Washington State Business leaders put future first – It’s never too early to plan ahead, Bert Caldwell says.

Just two weeks into the 2004 session of the Washington Legislature, business has already adjusted its sights to 2005.

Association of Washington Business President Don Brunell and Richard Davis, his counterpart at the Washington Research Council, have begun touring the state and listening to business-owner concerns about affairs in Olympia. Just the sort of thing they do more or less routinely in preparation for a legislative session.

Bert Caldwell
The Spokesman-Review

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=012504&ID=s1477001&cat=section.business

They’re just working ahead of the curve this year.

The association and council are members of the Washington Association for a Competitive Economy, an amalgam of existing business associations and individual businesses formed five years ago to address the obvious divide between what was then a dot-com booming Puget Sound area and the not-com economy east of the Cascade Mountains.

The boom busted, of course, but the need to address the factors sapping Washington’s manufacturing sector did not. The state has lost one in five manufacturing jobs since mid-2000, or around 100,000 total. Each of those high-paying jobs supported several others.

Brunell says WashACE aims to draft a master set of recommendations by August. After a comment period, a final version will be released.

This will not be a wish list of legislative priorities.

Asked if the recommendations could be considered a litmus test for legislative candidates, Brunell says, "For us, it will be."

Davis says the group just wants to be more proactive.

"I don’t know that business has ever been as aggressive in letting people know what they like before an election," he says.

Davis says business interests think the Legislature and governor — in budgeting, changing worker compensation and satisfying Boeing Co. — turned a corner last year in acknowledging the need for a more business-friendly state.

"It was a recognition costs do matter," he says.

Neither expects much from the short, 60-day legislative session convened two weeks ago. Their priorities are renewal of tax breaks for research and development, as well as rural economic development, some kind of decision on reform of Washington’s primary election system, and a start toward addressing a worsening space crunch on state higher education campuses.

2005 will be a different matter.

A "bow wave" of anticipated expenditures will put pressure on the next biennial budget, but that could be a ripple compared with the demands of state workers and teachers looking for pay increases. Some will have gone four years without one.

Meanwhile, the incentive package given Boeing last year continues to raise eyebrows; something about fine print that added about $48 million to the $3.1 billion offered the airplane maker to assure the 7E7 is assembled in Everett. Gov. Gary Locke says nothing was concealed from the public. The Evergreen Freedom Foundation says it took a month of prying to get the information, some of which was news to the state’s press corps.

If you are a newsperson, you have to be alarmed that among the provisions of the state’s contract with Boeing is an agreement that as much information as possible will be withheld in response to the public requests for records. The bias should be toward maximum disclosure.

Brunell and Davis say they are puzzled by last week’s blowup. As long as the Boeing deal did not shift the tax burden onto other businesses, their groups have no problem with it.

The state was at least as generous a decade ago when offering incentives to semiconductor makers, Brunell says.

Apparently, no lawmakers squawked during meetings Thursday with Boeing Commercial Airplane President Alan Mulally.

We need to get closure on the Boeing deal so Washington can move forward on reforms that will be good for all businesses and an economy slogging through a jobless recovery.