While it would be ideal for Seattleites to get these jobs, even City Councilmember Sally Clark, chair of the council committee pushing to make it happen, acknowledges that there aren’t enough skilled workers inside the city limits. According to a UCLA Labor Center report, only 6 percent of the nearly 3,000 workers on 33 city projects in recent years lived in Seattle, with only 25 percent living in King County. Because of Seattle’s high cost of living, many blue-collar workers presumably moved outside the city, where they could afford the rents or even buy homes. Companies followed suit, finding it less expensive to operate their business outside the city.
What needs to draw the companies back to Seattle — and with them, local workers — are the tax breaks that the major corporations receive. It’s time the city spreads the wealth and doles them out to even the small businesses — especially in light of the minimum-wage increase that, business owners say, will greatly impact their bottom lines.
In related news, The Seattle Times reported that Hollywood executives are choosing to film Seattle-set productions elsewhere, usually in Vancouver, B.C., because they don’t receive the kind of tax credits that, say, The Boeing Co. and Microsoft receive.
Washington Filmworks, the state’s film office, is limited to allocating its $3.5 million in annual tax breaks to TV commercials and independent films with budgets less than $5 million, according to executive director Amy Lilliard. The money only lasted until May this year. Lilliard told The Times that five other projects were under consideration before the incentives ran out; they would have brought in an additional $55 million to the state this summer had they been green-lighted.
State tourism officials wasted nearly $500,000 on the short-lived and much-derided slogan “Say WA” in 2006. A better investment would be to redirect money from such pointless ventures — as there is certain to be in government coffers — to bring in bigger money that could stimulate our local economy exponentially. Our small businesses would appreciate the added foot traffic.