Apr 06, 2008 - 07:37:35 CDT
The Tribune editorial "Top export rank reflects N.D. changes" rightly described progress North Dakota has made in increasing exports of manufactured products. Unfortunately, the editorial ascribed credit for the programs that created this increase to Govs. Ed Schafer and John Hoeven.The real credit belongs to Gov. George Sinner and the 1991 Legislature that passed the "Growing North Dakota" bill.
When I joined the Sinner administration in 1985 as deputy director of the economic development commission, the state was losing 100 jobs per week. The coal gasification plant was in default, Steiger Tractor was facing financial collapse and the partners in the sunflower crushing plant at Velva had decided to walk away from the project.
Nick Spaeth, the attorney general, appointed a young attorney to help our crisis intervention team at the EDC. That attorney, Steve Noack, and I and federal, state and local development agency personnel met with numerous small manufacturers. We helped save most of them.
Through the prodding of Wally Beyer and others, Basin Electric bought the gasification plant, I recruited ADM to meet with Sinner and look at the sunflower plant, which it bought, and Tenneco bought Steiger.
The Bank of North Dakota made a bridge loan to Steiger to keep it afloat until it could be acquired. Joe Lamb led the work on a risky loan uncharacteristic of that conservative lender.
Sinner got out of the way of the legislation, saying that if he tried to take credit for it, it would be killed. Chuck Stroup of Hazen, Dennis Hill of the RECs, Jim Ozbun of North Dakota State University and Tom Clifford of the University of North Dakota worked to keep the coalition together.
Behind the effort was Sinner's chief of staff, Chuck Fleming. When I left the EDC in 1990, the biennual budget for our agency was $8.9 million. When Stroup was appointed director of that agency in 1993 by Schafer, the biennual budget was $22.4 million.
The saying that success has a thousand fathers, and failure is an orphan is probably true. But I could name a lot more people who worked in the Sinner administration who could claim a share of the paternity for the success of manufacturers in North Dakota.
Poor Bill wrote on Apr 9, 2008 3:38 PM:
It's hard not to feel sorry for Bill Patrie and the Sinnerites from the 1980's. I'm sure they did their best. But the facts are the facts. Those days in ND were similar to the Carter days in America. Every day brought another reason for pessimism and hand wringing. Thank God those days are behind us. "
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