► On the Record

“Even though the full-time staff number is small – around 40 troops – we are glad to not lose 160 years of history.”

-- Jan Bader, an administrator for the city of Vancouver, on news of a $28 million army training facility at Birtcher Industrial Park in Orchards, to be completed in 2011.

Reporter's Notebook

Paul Leonard can be reached at pleonard@vbjusa.com

Training Day

With the announcement of a new military training facility in Orchards, Vancouver seems destined to remain, at least in part, an army town.

And as early as 2011, that facility will be home to hundreds of recruits, with many drawn to military service because of love of country, family tradition or simply out of a desire to be gainfully employed in what promises to be a tough job market for years to come.

Just where those recruits will be going – where they will serve, fight and in some cases, die – depends in large part on President Obama’s strategy for the eight-year-old conflict in Afghanistan. Obama outlined a plan Tuesday for more than 30,000 additional troops at another, better-known training facility, West Point.

On the day of the President’s speech, I spoke with Congressman Brian Baird about his recent trip to the war-torn region and his thoughts on the decision to send more troops, as well as the war’s effect on economic priorities closer to home.

VBJ: Do you agree with the President’s decision to send in more troops?

Baird: That’s not the important decision. The most important decision will not be what we say, but what we do. What’s clear is that military action needs to be contingent on real action by the Afghan government to end the corruption there.

VBJ: With today’s announcement, do you think Afghanistan has finally become Obama’s war?

Baird: That’s a silly question. And one that’s typical of our political process [since] we think we get to start over every four years. People need to understand that this decision is vastly influenced by what came before. Given that history, what do we do? Unfortunately, I don’t think anyone has that answer.

VBJ: You made a recent trip to Afghanistan. What was your impression of the situation there?

Baird: I was also in Pakistan, in Islamabad and Peshawar, near the Afghan border. The Pakstani army took over Taliban areas nearby, and that was mostly a good thing for the people. But it took 30,000 troops to take a small valley from the Taliban. My question is what it will take to clear a whole country [Afghanistan].

VBJ: What do you say to parents of young people looking to join the military, as well as family members of troops on their second or third deployment? Are you comfortable with your support of the war?

Baird: The short answer is that I’m never comfortable with these decisions… The minute I saw the fireball over the Pentagon on 9-11, I thought the world has changed, that there’s no question that we are going to war, and that means people are going to die. The question then and always is the safety and security of the country. But it’s not quite as clear now what the mission is, or what we can do to succeed.

VBJ: Has the spiraling cost of the Afghan war affected your view on priorities at home like healthcare reform?

Baird: The problem is that we tried to fight both in Iraq and Afghanistan without paying for it and now we’re borrowing billions from the Chinese to keep things going. Before we start adding more things on the list, we need to find ways to pay for them.

Business around the Northwest

Utilities get $9 million from Enron scandal, South Sound Business Examiner

$88M grant aids utilities in quest for efficiency, Portland Daily Journal of Commerce

Oregon gets $699K from fraud settlement, Portland Business Journal

► On the Record

"Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. [Football] Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence."

- Legendary columnist Erma Bombeck (1927-1996)

Reporter's Notebook

Paul Leonard can be reached at pleonard@vbjusa.com

The case for taxes

Chances are you’ve scanned this headline and wondered, “What in the world is this editor drinking?” To actually suggest that a case can, or should be, made for a scourge afflicting humanity since the dawn of commerce seems completely against the values of most members of this business community.

However, one fact cannot be ignored – our tax system is broken, and if we are to emerge from this recession stronger than we were entering into it, we need a common-sense approach to funding government services essential to business growth and prosperity.

In order to do this, our business community should take the lead on the following measures: finally overturning the overly-burdensome Business & Occupation tax, as well as repealing the 1 percent cap on property tax increases throughout the state.

Here’s why it’s so important that one tax be eliminated and the shackles restricting another tax be removed:

Our government, at least at the county level, is going broke.

Last Friday, the Clark County Budget Office announced its recommendation of a $12.4 million cut of the 2010 General Fund operating budget, the third steep reduction in the past year.

Faced with the sudden loss of revenue from an unprecedented residential and commercial housing boom, the full effect of Tim Eyman’s misguided Initiative 747, passed in 2001 and capping an essential stream of government funding growth to a measly 1 percent per year, is now painfully clear.

On Dec. 31, the Clark County Sheriffs Department will let go of 16 deputies, more and more road maintenance projects will be deferred and our Health Department will continue to be increasingly dependent on nonprofit assistance to provide services essential to the wellbeing of all residents.

And that’s not all. For what the future beyond 2010 might hold if I-747 (upheld by the Washington Legislature in 2007 after the state Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional) continues to strangle local government, we need only turn our gaze to the south.

California’s budget apocalypse, a business-killing cataclysm with no clear end in sight, can be traced back to 1978 with voter passage of Proposition 13, which caps property values at 1 percent of its assessed value at the time of sale.

Here in Washington, surely we can learn from another state’s mistake – for proof, one need look only to earlier this month, with a majority of state residents rejecting another Eyman initiative that failed so miserably in Colorado a decade ago.

However, before you term this New York native as another tax-loving liberal, the second part of my proposal involves killing off another long-hated levy – the B&O – for good.

The B&O, a tax on all gross receipts, has long been a burden on small businesses, stifling growth and innovation among revenue-generating and job-creating companies.

One common-sense alternative to the B&O is the replacement of the current gross receipts tax paid on each business activity with a gross receipts margins tax based on total receipts, an idea proposed by Center for Small Business director Carl Gipson and Center for Government Reform director Jason Mercier.

Along with the legislative overturn of the tenets of I-747, this alternative business tax might be just the proposal to put both local government and business on the road to a responsible and sustainable economic recovery.

Happy Thanksgiving

From all of us at the VBJ, happy holiday wishes to you and yours.

As a reminder: since the editor plans to be in the grip of a 48-hour tryptophan-induced coma, Just Business will not appear this Friday. Our column will resume Wednesday, Dec. 2.

Business Around the Northwest

Clark County waterfront dispute winds down, Portland Daily Journal of Commerce

FDIC shows banks recovering, not lending, South Sound Business Examiner

More than a quarter of households to shop Friday, Idaho Business Review

► On the Record

“The widespread and growing lack of health insurance in Washington state is hurting families, communities and our state’s economy in ways that we can no longer afford to ignore.”

– Washington state Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler. A commission-sponsored report released Thursday predicted the number of uninsured Washingtonians would soon hit one million, costing the state nearly $1 billion in uncompensated medical care.