Yesterday was CRC Project day at the Capitol

Sen. Annette Cleveland & Reps. Jim Moeller and Sharon Wylie
at the Columbia River Crossing Information Exhibit

Many lawmakers in both chambers, as well as the general public got a chance to get a better understanding of the Columbia River Crossing Project yesterday at the CRC Information Exhibit in the Columbia Room. The Columbia River Crossing Coalition organized the event and brought pictures, brochures, and CRC engineers to answer questions and provide information.

The section of I-5 just north and south of the Columbia River has major safety and congestion problems that, experts say, will only worsen unless something is done pronto. The solution put forth after ten years of considering other options is the Columbia River Crossing Project, which, according to its proponents, will reduce crashes, provide predictable travel times, add travel choices, prevent traffic backups, and benefit the economies of Oregon and Washington.

The CRC project could begin creating thousands of much needed jobs on both sides of the river as early as next year if the funding is secured. Oregon has already committed to its share ($450 million) in order for the CRC Project to get $850 million in federal dollars; if Washington doesn't do its part, those federal funds will go to other states.

Secretary of Transportation, Raymond H. "Ray" LaHood, who a year ago said that the CRC is a great project anyway you can describe it, and Federal Transit Administrator Peter M. Rogoff were also in Olympia yesterday. They met with House and Senate Transportation chairs and with Southwest Washington legislators to talk about the regional and national importance of the CRC project. The Columbian ran this story shortly after the meeting.

For more information on the CRC Project, please visit the CRC Website.

You can also get the handouts from the 49th Legislative District CRC Town Hall hosted by Reps. Jim Moeller and Sharon Wylie and Sen. Annette Cleveland on March 16 here.

Read the Columbia River Crossing "Factbook" released last week.

Read this story in Spanish.

Walla Walla Community College Wins National Excellence Award

One of Washington’s many talented community colleges, Walla Walla, was honored on Tuesday with the prestigious Aspen Award – along with a $400,000 grant to grow their successful programs.

The national award recognizes a community college that does an exceptional job at graduating students and preparing them for careers or further education at a four year institution. Schools are judged on student learning outcomes, degree completion, labor market success in securing good jobs after college, and facilitating minority and low-income student success.

Traditionally the Aspen Award is presented to just one community college, but Walla Walla shared the top honors with Santa Barbara City College. The selection committee felt that both had excelled equally among the criteria.

WWCC was chosen for its success in predicting and meeting demand in new and growing industries. During the recession they were one of the few rural community colleges to grow, primarily because of their willingness to shrink or close programs and shift resources to more popular areas.

The college doubled enrollment in their nursing program when market research suggested an upcoming shortage, and they successfully anticipated the explosive growth of Washington’s wine industry with their viticulture program. Their efforts paid off for students as well: recent Walla Walla graduates earn nearly double annual amount of other new hires in the region.

Any mention of WWCC would be incomplete without an acknowledgement of the work of the late Representative Bill Grant. A consistent advocate and nine-year member of the Board of Trustees, his years spent pushing to expand and promote the school helped pave the road to this top honor.

The leading innovation hotspot of the world?

The Washington Economic Development Commission (WEDC) says Washington can accelerate job growth and become a global leader in innovation. The WEDC's report, "Driving Washington's Prosperity – A Strategy for Job Creation and Competitiveness," released last week, identifies five key drivers for ensuring job creation and competitiveness:

• Make talent a top priority
• Invest in entrepreneurship
• Connect through reliable infrastructure
• Regulate in the smartest ways
• Expand international business

The report also includes an analysis of the State's competitive strengths (research & development, patent production, technology jobs growth, venture capital investment, manufacturing and exports) and weaknesses (rate of jobs recovery, in-state production of scientists and engineers, workforce skills, household income, investment in transportation infrastructure and foreign direct investment).

Rep. Jeff Morris and Sen. Maralyn Chase serve in the WEDC, which provides the governor and the legislature with leadership and guidance on long-term economic development strategies to benefit all of Washington's citizens.

Read this story in Spanish.

House OK for Hansen bills brightens job outlook

Rep. Drew Hansen

The state’s job market would gain strength for the future under four bills by Rep. Drew Hansen that cleared the state House this past week.

“There are signs we’re rebounding from the depths of the Great Recession, but we’ve got a long way to go,” Hansen said. “I want to protect the jobs we have and prepare our young people for opportunities in the 21^st –century economy. It’s very encouraging to me to get the strong, bipartisan support of my fellow legislators in that work.”

The bills are:

House Bill 1247, which makes it easier for small businesses to get money from a key state job-training program designed to help employees upgrade their skills. The bill also ensures that money from this program supports training that leads to degrees and credentials rather than dead-end jobs. The House voted unanimously for it Saturday, 98-0.

House Bill 1472, which helps students train for high-paying jobs in the computer industry by enhancing computer-science education in high schools and creating a statewide task force to address the computer programmer shortage. It was approved Friday 95-3.

House Bill 1245, which protects jobs in the shellfish and recreation industries by getting abandoned vessels out of our waters before they sink and cause pollution. It passed the House Thursday on a 96-1 vote.

House Bill 1660, which will lessen the paperwork burden on hospitals and colleges as they train new doctors and nurses. It won unanimous approval Tuesday, 96-0.

House approval of Hansen’s bills sends them to the Senate for action there.

To read a more extensive account of House action on these bills, click here.

Read this story in Spanish.

Rep. Habib named to board of Innovate Washington

Rep. Cyrus Habib

Rep. Cyrus Habib will draw upon his background in working with high-tech entrepreneurs in his new position on the board of directors of Innovate Washington, a public-private partnership that seeks to spur cutting-edge economic development in the state.

Habib, who was appointed to the board Feb. 28 by House Speaker Frank Chopp, said:

This is a great opportunity for me to continue my work making Washington the No. 1 state for job creation and business innovation. My work in the Legislature will be substantially enhanced through the connection with business leaders and others at Innovate Washington.

Innovate Washington was created by the Legislature in 2011 to catalyze job creation and 21^st-century economic development by bringing together business and government leaders to focus expertise and investment on emerging technology businesses. It applies public and private financing to foster growth in the sectors of aerospace, advanced materials and manufacturing, clean energy, information technology, agriculture and life sciences.

Habib, a first-term legislator from Kirkland, is a lawyer at Perkins Coie in Seattle who specializes in providing legal services to high-tech startups. He is the sponsor of House Bill 1693, which seeks to attract entrepeneurs to Washington state by offering a business-tax break to new companies in targeted sectors of the economy.

Read this story in Spanish.

Sequester on your street corner

Last week, Senator Patty Murray visited with House Democrats and discussed some of the effects of sequester - the looming automatic cuts to the federal budget that will be triggered if Congress fails to strike a budget deal by March 1st.

This week, the White House released more detailed information on what these automatic cuts would mean for Washington state.

Among the low-lights:

• Washington will lose approximately $11,606,000 in funding for primary and secondary education, putting around 160 teacher and aide jobs at risk. In addition about 11,000 fewer students would be served ad approximately 50 fewer schools would recieve funding.
• Washington will lose about $3,301,000 in environmental funding to ensure clean water and air quality...
• About 440 fewer low income students in Washington would recieve aid to help them finance the costs of college.
• In Washington, approximately 29,000 civilian Department of Defense employees would be furloughed, reducing gross pay by around $173.4 million in total.
• Washington will lose approximately $1,053,000 in funds that provides meals for seniors.

For the complete list of potential cuts, follow this link.

Read this story in Spanish.

Top market for contractors, oh yes we are!

And you don't have to take our word for it.

Take Ken Simonson's when he said that if he were a contractor looking at where in this country to open up operations, he would look at Puget Sound. As chief economist for the Associated General Contractors (AGC) of America, Simonson knows his business.

His quote comes from a February 4 story in the Daily Journal of Commerce focused on construction jobs and the economy around the nation. Turns out that last year 24 states added construction workers, 24 shed them and two had no change — but Washington state posted strong results.

According to the AGC, our state ranked third in construction jobs added over the year, with 9,000 people finding work. And we were tied for fourth in the percentage of new jobs added, at 6.5 percent. 




SR 520 bridge.  Photo: Wash. State Dept. of Transportation

And who's creating many of these jobs? Well, what do you know, it's the state!
That's right, with big projects like the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement and the new State Route 520 floating bridge.

So the next time you hear someone saying that government doesn't create jobs, invite them to read the Daily Journal of Commerce story for the facts. 

Read this story in Spanish.

Rep. Jake Fey joins governor, mayor in "Rededication" of Murray Morgan Bridge

Rep. Jake Fey

​State Rep. Jake Fey will join Gov. Jay Inslee, former state Rep. Dennis Flannigan, Tacoma Mayor Marilyn Strickland and several other local and federal officials in a "Rededication Ceremony" for Tacoma’s Murray Morgan Bridge Friday morning, Feb. 15, at 9:30. Lincoln High School's Drumline will provide music for the Rededication Ceremony, and Kurtis Kingsolver, the city's Public Works Interim Director, will emcee the morning's events.

Murray Morgan Bridge
(photo by Ben Brooks via Wikimedia Commons)

The Murray Morgan Bridge was built to replace an older swing bridge dating to 1894. Murray Morgan opened for business as the 11th Street Bridge in 1913 -- just 100 short years ago. Murray Morgan, a local author, historian and professor, was honored in 1997 when the bridge was renamed for him. He wrote Skid Road (his 1951 history of Seattle) while working as a bridge tender on "his" bridge.

The city's very recently rehabilitated Murray Morgan Bridge reopened for traffic just a few weeks ago.

"I was certainly very committed to helping save and restore our bridge when I was a member of the Tacoma City Council," Fey emphasized. "Murray Morgan is extremely important in maintaining the Downtown Tacoma-Port of Tacoma connection. The bridge drastically cuts travel time between these two pivotal parts of our community, and greatly increases emergency response time to the port."

Read this story in Spanish.

Got broadband?

We sure do. In fact, not only do we have it, we're at the top of the list on broadband infrastructure. That's according to the fresh-from-the-oven TechNet 2012 State Broadband Index. TechNet is a network of CEOs and senior executives that promote the growth of technology-led innovation.

What puts us at the top are high rates of broadband use, a broadband-connected economy and better-than-average network speeds. Other tech states, like California and Utah, trail behind us ranking 5 and 9 respectively.

Upon hearing the news, the Washington State Broadband Office (WSBO), which is part of the Washington State Department of Commerce, issued this press release. It quotes Will Saunders, WSBO program and policy director, on the issue: "The state's ranking reflects state broadband planning going back to 2008 and more than $2.3 billion in public and private investment in infrastructure and training during that period. The study also confirms that we are ideally positioned for economic growth based on this work."

Saunders is right; one of the reasons we're leading the pack in 2012 is that in 2008 the legislature passed SB 6438, regarding high-speed internet services and community technology opportunities. The measure required the then Department of Information Services to come up with a statewide high-speed internet deployment and adoption strategy to:

• develop geographic information system maps and inventories of public and private high-speed internet infrastructure

• address management of proprietary and competitively sensitive data

• spur development of high-speed internet resources across the state

• track residential and business adoption of high-speed internet

• use local technology planning teams to help with internet deployment to disenfranchised or unserved areas.

Access to broadband means your morning paper loads quickly and you can watch the latest viral video in a snap. Being the best at access to broadband means it will be easier for the state to attract and grow companies, which means more jobs.

Graphic courtesy of Technet

We're No. 3!

And that's not bad at all, when you consider we're talking about a ranking of all 50 states in what the Seattle Times calls "a gold-standard measure of competitiveness:" the 2012 State New Economy Index compiled by The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

Washington "scores high due not only to its strength in software [and] aviation, but also because of the entrepreneurial hotbed of activity that has developed in the Puget Sound region, and heavy use of digital technologies in all its sectors," the report says.

The indicators applied by the institute fall into five categories: knowledge jobs; globalization; economic dynamism; the digital economy; and innovation capacity.

The front-runner once again is Massachusetts, yet it no longer holds the big advantage over the other states that it did just two years ago, in the 2010 Index. Although Washington has slipped from second to third since 2010, the pack -- now led by Delaware -- has closed ground on the leader.
But the broader picture for the nation is not so bright, the report says:

More than three years on from the end of the Great Recession, only six states have regained employment levels enjoyed prior to the recession, and 17 states are still more than 5 percent below their pre-recession employment levels.

The culprit? The report says it's "the decline in the competitiveness of the U.S. economy in the global marketplace." The decline is reflected in a steep drop in manufaturing jobs and investment since 2000.
"For the United States to be competitive," the rerport says, "one key will be to compete more on the basis of innovation and entrepreneurship, and less on cost."

There's plenty in the full report for policymakers to think about as they allocate resources for future economic development.

Read this story in Spanish here.

Matching skilled workers with aerospace employers

This started in 1916 with one small-aircraft business and has now grown to 740 companies, which currently employ 96,900 workers.

"What is the aerospace industry in Washington state?" is correct!

With almost 100 years of experience manufacturing and assembling the best planes on Earth, it is no wonder Washington is the aerospace capital of the United States.

As of 2011, all commercial aircraft over 100 seats built in the United States are assembled and delivered right here. Yes, even with Boeing's new plant in South Carolina, 90 percent of the company's production is in Washington.

But it's not easy being the best and the largest in the field; it takes lots of highly skilled workers to get the job done well and maintain our outstanding reputation. That's where it gets tricky because thousands of aerospace workers will be retiring in the next few years. Meanwhile, production will continue increasing, which means the demand for a qualified workforce will also be higher.

The Center of Excellence for Aerospace and Advanced Materials Manufacturing, a one-stop resource hub for the industry's education and training needs, created this nifty online tool that will make it easier for aerospace companies to find skilled workers.

The website lists graduates from 18 of Washington state's community colleges, in nine aerospace-related fields, so employers can search for graduates with specific skill sets.

There is plenty of work ahead to satisfy the industry's demand, but Washington is on it. In recent years, we have taken important steps to create and expand aerospace and manufacturing training programs. In fact, just a year ago, during the December special session, the Legislature passed three measures to shore up our aerospace industry.

Want to learn more? Back in April, Mary Kaye Bredeson, director of Everett Community College's Center of Excellence for Aerospace and Advanced Materials Manufacturing, wrote this op-ed on how community colleges are helping aerospace soar.

To read this story in Spanish, please click here.

How do you like them blueberries?

We all know Washington is home to great apples and lots of them. Last year's crop was 109 million boxes and this year that number could grow to 121 million.

But did you know we're also breaking blueberry production records?

The Capital Press reports that we're looking at a 70 million-pound crop, up from 61 million last year. According to the Washington Blueberry Commission, Washington state has more than tripled its blueberry acres in the last five years, with much of the recent growth happening east of the Cascades.

Our neighbors in Oregon produced 65 million pounds of blueberries in 2011 and this year they're expecting up to 75 million pounds.

The U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council is forecasting almost 286 million pounds along the entire west coast for 2012. 50 blueberries weigh about one ounce; 286 million pounds is 4,576,000,000 ounces, which is 228,800,000,000 blueberries. Yeah, that's definitely a lot of berries! 56 percent of those will go to fresh market and the remainder will be processed.

Blueberries are becoming more and more popular around the world not only because they're really tasty, but also because they're really healthy. They are high in fiber, very low in fat and sodium and, compared to nearly 40 other fruits and vegetables, blueberries rank highest in disease-fighting antioxidants. 3.5 oz.—or around 175—fresh blueberries could deliver the equivalent antioxidant capacity of five servings of other fruits and vegetables.

How does a smoothie sound right about now?

To read this story in Spanish, click here.