SmartLam stymied by SillyState

It was disheartening to learn that the state of Montana’s priorities seem to be misplaced when it comes to spending taxpayer money to boost the local economy.

A new Columbia Falls business, SmartLam, was in line for an $800,000 low interest loan to help get its timber and wood-processing business off the ground.

Unfortunately, the Montana Department of Commerce, at the discretion of Director Dore Schwinden, shifted the $1.7 million available for economic development to another program intended to pay for infrastructure projects, most probably in Eastern Montana.

These infrastructure projects are couched as “community development” projects, so they qualify for the federal money sent to the state under the Community Development Block Grant program, but no one is fooled.

Real community development is jobs, and that’s just what SmartLam aims to provide — 30 within the next two years, and possibly many more down the road. Fortunately, Western Building Center, a major investor in SmartLam says the project will continue without the infusion of state funds, but no thanks to the Department of Commerce.

What’s particularly disturbing about this development is that the state is showing an inclination to invest in the growth of government rather than the growth of private industry.

Perhaps not coincidentally, but rather as part of a larger picture, the Wall Street Journal published a column last week that talked about “America’s Two Economies.”

Daniel Henninger wrote about the problem thusly: “Today the private and public economies are in head-to-head competition for the nation’s wealth — with the private economy calling that wealth capital or income, and the public economy calling it tax revenue and making moral claims for spending tax revenue.”

Putting aside the political ramifications of that philosophical divide, it is nonetheless on a very practical level completely unacceptable to see the state put itself on the same plane as the private economy. If we are ever going to get out of the mess we face with our decline in manufacturing, it will be because government gets out of the way or lends a hand, rather than seeking its own handouts.