From Foresight, Vol. 7, No. 4
published 2001
The seventh annual conference of the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center, which featured partnerships with Kentucky Leaders for the New Century and Kentucky Educational Television (KET), drew more than 350 people to the new Northern Kentucky Convention Center in Covington. Focused on the state’s position in the New Economy and challenges the Commonwealth will likely face in the 21st century, the conference featured a best-selling author and Internet prognosticator; provocative panel discussions; timely predictions about the federal budget from a nationally recognized Urban Institute economist; the live taping of two compelling KET programs; and the presentation of the 2000 Vic Hellard Jr. Award to one of Kentucky’s most esteemed and accomplished journalists.
Kentucky Leaders for the New Century, an organization of the next generation of Kentucky leaders, sponsored the first day of the conference. The half-day, Nov. 13, 2000, session, "Kentucky and the New Economy," was co-chaired by Kevin Canafax of Fidelity Investments and Anne Maxfield of the Roth Partnership. Maxfield told those on hand for the well-attended session that its principal goal was to impart a better understanding of the imperative of Kentucky's engagement in the New Economy and its importance to the state’s economic advancement. Coincidentally, this nascent group of emerging state leaders is the brainchild of this year's Vic Hellard Jr. Award winner, veteran journalist, publisher, television host, Al Smith.
The Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center followed with its seventh annual conference, a full-day session dedicated to some of the issues that are likely to dominate Kentucky’s public agenda in the early years of the 21st century. Center Executive Director Michael T. Childress launched the day’s program with a presentation on major trends influencing the state’s future, discussing the economy’s weaknesses and strengths, the inequities that continue to persist, and the monumental challenge of an aging population that lies on the immediate horizon.
The morning session of the conference concluded with KET’s taping of a historic panel of distinguished Kentuckians who were challenged to offer advice to an incoming, fictional governor. Kentucky Tonight’s Bill Goodman led the lively and provocative discussion that followed.
Over lunch, Urban Institute economist Dr. Eugene Steuerle offered his own knowledgeable perspective on the future in his keynote address, tracing the contour of trends in the federal budget and their likely effects on future state and local spending. The afternoon featured panel discussions of the implications of Kentucky’s aging population; ways of leveraging higher postsecondary enrollments and improved educational outcomes; and keys to building an entrepreneurial economy.
With support from Fidelity Investments, Ashland Inc., and Delta Airlines, Kentucky Leaders for the New Century brought nationally known journalist and cyberbusiness forecaster Chuck Martin to the conference as their featured speaker. A former editor-in-chief of the largest computer magazine in the world, Martin is the author of the New York Times best-seller, The Digital Estate, and, more recently, Net Future, which is being used in some of the nation’s leading business schools as a textbook on the New Economy. Martin is also CEO of the Net Future Institute, a global group of CEOs focused on the Internet and its changing role in our economy.
Martin outlined some of the trends that can be expected to influence the way business is conducted here and around the globe and the effects it will have on each of us as consumers, workers, and users of technology. Martin pointed to Amazon.com, “the poster child of the Internet,” as an illustration of the fundamental changes underway. Amazon’s elusive profitability, Martin suggested, is not what’s at issue. “The reality is Amazon is not about selling books. Amazon is really about changing how people buy and that’s what we’re going through here. We’re going through a change in how people actually behave ….”
Among the trends Martin charted:
The Cyber Economy goes Main Street. As the physical and online worlds become integrated, it’s no longer a matter of moving from bricks and mortar to clicks and mortar, Martin told the large audience for his presentation. Instead, businesses are integrating the two, synchronizing operations to provide timely support for sales and communications conducted in an electronic environment and augment those made on Main Street. Increasingly, the locations of physical infrastructure like retail outlets, service centers, and the Amazon.com distribution centers located in and planned for Kentucky, are linchpins in the success of the fast-paced, customer-oriented world of e-commerce.
The ascendance of the wired workforce. Forget résumés, says Martin. Jobs, but more importantly, opportunities are a click away for wired workers. Empowered with all the information it wants anytime it wants it, the wired workforce, rather than organizations, will create jobs identifying and meeting the immediate and increasingly specialized needs of customers.
Instead of the once predicted elimination of the proverbial “middle man” or what has come to be called “dis-intermediation,” Martin says a reversal is well underway. Today, new and expanded opportunities for the insertion of entrepreneurs into the “network value chain” are emerging.
The customer becomes data. Information about your travels, your personal tastes, your buying history and more will be compiled and used increasingly to offer goods and services and leverage sales.
Already in the works, ever smaller and cheaper microchips will soon free more and more of our time, Martin says, as they are embedded in such mundane things as milk cartons that electronically monitor supplies. From preparing our grocery lists to tracking baggage for airlines, technology will do more things humans now do, raising the skills bar even higher and eliminating more low-skill jobs.
For those who see Kentucky trailing other states in regard to its e-commerce position, Martin offered a welcome perspective. “The good new is, … you are change agents … you can make things go a different direction. … There’s no reason you can’t put your state wherever you really want it to be. The issue is … where do you want it to be, and then it’s just a matter of how you get there because most states aren’t doing it. They aren’t thinking about it. … There’s no reason that you can’t position your state really way ahead, pretty much of the pack, because it’s a zero sum game right now; it’s who really does it.”
The November 13, half-day session was capped off by a live broadcast from the conference center of “Kentucky Tonight,” KET’s Monday night public affairs talk show hosted by Bill Goodman. A panel of experts on entrepreneurship and e-commerce assessed the economic terrain, discussed various strategies for countering the state’s so-far weak showing in the New Economy, and discussed ways of leveraging more high-technology opportunities for the state.
During a late morning session of the Center’s conference on Tuesday, November 14, KET’s Bill Goodman, host of Kentucky Tonight, led a panel of 12 eminent Kentuckians through a series of questions about the state’s future. The panel was asked to offer words of advice to a hypothetical incoming governor. What followed was a compelling 90 minutes of challenging, visionary, and sometimes conflicting perspectives on the state’s status and its future needs. The program was aired on KET in late 2000.
Panelists included former Kentucky Supreme Court Justice and General Assembly member, Walter Baker; Courier-Journal columnist Betty Bayé; former member of the Kentucky General Assembly, attorney and advocate for burley tobacco growers, John Berry, Jr.; Ashland Inc. Chairman and CEO Paul Chellgren; Council on Postsecondary Education President Gordon Davies; former Governor and U.S. Senator Wendell Ford; Kentucky Council of Churches Executive Director Nancy Jo Kemper; Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation President Kris Kimel; State Historian James Klotter; Kentucky League of Cities Executive Director Sylvia Lovely; University of Kentucky History Professor and Director of African-American Studies and Research, Gerald Smith; and founder and former director of Berea’s New Opportunity School for Women, Jane Stephenson.
Dr. Steuerle’s remarks focused on trends in federal expenditures and their potential future impact on state and local governments over the long term. As the Baby Boomer generation ages, it is expected to place unprecedented demand on federal programs which comprise the lion’s share of the federal budget, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. All of these programs are predicted to experience shortfalls in the near term. In turn, opportunities for the federal financing that once helped states and localities make improvements to their physical and human infrastructure will become more limited.
In spite of forecasts of a rising budget surplus that are expected to finance federal tax cuts, Dr. Steuerle’s predictions suggested little reason for comfort over the long term. “There will be extraordinary pressure upon states and localities to self-finance what they want to do in the near future,” Dr. Steuerle observed.
Dr. Steuerle is the author of a weekly column, “Economic Perspective,” eight books, more than 125 reports and articles, 500 columns, and 45 congressional testimonies or reports. He chairs a technical panel advising Social Security on its methods and assumptions for fiscal projections. Prior to joining the Urban Institute, he served with the Reagan administration. He discussed the future of Social Security and explored some of the ways that state governments and the nonprofit sector may be affected by future changes.
The fourth annual Vic Hellard Jr. Award was presented to veteran journalist Al Smith at the Center’s annual 2000 conference in Covington. A former newspaper publisher, editor, and reporter, Smith is one of the state’s most engaging and enduring media personalities. As host of Kentucky Educational Television’s longest-running program, Comment on Kentucky, now in its 26th year on the air, Smith’s formidable grasp of public policy and the rich history of his adopted home state have made him familiar across the state.
Given in recognition of contributions to the future of the Commonwealth, Smith’s life and work exemplify such commitment. Most recently, he was instrumental in forming Kentucky Leaders for the New Century, an effort to identify some of the state’s most promising young leaders and engage them in actively working for the betterment of the state.
In addition to his many contributions to the civic life of the Commonwealth, Smith served in Washington as federal cochairman of the Appalachian Regional Commission under Presidents Carter and Reagan. For 25 years, he served as chairman or vice chairman of the Shakertown Roundtable, a public policy forum held annually at historic Pleasant Hill in central Kentucky. He is a past chairman of the Kentucky Arts Commission, a former president of the Kentucky Press Association, one of the founding directors and a chairman of Leadership Kentucky, and a cofounder and first chairman of the Kentucky Oral History Commission, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this month. As a member of the Prichard Committee for Educational Excellence, Smith chaired a Governor’s Council on Educational Reform and served as vice chair of the Council on Higher Education in the 1980s. He was on the founding boards of the Governor’s Scholars Program and of Forward in the Fifth, a program for better schools in eastern Kentucky. He is a former trustee of Berea College, a former member of the University of Kentucky (UK) Hospital Council of Supervisors, and has served as an adjunct instructor at UK in the political science department and the Appalachian Studies Center. He holds honorary degrees from three Kentucky schools.
In addition to his work in television and radio, Smith was in the newspaper business for over 50 years as a reporter, editor, and publisher. As an editor and publisher of weekly newspapers, Smith was active in community and state educational and economic development programs. Most recently, his elegant prose appears in Our Kentucky, a history of the state published by the University of Kentucky Press.
“Through his radio, print, and television work, he constantly engages the public in a dialogue about what it is to be a Kentuckian and American in today’s changing world,” observed state historian, Dr. James Klotter. “His ‘Comment on Kentucky’ is as close to a statewide program as any around. Moreover, he conducts that program and himself with dignity and humor, and always shows his commitment to the things that make us better.”
Smith lived in Russellville for 22 years and in London, Kentucky, for six years. A native of Florida, he grew up in Tennessee, served in World War II, attended Vanderbilt and Tulane universities and worked on New Orleans daily papers for 10 years before coming to Kentucky in 1958. He and his wife Martha Helen, formerly of Hopkinsville, have three grown children.
Criteria for the Hellard Award include the demonstration of long-term vision and innovation, championship of the equality and dignity of every person, efforts to enhance the processes of a democratic society, and an approach to work distinguished by commitment, caring, generosity, and humor. Hellard was beloved for his playful wit, which was often embellished with theatrical flourishes.
“In Al Smith, we have the embodiment of all these values,” observed Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center Board Chair Dan Hall, a Vice President at the University of Louisville. “Few have celebrated and challenged this state as Al Smith has, and we are all the better for it.”
* Ms. Smith-Mello is a Senior Policy Analyst with the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center. Return to text.