To the editor:

If our political leaders want to improve job opportunities in Douglas County while minimizing cost to taxpayers and maintaining quality of life, they should do some common-sense things they haven’t yet done:

1. Commission an independent study of what industries are best for us, and what land and other resources they need, and what industries are counterproductive;

2. Develop specific targets for industries, job numbers and quality, industrial land, and all other necessary resources;

3. Adopt comprehensive plans showing which land and other resources will be provided, when it will be infrastructured, and how it will be financed;

4. Perform thorough and public due diligence and then enter into hard-headed deals that include compliance with plans, binding wage standards, clawbacks for nonperformance, and public equity shares commensurate with public risk and public inputs;

5. Enforce those deals in a business-like fashion.

If our political leaders want to treat “economic development” as mere excuse to reward their friends, they should continue to do what they’re doing:

1. Ignore conflict of interest laws, open meeting requirements, and legal procedures for granting tax abatements;

2. Proceed on a deal-by-deal basis without any real plan;

3. Set arbitrary deadlines;

4. Give businesses whatever they ask for;

5. Adopt dishonest, inflated targets (e.g. 1,000 acres of new industrial land) based on no study whatsoever;

6. Encourage overbuilding;

7. Instruct the Planning Commission to ignore costs to taxpayers; and

8. Treat citizens with contempt when they testify against give-aways.

David Burress,

Lawrence