Published December 2002

Drewel: It’s time to start thinking like a region

In October, Snohomish County Executive Bob Drewel led a Trade Development Alliance business mission to the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Belgium. While there, Drewel met a London businessman at a reception and told him he was a member of the Seattle delegation.

The man immediately knew that Seattle was on the West Coast and home to Boeing and Microsoft. He knew of its beauty, having seen “Sleepless in Seattle” and “Frazier.” But the businessman had never heard of King, Pierce or Snohomish counties or of Bellevue, Everett or Tacoma. He didn’t know about, or care about, the myriad of jurisdictions, boundary lines or special taxing districts that dot our geopolitical landscape.

All he knew was that “Seattle” was a successful economic region in the United States.

Drewel recounted his meeting with the British businessman to begin a keynote address before the Pacific Northwest Regional Economic Development Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, that forcefully urged sweeping changes on how we sell “Seattle” as a regional “brand” on the global marketplace.

Drewel, co-chair of the conference sponsored by the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce, stirred with his comments a weekend of discussion and, hopefully, the beginning of action among Puget Sound area political, business and civic leaders. His goal: begin creation of a regional strategy to succeed in the global economy, while eliminating the debilitating competition between individual political and economic jurisdictions that weakens our standing worldwide and at home, as well.

Speaking before the Nov. 4 elections that brought a stunning defeat of the statewide transportation initiative and passage of a measure that will remove millions from regional transportation agencies, Drewel acknowledged the “huge degree of skepticism among Washington citizens.”

He said, “They don’t trust our basic institutions. ... The current structure prevents citizens from believing that they have the power to determine matters. Responses based on jurisdictional lines do not match the social and economic realities.” The reason? A breakdown in leadership.

“Let us face the ugly truth,” Drewel said. “We have been fractured by partisanship, by geography and economic circumstance — Democrat from Republican, east from west, business from labor.”

It’s time to change, to end the in-fighting and begin thinking like a region, he said. An indisputable truth is that “world-class companies spring from and are drawn from world-class regions.”

While Boeing, Microsoft, Starbucks, Amazon and many more have sprung from this region, “we have lost our edge,” Drewel said. Boeing headquarters is gone; others may follow.

The degree of change needed to regain our world-class status, he said, will require positive leadership and partnerships between government, business, labor, the faith community and nonprofit and civic organizations.

It means, “we work hard to make crystal clear the strong link between economic growth, family-wage jobs and quality of life.”

It means reaching out to citizens, not just talking among ourselves.

It means, “reaching out to the women and men of our varied and talented work force,” including building partnerships with organized labor “that are closer to reality than recent headlines suggest.”

It means respecting our natural environment as we grow responsibly.

Broad-based tax reform with an emphasis on developing government revenues that are reasonable, accountable and flexible will be necessary, Drewel said. This will ensure a reliable source of funding of the University of Washington and other research institutions so important for a successful 21st-century economy.

He urged we find ways to deliver regional services common to all through partnerships of existing governments or, when necessary, creating new state authority without reliance “on local regulations that create a confusing jumble of rules, procedures and hoops to jump through.”

It was an extraordinary and powerfully courageous speech by our county executive containing a message that we can’t let die. His ideas, his passion and commitment to our region — not just to Snohomish County — will be an important driving stimulus to all we do in the future to once again create a world-class region of which we all can be proud.

Deborah Knutson is president of the Snohomish County Economic Development Council. She can be reached at 425-743-4567 or by e-mail to dknutson@snoedc.org.

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