Well, I feel vindicated but am not happy about it.
The Common Sense Institute of Arizona, a public policy think tank, has issued a report on why Tucson is an economic laggard, highlighting the city’s difficulty in attracting talented young people and in convincing talented graduates of the University of Arizona to stay in town instead of leaving for better opportunities.
Most of the report matches what I’ve been saying in nonpartisan commentaries, in scholarly studies, in polemics, and on local radio, beginning seven years ago, when my wife and I moved to Tucson after retirement for family reasons.
Our experience with Tucson goes back much further. Previously, our son had attended the University of Arizona and earned a bachelor’s and master’s in engineering. After graduating, he took a job with Raytheon (now RTX) and entered its leadership development program, which included temporary assignments in Boston and Abu Dhabi. Going full-circle, he ended up with the company’s business unit in Tucson.
The business unit is the largest private employer of note in Tucson, one that operates nationally and internationally in highly technical fields.
Raytheon is an anomaly in Tucson. In spite of a major research university being located in Tucson, the local economy is dominated by low-wage jobs in retail, tourism and hospitality. At the same time, other manufacturing companies tend to be small, low-margin, and reliant on low-skilled labor.
Government is a leading employer in Tucson. Of the ten biggest employers in the city, five of them are government entities.
Raytheon doesn’t get much recognition for its contribution to the economy by local media and the establishment. However, it does get periodic demonstrations at its entrance gate, including a recent one on behalf of Hamas. It also has such nearby attractions as a large homeless camp to its northeast and blighted area to its southwest known as Dogpatch, where—this is no exaggeration—the sheriff department periodically rescues horses from starvation.
Hardly a day goes by without a flattering story in the local media about a new bar or restaurant opening in the city. Longstanding eateries are called iconic in other stories, even if they are seedy and mediocre.
In a recent story, for example, the head of Rio Nuevo was ecstatic about a Beers and Cheeseburgers outlet going into the long-vacant, former Sears store at Park Place Mall. (Out-of-town readers may not know that Rio Nuevo is the redevelopment district that uses revenue from a tax abatement scheme to redevelop downtown and a few miles of Broadway Blvd.)
Maybe the Rio Nuevo honcho doesn’t know that three large malls in metro Phoenix have been razed and rebuilt into attractive mixed-use developments, with the money coming from private capital. Granted, he does know that downtown Tucson now has nineteen bars and nightclubs, as he recently bragged in a local news story.
Meanwhile, the business news in metro Phoenix is about corporate offices moving to that megapolis and about tens of billions of dollars of investments in new semiconductor plants and other industries.
Oh, one other note about the Rio Nuevo bigwig: He contributed $10,000 to a group that is trying to pass a proposition to raise the sales tax in Tucson to 9.2 percent, which would make the city a tax leader in the state.
Statistics aren’t needed to know that something is amiss in Tucson. All that is needed is to drive around. Be careful, though. Tucson is a leader in the number of impaired pedestrians and the homeless being run over, often by impaired drivers.
Signs of prosperity and dynamism are few, but signs of poverty and provincialism are many. In terms of aesthetics and upkeep, much of the metropolis is hard on the eyes.
In closing, the aforementioned report from the Common Sense Institute does a pretty good job of detailing where Tucson lags economically, but it doesn’t discuss the root causes. They are:
– A hidebound, one-party monopoly that has been running the city, county and largest school district for decades.
– A local government that places more emphasis on platitudes, banalities and clichés about equity, social justice and global warming than on providing such mundane but critical municipal services as police, roads and code enforcement.
– Interest groups that thwart progress while posing as champions of the disadvantaged.
– Certain demographic groups that are dependent on government money and leery of a market economy.
– The fact that a whopping 36 percent of the metropolis is unincorporated county and thus ill-equipped to provide the municipal services and amenities needed to attract high-wage industry.
Selfishly, I shouldn’t care, given that I’m retired and financially secure, having done well by working in such business centers as Chicago, metro New York, and Phoenix. But I worry about what kind of future my beautiful granddaughter will have in Tucson.
Mr. Cantoni can be reached at craigcantoni@gmail.com.
