Delta Regional Authority co-chair Chris Masingill continues to push the politics and economics of regionalism

Spend five minutes in a room with Delta Regional Authority co-chairman Chris Masingill and you’ll feel like you’re in the presence of a preacher – and you are.

Masingill preaches the gospel of the Delta’s revival, and whether he’s working a room full of community leaders, delivering a presentation to a captured audience or recounting to a reporter the progress and patience needed to advance his economically-challenged circuit, you’ll understand he has a calling to make a difference.

Masingill, 43, lives in Little Rock with his wife, Melissa, and two daughters, and travels weekly across the eight-state region that includes parts of Arkansas, Alabama, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee. He’s spent plenty of time in politics, having served on the staffs of U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln (who helped create the DRA), U.S. Rep. Mike Ross and Gov. Mike Beebe. But Masingill has economics in his blood, having spearheaded Beebe’s management of the Great Recession when the federal government doled out billions of dollars to keep the U.S. economy from cratering through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Appointed by President Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2010, Masingill has used the position to push for healthier communities, leverage federal and state funding to advance economic projects, and collaborate with stakeholders to model new approaches to workforce development, job creation and entrepreneurship.

Talk Business & Politics’ Michael Wilkey interviewed Masingill at a Jonesboro economic development conference in October for a conversation about what’s happening and what’s next.

TB&P: What would you say that you have learned the most from serving as DRA co-chairman?

Masingill: A couple of things come to mind. The first one is there are some really amazing, incredible people in the region that are giving their heart and soul to save their communities and to keep their kids home; to provide an amazing opportunity. They love their communities, they love their neighbors and their home and they recognize the tremendous economic challenges and local challenges that they have. They’re working very hard. I have also seen that we have got a real gap in actually doing a better job of being more regional in our focus.

We still have a lot of places that are isolated into thinking very locally and not regionally in dealing with those issues. And that is real important. You have to tackle economic development. From a regional perspective, you need to be working together in a regional fashion with multiple communities on just about every issue that faces us from economics to infrastructure to workforce training and education to the environment. We need to do a better job of that. We still have a lot of places that don’t understand the power of regionalism.

We still have to do a much better job of providing capacity, capacity to be more competitive with organizations, with communities, with our workforce, the ability for individuals to have greater capacity to be successful, to educational attainment or health or local challenges. We need more professional, economic and community developers on the ground doing that.

And lastly is that there are some really amazing things happening around the region. People, I think, initially want to think of all the bad things. I have been able to learn very quickly that even with all the challenges, there are some amazing things happening. There are some individual projects that are having a huge impact.

I tell you, one of the coolest things that I have learned in my five years is that the Delta region is a pretty, damn cool place.

TB&P: One of the major issues the Delta faces on a daily basis is workforce training and development. How do we create a cohesive policy on training workers for the future while still not stifling ingenuity and people thinking outside the box on possible solutions?

Masingill: First and foremost, you have to tackle this regionally. You’ve got to have a regional strategy. You have got to look at changing the model. And you have got to look at changing the system.

The reality of it is we have got to create a system that is connected, that is linked to economic development, that we are re-thinking the model. We have to reimagine what readiness looks like. Are we providing opportunities that are seamless? What career pathways are exposing our youth much earlier to the world of work? Are we encouraging or incentivizing our young people going into the highest demand trades? We recognize, particularly here in Arkansas, that we have not done a very good job of teaching our young people and our parents, quite frankly, the importance of career and technical training.

We’ve got to do a better job with that. We recognize that we’ve got jobs that are open right now that we cannot fill because of the mental skills gap. And there are programs that are doing some pretty significant things. That is why we are a big proponent of the ACT Certified Work Ready Community. In fact, we have been shepherding this for the last couple of years.

Why does it take so long to get through school? We recognize that not every occupation requires a four-year degree. We want to encourage additional educational attainment, but it does not necessarily mean a four-year traditional baccalaureate degree. We need to be encouraging young people to look at the broad perspective of where we are going. What are the needs of business and industry? Are we incentivizing that? Are we recognizing for the last 20 years, we have done a very poor job of putting a negative image on career and technical training?

Working inside of an industry or manufacturing facility is cutting edge. It is technology based. It is STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) related. And that the other part of that is that we need to recognize the importance of soft skills, employability skills. That is just as important as learning specifics trades or specific technical skills. We have got to make sure that we are providing that opportunity.

It is about K through J – kindergarten through Job, not about K-12 or K through 16. We are talking about lifelong learning, about career pathways and that is different for every kid.

TB&P: What would you say is your overall vision in facing many of the issues that the Delta Regional Authority deals with every day?

Masingill: We operate in a different world. We are in a world economy. We are not competing Jonesboro against Helena. We are not competing Arkansas against Tennessee. We are competing against Mexico and China. We are competing with countries around the world and this issue of workforce training and education is the number one issue impacting economic development, bar none, and that is why it is so important.

That we in Arkansas, we in the Delta region, fix this issue, get to the place where we are meeting the needs of business and industry when it comes to a supply side, not just the demand side as it relates to workforce training and education.

And if that means we have to go to the drawing board and redo the system, then that is what we should do. We should have the political courage to address those issues from funding to the structure of how we have higher education. If that is what it means, then that is what we should have the political courage and leadership to do. That is what the future of economic development is demanding, and quite frankly, what those who are creating the jobs are demanding.

TB&P: The late CEO of Big River Steel, John Correnti, said in late 2014 that the construction and opening of Big River Steel near Osceola will create an economic impact within 150 miles of Osceola. What can the region do to benefit from the $1.3 billion that is expected to be invested in the project?

Masingill: It starts first with workforce training and education. Secondly, communities have to realize or really discover what their true assets are. You have mentioned tourism. Tourism, from our position, cultural tourism, geotourism, all of these things are an important component of the local economic development strategy. In fact, in the Delta region, tourism – heritage tourism, cultural tourism, geotourism – all of those things are important.

They have a huge economic impact on our local communities’ economy or regional economy. In fact, tourism is one of our biggest contributors for the entire region. It goes right along with small business development and it is about leveraging, it is about maximizing what that asset is; and that, in a lot of our rural communities, is just as important as the traditional economic development. It has to be all tied in.

If you’re Clarksdale, Miss., home of the Crossroads, one of the most legendary landmarks of blues music in the entire world, people from all over the world come to the Delta region because of the music and cultural heritage. They spend lots of money. They stay longer. They have a huge impact and so for that community, for that region and that state, that strategy to bolster, expand, to broaden tourism as an economic development strategy is just as important as recruiting a Big River Steel.

Big River Steel will have a huge impact. But the thing we have to realize is that impact is truly region wide. Let’s also remember Mississippi County is home to Nucor Steel – an amazing company – an amazing economic contributor but yet the unemployment rate in Mississippi County is double digits. So we have to understand the relationship this has from an economic development standpoint and that they are drawing from a huge range.

He said 150 miles. I totally agree with that. We know for a fact, that people in our footprint, will drive 50 miles one way to go to work. So, they are pulling from everywhere and when they have a company that strong and with Big River Steel, there will be no exception – high-demand jobs, high-wage jobs and that gives them the ability to pull talent, human capital from a lot of places.

TB&P: The chairmanship of the Delta Regional Authority is not a lifetime appointment. How long do you think you might stay in the post and what do you think your legacy might reflect?

Masingill: I serve at the will of the president. And with every new president, they will obviously evaluate their own philosophy of that. I have been fortunate to have this opportunity. I am very appreciative of President Obama for giving me this opportunity. I am very appreciative of (former) Gov. Beebe for giving me an opportunity to still be involved when I worked for him, to be involved in economic development at the state level; to be able to be on the board, to have that understanding.

I am thankful to (former) Sen. Blanche Lincoln, who helped create the DRA, when I was one of her staff members in D.C. during that time period. And I got to see this firsthand. So, I have had a close connection and strong belief in the power and impact an organization, like DRA, can have.

I look forward to finishing my term and I think our legacy is going to be making DRA what Congress wanted it to be – an economic development partner that was able to leverage resources, its small resources with local resources, and have some profound impact – and we have done that.