Transcripts For CSPAN3 Aspen Institute Discussion Focuses On Rural Economies And Innovation 20170302

Test test test. Test test test. With us from the South Carolina association for Economic Development. Bernie . Thank you and welcome. I bring you greetings from warmer climates where there are Smiling Faces and beautiful places. [ laughter ] South Carolina is a great place to be. We have urban and rural areas that definitely have slight differences. In South Carolina, the Unemployment Rate in our 11 most distressed and rural count iies averages 12 , this is twice that of the more developed and you are urbanized counties. Our three most prosperous counties is home to 40 of the states Bank Deposits. What that translates into is thats where capital largely resides. Whereas the Rural Communities, the 11 most rural and distressed count geez home to 4 of the states Bank Deposits. At the same time, South Carolina rich in land assets or 65 of our state is considered rural as far as landmass. Now, some may say that that is a challenge but we see that as an area of great opportunity and innovation. One area that id like to talk about is Allendale County. If you live in South Carolina, often times when you you want to see and hear about the most distressed conditions in the state you will talk about allen dale county. Population wise its a little over 9,000, 9,433 individuals. All Allendale County is often seen as a place where educational challenges exist. At the same time, Allendale County is rich in cultural and agriculture. Unfortunately, Allendale County is separated from Major Urban Centers because of how the Transportation System aligns. At one time, Allendale County was an area where a local economy would drive because it was a cutthrough between savannah and columbia and some of the more urbanized areas. But with the building of interstates that bypass the county, the county fell into economic hardship. The major areas of opportunities that we see in Allendale County are focused on the local assets and thats where we tried to drill down on our own innovations there. Its abundant in Natural Resources, Cultural Assets and opportunities to really mine the potential that exists there. A recent study from the university of South Carolina produced a one other thing ill say about Allendale County. Its a majority africanamerican population. 73 is africanamerican, 25 euroamerican. So theres some historical qualities that exist there. Recently, the university of South Carolina produced a study, one that we have been hoping to be generated for some time that looked at africanamerican tourism in South Carolina and that study produced recently and released recently showed that africanamerican tourism in South Carolina was a 2. 4 billion industry. Just in africanamerican tourism in the state. So when you look at the cultural asset, the Natural Resources that exist throughout the state but specifically in Rural Counties we see theres an opportunity for cultivating that. So id like to move to one of our organizations in Allendale County and since im here by myself youll have to imagine Allendale County representatives here. He cant fit on the stage but hes actually here. So Allendale County alive is local Community Development corporation. Its a certified Community Development corporation and i x will explain the significance of that shortly. It was created by the community because the community itself recognized they had resources they want to cultivate and they want to maximize the potential that exists in their county. And what has happened, the state also recognized that a lot of our distressed communities had resources but without capital they could not cultivate and receive investment in those resources. So the state created something called a Community Economic Development Tax credit and that tax credit incentivizes investment into local challenged communities. As long as there is a certified Community Development corporation or Community Development Financial Institution in that area and Allendale County alive is one of those Certified Organizations. Verdictfication is done by our state department of commerce and any investment, contribution, equity or debt that is invested in one of these Certified Organizations, that individual bank or Insurance Company who makes that investment gets a 33 tax credit, state tax credit, on their investment. And what that has been able to do is to drive investment, private investment into some of our more distressed communities. What Allendale County alive was able to do was to use that tax credit to be able to secure property and buildings that are now enabling them to operate and to advance heritage tourism, Affordable Housing development as well as cultural tourism. As i mentioned earlier, most of our Bank Deposits and Bank Investments are in the more urbanized areas. Well, through cdifs that exist in the state, those cdifs have also been able to attract private capital and therefore lending them to allowing them to lend capital to some of the more distressed areas. And recently Allendale County alive received a 61,000 loan to advance their work. So in South Carolina, what our state policymakers have recognized is the value of investing in rural and distressed markets. We have had companies, individuals, banks that have invested in these markets using the tax credit as a means to do that and if but for the tax credits those investments would not flow into those markets. To date, the Tax Credit Program has directed over 15 mltd into these rural and distressed communities throughout the state, most of whom are rural and economically challenged communities throughout South Carolina. Now the tax credits have been exhausted and we are engaged with our legislature now to up the ante. So were in discussions with them of increasing the tax credit from 33 to 100 . The current Tax Credit Program has an annual cap of 1 million. Were working with our state legislature to increase that to 5 million annually. Eventually we would like that to be a permanent tool across the state. We received calls from investors, bankers, who are really interested in receiving that tax incentive in order for them to target investment in distressed areas. And so now that the tax credit, of course, is exhausted, were getting more calls than ever because this is a unique tool that is enabling us to channel capital into economically challenged areas throughout our state and Allendale County is one of those that is receiving private capital whereby they would not have received it before. Bernie, thanks a lot. [ applause ] were going to be taking your questions in just a short time but were going to keep the conversation up here a little longer. Im glad you ended, bernie, with the tax incentive program. It certainly makes sense on its face can you envision a time when Allendale County will attract that kind of investment without the tax credit where the advisability of capital going there is selfevident and doesnt need the spur of a tax credit. Often times investors are not going to be drawn to an area where they cannot immediately see a return on their invest investment. So what the tax credit does is brings the attention to the area and gives them the ability to see the Investment Opportunities there. Thats why a Certified Organization is bush administrationed in or serves that particular county so they can package the asset they are in, put that in a package that the investor can see the return on that investment as well as they get a tangible financial return from the state but they could also get a monetary return from the investment. It is going to be below market. Its going to be Patient Capital that goes into the product but theyre going to receive what we call a triple bottom line. Theyre going to receive a turn from the state. Depending on their investment they may receive a return from the project and they will also play a role in moving the economy forward in that local market. If im sitting in columbia with my green eye shade on, do the numbers work . If South Carolina has foregone a certain amount of tax revenue can i make a case for foregoing that revenue in money i dont have to spend for various kinds of subsidies, social welfare payme payments emergency aid to the people of that distressed part of the state . Sure, because already the Tax Credit Program has proven to have a 51 leverage average. Sfiems that leverage is higher in some other markets and a little bit lower in others but on average a 5 to 1 leverage, you are creating jobs in that local market and providing return to the state. So, yeah, the department of revenue with the green eye shades, theyre measuring that as well. And when they see that return on investment, more importantly the legislature sees that return on investment and now they are happy to forgo that potential revenue realizing that they are getting more revenue on the other side. That also includes the local tax base which is going to help with finding local schools and so forth. Sitting here as we are in Dupont Circle in washington, d. C. , were just a short stroll from the agencies that could make your lives in the short term or the near term a little easier, a little harder, a little more promising, the sba is not too far away from here, the u. S. Forest service. Are there really easy fixes that the relationship with both your own State Governments and the federal government are missing. Is there lowhanging fruit that really is kind of easily picked thats being missed right now . Thats certainly true. When you begin looking at the Economic Opportunities across Rural America there are many, many great opportunities that we miss simply because we dont have the initial investment of resources necessary to move to a state where they can sustain themselves. A good example for us in eastern ohio is in the area of infrastructure. We have Many Companies that are looking at globally where it makes the most sense for them to locate an operation and eastern ohio is extremely competitive as a geographic location but we have a shortage of infrastructure to support that. And by infrastructure you mean water, sewer building sites. So in our region, if its flat enough to build on its likely a brownfield, its been built on before and had industry on it before, its on a strip mine, it has an underground coal mine under it, its in a flood plain or a landslide area. So we have billions of assets sitting in a trust fund for reclaiming strip mine land and theres a proposal in congress, the reclaim act, that would move some of the money out but prioritize it for those sites that have the most Economic Development potential. That linkage between Economic Opportunity and that fund can create a situation that basically fixes the problem we have of not having property available when Companies Come calling when you create jobs in our community. David, you reinhabited a closed mill. That sounds like the perfect all around win, revitalizing already existing capital. And theres a lot of it across the west, particularly saw mills in our Forest Industry which has obviously suffered in some of our Rural National forest dependent communities over the last 20 years so those sites are available and the help to get on to them is really important. Our county, for example, stepped up and bought the old mill site in our community and leased it to us with the agreement that we would purchase it back from them over time. We had a five year leaseback option and we will buy the property back from the county by getting some new market tax credit lenlding within 18 months. So the county recognized we neednt been focused on infrastructure, we need to focus on our processes to create those jobs so they stepped up and filled the gap, we were able to buy it back but it was a perfect example of the Public Private partnership to get that infrastructure in the hands of businesses without it becoming cumbersome. Are there interoperability problems . Are there ways that the incentives provided in washington and in your own state doerchlt line up easily or could line up better . Yeah, i think theres one in particular, the Community Development Block Grant Program that were involved with. For entitlement areas, which are usually the urbanized areas, the local government designs those well for urban markets but in nonentitlement areas, those dollars go to the state and the state designs a master plan for that. Often times the state master plan does not align with some of our rural local rural markets. So we really want to see guidelines and directions to the state to be a little bit more sensitive the to what the needs are in the local market. We support water and sewer projects but there are also entrepreneurial opportunities that can be utilized and gleaned from using that program as well as innovative programs and activities around youth entrepreneurship, Work Force Development so that if we can get the cdbg program to be a little bit more directive as far as getting our State Government to do that. Whats the end game . Are we trying to provide a maintenance doseover Economic Development to Rural Counties just do sort of keep them moving forward and keep them alive and keep them funded . Are you trying to create places where people will move to instead of just taking care of the people who are already there . Are you looking to something more ambitious than that . From my own experience, i spent 20 years working in western minnesota in a region which was predicted to be about 175,000 people and today its about 215,000 people and the reason for that is a focused 20year effort to rebuild the local economy from the ground up using local resources. It created more vibrant communities and defied all of the expert predictions about continued rural decline. It is possible, there are examples where its possible. It takes flexible resources driven by a local vision of the path forward to make it happen, but it is very doable. I have a point there, too, please. The really important thing here as far as im concerned as an entrepreneur is to provide the opportunity for people to stay in their communities. Ful so many times people have to move and leave the communities behind and you see an erosion of the tax base, erosion of the infrastructure. All of those disastrous things start to happen. So by creating opportunities on the market side, the way i see things, and bringing work to the people, keeping them in their communities that you not only stabilize their families but you start to stable size those communities as well. So if you can find a way to stop the exit of people from these communities, i think youve gone a long way of rebuilding Rural America. Thats when we got started in 1996, the goal was to create jobs and create enough opportunities that kids came back to the schools. And that is happening. In 20 years after the mill shut down for the first time in 20 years and ive been on the school board for 12 the School Population is growing in Wallowa County and its a source of prietd and excitement within our community. And our community there is so much Natural Resource wealth and as i said before so much ingenui ingenuity and people want a work, they dont want a maintenance dose of funding. They want to work. Theres tremendous opportunit s opportunities were working with farmers and ranchers across the county developing micro Hydro Systems and irrigation efficiency programs to create efficiencies in water use and energys you the improve farm incomes and farm values. Were working with contractors in the woods to look at different systems of running their business and diversifying their business so theyre no longer just harvesters but stewardship contractors doing a full sleep of water shedd restoration work in addition to the timber harvest work and thats what were trying to is building a stewardship economy, one that is rebuilding soil, rebuilding Forest Health while still creating some of the products that society needs, whether thats food, fiber or energy. Bernie. And i also see people attracted to a place of areas that have a sense of place, areas that are clearly you hear the diversity right here where a community has a sense of place and identity and celebrates that and then has the ability to attract the resources to grow that in such a way that people can understand the value of that place. Theyre attracted to that area and thereby you can attract folk that align with that sense of place and bring their resources and their talents to that area. So that this helps strengthen that sense of place and grows it so others are attracted to it as well. Im going to tell you guys a dirty secret. From the urban side of the divide its taken as an article of faith that because of the way our politics are structured rural areas are disproportionate pull in the national dialogue. If you look at the United States senate, theres the state of california with 40 Million People and the 17 nearest states have 41 Million People and, of course, 17 times as many United States senators. How come politics and the way state legislatures and the National Legislature is structured have been able to champion some of the interests that weve heard discussed in this conversation so far . [ laughter ] it is i think the checks and balances bilts into o s bui political system. So you might think with the majority of americas population being urban that the majority of the power would be there and if you look at the house of representatives thats the case. In the senate, the idea was to have a senate based on states versus based on population was to avoid what i believe was talked about in the federalist papers as a tyranny of the majority. So on the one hand you have geography then you have population. The balance between two should lead to more balli ibalancing a affairs and its probably the reason Rural America hasnt been held on all together. How come weve held on to so many counties in america that have been depopulating, that are adjacent to depopulating counties where they might very profitably combine their Sheriffs Departments, court systems, county jails, School Systems and yet they hang on as revenue centers, as centers of employment. Might you guys be helping your own cause with a rationalization of rural government across the country . Well, a lot of these counties were developed for political reasons and i know in South Carolina they have such a strong sense of identity that they dont want to lose that sense of identity. Now, what weve attempted to do in South Carolina is operate on a more regional approach where counties are working together but those lines and those jurisdictions still exist but yes, you still have to have more than one fire department, more than one Sheriffs Department but there are so theres the beginning of economies of scale where theyre beginning to collaborate more. But a lot of it is youre touching the third rail and thats all about who i am. And if you want a subsidy, i think weve got touch the third rai rail. Well, theres another point. We work on a regional basis from my seat and from what we do its not just a county effort here and we dont really have the time nor do we have the interest, i personally dont have the interest in fighting political battles to get the economics done in our area. So for that reason we go straight the core of the problem. We look at ways to solve it on a regional scale and the things that were doing, the model weve built and the hubandspoke system is actually transparent and transferable. And ive talked to people in the federal level about taking this idea to the rest of appalachia and other Craft Industries like clay, like glass and leather and fabricings. Its starting to happen in North Carolina in the fabric industry as i understand it. So this is not a county by county effort. Its a regional effort and its a huge wide swath of the region. Were talking about 13 states here in america. And frankly i dont know a rural county in america that does it all in their own. Almost every rural county is collaborating with american rural county, almost every rural city is collaborating with nearby rural cities in order to make to bring the services that they need in order to get things done. Can we get rid of those old political units that were based on how far can be travelled in one day . Im not able to fight that battle. That said, when we work on Economic Development in eastern ohio, local partners understand the geography, understand the entrepreneurs, understand the building sites, can work on getting the infrastructure in place. That said if youre in a town of 500 people or 5,000 people in appalachian ohio you cant effectively market that place to say a business in the Wood Products industry in the European Union thats looking at a location closer to their source of hard wood supplies to operate. So we work on a hubandspoke basis even in Economic Development to get the job done. So its not like were sitting there in our castles and barring the doors. We are collaborating and innovating, have we been able to do that on every level . Is every unit of government in Rural America rational . No, but i could say the same thing about every metropolitan area in america. Im sure youve been thinking of your brief, direct, and elegantly crafted questions. [ laughter ] and we will move on to questions from the audience now. And your hand shot up right away, secretary, former kansas secretary dan glickman. Thank you. The spirit of local development and entrepreneurship is amazing. One comment and then a couple questions. The comment is is that one of the problems that happened with Rural America is largely Rural America and policy affecting Rural America up until about 1950 was strictly agricultural and maybe even to 1960. The bulk of that agriculture was the commodity crops of wheat, corn, cotton, rice and soybeans. Timber was a little bit different but it was viewed as a crop and agriculture has changed so dramatically and its depopulated because of production increases in productivity and other kinds of things that were left with a depopulated area but the programs were designed for an area populated by farmers and now its much different than it used to be and thats the challenge, ray, to making these political decisions but were probably not going to change the constitution in the short term so maybe the president might want to change it but the but probably the rest of us dont want to change it. You talked about the forest service, state tax credits. The federal government pumps a huge amount of money into rural ameri america. One could argue its almost disproportionate. Water and sewer grants, business and industry loans, infrastructu infrastructure. Its a significant amount of dollars that comes in. Some of it is distributed by the sba, most usda in this regard. Does it work . Does it help you do what you want to do . Does it need to be spent in a different way . There are billions and billions of dollars every year flowing into Rural America from uncle sam. Is it being spent the right way . Does it help you . The short answer to all of that is yes. In some ways the federal dollars do work. They do help, but as i said earlier, sometimes we need it directed in a more strategic way, visavis directed with more voice from the local community and you may say that that exists but we really need to have that pushed down even further. It also needs to be more accessible directly to organizations that are closer to the ground. You might say local governme government a lot of times local government in the Rural Communities in our small towns dont have the capacity to access those dollars so that requires either some Capacity Building or structuring the dollars in a way that that local community, that local town can access them and really put them to work. So yes we have many programs that are working very well but we still have some ways in which we need to structure federal programs so that they can go directly into the local community utilized by the local units of local governments, nonprofits, hospitals and so forth that will be a more efficient and effective way of utilizing mobile assets. I can only speak to the sector that im in, the disproportionate amount of money being spent on fighting fires and it dwarves the amount of money that were putting into actual restoration that can mitigate some of that and being a business that is in the business of that we are continually frustrated by seeing those dollars flowing to stop fires when were on the ground trying to create Forest Health. I think one of the things we see with a lot of programs is and i know the reasoning why, but sometimes we try to get big cure awl alls so we want to have huge impact so lets focus on one big thing. I see it in our industry. I was talking earlier about biomass. We want to fix the forest in one fell swoop so lets invest tens of millions of dollars of research on one thing we think can fix it all. Were seeing Small Solutions that are working that in the 15 years that were spending trying to find the one big thing we can be doing many things that are making a big impact. [ applause ] good afternoon. My name is jose, im from the Manufacturing Extension Partnership program, im the southeast manager. First let me congratulate the Aspen Institute and the panelists for having a great conference without powerpoint. Its very refreshing. [ laughter and applause ] moving along, i have a question actually. Im very interested in the you probably answered some of it now but im very interested in the billion ton initiative by d. O. E and usda. And since you know biomass, thats a thats a phrase i use, you talked about ethanol, i imagine you looked at it for the next step, you already know how to handle it, what are challenges for you to move to that next level . Because im looking into that for the southeast thinking you know we know biomass in the southeast, what would need to happen to be able to start looking into that new Economic Development . Eastern oregon is a little over 50 of the area is federal land but 70 of the area falls within our National Forest. And the capacity has declined substantially over the last 20 years to manage that. And in Wallowa County alone theres about 112,000 acres that broad Scientific Consensus says is in real need of restoration and were accomplishing about 1500 acres a year. And that has impacted everything david and i have done because some of the solutions that look good on paper when youre crunching numbers become incredibly difficult to real iz when you think about the availability of supply coming off the federal land. So trying to figure out a way to achieve more consistency and continuity in the pace and scale of restoration on federal land, trying to get the country to step that this is important work, that it is important to the health of the National Forest and reinvestment in all the other things the National Forest does for the public but that it adds that extra benefit for our communities of jobs and income. Thats a key constraint to us. The other thing is because we operate in we have 2. 2 people per square mile, we have a very dispersed geography with long haul distances and steep mountainous and canyon terrain so the cost to get fuel to a sight often exceed some of these big Scale Solutions that david mentioned we look at five and ten meg watt pawatt power plant. They needed fuel to come in at 85 gre 8 a green ton, at that time we would not be able to deliver it for less than 25. So those challenge some of these bigger ideas. Using the hashtag rural innovation some questions have been coming in and janet has those. Lets start with this one. How do the rural innovators here think about job quality as part of the Economic Development efforts . Job quality. Great question. Great question. John . [ laughter ] job quality is critical and we focus on that everyday. Most of the tools we use to encourage development, well invest in anything that creates a job at less than 1. 5 times scheduled minimum wage. Thats still a relatively low level but that said, in my experience, until you soak up your labor surpluses your job quality wont go up. So once you get to the point where youre approaching 5 unemployment you start to see economic pressure to increase quality of jobs. So its a ying and yang. A company wont pay more than the prevailing wage in the area so until you get enough volume going to bring the Unemployment Rate down to a point where your work force begins to be competitive your wages wont go up. And thats roughly 22,000 a year for full time employment . Right. Can you live on that in eastern ohio, Southeastern Ohio . If you have two people in the family working full time that will bring you above the federal poverty threshold for a family of four. Not the greatest living but the cost of living is lower. 282 the national average. I think its a twopart situation. I would say investing in our edge station education is a big part of it. We talked about the brain drain, about people having to move to Rural Centers because theres no jobs for them. So we need to reinvest in that to get people to be able to stay and thats the other part of it is that we have a lot of people that want to stay. Were in communities where people want to stay there. We have a lot of employees that are excited about the jobs we have there because theyre in the sector they want to to be working in that so to create opportunities for them stay is really important so investing in that education but also investing in so were creating opportunities for people to work in sectors they want to be in. And lots of people who want to move back so when people worry they wont find somebody with a technical skill set, there are almost people in that area who left for opportunity with that skill set willing to come back. I think one of the other issues, too, ray, i think it would behoove us all to think about what can we do at our local level to make a difference . Striems a small pebble can make a lot of waves in a pond. And in our case if we would have listened to the outside world where im from we would never have even attempted to create a creative business. Those are in atlanta, those are in new york city those are everywhere but Morgan County ohio or other small counties like ours. But our people are creative, we have to reach in the woods to find them. But what we dont that we dont need any government help with is we have taken away the ceiling on their earnings so talk about the quality of your job when you go and do what you want to do and are paid to your to tension. That is a quality that isnt often found and thats what weve been able to do in our rural community. We offer even our hourly people a Profit Sharing bonus. So they share they become part of the organization. I think these are tind t kinds of efforts that are grassroot and very simple and they dont need a lot of money thrown at them. It takes leadership and entreprene entrepreneurship to make this work. Whos next . Over here. Now its on. Im renee bryce laport, hello, john. Im just interested to hear from you guys for the jobs the new jobs being created, what kind of educational preparation do folks need to be able to successfully work those jobs. I would like to address that for one second. Educational level thats thats kind of a soft area here. Whats really going on in america is the lack of work ethic regardless of your education. Weve lost that somewhere along the line at the family level, at the community level, i dont know at what level. But we found in what weve done in ohio is weve concentrated on working with the amish and Mennonite Community where the work ethic is part of their way of life and john has helped us create an Educational Program with Washington State college in marietta to do training for people. And our idea here is to take the work ethic element and make it transferable to the english work force if possible. We dont know that yet, its still an experiment. Those are the kind of innovative things at the local level we can do to make a huge difference and make the pebble make even bigger waves. Just a point of clarification, the english are what the amish call the rest of us. [ laughter ] i would say that, you know, part of it goes back to jobs that people enjoy doing and tapping into the things that people like. So for us, working in Natural Resources, people are there because they want to do that. Jessie is here and she spends a lot of time with our employees, sometimes i want to be like, jessie, dont encourage them because we like to keep our good employees. But we spend a lot of time with them finding out what do you want to do . What do you want to go to college for . A lot of times in our Rural Communities kids dont know what they want to do when they get out of school so they need to spend time figuring out what drives them, what theyre passionate about and identifying that and being able to invest in that. So investing in Work Force Development is an important part for our business so we do lean manufacturing training, other things to find that thing that inspires people to say this is the direction i want to go. I think thats an important piece. And its also the difference between not difference but education and training. You have education and a often times persons think immediately that thats college or graduate degree but its training. One of the programs we operate is called the individual Development Account program, ida program where an individual can acquire an asset, one of the assets is in education and thats a matched savings program. Well, most ever to ones that go through that program, theyre going for training. Now some of that is for professional training and barbering, beautician, welding, something they enjoy so you have education, you have training. I think its also making training and education accessible to persons. Because not everyone as s al lined to go to college or be in that environment so as we create training opportunities that are closest to the community, grounded in the community, that aligns with the values and the passion of the people there, i think we wont have an issue where persons cannot find work because theyre not skilled. And i think that also feeds to the work ethic because most persons that we may think have lost the work ethic its just because theyve not been exposed to what the opportunities are so what we try to do is first of all affirm them that that they have something in them that can produce for themselves, their family and the Greater Community and work with them to find what that is and provide the tools so they can capitalize that. Bernie, you told us the unemployment in your county was twice the level that that it is in the state to so up some of that excess labor, where would you train your fire as far as the amount of education, the amount of training you need for these jobs and once people have some experience and some skils s are there ladders that allow them to stay in the area . More skilled jobs that they can move to over time . Well, whats happening in the county is helping people understand what resources are there and what potential entrepreneurial opportunities are there and how they can petition themselves in that environment and bringing the Training Resources to them so they can transition from so thick transition from the unemployment role to the employment role. It takes some time. My state is alined on what we call smokestack chasing. So a lot of the agenda is focused on that, were trying to help right side that so theyll invest more in entrepreneurial development, Place Based Development so that in those counties that cant attract the boeing plan manufacturer, they can generate alternative industry and from that attract a manufacturer that aligns with the Natural Resources that are there. Next . In case theres this is a second question. There was a question from california how are you reaching out to cultivate a future generation willing to work and live in rural . Ernie, you began to answer that but is there anything tells rest of you are doing . Our resources have been running research and Education Program with broad outreach within the k12 programs. We started offering an outdoor Natural Resource Education Program on fridays and extended that to the universities and create a variety of internships as well but i think this idea of continual Work Force Development and training is the more important one Wallowa County has the highest rate of selfemployment in the state of oregon and people there are used to trying to create something on their own. One of the things you hear over and over again is that the Younger Generation has less direct experience than the preceding one that grew up on a farm or on the family that is working in the woods and using these as key tools to work and trying to figure out how we create those opportunities again so that theres the ability to do to use both your head but to use your hands and figure out the best way to cut a tree, whatever it is that were losing some of that and we want to create more opportunities for kids to do that. So some of the older generation were talking about on the largest abandoned mill site creating for an applied Training Area for kids to get more involved in that and also talking with the returning vets to be involved to immediately go back to work doing a whole range of things on the National Forest system starting with simple things like rebuilding trails to doing some of the work that we talked about earlier. In our case with the Certification Training Program that john worked with the local Community College the idea is to have a Board Certified at the state Level Program that can articulate so weve created an 18hour curriculum for job training and skill train iing tt will articulate if the student wants to go for an Associates Degree or beyond that. Thats one path, thats an option for them. If they want to go into the work force theyre prepared for that and were creating resources and manufacturing for those jobs to be open for then when they do come through the school. We created a flan tlop cal base in our community that we can support scholarships and the educational cost for those students so theres no reason that our kids kids in our area have to be on the streets. This is the best antidrug campaign i can think of. Get them in the workforce or on for further education. And not abandon them at that point. Not abandon them. One of the initiatives which has been extremely successful, something we call upskill, which works with employers to identify people at those lower tiers in their company who can do better and who are great employees but dont have the next skill to advance, with the department of labor Training Grant we were able for an average of 600 per person help that individual move up into that next skill, which allowed them to be promoted and open the position for a new entree level person. We managed to train and place more people with that model than other workforce grants combined focusing on preemployment training. Its a Cost Effective way to meet skill needs and keep your workforce moving up id be happy to talk to you about it. One of the metrics that big city mayors throw at each other when they talk about vitality and job growth and healthy economies is how many immigrants come to my metropolitan area. And if you look at the smsas with the least immigrant inflow, they tend to be some of the least healthy metropolitan areas in the country. Our rural areas in america, just out of this conversation, not even in it, when a tremendous share of the people who come to america from other parts of the world are rural people i have one story but it kind of encapsulates our experience in South Carolina. We recently swore in a new u. S. Secretary to the u. N. , nikki haley, who is the former governor of South Carolina who of course is born in South Carolina but her parents were immigrants from india. They moved to a rural area, bamberg of South Carolina. And they started an enterprise there. So rural areas are rich for immigrants who have been able to create an opportunity for themselves, a life for themselves and then able to grow and prosper from there. Thats one story that shows the opportunity that exists but you can aggregate that up with there are many parts of Rural America where there is population growth going on by immigrants and you can go into communities in rural nebraska that are growing again because of immigrants moving into the community and Rural Communities in the southwest that are growing and thrive being and doing better because of immigrants coming up through the americas. Its the immigration issue and immigration opportunity hasnt bypassed Rural America. Its a much a part of the rural narrative as the urban narrative. Its just not told as often. I think we have time for one more question. We have a lot coming in i had him in the queue, sorry, we have a lot coming in we wont have time for but here you go. Thank you. My name is dan nef, i work here in washington with the Appalachian Regional Commission and worked with mike in ohio in the 90s and applaud his work and catalyst for that part of the state over the years. My question is kind of simplsim we just completed a very contentious election cycle and we have a new administration and Rural America was very much behind the new president and what he proposes to do. If you had access to his twitter account and knew he was going to look at what you were going to say, what recommendation would you make to this administration as to what they could go to better help Rural America and to deal with issues and problems perhaps more wholistic manner . He does go on every day so he would see it. Again, city and far Eastern Oregon were desperately opening thoughts about infrastructure go beyond traditional infrastructure of roads, bridges, highways and schools and think about Natural Resource capital and infrastructure that exists across our National Public lands in general that has a deferred maintenance account that exceeds 20 billion and tremendous amount of opportunity to put people back to work restoring that infrastructure and that asset that has long served the public. So thats a key piece. The second thing would be to just make sure that as david was getting to before, that were not looking for just nice, big splashy investments that get you headlines but were thinking about how do you package the programs that are the right size and scale with the right flexibility for small Rural Communities across the country. This may go counter to the narrative that were hearing out there but for one thing, i would really like to see our administration understand the impact of uncertainty on opportunities related to International Trade and the impact thats having in rural areas. I currently have 40 International Companies that are actively considering the possibility of making an investment. It would create jobs in our region. All of them have been on hold since the election because they dont understand the impact of the election on the operating environment. I would urge our administration in congress to make it clear that Foreign Companies that want to create jobs in america are welcome here. And that trade barriers that might prevent them from having successful Business Operation in america arent going to get in the way. I would encourage him or help to inform them that Rural America is very diverse, that there are a variety of ethnic groups and others that live in Rural America that really help to shape who Rural America is. And so, with that diversity lies many opportunities and so to think about the diversity and to help inform them of the diversity of Rural America and how those Cultural Assets can play a role in promoting Economic Opportunity in our Rural Communities. I would like to excuse me, go ahead. I would like to ask the president to not pay so much attention to wall street and main street but pay more attention to the country roads. Thats where the jobs are being created at the entrepreneurial level and 17 of employees are hired by entrepreneurs. I think it would be behoove the president to take a look at that and see how he can support less regulation and more support for the Small Businesses in america. I would one last thing, it might be counter intuitive but theres large parts of Rural America that are starting to partake in a stew ardship economy and want to have a stew ardship economy and care about the land they live on. Its a little counterintuitive that we are against regulation and Climate Change and so on when really not all Rural America wants to be in an extraction economy. Theres a lot of Rural America that would like to be part of a stewardship economy. Im told he watches more cnn than cspan3, but in case he was watching thats a good set of messages to end on. One of the most important jobs as moderator is to get off on time and we just did that. Janet . Thank you very much. [ applause ] i want to thank greg suarez and youre welcome to chat with him afterwards. I saw more hands up so i know theres more detailed questions. I want to remind you that were actually very actively interested in collecting more stories of rural innovation, if you have any of those, please do share them with us via a link at twitter at rural innovators or you can visit us at aspn rural. I want to thank all of you for being here in the live stream cspan as well as in the room and invite you all back to our front porch for the next segment of americas rural opportunity, which will be on march 17th, here and were going to be focusing on entrepreneurship and Rural America. Thank you very much. We take you live to a houseoversight hearing, jason chaffetz, an Inspector Generals report indicated that the tsa is abusing stewardship of sensitive security information. Just getting under way live here. Without objection the chair is authorized to declare a recess at any time. Appreciate you you being here on this important topic, transparency at the tsa, the committee will explore the lack of transparency at the administration and hear testimony from the office of special council known as the osc and the department of homeland securitys Inspector General about problems they are having with the tsa. Congress created the office of special counsel to investigate practices especially whistle blowing. In order for the osc to complete its mission, agencies are required to produce complete and unredacted documents to the office of special counsel. Unfortunately they are not fulfilling their obligations and frustrating efforts and i can tell you with a passion on both sides of this aisle, it is not