George Erb of the Puget Sound Business Journal recently shot some ink at Washington Governor Chris Gregoire. He wrote:
Earlier this year Washington was competing with four other states for a $2 billion uranium enrichment plant that could be located on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. The facility would employ about 400.
But Areva, the French company that proposed the plant, announced in May that it would build the facility at Idaho Falls, Idaho. The Tri-Cities were stunned.
The Tri-City Herald later learned, through a public records request for correspondence, that the governor’s office was aware of Areva’s offer as long ago as the summer of 2007.
Civic leaders had urged the governor’s office to help close the deal for the state. But the Tri-City Herald discovered that Gregoire instead canceled a telephone call with Areva’s chief executive in September 2007. Then she didn’t contact the company for another six months.
Um. I don’t know terribly much about this, but it smells a little off.
I suspect it’s just an election-year broadside from an editor who supports another candidate. But it’s a silly little accusation, isn’t it?
If you were the CEO of a company deciding where to put a $2 billion plant, would you pay terribly much attention to whether the governor of one of the states under consideration as a siting option promptly rescheduled a phone call? Would you even notice? It strikes me as the kind of issue that would be left to the executive assistants who run the CEO and governor’s calendars. Any CEO who would be swayed by a 30 minute pitch from a governor, rather than the detailed and voluminous analysis of his or her own team is a CEO not worth his or her salary. The notion that courtesy calls from governors sway business executives has always struck me as naïve.
But that point is mere etiquette. Even if you assume the worst about the governor’s office—that it was too focused on, say, leading state government and setting public policy to make sales calls to French nuclear companies—there’s still the public policy question. Do we even want a $2 billion uranium enrichment plant in Washington? Or in Idaho, for that matter? As one astute blog reader pointed out in an email yesterday, “The Tri Cities are trying hard to emerge from being the most polluted place in America into a center of scientific excellence, preparing for the 21st century. The people of Washington have voted not to allow shipments of radioactive waste to be sent there for storage. Yet an enrichment plant would produce huge new volumes of (low-level) waste—demonstrating to anyone who was thinking of locating clean tech there that it will be a nuclear community forever. It would have produced a fair number of short-run construction jobs, a small number of permanent jobs, and committed the community indelibly to an industry that has a bleak future.”
The Northwest’s jobs future has more to do with enriching sunlight and the wind than it does with enriching uranium. The region’s jobs rush for green-collar industries has been impressive. It’s conceivable that uranium enrichment is an economic ankle weight.
Greg
AlanThis is rather weak. Did you research the subject and follow up with the articles in the Tri-City Herald about the governor’s lack of leadership on the Areva decision to locate its new plant in Idaho? How much effort should the governor put in to attract a company to build a $2 billion plant with 400 jobs and a payroll of $30 million a year? Is it worth a return phone call back to a CEO? Is it worth taking a meeting? Remember this is the governor of the State of Washington, not just King County. Governor Gregoire should be searching out companies that will invest in Washington State to drive economic development and attract well paying jobs. Areva is already a good corporate citizen in Washington State with facilities in the Tri-Cities so this would not be a cold call. And yes when a CEO is ready to lay out $2 billion on a new facility and make a long term commitment in a state he/she wants to make sure the state will be a good partner and its facility investment will be welcomed. The governor put in the time and effort in to battle for the Boeing tanker contract but could not put in any effort for the Areva plant? I believe Governor Gregoire’s decision to not support the Aveva facility was a political decision not to alienate her supporters in King County and increase her chances of keeping her job in this next election cycle and not for the greater benefit for the State of Washington.
Jimmy
I have a hard time with this part of your assessment. “I believe Governor Gregoire’s decision to not support the Aveva facility was a political decision not to alienate her supporters in King County and increase her chances of keeping her job in this next election cycle and not for the greater benefit for the State of Washington.”But only in the sense that I don’t think it would have affected her support. Mullick’s (TC Herald)article quoted a staffer that “nuclear wasn’t” in the governors future (or something to that effect). The deal is, that may or not be true, but I find it hard to believe a decision to bring jobs to an economy trying to break ties with Hanford cleanup would be a black mark on her record. I also find it hard to believe that Areva based it’s decision on lack of contact from the governor. That just doesn’t add up with the fact that Wa. had basically the same incentive to have the new facility in Wa. What I do find easy to believe is that Areva may very well have made a business decision based 1: better logistics and wages in Idaho and 2: A more friendly state that hasn’t recently passed initiatives like 297 (which was only defeated in Benton County – Hanford territory). That’s a pretty big investment to put at risk in an anti everything initiative prone state.Could the governor done more? Probably so. Given that the courts threw out 297 I’d say its a pretty good arguement. But likely Areva was weighing their long term options.