Data and policy tools
Posted on 09/17/12
This series of reports provides advocates with a set of tools designed to help them shape policy, better understand economic development, and talk effectively about the issues that matter most.
Maximizing Value: A policy blueprint
This report details options that can help communities engage in sustainable development. The paper outlines five investment strategies: driving demand for clean technology; creating good jobs from green investments; maximizing community value from green projects; supporting local businesses as they enter green markets; and ensuring local residents have access to the jobs created.
The Tracking Toolbox
A resource understanding your city’s development process and making it work better for workers, neighborhoods, and communities: This is where to start when you don’t know where to start! This toolkit by the Partnership for Working Families walks through the often complicated and seemingly impregnable world of development. The guide teaches techniques for researching projects and identifying opportunities to be heard.
Words that Work: Communications Messaging for Community Benefit Agreements
This communications toolkit from the Partnership for Working Families and the SPIN project explains in plain language how advocates and community leaders can better frame and talk about their community benefit campaign. The toolkit reinforces the need for groups to lead with values, to craft a positive picture for the future community, and to make sure they are heard.
Making the case for change is a primer on using data from the U.S. Census or collecting data through a neighborhood survey to learn how to help tell the story of your community.
The ABCs of CBAs is a slide presentation on how community benefits agreements (CBAs) work.
Columbus by the numbers shows how a particular zip code compares to the city, state and nation on key economic indicators.
The Jobs with Justice/Ohio State University community survey is an example of a way to gauge community interest, knowledge, and concerns about development, and to encourage stakeholder participation.
Many Ohio companies have been awarded lucrative property tax breaks as they moved facilities around within the Cleveland and Cincinnati metro areas. According to this 2011 study by Good Jobs First, the subsidized relocations affected an estimated 14,500 workers, were overwhelmingly outward bound, and fueled suburban sprawl and regional inequality.
Additional resources:
Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services green jobs page