same time. Some are non-profit, private agencies. Others are quasi-governmental boards.

And sometimes both types of agencies represent communities.

Full Story: http://www.statejournal.com/story.cfm?func=viewstory&storyid=12435&catid=165