Jason Hagey, Vice President of Communications at the Association of Washington Business, emailed The Wire the following statement in response to Rep. Noel Frame’s criticism to AWB’s opposition to HB 2947. 

I guess I would start by pointing you to our blog post about the testimony Rep. Frame cites in her Twitter stream. As you can see, we made it clear that we supported lowering the B&O tax rate for manufacturers, but wanted it applied to all of Washington.

We are a statewide organization representing manufacturers in every part of the state. Last fall, we led a statewide manufacturing bus tour that went to every part of Washington, from the smallest town to downtown Seattle. This was independent of our efforts to promote rural job development. We believe there should be a uniform B&O tax rate for all manufacturers — urban, rural, east, west.

The manufacturing sector needs support throughout the state. As the blog post notes, manufacturing jobs have declined in Washington since 2000 and the decrease is slightly more in urban areas than it is in rural areas.

The bill that Rep. Frame refers to would have excluded 9 counties, including some that are largely rural such as Benton and Kitsap.

We are proud to have started and led the discussion about rural jobs with our Rural Jobs summits last year. But it’s important to note that we were calling for a lower B&O rate for manufacturers before our Rural Jobs Summit in Moses Lake and we continue to believe all manufacturers should receive the lower B&O tax rate.

We’re disappointed the Legislature didn’t act this year and look forward to working with Reps. Chapman, Frame and others to try again next year.

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