MARYSVILLE – After spending the day cooped up in a car on I-5, Gov. Christine Gregoire on Saturday predicted that if state voters in November repeal the Legislature’s 91/2-cent gas tax increase, “injuries will occur, lives will be lost and our quality of life will diminish.”
After arriving about 40 minutes late from Olympia, Gregoire and her husband, Mike Gregoire, spent a little over two hours in Marysville, first walking along Third Street to talk to owners and employees of several small businesses.
They then listened attentively to several brief presentations and comments from government, business and civic leaders from Marysville and Tulalip at City Hall before the governor rushed off to Everett for a dinner meeting.
“I couldn’t get from one point to the next,” she said of her day in I-5 traffic. “I think this state’s in deep trouble if the initiative (912) passes in November.”
She praised the Legislature’s courage and leadership for passing the tax increase, which gives Washington’s the highest gas tax in the nation.
“Now it’s up to the people of the state of Washington,” she said.
Projects targeted for the tax money include aging bridges that will put thousands of lives at risk if they are not fixed, she said.
During her time in Marysville, the governor focused on the problems of small businesses, which she called “the engine that drives the state.”
Business owners shared their views, many commenting on burdensome government regulations that they say are driving them out of business.
A sampling:
* Randy Dasalla of Milgard Manufacturing told Gregoire that Snohomish County businesses are crippled by difficulty in getting permits, a process he said has lengthened from three to 16 weeks.
* Larry Adeyemi of Benico &Associates said businesses would like to be more competitive, but workers often have to commute to their jobs, and other states such as Oregon are more friendly to business.
* Janet Duffy of Residential Management said the cost of doing business, including paperwork and payroll, adds 20 percent to the cost of each employee.
* Diana Biringer of Biringer Farms said agricultural businesses such as hers are required to pay unemployment costs for minors who can’t collect unemployment, are burdened by all the information and forms required that take so much time there’s little left to harvest crops, and struggle with contradictory state and federal laws on minimum wage.
Her farm employs mostly non-English speaking workers, and farm staff are prohibited by the state from helping them fill out paperwork workers don’t understand.
In addition, Biringer was ordered to be part of a state agriculture study that yields the state little benefit but requires hours of detailed paperwork with no reimbursement for the time spent working for the government, she said.
Mary Kirkland, owner of Hilton Pharmacy, told Gregoire that pharmacies are less plagued by people looking for ingredients to make methamphetamine than grocery stores, since those stores stock many more over-the-counter remedies.
Pharmacies are hit hard, however, by mandates from large employers such as Boeing and Microsoft that require employees to obtain their maintenance medications by mail from out-of-state companies.
That has caused a 10 percent to15 percent annual loss of revenue in her pharmacy, she said.
Small stores such as Mary Burns’ Bookworks are hit hard every time a new large store opens, Burns told the governor. Large chain stores that already have low prices drop them even more, and the small businesses’ sales are down for weeks, she said.
Smaller businesses counter the big chains that buy in huge volume by focusing on better customer service, said Nicole Walker of Marysville Floral Inc.
“We’re constantly trying new things, and we stand behind our customers,” she said.
The Gregoires did their part to help local businesses by purchasing several items, including a corsage for the governor and a copy of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” for their daughter.
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