The way to growth is through challenges

BY MARTIN R. CANTOR

August 26, 2007

For too many Long Islanders, change is for the other guy. This kind of thinking places us on a path to economic and sociological paralysis. If a region does not evolve, it ultimately collapses from the weight of its own inertia.

The key question looking ahead to the future of the economy is this: Are Long Islanders up to the task of addressing some of the region's critical challenges? I refer specifically to transportation, taxes, poverty, education, environmental preservation and immigration.

All of these are interrelated, and it takes a broad view, encompassing the sociological, economic and educational elements involved in each, to solve the greater problem of economic growth. The obstacles to growth are too complex to be remedied with quick fixes.

The first obstacle is finding a balance between regional transportation needs and protecting the environment. Our roads are almost full and lack room to expand. This threatens to throttle the regional economy.

A solution lies in the proposed Brentwood intermodal transportation hub, where products brought in by rail to a central location on the Pilgrim State Hospital site would then be distributed by small trucks across the Island. The hub would be near the Long Island Expressway. Efficiently used, it could remove the equivalent of 7,000 cars a day from the LIE, which would ease congestion on other roads.

The ultimate winner is the environment and air quality. The arguments that this facility would increase air pollution are specious, considering that doing nothing would encourage the spread of more air pollution.

Then there is the explosive issue of government purchasing open space, with the inherent conflict between the environment, the economy and housing needs. We have to preserve as much of what land is left. However, there has to be a serious discussion of whether we are buying too much land or not enough, and of the economic impact on the regional economy of either decision.

The more land that's preserved, the less that's available for affordable housing. And, with government setting the price floor through open-space purchasing, land becomes more expensive, thus making housing even less affordable.

One solution would be to permit higher density housing (which is generally more profitable for builders) in exchange for the transfer of development rights. So far, this idea has failed to meet with widespread success, since few communities are willing receive the higher-density development. But if something like this doesn't occur, taxes and housing costs will continue to send young people away and with them the region's future workforce.

The most stubborn of all our economic growth problems is education and the need to spend less while educating more. Taxpayers are willing to discuss how we teach our children, but they abhor talking about changing the financing system. They don't trust government with making such a decision.

This fear prevents a serious look at how we tax ourselves. That's too bad, with the benefits so obvious.

One scenario is the state's picking up more education costs, which would bring immediate property tax savings, making it cheaper to live here. The impact to the Long Island economy of the infusion of extra spending power would be billions.

Included in education costs now is the "high-stakes" testing required for the No Child Left Behind school scorecard. The concept, intended to identify schools needing help, has morphed into a system that uses results of testing children as an indicator of meeting standards.

Scores are not evaluated for individual improvement, which would help teachers develop individual learning plans. Rather, they are used to measure progress in entire grades from one year to another.

High-stakes testing also fails to recognize that children living in poverty may often be sick, hungry, cold and tired. They tend to live in households with single parents, usually women with lower levels of education who can't reinforce the child's learning at home. These factors result in lower test scores.

A recent Dowling College study found that in 49 of Long Island's 127 school districts, eighth-grade children taking the January 2007 English Language Arts exam failed to meet average county standards. Furthermore, 47 of those districts had children living in poverty at rates that exceeded the county average. These children are being left behind.

Rather than spending so much money on testing, some funds should be allocated to supporting the educational burdens of those in poverty. Long Island will benefit when these students enter the future workforce and fill the jobs so vital for sustaining the regional economy.

Finally, you can't talk about Long Island's future workforce without discussing the volatile issue of immigration. Long Island's welcome toward new documented immigrants has been muted, but down the road, educated immigrants can be part of Long Island's much-needed workforce.

An understanding of how the social and policy challenges we face are interrelated and also connected to the future of Long Island's economy would make it harder for the many Long Islanders who believe that progress lies in stopping initiatives.

We need to know what is important and distinguish it from what is essential, so that we preserve what we absolutely must, and open the door to the changes we need.

Martin R. Cantor is director of the Long Island Economic and Social Policy Institute at Dowling College, author of "Long Island, The Global Economy, and Race: The Aging of America's First Suburb" and a former Suffolk County economic development commissioner.