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Column
By JEFF WEBB
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 9, 2000
It's not unusual that economic development groups compete for the same industries. In Florida and across the nation, such groups routinely court companies that create jobs, are easy on the environment and will pay taxes that help keep residents' costs for government from increasing.
What is unusual, perhaps, is that two of the public-private economic development partnerships in this region made headlines recently for recruiting, or at least attempting to recruit, detention facilities.
Late last month the Citrus County Economic Development Council announced, with more than a modicum of satisfaction, that it had landed the Brown Schools, a residential education and treatment center for youngsters with serious emotional and behavioral problems. The facility, which also will serve as the corporate headquarters for the Brown Schools' other Florida operations, will be in the old Beverly Hills Heritage Hospital off County Road 491. It is expected to house up to 100 troubled young people ages 4 to 18 who are referred by the state. It will employ about 150 people who will make an average of $25,000 a year.
Meanwhile, just last week, the Times confirmed that the Hernando County Economic Development Commission was entertaining inquiries from the Wackenhut Corp. to build a low-security prison on an undisclosed 50-acre parcel. The privately run facility would be a gray-bar hotel for as many as 1,500 inmates in the custody of the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service. That compound reportedly would create up to 300 jobs, also paying wages well above the average in Hernando County.
In Citrus County, the fledgling EDC is touting the arrival of the Brown Schools as a real coup. Only two years old, the EDC has worked hard to correct a negative public image that its leaders created when they initially tried to keep their operations secret, even though they are funded mostly with public dollars. At the insistence of the County Commission, the group recently agreed to be more open about its operations. That, as well as the news about the Brown Schools, amounts to a one-two punch of positive public relations that the Citrus EDC can herald as the first in what it hopes will be a long string of similar accomplishments.
The Hernando County EDC has suffered a similar image problem regarding the use of public funds to operate a private corporation, but it has been around more than twice as long, and many of its critics have come to an uneasy peace with the group. Also, its accomplishments have been greater in number. A strategy to develop land around the Hernando County airport for small businesses and the acquisition of grants to improve roads and water systems there have given the group a measure of success that the Citrus EDC has not yet enjoyed.
It's too early to tell whether the Wackenhut prospect will be a boon or a bane for the Hernando EDC. Creating that many jobs is a notion that will sit well with the public, as will the expectation of the corporation's paying tangible property taxes on its sizeable assets. However, finding 50 acres that is far enough away from residential areas but still has the road and sewer network necessary to support such a facility, will be tricky. No one wants a prison in his or her back yard, and Wackenhut can expect Hernando County residents to put up a fight. The only question will be how intense the fight will be.
In the bigger picture, though, one has to wonder why, if such operations are so desirable, counties with economic development programs bigger and better than those in Citrus and Hernando aren't rolling out their red carpets.
Also, residents should ask themselves if attracting companies whose stock in trade is misguided miscreants or prisoners is what they had in mind when they gave the EDCs the public money and authority to act on their behalf.