More To It Than The Puget Patch

Leaders who will shape the 1999 Legislative session gathered in Olympia Tuesday and told newspaper editors from all around the state that they will work to improve the “other Washington.”

No, they weren’t talking about the nation’s capital.

They were talking - bless them - about helping the majority of the state’s communities, from Forks to Spokane, where people with blue collars pack lunch buckets at kitchen tables and head off to low-paying jobs far more tenuous than those in thriving Pugetopolis.

This is good policy. A diverse economy means a downturn in one sector - Boeing or wheat farming - will do less harm overall.

However, the Legislature has quite a record of tending most assiduously to the needs of just a tiny fraction of the state, geographically. Sport stadiums come to mind. So do highways. A new floating bridge for Seattle could sink every penny of the $2 billion voters recently made available for statewide transportation improvements.

The Legislature also has a record of devoting much of its resources to narrow interest groups like state employee unions, while city and county governments and far-flung economic development needs go begging.

Therefore, communities all over this state do indeed hope that Tuesday’s admirable pledges represented a commitment to represent the entire state.

Here in Spokane, civic leaders have assembled an agenda that fits exactly with the talk about serving the “other Washington.” The north-south freeway in Spokane has won the governor’s support because it’s a cost-efficient solution to a regional economic bottleneck - heavy truck traffic to and from Canada, as well as a longtime local traffic problem that limits Spokane’s future.

A health sciences building at the Riverpoint Higher Education Park here, as well as a renovation of health sciences facilities at Spokane Community College, are state investments crucial to Spokane’s leading good-jobs industry: medicine.

A Spokane Convention Center, with the Legislature’s authorization and support, could boost the local convention business, using the public facilities district method that was proved a huge success in the construction of the Spokane Arena. Similar proposals for Vancouver and Tacoma would use the same financing method, spreading the benefits.

One crucial reform requires wiser policy, not dollars: The Airway Heights prison has been pouring released convicts - and their social problems - into the Spokane area. The state ought to start releasing convicts into the communities they came from, instead.

The Legislature can afford to address these needs, and others like them, precisely because it cannot afford to ignore them.