Greater Minnesota

Making the Entire State of Minnesota Work Again

Having graduated from high school in Worthington, in far southwestern Minnesota, I have a special place in my heart for our state’s small towns and rural communities. These communities have helped shape the values and renowned work ethic of Minnesota. In no small way, these values made me who I am.

But today, these communities are suffering. Increasingly, greater Minnesota’s biggest exports are its kids.

People are leaving our rural communities because there are not enough good jobs for the next generation. I also know these communities are in so many ways wonderful places to make homes, go to school, settle down and raise families. People aren’t leaving our rural communities because they want to. They’re leaving because they often feel they have no choice.

For years Minnesota has been looking for outside businesses to come in and “save” one region or another. Our economic development policy has been focused on helping large, mostly manufacturing businesses, relocate, build and expand plants. Most of the time this involves tax subsidies combined with large grant and loan programs. The truth is, big foreign businesses have an easier time getting millions of dollars to bring their enterprises here than independent local businesspeople have getting $2,500 to launch new or expand a small business.

Diversity in any region’s economy is important for stability. We should focus on building a diverse base of business from within our rural communities. When we’re constantly focused on nabbing “silver bullet” businesses – ones that stand to employ large percentages of a region’s population – we begin orienting everything we do to keeping those businesses happy and wondering what we’d do if they left. Further, their profits often leave our communities for headquarters cities elsewhere in the country or world rather than being reinvested here in Minnesota.

For example, the Pawlenty administration schemes to stimulate small business growth have yielded no measurable results. The Job Opportunity Building Zones (JOBZ) Tim Pawlenty unveiled with much fanfare in 2004 is based on creating tax-free zones for new businesses. But the program has been mired in controversy, partly because of its apparent lack of results and partly because the governor refuses to release its results. A December 2006 report by the Center for Rural Policy and Development outlined some of the problems with JOBZ, saying its effect is to simply “relocate [businesses], pitting one rural community against another and ultimately creating no ‘net gain’ for the State of Minnesota.”

Meanwhile we are not adequately supporting our family farmers who are the bedrock of rural Minnesota. Their efforts to diversify farm income with new value-added approaches to farming must be supported.

As governor, I will focus every day on building jobs and revitalizing rural communities. Here are some of the things we need to do: