OLYMPIA — A bill sponsored by state Rep. Lynn Kessler to extend a tax incentive program for manufacturing companies in economically distressed counties passed the Legislature and is headed to Gov. Chris Gregoire to be signed into law.
House Bill 3014 passed the House (87-6) on Wednesday and the state Senate (41-2) on Friday.
It extends the rural county sales and use tax deferral program for another 10 years.
Without legislative action, it was slated to expire on July 1 of this year.
Under the program’s guidelines, manufacturing companies are granted a deferral of state sales and use tax on qualified construction and equipment costs.
“This tax incentive has been around for a while, and the numbers speak for themselves — 317 employers have used it, and created over 33,000 jobs,” said Kessler.
Kessler’s bill makes some modifications to the program.
The definition of “distressed county” is modified to only include counties where the unemployment rate is at least 20 percent above the state average for at least three years.
Clallam and Grays Harbor are two of the 19 counties that qualify for the program under the new definition.
Forest biomass
Kessler, D-Hoquiam and the state House majority leader, represents the 24th Legislative District along with Rep. Kevin Van De Wege, D-Sequim, and Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam.
The district includes Clallam and Jefferson counties and a portion of Grays Harbor County.
On Friday, Gregoire signed Second Substitute House Bill 2481, which was sponsored by Van De Wege.
It lets the state Department of Natural Resources enter into long-term agreements for supplying biomass from state forests to biomass energy firms, according to Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark, who sought the legislation.
It received almost unanimous support from the Legislature.
“By signing this bill, Gov. Gregoire is helping to encourage rural economic development and a new green industry on state forest lands,” said Goldmark.
“I’d like to thank the Legislature, and particularly Rep. Kevin Van De Wege and Sen. Jim Hargrove, for helping to ensure this important piece of legislation made it through in a short session.”
Said Van De Wege in a statement:
“The next wave of energy jobs may very well be in our rural timber communities, and long-term contracts are a crucial step.”
Said Hargrove in a statement:
“A lot of folks on the Peninsula are still recovering from the last recession, and this is a great opportunity to get green jobs growing in the places that need them most.
“Expanding our green energy biomass projects will help our tree farmers and working families in timber-dependent rural areas.”
The bill has no cost to the state’s General Fund and will potentially help to generate revenues from state-managed forestland.
In addition to rural jobs and green energy, a viable forest biomass industry in Washington will help to improve forest health by removing dead and dying material from overstocked forests, according to Goldmark.
He said improved forest health could result in avoiding fire suppression costs by reducing the risk of explosive wildfires.
McNeil Island
A deal shaping up between the Legislature’s weary budget negotiators would keep a prison on McNeil Island — for now — but at a fraction of its current size.
Democratic House and Senate negotiators said Saturday they have agreed on a concept that eventually would close the island prison in southern Puget Sound to save money.
But for now, it would shrink to 256 inmates from the 1,200 housed there now.
No date would be set for the closure, but the state would start planning to build a new prison elsewhere, Hargrove and state Rep. Mark Ericks said.
McNeil Island Corrections Center would become a minimum-security facility.
Dropping its population to 256 is a middle ground between the House’s proposal to keep the island prison open with 512 inmates, and the budgets the Senate voted for that would close McNeil altogether and start work on a new prison somewhere in Western Washington.
The prison costs a comparatively high $50 million a year to run because of its separation from the mainland.
To achieve such a large savings in the first year of closing it, though, would require offsetting shutdown costs, with a complicated shifting of funds that has its doubters.
Then there is the island’s Special Commitment Center, housing sex offenders who are done serving time but deemed too dangerous to release.
The center would need more money to keep ferries and utilities running without the benefit of cheap inmate labor, and those details have yet to be ironed out.
McNeil Island prison opened in 1875. The facility has a backload of needed maintenance.
Hargrove says it’s time to modernize the prison system.
“If we had no budget deficit,” he said, “we probably would avoid making these hard decisions.”