You’ve Got A Friend, Spokane A Lobbyist For Tacoma Urges The Lilac City To Forget About Seattle And Form An Alliance With Others

I read The Spokesman-Review’s “Great Divide” series, comparing Seattle and Spokane, with a mixture of emotions ranging from incredulity to delight.

I was pleased that I was almost mentioned in the series. A box entitled “Who’s Lobbying for Spokane” mentioned the lobbying activities of other Washington cities.

I am the one full-time lobbyist for Tacoma. In that capacity, I have worked with many Spokane-area legislators over the years and have worked hard - and usually without success - to get the city of Spokane to cooperate with my community on issues of mutual concern.

The very premise of your series reflects one of the reasons I have had these problems. Way too many people in your wonderful city seem to be so busy worrying about how you compare with Seattle, you fail to see who your real cohort may be. This “second largest city” thing is an albatross you must shed. (Besides, Vancouver will probably knock you out of that spot soon.)

Tacoma has finally begun to drop the baggage of comparing itself with Seattle, and Tacoma is thriving because we have stopped. We are not competing, we just want to be the best we can be at who we are.

Seattle is a great city, we like having it so close, but most Tacomans these days don’t give a whit that we don’t get everything they get.

Spokane and Tacoma have much more in common than Spokane and Seattle. Our similar populations share many characteristics in terms of poverty and wage levels. Our city governments are both expected to provide the breadth of services of large cities with medium-sized city revenues. We both have downtowns that need assistance and neighborhoods that need protecting. We are both still affordable places to live.

There are differences too. We are a port city; you are a center for agriculture. We are the second city in a large commercial market; you are the center of commerce for a broad geographic area. We are more culturally diverse; your population is more homogenous. But these are differences, not dichotomies.

There is much we can do together.

One of the themes of the articles was a comparison of how much the West Side gets from the state vs. how much you get. This was about the only place in the series where Tacoma was mentioned. You must learn to leave Seattle out of these equations. They are a factor to themselves.

Besides, you’ve done darn well in any comparison. Visiting Spokane this summer, I marveled at your convention center, agricultural trade center and beautiful Riverfront Park, all built with copious amounts of state assistance.

Your success in those projects served as one of our models in the 1980s when our community united behind the University of Washington’s branch campus and the Washington History Museum.

Working with our business community and other local governments, we were able to excite our local legislators about the importance of these projects. And they delivered.

We are proud of that work, and we are leveraging it with private and local funds to reclaim our waterfront (you led the way in showing the benefit of rehabilitating downtown waterfronts) and build new amenities and commerce.

One of the cornerstone projects in the 1980s was the UW branch campus. Spokane legislators played a key role in that effort. I remember working closely with Sen. Jerry Saling and other Spokane lawmakers to assure that both our cities were to be included when the UW-WSU branch campuses were created. Your present-day legislators are just as willing to be helpful as those of the 1980s. Maybe their philosophies are different from those who served before, but they were all elected because they want to do what they think is in the best interests of their constituents and communities. It is incumbent on the Spokane community to help them identify that interest.

I have worked closely with Sens. Jim West, Bob McCaslin and Lisa Brown and find them to be among the best. I haven’t had the opportunity to work as closely with some of your present House members but lobbyists I respect have high praise for many in your delegation.

Our legislative representation has nearly all changed too. Yet we are still able to work closely with the business community and other governments on key shared priorites. We could us some assistance from you too.

Tacoma, like Spokane (but not Seattle), needs some assistance to revive our downtown. We have proposed several pieces of legislation in that regard in the past few years. Spokane legislators have helped us with these bills, but I really haven’t seen much activity from your community.

In 1995, we were successful in passing the multi-family housing tax credit, which encourages housing in our downtowns and neighborhood business districts. Our business community helped us with this legislation, which is available to all cities over 100,000 in population. The Spokane community didn’t participate in this effort.

In 1997, we introduced two other bills that will help both of our communities. The Urban Stabilization Act permits tax increment financing in our communites. We worked with many cities around the state on this legislation last year, only to have a competing proposal introduced late in the session by Spokane business interests. Their idea may have been better, but why weren’ we working together?

Both communities can use what we call the Main Street Bill, which originated in one of our neighborhood business districts and provides funds to assist these small businesses market and maintain their neighborhoods. Many smaller cities in the Puget Sound area joined Tacoma in pushing this legislation, but we never heard from Spokane.

You have a friend over here on the West Side. You just don’t realize it. Quit gazing from afar at that big Emerald City and fretting about how green the grass appears. You’ve done much to be proud of on your own, and you can do much more. Don’t compete - cooperate. We are your ready and able ally.

MEMO: Randy Lewis is government relations officer for the city of Tacoma.