"The Arizona We Want"

by Dan Nowicki - Oct. 4, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic .
An Arizona non-profit think tank is hoping policy makers and civic leaders will embrace its "citizens' agenda" for the state's second 100 years. The Center for the Future of Arizona based its new "The Arizona We Want" report on extensive statewide polling that took the public's pulse on key issues and exposed ongoing problems.

But on the other side of the Colorado River, California Forward is taking a far more aggressive approach in its pursuit of systematic change in a state paralyzed by a state budget meltdown and dysfunctional government.

Different states identify different priorities, face different challenges and chart different maps to achieve their goals and measure their progress. Academics and policy wonks frequently look to other states for ideas and principles that they can apply. Some initiatives have varying degrees of government buy-in; others operate independently and rely on private funding. Money makes a difference in almost every case.
Like the Center for the Future of Arizona, California Forward is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, which under IRS rules can't lobby. But the California group also has a 501(c)4 political-action arm, spokesman Ryan Rauzon said, and is pushing a sweeping government reform plan that it hopes to get on the 2010 statewide ballot. The proposed constitutional revision includes an overhaul of California's budget process.

"The idea is we'll take the best practices and the best ideas from other states and successful businesses and bring them to California," Rauzon said. "We don't have to reinvent the wheel here. We're strictly nonpartisan, and if the Legislature and the governor won't take our reforms and present them to voters for approval, then we'll do it ourselves through this political-action (organization)."

California Forward's experience is that there comes a point where decisive action is needed. As part of its budget proposal, the group is seeking reforms such as making sure any new spending has an identified funding source; changing the number of legislative votes needed to pass a budget from two-thirds to a simple majority; and transitioning California to a two-year budget that would give the governor and state lawmakers flexibility to make midcourse adjustments if needed.


"We're not really in the business of diagnosing the problems," Rauzon said. "People have been diagnosing the failures for years."

Other states have taken different approaches to visioning and long-term planning for their key issues:


• In 1997, Envision Utah, a groundbreaking public-private partnership, was started by a group called the Coalition for Utah's Future. Its founding (and current) chairman was attorney and visioning pioneer Robert Grow. The goal was to help Utah balance its rapid population growth and new development with its quality of life and keep the state to Arizona's north "beautiful, prosperous, and neighborly for future generations," its Web site says. After completing its well-received "Quality Growth Strategy" in 1999, Envision Utah has worked closely with more than 100 communities on local and regional growth, land-use and transportation issues.

"Maybe the most important aspect of our work is on the social side, bringing the community together around some common goals," said Alan Matheson, Envision Utah's executive director. "We really facilitate public conversations to explore our common values and identify and implement strategies that will create the world that we're trying to imagine for our children and grandchildren."


• The Oregon Progress Board was created in 1990 by the Oregon Legislature with the task of keeping its long-range vision document, "Oregon Shines," up to date. Its benchmarks measure progress on three key goals: quality jobs for all residents, safe and engaged communities, and healthy, sustainable surroundings. However, the board is a casualty of Oregon's budget woes, losing its funding for at least two years. There is no plan at the moment to re-establish the panel, though the Web site and its database remain accessible to the public.

"It's something we pointed to with pride, but now we're chagrined, as many other people are, that some very severe budget realities forced Oregon to de-fund it and essentially suspend its operation," said Lonn Hoklin, a spokesman for the Oregon Department of Administrative Services.

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What does any Organization do when things are out of Kilter?

October 09, 2009 |
Viewpoints
Type Size: A A aprintEmailRetweet Digg this.New poll offers us a map to the Ariz. we want
7 commentsby Lattie Coor - Oct. 3, 2009 08:57 PM
The Arizona Republic .

Whether it's a business, a university or a state, two steps are essential: You identify the key problems, and you look to your base for solutions.

If you're a business, your base is your customers. If a university, it's your constituency - students, parents and the larger community you serve. If you're a state, it's the citizens.
That's why the Center for the Future of Arizona commissioned the Gallup Arizona Poll. We felt strongly that the citizens' voice must drive the development of a comprehensive vision for Arizona's future.

In extensive telephone and Web-based interviews completed last January, the Gallup Arizona Poll not only provides a solid blueprint for Arizona's future, it provides some interesting insights - and a few surprises - as to what Arizonans are thinking and what they want for the future.

We found, for example, that Arizonans are more passionate about and loyal to Arizona than is true in most other places that Gallup has studied. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that Arizona is largely populated by newcomers who see us as a way station to somewhere else, we found that Arizonans are deeply attached to their communities and their state.

Arizonans display a remarkable consensus on a broad range of issues and policy positions regardless of where they live - north or south, urban or rural. This challenges the oft-held view that there is no shared "voice" of Arizona.

Not surprisingly, the state's natural beauty and open spaces are seen as our greatest asset. Citizens urge us to protect Arizona's natural environment, water supplies and open spaces as our population grows and to provide an effective transportation system to support that growth.

Like the rest of the world, Arizonans want jobs, especially good jobs that provide the income needed to support a family. We also found an almost universal view that Arizona is not a great place for young college graduates looking for a job. A healthy future requires us to do something about that.

Equally troubling, citizens are not at all satisfied with their elected leaders, with only 10 percent saying they believe their elected officials represent their interests. The underlying message is that Arizonans want leaders who are fully prepared to deal with complex issues. They want a sound investment strategy to grow new industries like solar energy and a balanced and stable tax system.

The "Arizona We Want" report does more than provide an interesting picture of peoples' attitudes, however. It also provides a significant framework for planning called the Arizona Opportunity Map, which shows clearly how citizens rate the state's performance on 11 factors that describe a prosperous, healthy and sustainable quality of life.

Several of the factors, such as leadership, K-12 education and basic services, emerge as areas where citizens believe we are not performing as well as we must to realize the Arizona we want.

The opportunity map makes it possible to identify specific goals for action. Among the key items is a call for job creation, more job training and health insurance for all, with payment assistance for those who need it.

Given the difficulties and the opportunities facing Arizona, we believe, as never before, that we must move beyond words to action.

To encourage action, our center is creating the Arizona We Want Institute to serve as torchbearer and quarterback to leaders and leadership organizations. Together with our partners, the goal is to help form strategic alliances at local, regional and state levels to advance the most significant goals set forth in this report.

Already, specific initiatives are under way that relate perfectly to the citizen goals set forth in this report. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and the O'Connor House project are focusing on the task of creating an appropriate government for Arizona's second century. This is a splendid example of the kind of action that must be undertaken if we are truly to accomplish the Arizona we want.

Citizens also must be involved, playing as important a role in the implementation of this report as they have been in its creation. The very best way to start is for each citizen to take the actual Gallup Arizona Poll and to compare his or her personal views about the future of Arizona with those of his or her fellow Arizonans. You may do that by visiting our Web site at www.TheArizonaWeWant.org.

Take that first step and, together, we can create The Arizona We Want.

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The Center for the Future of Arizona

October 09, 2009 |
by Dan Nowicki - Oct. 4, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic .
Most forward-looking reports from policy think tanks or universities face a huge hurdle: selling their proposed goals and recommendations to the people.

The Center for the Future of Arizona hopes to avoid that fate. The Phoenix-based organization - or "do" tank, as it likes to call itself - went to the people first to learn their hopes and desires for Arizona's future.

At the heart of "The Arizona We Want," the center's new report charting a "citizens' agenda" for Arizona's second century, is in-depth statewide polling data from the Gallup Organization. The findings show that many 21st-century residents are loyal and attached to the state, thanks particularly to its scenic open spaces and environmental beauty, and actually see eye to eye on a variety of issues. But they are disenchanted with their elected leaders and concerned about jobs, education and the economy.

"I view the report as a platform for positive change," said Robert Delgado, the president and chief executive of Valley beer distributor Hensley & Co. and a community leader who got an early look at the publication. "It will have the effect of saying, 'OK, look, this is really what the citizens of Arizona want,' and those who we elect to public office are accountable to the citizens of Arizona. I think it gives us a great road map or compass on how to go forward."

The center, an independent non-profit, hired Gallup because of its reputation as "the gold standard" of polling companies, said Lattie Coor, the former Arizona State University president who founded the Center for the Future of Arizona in 2002. Gallup surveyed by telephone a random sample of 3,606 Arizona adults and then followed up with 831 respondents who agreed to participate in an online poll. The statewide telephone poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.7 percentage points.

"This is not so surprising, but we also found that the natural environment, the open spaces and aesthetics of Arizona, are at the absolute top of people's view of what it is about Arizona that resonates most highly with them," Coor said. "We found, disturbingly, but I fear I must say also not surprisingly, that citizens don't think their elected representatives represent their interests. Only 10 percent strongly agreed that they do. We also found that Arizona is not viewed as a good place for talented young people, and we also found that Arizonans want jobs."

The center relied on the poll results to inform its set of eight resident-backed goals for Arizona related to jobs, education, water and the environment, transportation and civic involvement. It also used the results to help identify a series of sticky problems that need resolution: inadequate "leadership and governance structures"; the lack of an "investment strategy" for priorities such as job creation and education; the need for a clear commitment by the state to compete globally; the illegal- immigration situation; and an unstable state tax system.

Building alliances

The Center for the Future of Arizona released "The Arizona We Want" on Friday in hopes of framing the state's key issues and challenges in advance of Arizona's centennial in 2012. The survey results can give policy makers the political cover needed to make the tough decisions, several observers said.

Coor acknowledges that "you can't take everything on at once," but the plan is to forge alliances with other community, civic and business organizations to move forward on the topics highlighted by the poll.

One area he expects to attract some immediate attention is the leadership and government deficiencies. A possible alliance might be forged, Coor said, with the O'Connor House Project, the new government-reform effort recently launched by former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. The O'Connor group is looking at pursuing ballot measures that possibly would ask voters to make a variety of changes to state government, such as dumping the state's publicly funded campaign system and revising the way some legislative districts are drawn.

The Greater Phoenix Economic Council already has signaled interest in working on some of the jobs-related goals, he said.

Other issues included in the report, such as universal health care and illegal immigration, are playing out at the national level and are largely out of local hands, Coor said.

He is optimistic that "The Arizona We Want" will capture the public's imagination.

"We found that the degree of passion about and loyalty to Arizona, 'attachment' is what Gallup calls it, was considerably higher than any of us expected," Coor said. "How many times have you heard, 'Well, we're transients, people are new here, they haven't gotten connected yet,' and so on? Secondly, we found a very high degree of consensus among Arizonans - rural, small city, urban - on the major issues, and that, too, kind of flies in the face of conventional wisdom."

The telephone polling was done from November 2008 to January, in the early stages of the national economic meltdown.

Coor believes that the timing may have affected the responses to some economic-related questions. Overall, though, the lingering economic turmoil might find Arizonans more receptive to the report's agenda items and more inclined to tackle the tough challenges. Those agenda items include creating quality jobs, better preparing Arizonans for the modern-day workforce, providing health insurance for everybody and keeping and attracting talented young people in the state.

"My sense is, while it is just fortuitous, the interest in this is both broader and deeper than it would have been in normal times," Coor said.

Stressing the significance

Over the years, Arizona has had no shortage of provocative visionaries and policy wonks who generated conversation with reports that ultimately had debatable lasting impact or significance.

Futurist Herman Kahn of the Hudson Institute, to name a more notable example, helped write a landmark 1979 report titled "Arizona Tomorrow" that tried to envision the state in 2012. Paul Bracken, Kahn's collaborator, defended their work in a 2000 Arizona Republic essay, saying the report "did a good job" in helping leaders navigate through the era's daunting energy and water issues and predicting the rapid growth that followed. In 2005, the Center for the Future of Arizona reviewed 15 years of policy reports and published a precursor to "The Arizona We Want," a one-page "A Vision for Arizona."

"I think we must have produced about a dozen of them in a dozen years," recalled former state Senate Majority Leader Alfredo Gutierrez, D-Phoenix, who served in the Arizona Legislature for 14 years in the 1970s and 1980s.

But the extensive Gallup polling information sets "The Arizona We Want" apart from the stack of previous studies on Arizona's future, experts and long-time observers said.

"I'm not aware of another report that has this kind of broad-based public input. The polling stuff makes it considerably different," said Grady Gammage Jr., a senior fellow at ASU's Morrison Institute for Public Policy, a Valley land-use lawyer and the author of the 1999 book "Phoenix in Perspective: Reflections on Developing the Desert."

"The reason that's important is it provides a basis for saying, 'This isn't just what a bunch of academics think.' This is what the state thinks. This is a representative snapshot into what people in Arizona think."

Gutierrez added: "Ultimately, it's no more valuable than any other report if people are going to ignore it. What makes the difference is Lattie Coor and the credibility that Gallup brings to the report. I joke with people around here that Lattie's a rock star. He has a unique capacity to call for the best minds to read this, to think about it and engage in it."

Gutierrez, who like Delgado and Gammage had access to the report in its drafting stages to provide feedback, said he would have preferred more specifics and a bolder focus on ethnic issues, but "they've been very careful not to pre-decide the policy that emanates from the agenda."

"The next step," Gutierrez said, "which I think will take place, is to bring the best minds to apply themselves to the issues."

Maintaining interest

Coor is keenly aware of the tendency of policy makers to read and discuss reports such as "The Arizona We Want" and then shelve them without taking any action. To help keep interest in the report alive, the center is opening a new operating unit called the Arizona We Want Institute. The center is leaving the policy prescriptions to the allies it recruits, but the new institute will develop methods to measure progress, or indicators. The institute also will try to rally public support and establish short-term and long-term plans for the report's implementation.

"We'll be the quarterback, the keeper of the flame, the one that makes sure that the indicators get done, also the one that makes sure we focus on the most promising issues, the most important issues, and make sure we get the alliances under way," Coor said. "We'll do our best to make sure that happens. But if this doesn't get owned and led by these key organizations, including some new ones that may form, this will be just another report that won't go anywhere."