Testimony of Tom Hudson

President of Tom Hudson Company and Chair, Idaho Rural Partnership, to:

Oversight Hearing on the National Rural Development Partnership

Subcommittee on Forestry, Conservation, and Rural Revitalization

Senate Committee on Agriculture

March 8, 2000

Washington, DC

Chairman Craig, Honorable Subcommittee members, fellow rural Americans, Idaho is one of the most rural states in the country. We in Idaho have long tried to demonstrate leadership in the ways we have addressed our sparse population and tremendous geography. Our senior Senator's willingness to hold this hearing to examine a small, but innovative, program on rural development is tangible evidence of Idaho's leadership in this arena. Senator Craig, on behalf of rural Idaho and the Idaho Rural Partnership, I thank you for this opportunity.

I am the Chair of the Idaho Rural Partnership and the principle of Tom Hudson Company, a consulting firm devoted to rural economic development and planning. I have been in this field for twenty-one years. I also am a fifth generation Idahoan. Two generations before me were farmers, one a merchant and one career military.

I share this background with you to emphasize that rural development is not just my vocation. It is my heritage and my mission in life.

In the precious time that I have with you, I would like to emphasize three key points:

American rural communities and lifestyles are in peril.

A strategic public-private partnership is needed to restore and sustain a stable rural economy.

State and National Rural Development Partnerships are by far the most effective means for guiding this effort.

I will talk briefly about our approach to working on rural issues, outline a little of the quality and breadth of our accomplishments, then speak to the issues that remain before us in Idaho, and the ways the Partnership might be strengthened.

As someone from the private sector and a bona fide capitalist, I have developed my commitment to these formal partnerships after careful consideration of their effectiveness, efficiency and collaborative processes. I choose to volunteer my time with IRP. Six years ago, I began participating in Idaho Rural Partnership activities primarily out of curiosity. How could this unusual organization be so on target with its programming? I found nearly immediately that IRP was not unusual in our state. It was, in fact, unique. Here were business people, industry representatives, community organizations, government staff and elected officials from all levels of government working together as a team on rural issues. They knew each other on a first name basis. They emphasized collaboration, communication and cooperation. They built interdisciplinary and inter-sector teams to address both challenges and opportunities.

Most importantly, they built understanding and success. I would like to share some of these successes - and our ongoing challenges - with you. As you hear these, you will appreciate why I and about two hundred other community leaders in our state have come to embrace the Idaho Rural Partnership not just as an organization but as the ideal means for supporting and guiding rural development.

Please understand that in the intermountain west, our rural economies are intimately linked to our natural resource base. Agriculture, ranching, timber and mining all depend upon two things: reliable access to the resource; stable markets. Both of these fundamentals can be heavily influenced by government action. In our region, this has certainly been the case.

As a result, it is especially important that national leaders ensure our federal agencies are informed and act strategically. "Strategic" action must include interdepartmental cooperation, programming driven by explicit missions, systems that reflect economic rationality, and decision-making that engages rural communities. In a word, we need partnerships.

The Idaho Rural Partnership operates from the principle that the residents of a community are those best qualified to determine what constitutes progress in that place. Moreover, the responsibility for that progress ultimately rests with those local people. It follows that the best roles for state and federal agencies are:

to inform and educate people about options that could address a particular issue so that they can make better decisions and take action on those decisions,

to offer ways for people and organizations to increase their capacity for working together and making group decisions, and

to linking rural people with the programs and resources that can help them realize their dreams of progress.

As you will see, Mr. Chairman, the activities of the Idaho Rural Partnership fall into one of these three roles, plus one other. In the current fragmented world of federal and state rural agencies, programs, and authorities, problems tend to be viewed through narrow lenses, and a lot falls through the cracks. IRP tries to catalyze public and private partners to work together in ways that would not otherwise happen and to fill gaps in rural service. In the process, we learn to think more systemically and to look at the whole community, instead of pieces and parts.

IRP believes in the value of diverse opinions and the value of working as a group. Our Board of Directors alone numbers 25 experienced leaders from all walks of life, parts of the state, and levels of government. While collaboration takes time and a new set of skills, we also find it leads to more creative and durable solutions that not only satisfy, but empower and energize large numbers of people.

IRP ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Helping Government Serve Rural Customers

Idaho Community Mandates Pilot Project - This in-depth case study looked at the financial and administrative capacity of four rural communities. It helped inform then-Senator Kempthorne's mandates legislation. An IRP Board member chaired EPA's Small town Task Force. The process we developed for community residents to assess their community investment needs and to prioritize mandates with other capital expenditures was adopted as national policy by EPA to allow enforcement flexibility for small communities. This project won a Hammer Award for reinventing government.

Idaho OnePlan Project - IRP has facilitated a group led by EPA, the Idaho Soil conservation Commission, NRCS, and Extension to consolidate all ag conservation planning requirements into a single, web-based, planning process. This five year public/private collaboration was selected as one of 25 USDA Business Process Re-engineering projects nationally. With Internet use by Idaho farmers and ranchers growing rapidly, this web site receives over 400 hits weekly.

Business Solutions Home Page - Here the Idaho Small Business Development Center is leading a state and federal team in the development of a similar portal web site to answer small business questions about regulation and development finance.

Inform and Educate

Profile of Rural Idaho - This publication analyzes the disparities between rural and more urban parts of Idaho at both statewide and county levels. It's been copied by other states, and is in its third edition in Idaho.

Idaho Partners for Homebuyer Education - Homebuyer education increases success rates for first-time homebuyers, and qualifies them for lower closing costs, but has not been widely available in rural areas of Idaho. A broad group of public and private stakeholders met over a dozen times to create a model program and form a non-profit organization to deliver it statewide. HUD money is matched by private contributions to offer the training via seven regional partners and many volunteer industry experts.

Opening Windows - Theater can be a powerful tool to address controversial issues in a value-neutral way. This play illustrated the negative consequences of destructive teen choices and was followed by a facilitated audience discussion. It was based on interviews conducted in seven rural Idaho communities. Opening Windows toured for three years in rural Idaho and has played in several other states before more than 30,000 parents and youth.

WEED! - The Public Lands Theater Project used the same technique to develop a play that shows a natural resource conflict from the view of land users, environmentalists, public land managers, and community leaders. It communicates the adverse consequences that resource-dependent communities experience from these conflicts.

IRP also has a history of sponsoring educational opportunities on key rural issues, including:

Land Use Protection Policy Workshops

Rural Workforce 2000

Connect Idaho: Attracting High-Speed Telecommunications

SmallWood '98

Increase Rural Capacity

Bottoms-up community development relies on strong local leaders and organizations. IRP identified capacity-building as one of its first priorities. Several different training products are offered each year in rural locations, using a variety of public and private sector instructors:

Community Leader Forums - Local elected officials and volunteer rural leaders choose from a variety of interactive training classes. Seventeen forums have been offered across the state since 1994 in groups ranging from 25 to 150.

Building Common Ground workshops - This two-day workshop on communication and conflict resolution has been offered on demand in ten locations across Idaho.

Facilitator Roundtables - Here beginning and experienced facilitators trade tips and lessons in group skills.

Community Peer Exchanges - This program offers small travel stipends to communities working on a problem who wish to learn from another community who solved it.

There are other kinds of rural capacity to be increased as well:

Telecommunications Awareness Workshops - In 1994, we held workshops in three dozen communities before a variety of audiences, talking about the potential of the Internet. After funding several other states to do the same, US West conceived the idea of a traveling portable computer lab with instructors to train in the rural West, called the WOW van.

Internet Masters - Several Western states worked together to train community volunteers to answer local questions about the Internet and computers.

Intermountain Woodnet - An unrelated project has tried to build cooperation among small, value-added firms working in the secondary wood products industry.

Local Transportation Planning - IRP facilitated a dispute between local and state transportation officials. The resulting consensus strengthened local planning efforts and gave local officials a greater say in the allocation of funds for local projects.

Linking Rural People To Resources

Small Business and Community Development Resource Directory - IRP has published three of these invaluable reference works that offer capsule program summaries and contact information for private, local, tribal, state, and federal rural development players. The current version is also available on the Web in two different electronic formats.

Directory of Idaho Facilitators - Effective collaboration requires neutral group process facilitators. This publication lists 125 private and public sector facilitators available for community or agency facilitations.

Note that these projects are all creatively financed using agency and private sector contributions, many of which are in-kind. Both the Idaho and National partnerships are not about massive new spending programs. Rather we are about making existing programs more effective by working together. We are about pooling meager resources to make an impact. We are about doing something with nothing. We are about being more savvy at helping rural areas get their share of federal, state, and philanthropic help.

We are not about getting credit; we are about getting the job done. Most of these projects use another agency as the lead. They all rely on a set of partners acting in good faith to achieve a shared goal. There is a story about collaboration behind each of these projects. The lessons Idaho and our sister councils have learned about collaboration represent an important body of knowledge on an increasingly important way of doing business.

In a sense, the state rural development councils are like a modest investment in glue to hold a diverse set of institutions together. If done right, the glue on a project becomes transparent and the pieces hold together as a whole. Just because you can't see the glue, that doesn't mean it is not doing its job.

THE JOB IS NOT DONE

And the job of the Idaho Rural Partnership is not done. The economic health of Idaho communities varies widely today. Some amenity-rich places are growing so rapidly, they struggle to maintain infrastructure systems and preserve prime farmland. Other resource-dependent communities are fighting to remain viable at all. Half the sawmills that existed in 1990 are now closed, and we are even finding there are limits to recreation carrying capacity. We are not well prepared to help with the economic emergencies that have become all too frequent. These towns need assistance finding a path to sustainability that works for them.

The answers seem to lie in areas like improved telecommunications service, computer literacy, workforce training, rural transportation, day care, housing, health care, entrepreneurship, and economic diversification. In all these, partnerships will play a major role in finding solutions.

Nor is the job of the National Rural Development Partnership by any means done. To be more effective, we need to increase this experiment in collaboration to scale. That means funding councils in all fifty states. It also means funding councils at a level where they can actively manage a larger number of partnership projects. One full-time staff member is not enough to cover the range of potential rural issues where partnerships can add value. We find that each rural issue, be it agriculture, health care, housing, or workforce development, has its own set of programs, jargon, and existing players. Councils must be able to climb many learning curves simultaneously, with enough agility to recognize potential synergies.

The reason I am excited about this hearing is that I believe that one important partner has not been invited to participate in the first ten years of the National Rural Development Partnership--namely the US Congress. You have the ability to recognize collaboration as the most effective way to get progress accomplished on the ground, and the National Rural Development Partnership as an effective way to collaborate. You have the ability to allow federal field staff to participate fully in the state councils. You have the ability to encourage more federal agencies to participate financially, perhaps by allowing program taps or contributions to our non-profit arm, Partners for Rural America. You have the ability to build bridges across the vertical stovepipes of federal funding streams. You have the ability to entrust local communities with a greater role in crafting locally appropriate management decisions.

We, the Idaho Rural Partnership, urge you to build upon the outstanding job attained by the National Rural Development Partnership. Help us engage our federal partners strategically and systematically in our mission to sustain your rural economies and communities.

We in Idaho look forward to continuing the dialogue with Congress on rural America that has begun today. Thank you very much for this beginning.