Business ranking remains steady

We’re getting predictable. Last year Spokane ranked 114th in Forbes magazine’s annual ranking of best places to do business.

This year, Spokane ranked exactly the same, 114th out of the 200 largest U.S. cities.

The annual ranking was released Friday by the magazine. It uses a variety of measures to score metros.

It also has a best-places ranking for smaller cities. Coeur d’Alene, one of the fastest growing metros in Idaho, ranked 33rd on the Forbes list.

The top three cities ranked this year were Albuquerque, N.M., Raleigh, N.C., and Houston. In the smaller city ranking, the top three were Sioux Falls, S.D., Las Cruces, N.M., and Fargo, N.D.

The rankings consider cost of living, cost of doing business, crime rates, education levels, leisure choices, job growth and income growth.

The highest-ranked large metro in Washington was Tacoma, at No. 80. The highest ranked Idaho metro was Boise, at No. 4. Boise was ranked No. 1 in last year’s best-places list.

Seattle scored 101st; last year it ranked 73rd.

Since business costs are so high in California and Florida, the Forbes list showed that cities in those states don’t rank high. Out of 38 cities in the two sunshine states, not one of them landed in the top 50, based on the Forbes rankings. The highest metro from California was Anaheim-Santa Ana, which came in 58th.

Randy Barcus, the chief economist for Spokane-based Avista Corp., said the rankings for Spokane and Coeur d’Alene are no surprise.

“Because we’ve had good growth here, the cost of doing business is higher,” he said, resulting in higher office lease or building construction costs. Those in turn made Spokane and Coeur d’Alene lose points compared with other cities.

Barcus also said Washington continues to be a costly state in which to do business, compared with neighboring states.

The key difference, he said, is Washington’s business and occupation tax; nearby states like Idaho don’t have that tax, he said, and that gives it an advantage in recruiting companies.

Spokane did best in job growth and in overall population growth. It scored worst on crime rate and culture and leisure choices.

Barcus said the rankings should help area officials focus on making improvements in those areas.

“If I were in charge of economic development,” Barcus said, “I’d focus on the same things the community already has. I’d focus on enhancing higher education. I’d focus on public safety improvements, which is a crime-rate issue.” He also advocates streamlining the government processes companies face when moving here but “without compromising the important environmental advantages we have.”