5 | The Economic Impact of Local Parks STATE-LEVEL ANALYSIS This component of the research project examines the economic impacts of local and regional parks spending in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. As with the national analysis, this part of the study utilized employment data from the U.S. Census Bureau for local and regional park systems as a proxy measure of operations spending. Estimates of total economic impacts, including direct, indirect and induced effects, come from Regional Impact Modeling System (RIMS-II) multipliers developed by the Bureau of Economic Analysis and packaged by IMPLAN, Inc. The estimates of capital spending for state parks are based on proportional relationships between operating and capital spending observed in the national-level analysis. As with the national analysis, this approach does not include “ordinary” capital spending for minor equipment that appears in annual budgets. As a result, the estimate presented in this section likely understates the actual total economic impact of local and region park agency spending. The findings of the state-level analysis are presented in Table 2. The reader will note that the sum of the state-level impacts does not equal the national-level economic impact estimates presented in the previous section. This should not be a surprise. For any given state, some of the spending by local and regional park systems could “leak out” of the host state. For example, if the fertilizer used on sports fields located at an Oklahoma City park was produced by a manufacturer in Arkansas, the value of that product production would not count as an impact on the Oklahoma economy. In addition, since the spending for this fertilizer originated outside of Arkansas, we would not capture this fertilizer sale in the Arkansas state-level impacts. Therefore, the economic activity related to the manufacture of this fertilizer is “lost” in our state-level analysis. Note that since all of this economic activity occurred within the United States, this “lost” activity is captured in the national-level analysis. There is substantial variance in the economic impacts of local and regional park spending across the states, which reflects, among other things, population differences. Nonetheless, local and regional park spending is a substantial contributor of jobs and economic activity across the nation, with state impacts ranging from a few hundred million dollars to billions of dollars in economic activity supported each year. Table 2 Economic Impacts of Local and Regional Park Spending by State — 2013 State Economic Activity (Transactions) Labor Income Employment (Jobs) Alabama $1,231,368,975 $417,528,606 11,470 Alaska $265,134,937 $108,872,161 2,092 Arizona $2,149,280,345 $787,288,139 17,696 Arkansas $428,924,501 $151,675,101 3,898 California $17,612,301,914 $7,269,695,775 126,775 Colorado $4,626,619,238 $1,723,877,013 36,247 Connecticut $1,107,632,241 $417,751,961 8,439 District of Columbia $120,024,356 $57,078,384 896 Delaware $89,921,606 $33,946,700 724 Florida $7,485,741,762 $2,705,649,730 60,801 Georgia $2,250,326,290 $821,402,880 18,918
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