Former ASU president wants Arizona to think big

Lots of good ideas and policy recommendations are developed by government commissions, institutes and town halls in Arizona, but often those reports, after some initial discussion and support, end up on the proverbial shelf gathering dust.

Those dusty reports have been reopened by Lattie Coor, former president of Arizona State University and presently chief executive of the Center for the Future of Arizona. He’s not about to let them continue to languish.

Coor and his center staff have collected some 200 policy recommendations from nearly 50 reports made by leading organizations throughout Arizona during the past 15 years and have distilled them into a single framework for a vision of the future of Arizona.

He has organized the recommendations into five categories that he believes provide the basis to achieve the overall vision of making Arizona one of the best places in the nation to live a rewarding and productive life: Providing opportunities for all, improving the quality of life, pursuing a knowledge-based economy, developing future leadership and finding the public and private resources to accomplish those goals.

The program also stresses the need to think boldly — to develop a limited number of what Coor calls big, hairy, audacious goals, or BHAGs — to accomplish the vision.

"The idea of bold initiatives isn’t a new concept in Arizona," he said. "We’ve had our share of BHAGs in the past — the Salt River Project, Central Arizona Project, for example. . . . We need to be as imaginative about our future as we have been in our past."

Although the Phoenix-based center, which has only a few employees, cannot take the responsibility for achieving big new projects, Coor said it can assist other agencies in identifying and implementing bold initiatives.

Examples of big, hairy, audacious goals that have been proposed to date include:

• Improve Arizona public education to the point that the state ranks among the top 10 in the nation by 2020.

• Improve Arizona’s innovation and technology transfer process to enable Phoenix and Tucson, which are rapidly merging into a single metro area, to rank among the top five regions in the nation in entrepreneurship by 2020.

• Significantly lower the nighttime temperature in the Valley.

• Establish Arizona as the center of the "Nuevo American Economy."

Coor has won the endorsement of more than 70 Arizona cities and towns, counties, councils of governments, business and educational organizations for his vision plan.

He will present the program to Arizona residents in full page advertisements to be printed in newspapers across the state, including the Tribune, on March 20 — a $52,000 effort funded by Wells Fargo Bank, Arizona Public Service and Bashas’.

Coor said he will seek further endorsements for his vision in the coming weeks and will work to establish coalitions of organizations to accomplish those goals. Already the center is working on a project to reduce the high school dropout rate in Arizona, which is part of the goal of providing opportunities.

"We encourage organizations and individuals from all walks of life, public and private, to help us make this vision a reality," he said.

Center officials emphasize they are not trying to set priorities but are trying to create a framework for others to build on,

Jose Cardenas, a Phoenix attorney and a member of the center’s board of directors, thinks one of the strengths of the initiative is that the center, which is funded by foundations and individuals, doesn’t have its own organizational agenda.

"Not trying is not an option," he said. "The status quo is not an option, because everyone else is moving ahead."

Mesa Mayor Keno Hawker endorsed the program after receiving assurances that the goal of providing opportunity for all doesn’t imply an entitlement program.

"If you drop out of school, I don’t think you are entitled to a guaranteed income provided by the rest of the people for the rest of your life," Hawker said. "There should be equal opportunity for all, but you should still be accountable for your own actions."