A Little More on the Forbes Ranking

Washington CEO's Bryan Corliss offers a little more on that Forbes ranking. He managed to talk with Kurt Badenhausen, the Forbes editor in charge of the lists. Corliss focuses on the regulatory ranking, where this state does uncommonly well.

For starters, [Badenhausen] said, this category incorporates a broad range of data to get a sense of how well a state government performs on issues important to business. "It's really five factors: rules on the books, how hard it is for companies to cut thru red tape."

Badenhausen said Forbes (using data collected by Pollina Corporate Real Estate) also looks at the incentive environment within the state, and surprisingly Washington scores very high here - No. 6 - despite the fact that it doesn't offer companies incentives for relocating here.

These rankings are "not strictly 'we hand out the most incentives,'" he said. "They look at job training programs, they look at tax abatement, they look at economic development office's - how proactive are they, are they doing anything." And, comparatively, Washington does very well.

However, Washington does pretty poorly on another component of this sector: the tort environment, where we rank 37^th.

But that's off-set by a good Moodie's debt rating, which Forbes considers a "loose proxy for what kind of fiscal shape the government is in," Badenhausen said. Moodie's puts the state at a AA1, which is the second-highest rating.

Finally, Washington scores a slightly-above-average 20^th for transportation. Badenhausen said Forbes isn't trying to measure traffic congestion, but instead judge whether states have the appropriate transportation infrastructure, including highways, rail lines and airports.

Convinced?