Nontraditional information boosts opinion of Nevada

The lesson from the latest national recognition accorded Nevada's economic climate? You never can tell when someone is looking.

Development Counsellors International, an economic development marketing firm, reported a few days ago that Nevada's business climate ranks among the top five states.

Favorable taxes, business-friendly attitudes and low costs of business were the criteria the firm used to define a good business climate.

The results were based on a survey of 207 executives of large and medium-sized companies.

The executives, in turn, said they get nearly all of their information about the business climate around the nation from sources other than official economic development channels.

Dialogue with their peers in the industry is the top source, one that was cited by 54 percent of the executives surveyed by Development Counsellors International.

Articles in newspapers and magazines and experiences during business travel were cited by 45 of the respondents.

Chuck Alvey, the president and chief executive officer of the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada, said no one should underestimate the importance of business and leisure travel to economic development efforts in northern Nevada.

It's common, he said, for executives who first came to northern Nevada for a business meeting or a ski trip to like what they see and later decide to locate an office or industrial facility in the region.

With the knowledge that executives' opinions often are shaped by what they read, EDAWN pays a lot of attention making sure that the media and their audiences are aware of northern Nevada.

The agency in recent years has added public relations staff.And Alvey, a threedecade veteran of the broadcast industry, said EDAWN's initiatives often are shaped with an eye toward how they'll play in the media.

The findings that Nevada's business climate ranks highly, one of a string of national accolades for the state's economy, didn't get a lot of play in the state's media.

Alvey said the steady drumbeat of favorable publicity about the state's economy might be compared to the successes of the University of Nevada, Reno basketball team.

"People are still excited when the Wolf Pack makes it to the NCAA tournament but it's not like it was in the first year," he said.

Still, the inclusion of Nevada in executives' lists startled the survey team.

"Nevada was one of the biggest surprises this year," said Andy Levine, president of Development Counsellors International.

The state hadn't cracked the top 10 in surveys in 1996, 1999 and 2002, he said, and it's only the third state west of the Mississippi to make the top five.