Icon (Close Menu)

Logout

Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin Talks Importance of Arkansas’ Airports

3 min read

TEXARKANA, Ark. – When it comes to economic development, Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin said the Natural State’s municipal and regional airports aren’t islands and can be key to commercial growth.

The lieutenant governor emphasized the need for bold changes and new ways of thinking when comes to the state’s job creation and economic health during a presentation at the Arkansas Airport Operators Association meeting last Tuesday — the first such meeting the association has had in Texarkana.

“I think it’s inevitable that aviation is a part of the economic growth that surrounds airports,” Griffin said.

But Griffin focused his presentation on the more immediate need for bold thinking and changing when it comes to reigniting economic growth throughout the state, rather than just sticking with the outdated status quo ideas for development, the Texarkana Gazette reported.

“For Arkansas, I think the sky is the limit, but I think we are going to have to fight the urge to avoid risks,” Griffin said. “We need to look first at where we are as a state. I think as a state, we have made progress over the years, but there are two kinds of progress_absolute progress and relative progress.”

Griffin went on to describe absolute progress as creating jobs in areas of the state where jobs had never existed. Relative progress, Griffin said, measures how Arkansas compares to other states_this being the type of progress that matters.

“The question for us is are we moving up in the ranks compared to other states?” he asked. “You can develop jobs in the areas of the state where you have never had them, but still rank as the 50th state in the union when it comes to overall economic growth. I want us to be No. 1, or at least in the top five or top 10.”

Griffin quoted a recent national survey that ranked Arkansas as No. 37 in for economic growth last year in the U.S. He quoted another survey that placed Arkansas as 47th in the states for economic measurements between 2009 and last year.

“To me, the current status quo is completely unacceptable, as it has been for decades,” he said. “If you do what you’ve always done, you just get more of what you have always had. We’ve now got to dream big and act bold.”

Using cake-baking as an illustration, Griffin said compensating an old recipe to accommodate new tastes by adding more icing would be the approach for those seeking to keep the status quo.

“This is taking the easy way out, but eventually, it’s not going to last,” Griffin said. “The solution is to change the cake recipe, and that’s the way it is with government. We can start adopting policies that work and that encourage economic growth. If you got incentives for encouraging big business development, but not small or medium business development, it’s not going to work. It needs to work for all three.

Regarding the aviation industry, Griffin said its regulation and incentives are almost all federally related, but he added that the same need for bold change applies.

“There is need to reform the federal tax code, but the initial response to that is always that the federal government can’t afford it_but that’s the problem,” he said. “You have to start with reorganizing government. Then and only then will you be able to start talking about how to finance it through a new tax code — but that status quo (the current tax code) will always be hard to defeat. Politicians need to know that if you don’t want to see any more of the status quo, you have to demand real change.”

(Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

Send this to a friend