Slow Growth in Greensboro, NC

"The overall state of the city is less than robust," concludes a new study of Greensboro, NC, a city of 231,000 people. Prepared by researchers at UNC-Greensboro for a local economic development group, the report benchmarks Greensboro's economic and social conditions against those of ten peer cities across the South.

Compared to its peers, Greensboro is struggling with slow population and economic growth, deteriorating, little expansion of the tax base and inadequate education and health services. Many of these trends are related to the fact that Greensboro's economy still depends heavily on "old" industries.

Southern Education Foundation Report Released

The Southern Education Foundation recently released a new report titled "Pre-Kindergarten in the South." The report found that the South is leading the nation in enrollment and quality of state-supported early childhood development programs. The AP's summary of some of the report’s findings appears below.

_ In the South, 19.4 percent of 3- and 4-year-olds are served by state pre-K programs. That number compares to 12 percent in the Northeast, 9 percent in the Midwest and 5.6 percent in the West. The national average is 13.1 percent.

_ Oklahoma has the highest percentage of 3- and 4-year-olds enrolled in state pre-K at 33.4 percent. Eleven states have no state pre-K program.

_ Mississippi, the only Southern state with no pre-K program, has the nation's largest percentage of young children in poverty.

_ Of the six states requiring full-day pre-K, all are in the South.

You can read the full report here.

Jackson paper touts Better South ideas

A May 11 editorial in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger pushed the idea of tax reform as outlined, in part, in last year's book on the issue by the Center for a Better South.

"Overhaul," the paper wrote, "is a crying need for Mississippi's crazy patchwork of taxes. But his [Gov. Haley Barbour's] new zeal for tax fairness seems a far cry from his stony opposition over the past two years to doing away with the state's unfair food tax."

The editorial continues by highlighting several ideas in the Center's book, Doing Better: Progressive Tax Reform for the American South:

* Broadening sales tax base and modernize;

* Raising cigarette tax, cutting grocery tax;

* Modernizing state income brackets, and creating a new top rate;

* Eliminating corporate tax loopholes, reviewing rates;

* Indexing personal exemptions, deductions, credits or brackets;

* Rethinking senior tax preferences, based on ability to pay, not age alone;

* Connecting property taxes and ability to pay to shield residents from excessive taxation;

* Conducting a comprehensive performance review to boost government efficiency and improve service.

Other good ideas can be found at the Center for a Better South's Web site: www.bettersouth.org. These are a few for starters.

Moviegoing, Southern Style

The new edition of the Oxford American, a literary magazine devoted to Southern culture, is sure to delight the region's moviegoers. This special issue focuses exclusively on movies by, for or about Southerners. Articles range in type from historical reflections on the Southern cinema to discussions of the role of race in movies to interviews with emerging regional filmmakers.

Taken together, the articles illustrate an observation made by the editors in an introductory essay:

"The borders of the cinematic South stretch far beyond our own. we can't hope to map it all; we can only hope for a rough sketch of where we've been. The South on film is as vast and troubled and rich as our history. We won't really know the place until we dig through all the vaults."