Bert Caldwell

Community banking in the Inland Northwest may not fit the mold regulators are shaping for bigger, more complex markets, area bankers said Wednesday. Yet the cost of compliance with new federal regulations will be particularly burdensome for small local banks, which must hire extra staff to compile required paperwork, they said.

Remember the brick house built by the third little pig? The big, bad wolf huffed and puffed, but he could not blow it down. At least that's how the story goes.

John Wagner

Idaho customers of Washington Water Power Co. would likely be asked to pay rate increases of as much as 8 percent within the next few years if a proposed merger with Sierra Pacific Resources were rejected, company officials said Monday. But in seeking approval of the deal from Idaho regulators, WWP has agreed to freeze rates until the year 2001.

A Western Washington man who bilked Sons of Norway members around the Northwest out of more than $9 million pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court to money laundering and mail, wire and bank fraud. Many of Mike Calozza's 150 victims live in the Spokane-Coeur d'Alene area.

Don't block the exits at Washington Water Power Co. and Sierra Pacific Resources. Workers at both utilities, which will combine this fall to become Resources West Energy, have snapped at severance packages in twice the numbers projected earlier this year, said Don Kopczynski, WWP transition manager. Some workers facing relocation want to remain in Spokane, he said, while others have become weary of the rapid pace of change in the utilities industry.

Ken Kido is in charge of the Seafirst Bankcard Services operation in Spokane at Garden Springs. Photo by Christopher Anderson/The Spokesman-Review

Davenp[ort Hotel owner Wai Choi Ng presides Thursday at the reopening of the Elizabethan Room. Photo by Sandra Bancroft-Billings/The Spokesman-Review

The Washington Water Power Co. has agreed to freeze base rates until the year 2001 in proposed agreements with Idaho and Washington regulators who are reviewing a proposed merger with Sierra Pacific Resources. The agreement would allow adjustments under certain circumstances, such as lower natural gas prices or a loss of cheap hydropower because of reduced streamflows. The company also would be allowed to rebalance the costs imposed on a specific class of customers such as industry. The freeze and other conditions are outlined in so-called stipulations negotiated by representatives of the two companies and staff members of the Idaho and Washington utilities commissions.

1. Shanni Burnette, right, and Jack Sackville-West work on diagnostic tests in an automotive technology course at Community Colleges of Spokane. Trained mechanics are in short supply. Photo by Christopher Anderson/The Spokesman-Review 2. Tom Connors of TDC Auto Repair says it's tough to recruit good mechanics, even though the pay and job security are attractive. He's been trying to fill a job since October. Photo by Christopher Anderson/The Spokesman-Review

Kaiser Aluminum Corp., acting in the wake of a bitter February strike, has canceled the lease of a Northland Federal Credit Union branch that has been on the grounds of the company's Mead smelter for almost 50 years. Northland President Bill Roberts said the move probably stems from his refusal to let the company house temporary workers in the branch during the weeklong strike by the United Steelworkers of America.

More and more would-be tenants in Spokane find their way blocked by screen doors. An eight-year-old business, Tenant Information Systems Inc., examines rental applications submitted to more than 80 percent of the landlords in the community. It's a test many applicants don't pass.

Olivetti North America will supply a new generation of branch-office computers to the nation's largest bank. The Liberty Lake-based subsidiary of Ing. C. Olivetti S.p.A. will begin pilot installations at Citibank branches within the next few months, said spokesman Leonard Selvaggio. Full-scale rollout should begin by the fourth quarter, he said, with completion within a year.

At what will likely be their last annual meeting, Washington Water Power Co. shareholders were given a vision for the future and a judgment of the recent past. Chairman Paul Redmond said officials expect regulators to approve the company's merger with Sierra Pacific Resources by the fall. The new company, Resources Energy West, will supply electricity, natural gas and water to customers in six states across a total area almost the size of Oregon.

Kaiser Aluminum Corp. could chop $100 million off its electricity bill in the next five years if the company shut off the Bonneville Power Administration, regional Power Manager Pete Forsyth said Wednesday. But a variety of factors, including the possibility power may become cheaper still, have so far stayed Kaiser's hand, he told the Northwest Power Planning Council. Wednesday was the second day of the council's monthly meeting, which will conclude today in Post Falls.

U.S. Bancorp and West One Bancorp have agreed to merge in a transaction that will create one of the 30 largest bank holding companies in the country. It will also assure, at least for a while, the continued independence of Portland-based U.S. Bancorp, the largest bank based in the Northwest.

LDDS Communications will close its Spokane long-distance operator center less than one year after acquiring the operation. Employees received a memo this week indicating the closure will occur around October 1, but spokesman Charles Canada said the doors may stay open longer. With several months notice, he said, "This will give people an opportunity to think about it."

A surprise veto by Gov. Mike Lowry is sitting around the capitol in Olympia like an unanswered, ringing telephone. Two weeks ago, Lowry rejected legislation that would have turned back efforts by major long-distance carriers to simplify the dialing of phone calls within Eastern and Western Washington. The measure, SB5156, had swept through the House and Senate by overwhelming margins after intense lobbying on both sides of the issue.

Itron Inc., Puget Sound Power & Light Co. and a California maker of wireless information systems have agreed to form a new company that would sell cost-cutting services to the utility industry. Still in the planning stages, the as-yet unnamed venture would combine technologies developed by Itron and San Jose-based Metricom Inc. that gather information from utility meters using handheld, mobile or stationary equipment arrayed in a network. For example, said Puget spokesman Earl Dunn, a new system could be used to read meters several times a day, making it possible to set rate schedules that would encourage electricity use during nonpeak hours.

Fourteen Spokane-area companies are among the 150 largest private enterprises in the state of Washington, according to the May issue of Washington CEO magazine. The list is prepared by the Arthur Andersen accounting firm in a venture co-sponsored by the magazine and U.S. Bank of Washington. Nine-hundred companies were surveyed as part of the information-gathering effort. To be included, companies must employ 25. If companies did not respond, information was gathered from other sources.

Washington Water Power Co., in a precedent-setting transaction, will supply 70 megawatts of electricity to the Northwest Aluminum Co. in The Dalles, Ore. The deal represents the first break away from the Bonneville Power Administration by one of the region's nine smelters, which buy thousands of megawatts of energy from the federal power-marketing agency. It also shows how vulnerable rate hikes and other measures have left the once dominant agency. An aluminum company decision to buy from anyone else would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

1. Yellowstone's pipeline in the foreground has been blocked by removing a valve. In the background, a tanker truck unloads unleaded gasoline bound for the Spokane-North Idaho market. Photo by Christopher Anderson/The Spokesman-Review SPOKANE EDITION CAPTION: A valve has been taken out of the Yellowstone pipeline to prevent gasoline from going any further. A tanker truck in the background awaits fuel to be shipped from Montana to the Spokane area. 2. A tanker rolls along the Clark Fork River from Missoula to Thompson Falls. Photo by Christopher Anderson/The Spokesman-Review

A second-generation cellular telephone system could be operating in Spokane by early next year, according to officials with one of two groups that will provide the service. Jerry Brantley, executive vice president of MainStreet Wireless, said the new personal communications services, or PCS, will provide higher quality at less cost than existing cellular networks.

Consumers and corporations, not governments, are driving economic globalization, noted economist Murray Weidenbaum told a Spokane audience Thursday. Weidenbaum, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan, said pacts like the North America Free Trade Agreement are secondary to everyday decisions in the marketplace. "Individual businesses are the prime actors in the world economy," he said.