Bills would aid state aerospace companies

Legislators on both sides of the Cascades are pushing bills they hope will create high-wage aerospace jobs and benefit Washington companies in that industry not named Boeing.

In 2003, legislators pounded out a special $3.2 billion tax break package that kept Boeing, the world’s largest airplane maker, in Washington to build its next generation of airliners.

The current Olympia session has an industry incentive bill, SB6604, supported by Gov. Christine Gregoire and backed by East and West Side lawmakers, that would create tax breaks for smaller aerospace companies, including several in Spokane County.

Another bill would establish a 15-person task force to develop a long-term strategy to boost Washington’s aerospace industry.

Spokane-area economic development leaders see the bills as ways to help companies already here, such as BF Goodrich and Triumph Composite Systems, plus persuade other companies to move to Spokane County.

Triumph provides components both for Boeing Co. and for European aerospace giant Airbus S.A.S. Goodrich, which like Triumph has its facility on the West Plains, produces carbon brakes for commercial and military aircraft.

“The aerospace industry is expecting to deliver a record number of new airplanes in the next decade. We want to be sure Washington continues to catch and grow that business,” said Theresa Sanders, executive vice president of development for the Spokane Area Economic Development Council.

Airplane manufacturers and related suppliers and support companies employ more than 100,000 people in Washington.

“Washington is the epicenter of commercial aerospace manufacturing,” said State Rep. Brian Sullivan (D-Lynnwood), the sponsor of the task force bill HB2383. “We want to see that industry grow and expand.”

The task force the bill seeks to create would be made up of legislators, industry experts, airport officials and company representatives. It would come back to the Legislature in two years and define further incentives to expand the aerospace industry.

Sullivan said the bill asked for $250,000 for staffing the task force. But he knows the final amount, if the bill passes, will have to be lower.

Co-sponsoring HB2383 is Rep. Timm Ormsby (D-Spokane) who calls it a vital way to help Eastern Washington expand its aerospace sector.

State Sen. Lisa Brown (D-Spokane) said she supports the idea of the state developing a comprehensive strategy for aerospace. But she is hesitant about adding another task force and is careful about the fiscal impact of the incentive bill.

SB6604 would generate something like $10 million in tax breaks over the next three years, according to Senate fiscal analysts. It would give excise-tax breaks to other aerospace manufacturing firms. It also gives breaks to firms providing engineering, research and development and maintenance services to aerospace manufacturers.

Brown, who is the Senate majority leader, worries that the incentives will shift corporate tax burdens to other industries. She also has a general distaste for yet another task force to define state policies, she said.

The 2005 session produced several other task force initiatives, “and I’m concerned that we will start diffusing our focus with more of them,” Brown said.

Sullivan sees the state coming out ahead through the trickle-down benefit of good jobs being created by high-revenue aerospace firms.

“It would do for aerospace what we do for Microsoft. We give technology companies a tax credit for research and development,” he said.

“The result is Microsoft’s average wages in the Puget Sound area are $90,000 a year.”