Aerospace Study: Washington Not Competitive

April 9, somewhat ahead of schedule as Jerry Cornfield reports, Gov. Gregoire released the results of a study of Washington aerospace competitiveness conducted for the administration by Deloitte Consulting. Rich Roesler of the Spokesman-Review had an earlier link to the leak.

It's a good report, echoing earlier work by Deloitte Consulting. After establishing the importance of aerospace to the state economy, the analysts examine Washington's strengths and weaknesses compared to competitor states, including the Carolinas, Kansas, and Texas. Here's a key finding:

While Washington offers many advantages to aerospace companies, its disadvantages outweigh the advantages in attracting and retaining aerospace companies relative to other states."

Recommendations were clustered into five groups and scored in terms of "ease of implementation" and "importance to aerospace." At the risk of oversimplifying (download the report and make your own judgment), I think our problem is that the stuff that's easy to do (training/education, research and development, create an "office of aerospace and defense) tends to be of relatively lower importance to aerospace. The important stuff (reducing high UI taxes and workers' compensation, improving labor management) is more difficult to implement.

The larger problem, as evidenced by yesterday's House vote increasing UI costs, is that too many Washington legislators are unwilling to take even modest steps to improve our cost competitiveness. And the state labor council openly mocks the Deloitte report, which is, I suppose, easier than refuting it.

We'll look at the report in more detail and offer additional thoughts in the coming weeks. Right now, though, we encourage legislators to take seriously recommendations to bring the cost of doing business here more in line with those of competiting states.

More on the report from TVW's blog and Joe Turner's TNT blog.

Excellent TNT editorial here.