toledoblade.com --

Amid a debate over its role in boosting the region's job base, the area's lead economic development agency has reduced the number of projects for which it takes at least partial credit by 80 percent.

The Regional Growth Partnership's interim director, Eileen Granata, said that the agency decided months ago to create a new list to more accurately reflect the agency's role in area projects - an issue that has long-bothered critics.

"We've got to be able to tell people what we're doing - where we're spending our time and focus," she said after presenting the figures at a meeting of the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority's board of directors. "We need to do that to add clarity - good or bad - on what the return on investment has been for the community," she said.

In the past, the growth partnership compiled an annual list of projects completed by either it or its "partners," including other economic development agencies in an 11-county region. The growth partnership offered no breakdown on those projects in which it had a major role - until now.

Jakeway

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The old accounting system, from 2000 to the present, said the growth partnership or its partners completed 267 projects that created nearly 8,000 jobs. The new tally for the same time period, for just the growth partnership, is 52 projects that created about 2,800 jobs.

Ms. Granata said that former director Don Jakeway chose to compile a master list of all regional projects in an effort to cull regional cooperation and dissuade turf wars and credit-taking.

Still, the old tallies helped boost the image of the growth partnership. An industry trade publication, Site Selection magazine, cited the old tallies when it named the growth partnership among the continent's best economic development organizations three times in the last seven years.

After winning the third award in 2003, Mr. Jakeway called the magazine's assessment "outside validation."

Regardless, Site Selection Editor Mark Arend has no problem with either version of project accounting: "The [growth partnership] made it clear [in the past] they were submitting projects from throughout the region. If they're choosing not to do so going forward, that's fine."

Measuring economic development has always been tricky.

A 2002 analysis by The Blade found that nearly one in five jobs that area economic development agencies had claimed

to have created either didn't exist or didn't meet state criteria for economic development. The Blade also found that area agencies had double-counted thousands of jobs they claimed to have "retained."

And there were critics of the growth partnership's measurements, such as former Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner. He said the project accounting change proves his long-held complaints that the growth partnership had padded its numbers.

"That's not admirable," said Mr. Finkbeiner, now a port authority board member. "On the other hand, I would say that it's admirable that, with the present [growth partnership] board and Eileen Granata, they are attempting to honestly describe what they have had a hand in."

A week ago, the port authority's board asked for a better assessment of the growth partnership's work, including a breakdown of how much effort is spent on Lucas County. The port authority shifts $1.35 million of its property tax collections to the growth partnership, prompting complaints from agency critics that Lucas County doesn't get enough focus for new projects. The port authority is trying to dispel the perception before voters decide whether to renew the agency's levy in November.

Ms. Granata presented the new numbers yesterday to show that the agency isn't ignoring Lucas County. Of the 52 projects for which the agency played a major role since 2000, 36 of them were in Lucas County, or 69 percent. And, she said, the growth partnership's staffers this year have spent 76 percent of their time on Lucas County projects.

Beyond the levy, the agency is pondering what its role will be as local leaders streamline economic development efforts.The new numbers show the agency plays a major role in just one of five new projects in the region, but Ms. Granata cautioned that may not be a fair comparison.

She said part of the disparity is to be expected: The growth partnership does not employ the majority of the region's economic development professionals. And she said some agencies will submit projects to the region's master list even if they didn't do anything to spur them.

Contact Joe Mahr at:
jmahr@theblade.com
or 419-724-6180.

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