Big On Business New Valley Chamber President Sees Period Of Growth For Business Group

John Hanson is earning that elk hunting trip he will leave for Friday. The new president of the Spokane Valley Chamber of Commerce has found the position time consuming, to say the least.

“This is the eighth meeting I’ve had this week,” he said during a recent interview. “My day usually begins at about 4 a.m. and ends about 7 at night.”

That is no surprise to Stephen Baker, who ended his term as president last month.

“I tried to warn him when I handed him the gavel,” Baker joked.

Hanson, 52, says he enjoys the pace. The US Bank commercial lending officer is also on the board of the Valley Hospital Foundation, involved with the Rotary Club, and is a former campaign manager for the United Way.

“I think we need to get involved,” Hanson said. “You can either sit back and complain about things happening, you can watch things happen or you can make things happen.”

Hanson is promising to do the latter in a big way. He says he’ll add 200 more members to the Valley Chamber’s current 600 during his term. The area has grown so fast in recent years, he said, that such a jump is not a stretch. He also pledges to beef up a program that works with Valley schools to improve the quality of graduates.

Another of his goals is to increase the Chamber’s involvement with the Strategic Alliance Committee. That committee is a collaborative effort among the Valley and Spokane Area chambers, the Economic Development Council, the Convention and Visitors Bureau and Momentum.

It sounds ambitious, but Hanson believes in his product. If the Valley Chamber ever had an evangelist in the big chair, Hanson is it.

“I believe the best investment a business can make is to join the Chamber of Commerce,” he said. “We’re involved with everything from international trade to growth management … by joining the Chamber it gives a business immediate representation and leverage.”

Hanson sees some fights on the horizon. Shaping the state Growth Management Act so it allows future Valley growth is one of them. The days of just recruiting new businesses to open up shop here are gone for now, he said.

“In 1987, the big issue was jobs,” Hanson said. “Now the concerns are growth management, transportation and public safety.”

And, as always, taxes.

“You don’t make the weak strong by making the strong weak,” Hanson said. “When you take money from a business, you take away its ability to buy another piece of machinery or to hire another person because it’s going to taxes.”

Hanson, a California native and a banker’s son, has been a banker since 1966. He began working with the Valley Chamber in 1985, at the request of another US Bank employee, Phyllis Campbell. Campbell was president during the 1986-87 term. Another US Bank employee, Lonnie Bailey, took the helm during the 1993-94 year.

So Hanson isn’t new to Chamber politics. Baker said that’s good, because politics is all part of the drill.

“John is going to have to deal with a lot of the same issues (I did),” he said.

During Baker’s term, the big issue was Valley incorporation. Chamber members on either side wanted the group to take a stand. The Chamber declined.

“It was a really impassioned issue,” Baker said. “There were some strong feelings either way, no one was really neutral. We decided early that we weren’t going to take a stand, that we’d provide opportunities for people to hear forums on the issue … (and) let people formulate their own opinions.”

Hanson said he’ll probably stick to that philosophy when it comes to the Chamber’s stand on city-county consolidation. Personally, he has a “wait-and-show-me” attitude when it comes to both consolidation and incorporation.

“Feeling good about something and paying for it are two different things,” he said. “Unless you’re sure the change will be entirely positive, it’s pretty hard from a business standpoint to support that.”

A new executive director was also thrown into the mix last year. Ray Murphy, a former executive director of the Moscow (Idaho) Chamber, replaced Kay Moland. Moland had held the position for 20 years.

Murphy’s views, especially on the Growth Management Act, seem to mesh well with Hanson’s.

“It’s not bad to plan for growth,” Murphy said. “But if you end up tying the hands of business people, and the economy goes south, where are you going to work? How are you going to eat?”

You won’t, Hanson believes. The primacy of enterprise is at the core of his philosophy. That’s why he has taken what basically amounts to a second full-time job - for no pay.

“America’s a great country,” Hanson said. “The reason is because of the standard of living, the jobs.

“All these things we have today are because somebody went out, rolled the dice and started a business.”

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