I would argue that the less action by Tom, or anyone in Portland's government on so-called Economic Development, the better.

http://bojack.org/mt-arc/001769.html

Local Economic Development philosophies have been a pet peeve of mine for twenty years. The shuffling of intrastate dollars, as is usually the case with all lottery and video poker money is not economic development. The government types like to ignore the negative effect of the reduced spending by the gamblers on other real goods and services. Then they trumpet, with advertised TV campaigns, all the wonderful things they have done, as if the money that was spent had appeared like magic out of thin air.

I had made the mistake of sitting in on a Regional Economics AFTER having taken courses like International Ag Development and Economics of Developing Countries. The scope of the local material highlighted the local flow of dollars without nary a peep about the origin of the dollars. Gresham's trumpeting, for example, of the benefits of building retail outlets to sell goods produced abroad and peddled locally is the antithesis of economic development. From my perspective is colored by the having placed myself in the shoes of countries that are at the weak end of the bargaining relationship with multi-national countries. I look upon the promises of obtaining riches, by the poor locals, with a heavy dose of salt.

Today, it is us poor Oregonians that are a weak bargainer and our Economic Development guru's are typically, and horribly, lacking in the context to understand this position. They do not apply the many lessons learned in the international context that can be gleaned from studying the economic development strategies that have been experimented with in Latin America, and elsewhere.