Rural leaders beat bureaucrats

HELENA, Mont. - Civic leaders, economic development professionals and state and local elected officials met in this small (population: approximately 28,000) but sprawling Western capital last week to review the forces shaping the growth and development of the nation's top "comeback" state. After losing population and one of its two congressional seats as a result of the energy bust and the collapse of commodity prices in the 1980s, the Montana economy rebounded big time.

The Montana comeback story is a story of changing technology aligned with changing cultural values, including the changing lifestyle preferences of many Americans. Examples: The "simplicity movement" and "downshifting," where people strive to do more with less - smaller salaries and homes, less consumerism and fewer gadgets - and live in a place where you can hunt quail, fish for trout and coach your kids' Little League games; and Lone Eagles, the new breed of "knowledge workers" and free-lance professionals who can live anywhere, using faxes, modems, express mail and airplane tickets to stay connected to far-off markets and suppliers.

The Census Bureau describes the effects of these cultural and lifestyle changes as "deconcentration," as people gradually move away from larger, more densely settled places toward more sparsely settled areas.

These lifestyle changes are enabled by technology, which is driving much of the change in Montana, especially computers, software and communication networks. That's one reason why participants in these meetings were elated by the news on April 10 that the Federal Communications Commission agreed to revisit how to pay for telephone and Internet services to high-cost, low density areas. Under the FCC's proposed "25/75" scheme to pay for "universal service" to high-cost areas, 25 percent of the costs would be paid by federal surcharges on interstate calls and 75 percent would come from state surcharges on local telephone bills. This would result in huge surcharges, 40 percent or more, for people in Montana, South Dakota and other sparsely populated high-cost Western states, compared with less than 10 percent for people in states like New Jersey or New York.

But strong protests by leaders from small town America, especially in the South and West, to Congress; and then by Congress directly to the FCC, forced the FCC to back down. Said Gene Vukovich, executive director of the Montana Rural Development Partners, "Imagine the result if we'd tried to build the interstate highway system by forcing the states to put up 75 percent of the money. It wouldn't have been built, at least not in the wide-open spaces of the West. That's why we financed the highway network 90/10, with the feds paying 90 percent. We need the same kind of 90/10 formula to build out the modern, high-speed broad-band telecom network. It's in the national interest and it should be financed at the national level."

The voices of Vukovich and his Montana colleagues were heard in Congress. Result: National policy is changing. In a democracy, grassroots leaders can beat the bureaucracy's policy wonks on any issue any time provided they know what's going on. That's why regulators (a special breed of policy wonk) prefer to do things behind the scenes and why ordinary people prefer the public's business to be conducted in the sunshine. In this case, the small platoons of rural and small-town leaders, armed with the bright light of the sunshine, beat a vast army of Washington lawyers and lobbyists hell-bent on policies that were anti-small business, anti-rural and anti-fairness, favoring the Coastal and Great Lakes regions over the West and the South. It was a battle worth fighting. And they won the first skirmish.