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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > June > 04
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Guest column: ‘Real NCR’ can’t be moved
By Fred Bartenstein
“We are part of all we have met.” — John H. Patterson, 1844-1922
As I read the news coverage and commentary about NCR’s world headquarters moving to Georgia, it occurs to me that it is only the corporation with a three-initial symbol on the New York Stock Exchange that is leaving Dayton.
The real “NCR” — at least what that name has come to mean in the Dayton region — isn’t going anywhere.
In fact, it couldn’t be taken from us. It’s in our DNA, in the very landscape we inhabit, the water we drink, the air we breathe, and the way we live and conduct ourselves as a community.
What I’ll call “the real NCR” is a collection of powerful and influential ideas that changed the world and shaped Dayton as we have come to know it in the 20th and 21st centuries. John H. Patterson — who, by the way, bought but did not found the organization that became National Cash Register Company in 1884 — was the person responsible for many of the ideas.
But he also attracted and built a culture supportive of social entrepreneurs who refined his ideas and added their own — people like Charles F. Kettering, Edward Deeds, Thomas Watson, James Cox, and Arthur Morgan.
This culture nourished Wilbur and Orville Wright, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Josephine Schwarz, Miriam Rosenthal and countless others who build on their heritage and add to it today.
What were some of the game-changing ideas that still make Dayton Dayton?
Treating workers like human beings and not just instruments of production. Cooperation among business, government and the public for civic progress. An egalitarian approach to participation, education, public health, parks and open-space, recreation and philanthropy.
Efficiency and professionalism in local government. Creative institution-building for tackling new challenges. A higher social value for merit and innovation than for birth and wealth. A belief that progress is possible, and, therefore, that change is welcome.
We have been mistaken in associating the real NCR with a corporation that manufactures and markets products that could not have been imagined by its founders, far-seeing as they were.
The real NCR is a legacy of ideas, institutions, enterprises, and landmarks that make our region what it is today.
These aren’t going anywhere and will shape the lives of our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Let me name just a few: the City of Dayton, the Miami Conservancy District, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the Dayton Foundation, the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce, Culture Works, the United Way, Hills & Dales Park, Old River, Hawthorn Hill, Moraine Farm, the NCR Golf Course, Carillon Historical Park, Patterson Boulevard (the filled-in Miami and Erie Canal), and Dorothy Lane (named for John H. Patterson’s daughter).
The NCR story this week is not a replay of “Chicken Little” or “The Pied Piper of Hamelin.”It’s more like the “Wizard of Oz.”
We are slowly realizing that it wasn’t a wizard corporation that made the magic behind that moat and brick curtain on Patterson Boulevard. We had the magic all along — the heart, the courage, and the brains — and we can continue to use them to shape our future. We are grateful to our forebears and benefactors, and we — not Atlanta — inherit their legacy.
Fred Bartenstein has lived in the Dayton area since 1975. Formerly president of the Dayton Foundation, managing director of the Victoria Theatre Association and a Dayton assistant city manager, Bartenstein is a consultant living in Yellow Springs. E-mail him at fred@fredbartenstein.com.
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TweetEditorial: Stimulus money hard to tie to NCR move to Georgia
Obviously, federal stimulus money should not be used to lure jobs from one state to another. That’s just shuffling deck chairs on a ship that is still taking on water.
However, it really doesn’t look like stimulus money lured NCR to move any jobs to Georgia. This needs to be said, because Ohio politician after politician has made a statement denouncing the “fact,” to quote some, that the federal money — which is supposed to perk up the national economy — is being used for purposes of economic civil war.
The behavior of the politicians is almost defensible, because NCR put out public statements saying that stimulus money would toward its planned operation in Columbus, Ga., However, it turns out that the city has simply applied for that money, even though NCR has already committed to the project.
Every indication is that the project will go forth, whatever the feds decide. That’s what Columbus is saying: that the city will come up with the money, one way or another. It’s a credible claim. After all, a building is available (though NCR also plans to build another, smaller one). The city wants the project to happen. NCR wants it to happen.
Stimulus or no stimulus, that’s typically been enough to make this sort of thing happen. Local communities are enormously eager to find a way to facilitate the arrival of almost a thousand new jobs. Incentives may be the least controversial form of new spending.
Worth noting also is that the jobs in Columbus would not be coming from Dayton, anyway. Dayton doesn’t have an NCR plant. This would be a new operation.
Now, it’s also true that NCR got $60 million in tax breaks and other incentives to go to Georgia, and the Columbus project was necessary to access that money in the way it was accessed. Specifically, the money is available to a company that brings a certain number of jobs and buys a certain amount of land, among other conditions. Only if the Columbus jobs are added to the jobs NCR is moving from Dayton to Duluth, Ga., does the deal qualify.
But if NCR was moving into Columbus with or without the stimulus, the point hardly matters.
Anyway, even if the Columbus project wasn’t happening, it’s hard to believe that Georgia wouldn’t have antied up plenty of incentives to get the NCR headquarters.
Such incentives always materialize when a big company shows interest in a state. NCR had, says the company CEO, looked at all the states before deciding Georgia was right for the headquarters; then it got its offer.
Some politicians who complain about the possible use of stimulus money in Columbus are making a limited point about how the stimulus should be used. Others, of course, are seizing the opportunity to denounce the stimulus itself and those who supported it.
A spokeswoman for Rep. John Boehner, R-West Chester, leader of the House Republicans: “Ohio lawmakers who voted for the so-called stimulus package … need to explain why they voted for legislation that let another state woo away Dayton’s only Fortune 500 company.” Noise.
And yet, maybe the alarms that have been sounded have served a good purpose. Certainly the people who administer the stimulus money are going to have a lot more trouble approving the Columbus application now, given the bipartisan uproar, at least north of the Mason-Dixon.
It looks as though, if Columbus wants NCR, it’s at least going to have to pay. That may be all the comfort Dayton can get out of the whole situation.
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TweetEditorial: Bidding war would’ve left bad taste, too
The indisputable fact that NCR did not give Dayton and Ohio a shot at keeping the company here is understandably being shouted to the skies by local and state officials. They don’t want to be blamed for the company’s departure.
NCR’s aloofness also outrages other local people, who think that, given the extraordinary historic ties between the company and the community, NCR could have at least given Dayton an opportunity to sell itself. Not that long ago, the plan — under the company’s previous executive — was to expand in Dayton.
In the context of being totally shut out, the possibility that federal stimulus money might be used raises even more local hackles. Federal money to help one state lure jobs from another? Columbus, Ga., officials say ‘taint necessarily so. More on that in future days.
As of now, however, this observation: If there had been a bidding war between Georgia and Ohio, a lot of people would be complaining about that, too, and with justification. NCR obviously wanted to get as much in the way of incentives from Georgia as it could. If it had asked for and received a good offer from Ohio, and then went to Georgia anyway, critics would have said the company was just using the community and the state.
Obviously, NCR didn’t have to mention Ohio to the Georgians for Georgia to understand that NCR had options. Still, NCR can’t be accused of shamelessly playing the two states off each other.
The hours after the move was announced were full of politicians at press conferences and photo opportunities in both states. The politicians here were boiling. The politicians in Georgia were basking.
And yet their role was apparently not the end-all-be-all. The $60 million that Georgia put up in tax breaks is an important number, of course, something NCR had to care about. But such incentives are the way things are done these days; they are not necessarily the reason things are done.
NCR also didn’t pit all the states against each other in an open competition of the sort that automakers sometimes have created when opening new plants. Rather, NCR’s CEO says the company looked at tax rates, among many other factors, and Georgia came out on top.
Given how subject to manipulation those sorts of analyses are, you would not be crazy to think that NCR knew, from the beginning, where it wanted to go.
It would be a shame if the lesson that people take from NCR’s departure is that Ohio or its localities have to become more generous toward corporations bearing jobs. The state has to compete, of course. It has to play the game the way it is played. But it should not be a leader in making the game even more expensive than it is.
It would also be a shame if NCR becomes a football in a game of tackle partisanship. U.S. Rep. John Boehner, R-West Chester, leader of the Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, said, “This dismaying news … is a definitive statement that Ohio’s current economic policies are driving essential business and valuable jobs out of our state.”
When he says “economic policies,” he means taxes, of course. But Ohio’s basic tax scheme was devised by the Republicans in 2005, when they overhauled the tax system, especially as it relates to businesses. The overhaul has been embraced by Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland. So why get partisan?
There is still more to discuss as to government decisions, including the stimulus issue. But the way it looks now, a corporation simply did what it wanted to do and received a lot of government help to do it.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: City of Dayton, Economy, Editorials, Local Business, Martin Gottlieb
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