It's natural that Harold Bost, Fayette's new County Commission chairman, is questioning the benefits of economic development.

Mr. Bost is a true conservative, and he doesn't own a rubber stamp. If you want his support for continuing any government program, you have to prove that it has been and will continue to be in the best interests of local residents.

Bost has suggested that the County Commission should rein in the Development Authority, the group charged with bringing in new industry.

The traditional argument in favor of seeking out new industry is that a community needs a mixture of residential, commercial and industrial taxpayers so that its quality of life can be maintained without unduly taxing individual homeowners.

Bost says if that's true, then the benefits of new industry brought to the county should be measurable on the tax records. He has pulled those records and is now calling for an end to the use of incentives to bring in new industry.

All of the new industries brought into Fayette in the last five years combined have paid about $1.8 million in taxes during those five years, and that figure may yet be reduced a tad. Cooper Lighting paid $192,000 last year but has appealed its assessment, so the county may have to give some of it back.

Bost isn't saying we should do away with the Development Authority, but he is saying that $1.8 million over five years isn't enough tax revenue to justify an aggressive search for new industry. Let them come if they like, but don't offer them any incentives, he suggests.

Other commissioners say they want more information before sending a letter to the authority asking it to cool its jets.

I live in another county, so I don't have a dog in this hunt. On the other hand, as an outsider I do have an objective point of view, and I have to agree with some of the commissioners who say there are a lot more questions that need answering before any major change of direction is decided upon.

I would want to go back a little further than five years, to start with. Sometimes new industries receive special lease arrangements that have the effect of reducing their tax burden for the first years after they open. To get a true picture, you would have to see what kind of taxes are being paid by those that have been here a little longer.

Unfortunately, we haven't had a development authority for all that long, so it would be difficult to get that information. But it wouldn't be hard to look at the special arrangements we have with industries that have come into the county and examine what the tax impact will be after those agreements expire.

I would also want to know the tax impact of expansions of existing industries. The Development Authority spends more than half of its time, money and effort working to be sure industries that are already here get the support they need and continue to be happy here, so they will expand rather than moving somewhere else.

How does that affect the aggressiveness with which we seek out new industry? The statistics on expansion of existing industries suggests to me that new ones, once they have moved here, will eventually expand, and those expansions will add to the tax base without any new incentives.

I would want to get some feel for how much money employees of these industries are spending in Fayette. If they are spending money, then local businesses are benefiting and the county is receiving sales tax revenue.

One rap against industrial recruitment is that Fayette has a low unemployment rate, so new industries bring their workers with them and add to the county's residential growth. Is there a way we can measure the benefit of having new residents who work in the county, as opposed to having new residents who work somewhere else?

One thing is for sure. We're going to have new residents. I would think that having jobs in the county for some of those new residents would be a good thing.

Also, if we're going to measure the benefits of new industry, we would have to include charitable donations, the walking trails, parks and other amenities that many of them make available to the general public, their involvement in the community through programs like Partners in Education and mentoring programs.

Finally, if I were making this decision I would have to think long and hard about what would happen if we didn't work to recruit the best industries with the highest paying jobs and the most investment in plant and equipment. Would those who own the industrially zoned land then be tempted to lease or sell that land to the industries that aren't recruited... the ones that pollute more, pay less and don't put much money into landscaping?

I think commissioners are taking exactly the right approach. They're asking for a meeting with the Development Authority to look together for the answers to these and other questions.

Mr. Bost is right: Good communities constantly reexamine how they approach life-style decisions.