Gregoire brings business to Spokane

Washington state will spend more money on economic development and find better ways to spend it, under a bill signed Tuesday by Gov. Chris Gregoire.

With many of Spokane’s business and political leaders watching, Gregoire signed Senate Bill 5092, which she said will rearrange the state’s approach to providing money for economic assistance.

Rather than picking a few major industries it wants to support, the state will offer money to local economic development agencies and “let the locals decide their vision, with the public,” Gregoire said.

Local development agencies will then channel money to local companies.

State Sen. Chris Marr, D-Spokane, the bill’s prime sponsor, said the new law will triple the amount the state spends on economic development, up to about $9 million, and increase the amount Spokane County entities could get to $300,000, up from about $50,000 last year.

The bill was one of several economic development measures, and 10 bills total, Gregoire signed at a ceremony at Sirti, formerly called the Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute. Other bills allow the state to set up health sciences authorities to research medicine and life sciences, and allow rural counties to levy a small sales tax to help pay for local economic development offices.

Bills were also signed that standardize hunting and fishing license requirements for disabled residents, require accountability for money spent on salmon recovery, require athletic trainers to be licensed and ask police and sheriffs to set uniform policies to allow landowners to have access to their property during forest fires.

Before signing those bills Tuesday afternoon, Gregoire checked out a dinosaur, tossed balloons with some school children and got a tour of Native American artifacts at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture.

She viewed the visiting exhibit of a replica of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton with local grade school children, telling them that if they work hard in math and science they could wind up with jobs in science that relate to dinosaurs.

To celebrate the new exhibit, Gregoire pulled open nets filled with colored balloons that dropped on the children from the museum’s ceiling, setting up a cacophony of small explosions as the children rushed to pop the balloons. She then toured the archives where museum staff is working with a Native American council to catalog tens of thousands of artifacts and photographs in its collection.

The state budget includes money for the museum and the Fox Theater, which are important for showing Spokane is “a vibrant and growing community because people have embraced the arts,” she said.