Editorial

The Tobacco Settlement

By Steve Tuttle

Those of us who have worked hard for economic development because we want average people to enjoy a better standard of living should be among the first to applaud the General Assembly's decision to spend half of the state's tobacco settlement money on revitalizing farming communities.

It probably will take every penny of the $2.3 billion that the foundation created by the legislature will spend over the next 25 years to give farming communities a fighting chance to survive the golden leaf's decline. Many of these towns simply don't have the necessary tools to attract business and industry. They have outdated water and sewer systems, poor transportation links and little experience at marketing themselves to industrial prospects. They do have a proud population that certainly isn't afraid of hard work but which will need extensive job training in the community colleges to make the transition from farm to factory.

Many business and political leaders have properly deplored the fact that North Carolina has a two-tiered economy. It is undeniably true that the economic boom of the 1990s that has reverberated across the Piedmont has been only a faint echo across much of the eastern and western parts of the state. According to recent Employment Security Commission statistics, for example, the unemployment rate is below 5 percent in 58 counties. Almost all of them are in the Piedmont or in urban centers outside the Piedmont that have a solid industrial base. This is the top tier of the state's economy.

The bottom tier of the economy is in the 36 counties where the unemployment rate is between 5 percent and 10 percent and in the six counties where the jobless rate, we are ashamed to say, is more than 10 percent. The one common denominator that almost all of these counties share is a low level of industrial development, a long history of reliance on agriculture and poor infrastructures.

The programs that the tobacco foundation will operate, and the grants it will award, are the best and perhaps only real opportunities farming communities will have to attain the economic prosperity that so many of us take for granted. But rising into the top economic tier will not occur overnight. And no one can say with certainty that the effort will succeed everywhere.

But it is worth the effort. And Attorney General Mike Easley, who conceived of the idea, and the General Assembly which ratified it are to be commended for giving tobacco communities a fighting chance for a future worth living.

Steve Tuttle can be reached at stuttle@nccbi.org or by calling 919-836-1411