Business owners tell woes to governor

Gov. Chris Gregoire, center, held a community roundtable at the Port of Vancouver Tuesday to discuss her Washington Jobs Now initiative with business leaders and to hear their ideas for economic recovery. (STEVEN LANE/The Columbian)

Relief from stormwater rules. New tools for financing development. A freeze on increases in the minimum wage.

Two dozen prominent business and community leaders got a chance to tell Gov. Chris Gregoire Tuesday how they’re weathering the worsening recession, and what the state can do to help them.

Gregoire didn’t sugarcoat her message to them: Washington’s hurting.

“Weyerhaeuser closed two mills in Aberdeen yesterday,” she said. “We’re by no means alone. Nationally, yesterday was the worst day in history for job losses. And it’s going to get worse before it gets better. We thought we would see the bottom this quarter. That now seems optimistic.”

The session, the first in a series the governor plans to hold around the state, was at Port of Vancouver headquarters on Lower River Road.

Doug Anderson of Underwriters Laboratory said Clark County’s technology sector is in uncharted territory as the demand for tech products declines. Hewlett-Packard Co. is in the process of laying off at least 150 workers in Vancouver.

“We’re very used to seeing cycles, but this one is going to be deeper and longer,” Anderson said. “We don’t know when we will come out of it, but we know we will come out of it.”

Anderson thanked Gregoire for promising to cut spending instead of raising taxes in her 2009-11 budget. “This is something companies have already had to do,” he said.

Elie Kassab, president of Prestige Development, said he advertised in The Reflector last year to fill eight entry-level jobs and had 221 young applicants. “The biggest problem we have is the 50-cent minimum wage increase,” he said. The minimum wage, tied to the Consumer Price Index, jumped 48 cents to $8.55, the nation’s highest, on Jan. 1.

Courtney Corwin Barker runs a family-owned beverage-bottling business that employs 120. She said her company is being squeezed by the cost of fuel, health care benefits and shrinking demand. “We are being hurt heavily in our local restaurant sector,” she said. “A lot of restaurants are going under.”

Several developers asked the governor to make tax-increment financing widely available in Washington as it is in 48 other states, including Oregon. “It can be such an unbelievable tool,” said Barry Cain, president of Gramor Development, who hopes to build a posh waterfront community on the site of the former Boise Cascade mill in Vancouver.

Tax-increment financing allows a local government to borrow money to pay for roads and other infrastructure to jump-start private development, then use the additional tax revenue generated by the new development to pay off the debt.

Gregoire said Washington’s constitution makes tax-increment financing problematic, but pilot projects the Legislature authorized under a program called the Local Infrastructure Financing Tool may be winning over skeptics.

Roby Roberts of Vesta America Wind Technology, which manufactures giant wind turbines, urged the governor to protect the voter-approved green initiative that requires utilities serving 25,000 or more customers to get at least 15 percent of their energy needs from renewable resources by 2020. Companies falling into that category supply about 84 percent of the energy used in the state.

Legislation has been introduced to weaken the rule.

“We’re in 63 countries and this is one of the best ports in the world for us,” he said. “One of the things to keep the momentum going is to make sure I-937 is not changed.”

Contractor Roy Frederick drew applause when he urged Gregoire to take another look at strict new state stormwater runoff rules that require builders to set aside more land for retention ponds.

“Tell your Department of Ecology to do a cost-benefit analysis on these stormwater regulations,” he said. “It’s a giant train wreck. It has stopped development in Clark County.”