County plan takes on poverty and its partner: persistent racism

If rising rates of poverty are ever going to be reversed in Franklin County, the work going on now stands a good chance of making a meaningful difference.

Franklin County Commissioners have put themselves at the front of the fight and they deserve credit for owning the issue, but their success ultimately depends on how well they muster the community’s collective resources and political will to engage with them.

Commissioners Marilyn Brown, John O’grady and Kevin Boyce announced their Rise Together Blueprint this week and are rolling out its recommendations in a series of four community meetings to seek feedback and support.

This is not easy work; stubborn patterns of economic disparity have deep roots and cannot be quickly remedied. The pervasiveness of economic segregation in Columbus, one of the nation’s worst such examples, was documented in the 2017 Dispatch series “Dividing Lines.”

It is especially frustrating that local poverty rates have continued to rise in Franklin County —approaching nearly 17% — even as the area enjoys one of the state’s lowest unemployment rates at 2.7%.

But central Ohio already knows how to join hands to tackle large problems, as has been demonstrated over the past decade by the work of Columbus 2020 to drive economic development in central Ohio.

Sadly, poverty persists here despite the success of Columbus 2020 on its goals of creating new jobs, attracting capital investment and raising per capita income, and that may be in large part because of a sinister culprit the county has identified: racism.

“We needed to name the issue and we needed to own the issue,” O’grady told the Dispatch editorial board. He said local symptoms of racism include

African Americans having higher rates of unemployment and incarceration and lower rates of home ownership.

Racial-equity training will be offered to help the community understand and address the role race plays in individuals’ disparate opportunities to prosper.

It is important that this difficult issue be addressed to understand why some families and individuals continue to struggle in a strong local economy.

It is especially significant that the Columbus Partnership, a leadership group of central Ohio corporate and nonprofit executives, is working with the county to fight poverty. “We’re full partners here,” said President and CEO Alex Fischer.

In a move that is both symbolic and symbiotic, a planned Innovation Center tasked with overseeing the county’s initiative to reduce poverty will initially be housed with the Partnership. Yet-to-be hired staff there will focus first on three of 13 goals identified in the poverty blueprint, plus a “big idea” of making child care more available for working parents in the county.

The commissioners have tapped two very able co-chairs for the center’s leadership council: MidOhio Foodbank President and CEO Matt Habash and Trudy Bartley, an associate vice president at Ohio State University who previously directed OSU’S Near East Side revitalization initiative, Partners Achieving Community Transformation.

The county has pledged $13 million over five years to fund its work and is seeking a similar investment from the business community.

As Columbus 2020 wraps up its decade of economic development and creates new goals, it would be wise to target economic disparity next.

Poverty is not on the run yet in Franklin County, but the forces lining up against it are formidable.