You've been had.

Mitchell - chairwoman of the American Independent Business Alliance and author of Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses (Beacon Press, $24.95) - will speak Tuesday at Westminster College as part of Local First Utah's second annual "Buy Local First Week."

"These [national] stores take far more out of our economies than they put in. That's what the swindle is," Mitchell says. "If you spend a dollar in a local store, anywhere from 54 cents to 70 cents stays in the local economy. At a chain, as little as 15 cents stays in the local economy."

She and other proponents of area-based merchants argue that national chains drain money from local economies, funneling profits to corporate headquarters and buying goods and services outside of the places their stores operate. At the same time, small, more-diverse businesses struggle to compete with the big-box stores and often close down.

These national retailers, Mitchell says, are not so much generating new revenue and new jobs as they are displacing existing ones.

And Mitchell wants city and county governments to own up for the role they play in that phenomenon. Before her Westminster appearance, she will speak to officials from Salt Lake County and throughout the state about ways to support small-business owners.

Economic-development tools, she notes, conventionally favor large retailers.

"It's not exactly a free market if your biggest competitors are getting subsidies everywhere they go to build new stores," Mitchell says.

Representatives for Wal-Mart, Target and Costco did not return calls Friday seeking comment for this story.

Betsy Burton, co-owner of The Kings English Bookshop, says conditions are improving for Salt Lake City's small retailers, especially with the support of organizations such as the Vest Pocket Coalition and Local First Utah, which she chairs.

"During the '90s, we were fighting for our life," Burton says. "At the time, government was entirely buying into the view that big was good and these national chains were enriching our community. Over the past few years, government has begun to change its mind because the economic facts disprove that."

Salt Lake County Councilman Jim Bradley says that shift is happening at the county level. For example, Mayor Peter Corroon, who led the Vest Pocket Coalition, has designated an additional $250,000 for the county's small-business loan fund in his proposed 2007 budget.

"We're going to see a lot of emphasis by Salt Lake County [on how] to make it more bearable and advantageous to small businesses," says Bradley, adding that the county might require its departments to buy goods and services from local businesses when possible.

"If you didn't have locally owned businesses," he says, "any community you went to would look the same."

Gavin Noyes, director of Local First Utah, emphasizes that his group's campaign, which urges shoppers to spend at local stores, does not mean he wants big-box stores to disappear.

"We want a diverse and vibrant community with all kinds of businesses in it," Noyes says. "Our position is not that there is not room for chain stores, but we believe that locally owned, independent businesses contribute a lot more to the places that we live."

rwinters@sltrib.com

Tuesday's lecture

Buy Local First Week runs through Nov. 18. Stacy Mitchell, author of Big Box Swindle, will speak at the main event Tuesday at 7 p.m. in Westminster College's Gore Business Auditorium, 1840 S. 1300 East, Salt Lake City. More information is at http://www.localfirst.org