Governor’s aerospace task force is a farce

Governor Christine Gregoire announced yesterday that she is creating an aerospace task force charged with keeping aerospace jobs in Washington. 

But, for all practical purposes, the task force is a farce, designed to counter the negative impact of a consultants report.

State economic development officials paid a quarter of a million dollars to hire a consulting firm to study how the state could stay competitive in the areospace insdustry.

The report was so critical of the state, that the governor’s office order the study to be shelved.  But the results of the study leaked out anyway and the governor felt compelled to respond by creating the task force.

The report said that Washington had little chance to keep areospace industry in the state because of  a high wage scales,  a high sales taxes and high unemployment and workers compensation costs.   It also cited union activity.

Recently Boeings announced that it was cutting back production at it’s Frederickson  plant.

The consultants report also mentioned that we needed to do a better job of training people to work in aerospace,  and that’s what the governor decided to concentrate on.

In creating the task force, she talked about education but never addressed the subject of high taxes, high unemployment compensation, high wages or high worker’s compensation costs.