Read our DAILY
reports and links
to labor-related
news.
JANUARY 2003
Business climate warmer
than complainers admit
by Rick S. Bender, President of
the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO
If you’ve heard that refrain before, you shouldn’t be surprised. The business lobby has sung that same song for some 20 years, not just here, but in Minnesota, Maryland, Oregon and just about everywhere else, except some of the lost corners of the deep south. The complaints have been consistent: The business climate has always been terrible everywhere for everyone.
This now amounts to “crying wolf,” because the facts cannot support the complaints about our state. Here are just a few of the most recent reports that put the “Washington’s bad business climate” complaint in question:
-
The 2002 Small Business Survival Index ranked our state at No. 8, ahead of 42 other states. The index measures fundamental business issues of taxes.
-
The Progressive Policy Institute issued its 2002 State New Economy Index showing our state ranking No. 2 based on measures of business incentives, infrastructure and quality of life.
-
The Bloomberg Personal Finance magazine 2001 survey ranked all 50 states based on taxes, sales, real estate and other assets on four families. Washington ranked No. 5 in “wealth friendliness.”
-
The Tax Foundation ranks Washington in 2002 as 20th in comparing state and local tax burdens. In 1993, they ranked us ninth.
-
Suffolk University’s Beacon Hill Institute in 2002 ranked the Seattle-Tacoma-Bremerton area as the nation’s most competitive area because of a wealth of capital, a highly educated workforce, a good high-tech infrastructure and high level of exports.
Of course, the “whiners” can always scrape up a study or two that claim our state is at the bottom of the business climate list. But those lists usually put great places like North Dakota and Mississippi on the top of the list, so a reality check is always useful.
It’s also worthwhile to remember that our State Constitution forbids granting any state revenue to private business. Some states offer cash incentives to companies to locate in their state. For example, Oregon can offer loans of up to a half million dollars and no property taxes for up to five years, and Idaho can offer grants and loans to pay for utilities of private business. Our neighbors never learned the lesson many Washington towns did when they bankrupted themselves trying to attract the railroads in the 1800s. That’s why our Constitution is very strict about the “incentives” government can offer business.
If low taxes were the end-all of economic vitality and business competitiveness, then it would stand to reason that low-tax states would have a booming business climate. The lowest taxed state in the nation is South Dakota. Enough said?
Are there ways to improve our state’s business climate? You bet. But they don’t include shirking our responsibilities to injured or unemployed workers, and they don’t include shifting our state’s tax burden from businesses to individuals. Unfortunately, that’s how the usual business lobby would go about “improving” our business climate.
What these business climate surveys fail to measure is the reason most of us choose to live here. Washington’s quality of life is second to none. Our environment is clean, our natural beauty and resources are tremendous benefits. Our schools do a good job of educating our children, and we have one of the most highly skilled and educated workforces in the nation. Outside of Puget Sound, our roads and bridges are in pretty good shape, and within Puget Sound, we have developed a high-tech infrastructure that allows super-fast communications and computing. We have lots to be proud of.
In fact, I find all the “trash talking” that’s going on about our state insulting and damaging. If these ideological zealots could stop complaining for a while, our hard-working economic development agencies would have a much easier task.
The noise of whining about how bad our business climate is drowns out the positive story that we need to share about what’s right about Washington.
Rick Bender is President of the Washington State Labor Council, the largest labor organization in the state.
Return to index of President's Columns
Copyright © 2003 Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO