Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities: Reinventing Federalism for Distressed Communities

Assisting communities to stimulate investment and to create jobs as part of a federal-state-local government and private-sector partnership is a key intergovernmental objective of the Clinton administration, consistent with its agenda of reinventing government. The Empowerment Zones/Enterprise Cities (EZ/EC) Program, enacted by the Congress as part of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, reflects other federalism themes as well, themes that predate the Clinton administration. A shift in federal policy during the 1980s, away from places and toward persons, set the stage for the long and difficult path of the EZ/EC program through the Congress. During that same decade, many states enacted their own enterprise-zone statutes; these initiatives were part of a second federalism trend—the general resurgence of states. The EZ/EC program also demonstrates the persistence of partisanship in intergovernmental programs; empowerment-zone and enterprise-community choices announced by the president in December 1994 reflected Clinton's need to satisfy his traditional Democratic constituencies.