Spokane’s pitches in D.C. are paying off

Spokane officials have believed for months Fairchild Air Force Base will not be among the military installations the Pentagon will recommend be closed in an effort to cut costs. This week, perhaps as soon as Tuesday, they will find out if their faith was misplaced.

Rich Hadley, president of the Spokane Regional Chamber of Commerce, says the list has likely been ready for weeks, but that didn’t stop a large delegation of area government and business officials from making one last pitch on behalf of our largest employer during a late April blitz in Washington, D.C.

If only the Seattle Mariners’ starting pitchers could hang in there as long.

Hadley says U.S. Department of Defense representatives told the group persistence goes a long way with officials who see a lot of summer soldiers — local groups that show up only when a round of closures threatens a base they all but ignore most other years.

The Pentagon is not showing its hand, he adds, but nothing said during meetings with military officials discouraged the Spokane group. And one of those get-togethers included one with Anthony Principi, chairman of the commission that will review the Pentagon’s recommendations.

The state of Washington, knock on wood, has tiptoed through four previous rounds of base closures almost unscathed. Cuts in California, by comparison, have cost the state 200,000 military and civilian jobs since 1987.

Hadley says the group was also encouraged by the reception given Spokane initiatives on behalf of clean water, health-related information technology, and efforts to improve railroad crossings in the Spokane Valley and North Idaho. Enthusiasm for patient-tracking systems developed by Inland Northwest Health Services was so high, Chief Executive Officer Tom Fritz was back in Washington last week to make follow-up calls.

Mike Leavitt, Secretary of Health and Human Services, has made increased reliance on technology a priority. He hopes savings from the more efficient exchange of patient information will help ease the impact of the Bush Administration’s proposed $10 billion cut in Medicaid. The ability of INHS software to identify early potential disease clusters has drawn the interest of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Department of Homeland Security.

“Clearly, there’s a definite interest by a number of agencies,” Fritz says. An announcement last week that Rep. Cathy McMorris has been named to the Congressional High Tech Working Group should help increase the visibility of INHS, a joint venture of Providence Services of Eastern Washington and Empire Health Services.

Fritz says many regions want to copy INHS’s success getting hospitals from Alaska to Idaho to exchange patient information. “It works, and nobody’s figured that out yet in other states,” he says.

Cooperation across state lines also made an impression on federal officials who handle water issues. With a $500,000 appropriation for completion of a Spokane Valley-Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer study still pending, the subgroup addressing water issues was encouraged to apply for a separate $415,000 grant that would fund a study of phosphorous contamination in the Spokane River. Most phosphorus enters the river from non-point sources — lawns and agricultural areas, for example — less easy to contain than municipal sewage.

Chamber Program Coordinator Jeff Selle, who handles water issues, says the application was completed in time to make a midnight filing deadline that same day.

Other encouragement came from the U.S. Geological Survey, which may be willing to help Blue Water Technologies by testing water treated at its new Hayden facility. And U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials looking for examples of cooperation between business and environmental groups promised greater attention to the aquifer and river issues after learning of the cooperation between the business community and The Lands Council, Selle adds.

This trip east was the third and largest organized by the Chamber. Each has increased awareness in Washington of Spokane-area issues, and local expertise on navigating the federal bureaucracy. The Chamber estimates at least $5 million in funding has been obtained as a direct result of the visits, and another $10 million indirectly. Unfortunately, community officials continue to hit a wall when trying to convey the damage being done to the local health care system by inequitable Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement formulas.

They’ll just have to keep pitching.