Regents try hand at aiding economy

The seven-year term that each member of the state Board of Regents serves can lend stability to a state political structure blown over every four years by partisan winds in the governor’s office and the Legislature, some regents say.

By ALLISON FARRELL
Gazette State Bureau

That’s why the regents should lead Montana’s proposed economic turnaround, Regent John Mercer of Polson told his colleagues at the board’s meeting this week in Billings.

"The very survival of the Montana University System is hinging upon our ability to grow the state economy," said Mercer, a former four-term speaker of the Montana House of Representatives. "If we don’t do as much as we possibly can to further this economy, our whole ship is going to sink."

With some foot-dragging, five of the seven regents voted to give Higher Education Commissioner Sheila Stearns and Chief Business Officer Dave Gibson of the governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity the authority to name state leaders to a new committee. It will be charged with the task of developing a handbook of economic literacy for Montana.

The proposed handbook will look at the history of Montana’s economy as well as propose economic development strategies for the future.

Regents Richard Roehm of Bozeman and Lynn Hamilton of Havre opposed the measure.

"I think this project should go forward, but it should go forward under the leadership of the governor," Hamilton said.

Gov. Judy Martz has more credibility, Hamilton said. Roehm said Gibson’s office is fully capable of writing a handbook on economic literacy on its own.

Mercer agreed and said many agencies — from Gibson’s office to the University of Montana’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research — have the ability to single-handedly produce a document on the Montana economy.

However, Mercer said, many different groups of people need to have a say in the discussion so they feel some ownership over the Montana economy and its future development.

"What I’m trying to do is get people to work together with the same objectives," Mercer said. "When they have ownership, they’re going to be interested."

The creation of this new committee moves Montana one step closer to reviving the state’s economy, Mercer said. And it moves the regents further into the new realm of economic responsibility they have created for themselves.

Both Stearns and Gibson said they are up to the task.

"We’d be very happy to do whatever we could to support this," Gibson told the regents.

Stearns said the committee could provide some clarity to Montana’s economic discussion. The committee, which is not yet staffed, would be charged with saying if and how state leaders could move the Montana economy forward.

The regents, Stearns and others will likely discuss this project at a strategic planning meeting next month.

"We need to not pass this off," Mercer said. "We need to be right in the middle of it. There needs to be someone that can keep people communicating with each other."

Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.

http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2003/09/27/build/local/37-regents.inc

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Regents take an economic step

By The Helena IR – 10/01/03

An IR View

It would be easy to poke a little fun at the formation of yet another committee to promote economic development. This time, the Board of Regents authorized Higher Education Commissioner Sheila Stearns and Dave Gibson of the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity to name a committee of state leaders to develop a handbook of economic literacy for Montana.

After years of economic summits and endless talk about why the state’s economy has declined relative to other states and what can be done about it, the necessity for another panel to labor mightily to produce one more primer on economy building is not obvious. By now, we suspect most newspaper readers could slap a pretty good handbook together without much difficulty.

click here

But there’s more going on here than just another exercise in "words rather than action." Indeed, in the vision of activist regent John Mercer, the handbook is just the beginning of a new and intensified university system role in Montana’s economic future.

During last week’s regent’s meeting in Billings, Mercer argued that regents, with their seven-year terms, can transcend the state’s four-year cycle of political partisanship and bring stability to a real turnaround program.

To Mercer, whose years of legislative leadership have impressed upon him the jaundiced view many lawmakers take of higher education leadership in Montana, the issue not only is about improving the state’s economy. It’s about the future of higher education itself.

"The very survival of the Montana university system is hinging upon our ability to grow the state economy," he said. "If we don’t do as much as we possibly can to further this economy, our whole ship is going to sink."

We might not put it in such apocalyptic terms, but it is increasingly clear that Montanans expect the university system to put its many collective talents to work not only to educate students, but to benefit the state as a whole.

This responsibility extends a lot farther than creating another economic development 101 handbook, but, hey, rather than carp, we’d rather just welcome a newly dedicated Board of Regents into the game.

http://helenair.com/articles/2003/10/01/opinions_top/a04100103_01.txt