Moving to Montana Soon?

Much about the Montana state of mind can be ascertained by a visit to its official Web site, discovermontana.com. There you find three links in the following order: Gov. Judy Martz's office, the sign-up for the national "do not call" list to fight off telemarketers, and the online service for buying hunting and fishing licenses.
        Much about the Montana state of industry could be learned from a study conducted in December 2002. It found that it's not just Montana's 20,000 unemployed who are interested in work – around 40 percent of the entire civilian labor force is interested in doing a little fishing.
        "We have always known that there are Montanans [who] are underemployed or willing to make employment changes, but we haven't known how many Montanans fit this category," said Dave Gibson, chief of the Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity. "Now, we can show businesses that we have far more than 20,000 potential workers for their companies – we have over 188,000 people in our available work force."
        The state's economy has not performed well when comparing income or dollars invested, partly because of its sparse population. But ratings by the N.C.-based Corp. for Enterprise Development give the state good marks for its low energy costs, new company creation in and out of the university, high school graduation rates and environmental and health factors. The state's coffers, while suffering from a construction slowdown, have been helped by the regional panacea of mineral severance taxes, as huge hikes in the price of natural gas have dramatically increased the state take.
        The state's biggest housing growth is taking placed in the Bozeman and Missoula areas. The university city of Missoula is trying to bolster brownfield development, with federal funding totaling some $5.5 million currently under review. In Bozeman, the $18-million, 150,000-sq.-ft. (13,935-sq.-m.) new headquarters for financial credit "decisioning" firm Zoot Enterprises is complete. Costs for the project were partially offset by a $4-million loan from Gallatin Co. and the Montana Board of Investments (MBOI), as well as a $7-million loan guarantee from MBOI. The company payroll will grow from 120 to 360, with capacity to go as high as 450.
        Meanwhile, research and energy backbones continue to develop along the spine of the Rockies. The National Institutes of Health are looking at going ahead as early as the end of 2003 on a $66.5-million Biosafety Level 4 lab for the study of pathogens, to be built on the site of the current Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Helena. And Bull Mountain Development Corp. is working through legal challenges to its proposed $910-million 780-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Roundup, north of Billings and next door to the re-opened Bull Mountain coal mine. Should it clear all hurdles, the project is scheduled to employ 150 workers when it opens in 2005 or 2006.