Greater Baltimore Alliance Releases Scorecard Under Pressure

The Greater Baltimore Alliance (DBA) took a reluctant step earlier this week toward building its credibility as the lead partner in economic development in the Baltimore region. It released a new scorecard intended to assess its effectiveness and pinpoint the region's strengths and weaknesses. Up until now, the organization has not released much information about its performance to the public, even though the GBA Board is well informed about what the organization is up to.

According to the Baltimore Sun, “the public has known relatively little about just how the nonprofit business organization works to attract companies to Baltimore, how successful it has been in that effort, or what regional strengths or weaknesses it has discovered in the process. Not surprisingly, the GBA scored itself high on the first scorecard. Producing independent objective judgments may prove more difficult, experts say.”

In my assessment, all EDO’s, whether funded by public or private money, will need to keep their stakeholders, including the general public, better informed about their activities. This only makes sense since the decisions of EDO’s have an impact on a wide cross-section of people in the community.

The past three years have been unkind to local economies everywhere. Results are down in all states, including the growth hotbeds in the West and the South. The economic skies are clearing, which will hopefully bring more development opportunities to communities everywhere.

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