Sharing Isn't Always Easy

As this story by the Plain Dealer's Tom Breckenridge points out, sharing among communities isn't always easy.

The community of Macedonia is losing a major employer (Norandex) to Hudson. Since Hudson Mayor Bill Currin is a leader in an effort to bring regional planning and revenue sharing to Northeast Ohio, the mayor of Macedonia was hoping to arrange a revenue sharing deal with Hudson. And as demonstrated here, Hudson has used revenue sharing to facilitate economic development projects.

But on the Norandex project a deal wasn't worked out. This incident points out that negotiating deals one at a time that involve revenue sharing is very challenging and doesn't present a long-term solution.

Summit County Executive Russell Pry said the tension over Norandex "is why we need to get municipalities to agree that competing amongst ourselves is not the best thing for the region."

The region's mayors and city managers will meet on May 15 to consider supporting an effort to implement region-wide planning and revenue sharing that could ease the intramural competition. Such broader approaches are needed if the region is going to begin to compete against our global competitors rather than against ourselves.