Aerospace study: We're good, we're bad, we're ahead, we're behind

The study of how Washington stacks up against other states in the battle for aerospace business cost state taxpayers an even $250,000.

That wasn't enough money to make sure the governor got a copy of the 38-page report first from its authors, Deloitte Consulting. Someone leaked it and Gov. Chris Gregoire and her staff scrambled hard today to respond.

She planned a Monday news conference to talk about the study - read it here - and her response to it.

Instead it all happened today.

Here's an early story on the findings in The Herald.

Here's what the governor said.

Here's a snippet of a critical press release from the Washington State Labor Council:

"...you might want to note that Boeing is one of Deloitte Consulting's major clients, and Deloitte was the firm that brought Gary Locke the idea of giving Boeing a $3.2 billion tax break just a few years ago. It should strike everyone as suspicious (to say the least) that the Snohomish EDC chose Deloitte to put forth this study, which from the looks of it, might as well have been written by Boeing's lobbyists in Olympia. It cannot possibly be considered an objective assessment of our state's competitiveness.

There's data and charts. Probably the most intriguing chart shows the most important issue to aerospace is labor management relations - over which states have the least control.

There is one page on strikes and estimated costs of strikes under the headline "The frequency and high costs of work stoppages, fairly or unfairly, reflect negatively on Washington."

Apparently, labor folks said, they didn't point out that the four other states used in the comparison are right-to-work states. I suspect we may see a rebuttal analysis coming soon.