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Economist, Larry Swanson, upbeat about Billings and other Montana cities
Economist Larry Swanson told members of a Billings audience Wednesday that they live in "the right-size city with the right kind of change going on."
He told them that growth patterns across Montana are now based almost entirely on how many people move here from other states, not on birth rates. For most of the 20th century, he said, very large cities were the hotbeds of economic growth, and the relatively small cities of Montana hardly took part in it.
By ED KEMMICK
Of The Gazette Staff
But since the early 1990s, people have been leaving the big cities for small urban centers like Billings, Bozeman and Missoula, creating a boom that probably won’t level off for at least another decade, he said.
"People have always said, ‘I would live in Montana if I could.’ Well, now, increasingly, they can," Swanson said. "And it doesn’t take many people who ‘can’ to make a significant impact on the local economy."
Optimistic gospel
This was the third visit to Billings this year by Swanson, associate director of the Center for the Rocky Mountain West http://www.crmw.org at the University of Montana, to spread his optimistic gospel about what he sees as the true condition of the state and local economy.
About 50 people attended the breakfast meeting Wednesday at the Northern Hotel, and based on a show of hands, about a third of the audience was hearing Swanson’s presentation for the first time.
The meetings have been organized by Montana on the Move http://www.crmw.org/MontanaOnTheMove/ , a group working to help Montana communities prosper economically and culturally. The group is sponsored by the Center for the Rocky Mountain West, the Public Policy Research Institute http://umtpri.org/ , also based in Missoula, and the Billings-based Foundation for Community Vitality.
Montana on the Move has put on similar forums in Missoula and Great Falls and is planning meetings in Kalispell, Bozeman, Helena and Butte. The group is hoping to have representatives of all seven cities gather for a forum this fall, and then to produce a statewide economic and community-development plan before the Legislature convenes in January.
In Billings, a coalition of businesses and organizations known as Celebrate Billings is planning to have Swanson present his findings to a gathering of students from Montana State University-Billings and Rocky Mountain College sometime this fall. The Gazette, which is part of Celebrate Billings, also plans to publish a special tabloid in mid-October presenting the results of Swanson’s research.
Forum planned
After the November election, Celebrate Billings will host a forum at which Swanson will make a presentation to Yellowstone County’s representatives to the state House and Senate.
Swanson said the state has to get beyond the notion that it is possible to come up with one statewide economic development plan dictated from Helena. Only if such a plan is a melding of six or seven regional plans developed in the state’s urban centers will it have a chance of succeeding, he said.
Part of the problem is that Montanans have been wallowing in bad news for so long that they don’t know how to recognize good news, Swanson said.
He pointed to Missoula, where the lumber and wood-products industry declined by $18 million between 1990 and 2000. Figures like that make the news all the time, he said, because of the state’s fixation on traditional resource industries.
He asked – and was answered by laughter – how many people had read news stories about the $100 million increase in health care services in Missoula during that same decade, or the $45 million increase among special trade contractors, or the $43 million increase in business services.
Swanson said traditional industries like logging, mining and oil and gas extraction have been flat or declining across the Rocky Mountain West for the past 10 or 15 years, but politicians still concentrate on those sectors almost exclusively while ignoring the new economy.
Swanson said people need to realize that "service industry" jobs don’t necessarily mean low-wage or marginally skilled labor. The service economy also includes doctors and nurses, engineers, lawyers, accountants, contractors, real estate agents and financial managers. Those workers cater to the people who are moving to Montana because they have high-paying, portable jobs or those who move here with good incomes from transfer payments or investment earnings.
The boom won’t last forever, Swanson said, which is why the urban centers where growth is concentrated need to capitalize on their strengths and make the best of the boom while it lasts.
"We’ve moved, wholesale, into a human-resources-based economy, and we’re still trying to plan for a natural-resource-based economy," Swanson said. "You have to work with these growth cycles because you can’t count on them."
The reality, he said, is that almost all of Western Montana is booming, central Montana (of which Billings is part) is doing fairly well and most of Eastern Montana is in the midst of a long-term decline.
Asked what the state could do for eastern and northern agricultural counties that are facing hard times, Swanson said what the state shouldn’t do is devote precious resources to areas that may be beyond help. Agriculture is influenced to such an extent by Washington policies and global trends that the state is almost powerless to render meaningful help, he said, and "you get into a lot of bad strategies when you’re desperate."
He said it makes more sense to concentrate on policies that sustain the growth taking place in Billings and other urban centers, in hopes of being in position later to help those areas being bypassed by the boom.
"We’re kind of in a position in Montana where we have to be opportunistic for a while," he said. "We have to play to our strengths."
Ed Kemmick can be reached at 657-1293 or [email protected].
Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.
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