Dubuque - How Close to Wisconsin?
Dubuque, Iowa shares its border with both Wisconsin and Illinois. Rather than high taxes and layers of mandates, Dubuque and Iowa encourage cooperation, consensus and joint projects among business owners and government agencies; such cross-fertilization has created a dynamic and growing economic environment that “floats all boats”. This, then is a real life Tale of Two Cities, one in Iowa, and several (take your pick) in Wisconsin.
As it has done several times in the past, Dubuque (population 58,000) has re-invented itself and leapfrogged the declining economies in adjacent states. It has morphed from a Rustbelt “Flint Michigan” type of town to become the fastest job-growth city in the Midwest by seeking and welcoming new businesses outside of its traditional manufacturing base.
To add to its still viable manufacturing sector, Dubuque today has sought and landed “high tech” industries in health care, education, tourism, publishing and financial services. The latest crown jewel is a new IBM technical center, located here just a hop and a skip from the Mississippi River. So close but so far, Wisconsin’s cities from Platteville to Madison to Milwaukee were never considered by IBM. Rather, in Wisconsin, every private sector job lost results in a public sector job gain, fossilizing the status quo.
In the late 19th century, a similar scenario was played out in Dubuque with respect to Galena, Illinois (see Badgernet category “Disasters and Fiascos”). Galena continued to subsidize its barge industry throughout the 1890s, and actively discouraged entreaties by the railroads to establish a rail head there. Tired of waiting, the railroads built their facility in Dubuque, and Galena became today’s quaint little tourist town without the political or financial clout it enjoyed when U.S. Grant and Abraham Lincoln would woo the powerful and moneyed interests that used to call Galena home.
Some day, our leaders in Wisconsin will “get it”, and appreciate the course of our state’s creeping europeization. Some day our state leaders will fully understand the lessons of history. It may just require that the bones of today’s creative and productive citizens be in the ground before the light comes on.