'The Next Washington' plan unveiled
BYLINE: Nathan Isaacs, Tri-City Herald, Kennewick, Wash.
Sep. 30--Kennewick Mayor Jim Beaver often discusses the need to plan for tomorrow's Tri-Cities as its population swells and its economic base shifts away from Hanford's nuclear waste cleanup.
Gov. Chris Gregoire has a similar goal for Washington's future. She and her cabinet have been traveling the state this month to her program called The Next Washington.
"This plan is about a vision for the future of our state and the steps we must take in order to get there. It's about a Washington where economic expansion, environmental quality and cultural diversity work together to create global success," Gregoire said during her Governor's Economic Development conference in Vancouver. "We can get there by investing in education and skills training, by supporting the foundations of the new economy and by making Washington a good place to do business."
On Friday, Valoria Loveland, director of the Washington State Department of Agriculture, and Sandy Matheson, director of the state Department of Retirement Systems, discussed the plan while meeting with the Tri-City Herald editorial board.
The two former Tri-Citians were also traveling to Walla Walla to discuss it. And Matheson described it earlier this week to the Tri-City Regional Chamber of Commerce, the Tri-Cities Visitor & Convention Bureau and TRIDEC's governing board.
Matheson said she and Loveland were "teasers," previewing the draft plan.
She said it "recognizes that technology and globalization have so fundamentally changed our lives."
"We have to be thinking it's a different world with globalization and technology than it was 50 or 60 years ago," she said.
The plan has a three-pronged framework. It includes bolstering the state's education system, improving the skills of its work force and bolstering its infrastructure, whether it be freight mobility or the information superhighway.
"There are many initiatives to be accomplished within that framework," Matheson said.
Loveland said Gregoire thinks of Washington as a small nation. With the state expected to sell about $45 billion in exports this year, she has a point. "We cannot just compare ourselves with other states, but to our trade partners as well," she said.
Carl Adrian, TRIDEC president, heard Gregoire describe the plan in Tacoma. As a broad-brush vision, he said the document was positive in what it attempts to do.
"There are a number of elements in there that click with what we're doing," he said.
Gregoire's Washington Learns initiative is similar to the "Building Bridges for Lifelong Learning in the Tri-Cities and Beyond" that TRIDEC's higher education committee released earlier this year. TRIDEC also played a part in shaping how The Next Washington plan defines innovation zones and economic clusters.
As Beaver would point out, the Tri-Cities already is taking steps to prepare for its future, often with state help.
That includes the new Health Sciences building in Richland, which had its ribbon cutting Friday and was built through a partnership between Columbia Basin College, Kadlec Medical Center and others. The building is part of CBC's Washington Institute for Science Education program, the mission of which is to improve tomorrow's work force.
Washington State University Tri-Cities and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory also have been working together to make the Mid-Columbia a magnet for research. PNNL and others also are vying to tap into about $35 milllion annually in research grants from the state's Life Sciences Discovery Fund.
The state Department of Transportation is completing its $87 million Highway 240 project and is in the middle of its $104 million project to widen Highway 12 to four lanes from the Snake River Bridge to Walla Walla. A $17 million project is expected to start in 2009 to reconfigure the interchange of Highway 240 and Highway 395 at the blue bridge.
RailEx plans to send its first mile-long unit train full of Mid-Columbia potatoes, apples and other produce to East Coast markets in mid-October. Kennewick General Hospital and the other hospitals in the Tri-Cities are planning expansions or already have begun expansion projects.
And Loveland said Gregoire has successfully brought partners of differing viewpoints together to tackle issues important to the Mid-Columbia, including her Columbia River water management initiative and the new requirements for blending ethanol and biodiesel into gasoline and diesel sold in Washington.
"The same is not good enough anymore," she said. "Not if we're going to continue to grow jobs. Not if we're going to continue to be competitive."
A copy of the plan is available at www.governor.wa.gov
Copyright (c) 2006, Tri-City Herald, Kennewick, Wash. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.