A representative of the state agency Business Oregon — essentially, the state’s economic development arm — is making the rounds of local governments in Wallowa, Baker and Union counties, making the pitch for a formal business retention and expansion plan.

The plan, as presented by Brian McDowell, Business Oregon’s Northeast business development officer, appears to have merit — although, as they say, the devil is in the details, and many details remain to be ironed out.

The plan, as it develops, also needs to avoid duplicating similar efforts going on in Northeastern Oregon. And, as McDowell learned in talking to commissioners in Wallowa County, it probably would be best if it didn’t require major funding from cash-strapped local governments.

But the basic idea is sound. Smaller communities like the ones in Northeastern Oregon typically don’t have the resources to go out and persuade businesses elsewhere to pull up stakes and relocate in Baker, Union or Wallowa counties — although it probably makes sense to have someone available to answer the call if someone from Microsoft or Apple unexpectedly is interested in a vacant lot where they could build. But that sort of recruitment always is a long shot.

A better bet is creating a business ecosystem that encourages entrepreneurship, and then working to retain the businesses that already are buzzing along in Northeastern Oregon and helping them expand if and when that time comes.

The plan McDowell is pitching doesn’t focus on the business ecosystem part of the equation — and, in fact, various business and economic development agencies and organizations in the region already are shouldering much of that work.

However, McDowell said, to his knowledge, no entity in Eastern Oregon has a business retention and expansion plan in place. He said the work to build such a plan won’t duplicate any work that any other organization is doing.

Key elements of the plan involve building a database of businesses, including agricultural concerns, in each locality; creating an early-warning system when a local business is pondering, for whatever reason, moving elsewhere; and identifying an entity or person to run point on the plan in each community.

In Wallowa County, the commissioners gave McDowell the green light to move ahead with discussions of what the plan might look like there. He said he’s had informal but promising conversations in Joseph, Sumpter, Baker City and La Grande. The city of Halfway has requested support in developing a business retention and expansion plan as part of its first strategic plan.

By the end of the year, he said, he’d like to have one or two municipalities in each county on board with the project. (The idea that communities involved in the plan could be sharing notes about best practices that work in the region is one of its most promising aspects.)

By the end of 2025, he said, the hope is to have databases built, and have an initial sense of business communities and their needs. Participating communities also could be working to improve their local business environments. Ideally, early victories could set the stage for requests for funding from the 2026 legislative session.

That’s an ambitious timeline — and we can see plenty of places where this effort could roll off the tracks.

But if it’s successful in Northeastern Oregon, it could be a big deal built on a relatively simple idea: The forces that are going to grow your economy aren’t likely to suddenly drop into the region from somewhere else. They’re already here. Do what you can to keep them here.