Plenty of work to do in plan for Washington State regional economy

The latest plan to grow the regional economy isn’t so much a detailed set of policy proposals as a giant "to-do" list.

The dozens of items on that list range from the small and specific, such as extending existing state tax breaks for aerospace manufacturing to R&D and engineering work, to the big and vague, such as developing consensus on tax reform.

The strategy was developed over the past year by the Prosperity Partnership, a group of 150 local governments, businesses, labor organizations and nonprofits from throughout King, Pierce, Snohomish and Kitsap counties.

The plan is to be formally adopted today by the Central Puget Sound Economic Development District, the federally recognized planning agency covering the four counties.

The overall goal is to create 100,000 more jobs in the region in the next five years, beyond the 290,000 new jobs already forecast to be added over that time.

By Drew DeSilver

Seattle Times business reporter

Full Story: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002522799_prosperity27.html