Study Highlights Successful Programs in Rural Governance

Innovations in public and private institutions could be the key to aligning governance with opportunity, according to the Center for the Study of Rural America's latest annual report.

Previous focus for the center has been on how rural regions can build new economic engines, which the report's authors contend is well understood by public and private leaders. What is less understood, they explain, is the need to effectively change how regions reach economic decisions, a process they call rural governance.

New governance, suggests Innovations in Rural Governance, will define how decisions will be made within a region and how key institutions of federal, state and local government, higher education and the private sector will work together.

Solving jurisdictional boundary issues is vital to the process of bringing partnerships together, the authors explain. In many rural regions, institutions that were created for 19th and 20th century economies are no longer compatible with today’s technology, they say. This has resulted in old jurisdictional boundaries impeding on multi-county partnerships that are useful in building new business engines.

What is essential, Innovations in Rural Governance argues, is the need to reinvent how a region is governed. The report calls for creating a process that allows regions to make quick and efficient economic decisions that are in line with new economic opportunities. Instead of offering specific directives to achieve this, the authors highlight four programs showing positive signs of innovation:

• True North in northeast Minnesota. The emphasis on technology within the Northeast Minnesota Higher Education District’s regional economic strategy has spurred new businesses, private sector investments and activities by nonprofit institutions.
• The Office of Rural and Community Affairs (ORCA) in Texas. Developed in 2001 to address rural issues, ORCA has been successful in its efforts to develop policy and programs, monitor developments in rural communities and conduct research to improve the welfare of communities.
• The Manufacturing Alliance in northeast Oklahoma. The alliance expanded its stakeholders to include both public and private sectors, which strive to help rural manufacturing firms gain a competitive edge in the marketplace. Also, by creating partnerships with local community colleges, the alliance has been able to educate their workers and implement new technological systems.
• Discovery Park at Purdue University. University, government and private sector support aided in Discovery Park’s mission of combining discovery with innovation, which in turn has helped rural entrepreneurs create new economic opportunities.

The above examples envelop the support of universities, government and the private sector, which collectively bear the representation of an arrowhead, the authors conclude. Of the three, one becomes the tip and acts as the catalyst to new regional governance; without it, governance will not innovate. All three are necessary, however, in order to transform the region’s economy.

The Center for the Study of Rural America was created by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City to focus on the economic and policy issues that are unique to rural America. Innovations in Rural Governance is available at: http://www.kc.frb.org/RuralCenter/mainstreet/MainStMain.htm