ND editorial roundup
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Excerpts from editorials in North Dakota daily newspapers over the past week:
Prospects have been good. Tax credits up to $7 million were approved by the federal government for a possible wind tower manufacturing plant in Bismarck, with an estimated 275 workers. A 22-member team from a South Korea-based company wanting to develop a beef processing plant in North Dakota visited the city this week. And a delegation of livestock producers and government officials from Kazakhstan began traveling the state looking to deal in cattle and livestock equipment.
There are no done deals in any of this, but it's a feel-good thing to be in the hunt.
The local business climate, relatively strong despite a weak national economy, drew these companies to the area. That and the state's strong reputation in agriculture and energy — be it coal, oil, natural gas or wind.
It's important that Bismarck-Mandan discover or create enough good-paying jobs to compensate for the loss of the Bobcat production plant in December, and fuel the kind of business growth needed to attract new workers to the community. The metro area's unemployment rate, hanging just under 4 percent, will probably bounce up in January because of Bobcat. It becomes one of those chicken-or-the-egg issues pushing economic growth.
While everyone else in the country is talking recovery, Bismarck-Mandan talks growth.
Schuff Steel has been looking at Bismarck as a location for a new wind tower manufacturing plant. On Jan. 8, the Arizona-based company was approved for $7 million in federal tax credits for clean energy manufacturing. The company would like to start operations in the next year, if it can get enough orders for product and financing.
FK Corp. USA Inc., a North Dakota-incorporated subsidiary of a South Korean company, wants to site a large beef processing plant in the state and has been looking at Burleigh and Morton counties as possible locations. Expectation are that the plant could employ about 370 people and process 700 to 800 head of cattle daily. Sixty percent of the production would be exported to South Korea.
Kazakhstan, according to the North Dakota Trade Office, has set aside $80 million for 2010 to improve and expand that nation's livestock industry. The livestock producers there need not only equipment but "know-how." Like North Dakota, Kazakhstan has harsh weather conditions. One member of the Kazakhstan delegation, Duysenbek Nurlanov, runs a 10,000-head cattle operation.
North Dakota finds itself in a strong position as the national and global economies begin to pull themselves out of the tank. The concerted effort North Dakota has made to become more entrepreneurial and more globally conscious may pay off. Hopefully, the result will be more good-quality, high-paying jobs in an increasingly diversified state economy.
Mark McGwire finally admitted what every savvy baseball fan already knew: His 1998 single-season home run record was aided by steroid use. The slugger hit No. 62 in that year, breaking the record set by Fargo's Roger Maris in 1961, when Maris broke Babe Ruth's record, which had stood for more than three decades.
McGwire's admission, which included a call to Maris' widow, Pat, should be more than enough to compel the Veterans Committee of the Baseball Hall of Fame to reconsider Maris for admission. McGwire's record and subsequent home run records (Sammy Sosa), are products of the shameful "steroid era." Steroid-aided home run records are tainted, and will forever be tainted. The sooner Major League Baseball categorizes them properly, the sooner Maris' achievement might receive the recognition it has deserved for 40 years.
It's no shock that the newspaper in Fargo would editorialize that Maris should be in the Hall of Fame. While he was born in Minnesota, Maris grew up and played baseball in Fargo and identified himself as a Fargoan. He is by any measure one of the city's and North Dakota's favorite sons. A genuine sports hero, his career was distinguished not only by stellar play, but also by a kind of boyish humility that is seldom seen among top athletes.
But McGwire's too-long-in-coming admission moves the Maris story beyond Fargo and into the realm of the legitimacy of one of baseball's most elusive records. McGwire and others perpetrated a hoax and got away with it, in part because Major League Baseball looked the other way. The damage to the game — a game in which records and statistics are supposed to mean something — will fester unless steroid-aided performances are either removed from the books or defined for what they were: cheating.
Maris did it the right way. The old news reel of that day in 1961 shows his classic swing, the ball sailing out and the crowd going wild. The images still stir the hearts of true baseball fans. The pictures of steroid-pumped McGwire hitting No. 62 will never achieve the same status.
If ever a professional baseball player deserved to be in the Hall of Fame, it's Roger Maris. The home run record should be enough, but his overall play, especially with his glove, elevates him to the level of several players already in the hall. McGwire's admission gives Veterans Committee members an opportunity to do the right thing for Maris and for baseball.
Richard Hanson gets a nod of appreciation, both for what he's found in his short tenure as interim president of North Dakota State University and for the calmness he's displayed in the face of the news.
The news is bad.
NDSU has a budget shortfall of at least $2.5 million — and it will grow if the university continues current operations.
That means changes are urgently needed.
Here's where Hanson's calm comes in. He's begun a deliberate process to cut spending, first by putting a freeze on new hires. Hanson announced that step last month, when the budget shortfall was $1.8 million.
He's looking at other steps to cover the larger deficit. Those will be announced by the end of the month.
Hanson inherited these budget deficits, although close observers of the campus worried that something might be amiss with NDSU's accounting. The school experienced very rapid enrollment growth — surpassing UND to become North Dakota's largest university (measured by the number of students).
But it turns out that NDSU was essentially giving enrollment away, at least partly to achieve the goal that former President Joe Chapman set, to surpass UND's enrollment.
Chapman's administration was profligate with tuition waivers, meaning that students enrolled at lower rates, and it increased enrollment in online courses, which command a lower price.
Of course, Chapman was profligate in other ways, as well.
For example, he far exceeded the budget to replace the president's house on campus.
More notoriously, he spent more than $22,000 to attend the inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the United States. The bills included a chartered aircraft and luxury accommodations in Washington, D.C.
When these extravagances became public, Chapman resigned.
These early examples were expressions of Chapman's own arrogance and ambition, and they did little harm — other than to embarrass the university and the state.
But his casual accounting system endangers the university, as Interim President Hanson realized immediately. The problems must be corrected immediately, he told a Board of Higher Education Committee on Monday, in order to maintain the quality of education that NDSU offers and to fulfill its obligation to students.
This is the right priority.
Hanson's determination to measure the problems and to solve them is the right approach.
NDSU needs such a leader after the heady days of Chapman's administration — a time that brought real progress to NDSU.
Now, the price of that progress must be paid.
