Posted by donjarvis

Economic Growth

Position paper for Don Jarvis, Candidate for HD 63

25 February 2010

We value our families in this state. We are justifiably proud of having a well-managed state government. But good management of the government is not necessarily good leadership in helping families, and we could do much better at increasing the number of jobs and helping more families achieve financial security. We have a high rate of home ownership, but too many Utah families — 30% — are living just one paycheck or one health crisis away from financial disaster. We rank near the bottom of all states on this, (Davidson 2009) and foreclosures are way up (Lee, "Bankruptcies" 2010).

So what could be done? We give lots of tax breaks to big businesses in this state but seem to neglect small business and families. The Corporation for Enterprise Development says we could do much better at job creation. CED recommends that we give more support to organizations that help small businesses with technical assistance and micro-loans, which are crucial in the present tight credit market. CED also suggests offering low-income families better access to health insurance and encouraging them to save money by raising asset limits for public assistance (Davidson 2010). This makes sense when you understand that about 70% of bankruptcies are due to health crises. We should also think about an earned-income credit policy on state taxes. This gives low-income workers a tax credit to encourage them to keep working rather than just take welfare, and it has broad bipartisan support at the national level. If you give people a hand up now you are less likely to have to give them a handout later.

If we want to encourage large and small businesses to come to Utah and thrive, we need to think about our air quality. Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker says that too many business people investigating Utah come here, look at the brown haze covering our cities in the winter and make other plans. He, our governor and other leaders recently called for more effort to clean up our air (Falk), and it's time to get serious about it.

We could provide incentives for more compressed natural gas fueling stations. The US Department of energy (2010) reports that, "Compared with vehicles fueled with conventional diesel and gasoline, natural gas vehicles can produce significantly lower amounts of harmful emissions such as nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, and toxic and carcinogenic pollutants as well as the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide." In addition, CNG costs less than half as much as gasoline, so many people would like to convert their vehicles to it. That would help families and businesses with transportation costs. However, at present there is not a single CNG fueling station in Provo, and the nearest one — in Springville — works poorly. Here is an ideal place to partner with our business community and municipalities along the Wasatch Front to help clean our air.

One more thing to help the economy: we should encourage renewable-energy businesses. This is the future and hope for our nation and people. Utah has plenty of sun, wind, and geo-thermal energy which is starting to be developed by local businesses to provide jobs for our workers and income for the state ("Renewable" 2010). Encouraging universities, inventors and companies to develop processes and equipment to produce that energy would make dollars as well as sense (Lee, "Clean fuels" 2010).

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