Quo vadis 56572?

Star Tribune editorial
July 8, 2007

Tonight many Twin Cities residents will return from an extended July 4th weekend spent "back home" in or near a Minnesota small town. As they travel, they'll reflect on the vitality of the place they visited, and how it has changed from the place they knew in their youth.

Sadly, many of today's small towns won't compare favorably. Population decline that began in some places 60 or 70 years ago continues. Generations of out-migration by the young have left behind a disproportionately elderly population, and an economy overly dependent on monthly Social Security and pension checks. Agriculture, once most small towns' lifeblood, increasingly takes its own economic course, bypassing neighboring merchants and vendors. An assumption that decline is inevitable hangs over a whole region like a persistent, darkening cloud.

That assumption ought to be resisted, even by Minnesotans who aren't sentimentally tied to small towns. This state has shown throughout its history that it thrives when it pulls together. Persistent poverty within the state's borders dampens prospects for the whole.

What's more, most Minnesota small towns are not economically hopeless. They are home to people of entrepreneurial spirit, possessed of plans to start businesses that employ one to five people, or enlarge ones that already do. With the right help, more of their ideas can take root......

Rural Minnesota's Crisis
The Case For Using What We Have To Do More In The Places That Need It Most

by Lee Egerstrom,
Fellow Minnesota 2020

The state is failing rural Minnesota. Today, the State of Minnesota's economic development policy is oriented towards large projects and larger cities. Efforts to aid rural areas are fragmented, unfocused or nonexistent.

Minnesota faces a stark, fundamental policy choice: do we invest in small town business development policy or do we return rural Minnesota to the buffalo?

Current state agency infrastructure and resources, particularly those administered by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED), can be easily retasked to better serve Minnesota's 80,000 smallest businesses. At present, little state effort is directed to aiding these entrepreneurs.

Business data suggest that a modest policy shift, realized though state agencies, will yield substantive dividends. As Luverne, Minnesota Mayor Andy Steensma states, "I would rather have 30 businesses employing 10 people (each) than have a factory come to town and employ 300 workers," he said. "We would have more diversification. And, we would have most of the profits from those businesses that stay right here in town."

This research project identifies four public policy initiatives that will result in a stronger small town business climate.

• Entrepreneur business skill building and research
• Business development resource coordination
• Development and marketing
• Capital formation and micro-lending

Indifference, denial and neglect of our rural areas are poor public policy. By leveraging existing resources and making rural economic development a priority, Minnesota could realize a boundless future......