The Association of Washington Businesses May 13 board meeting.
The Association of Washington Businesses claims its board unanimously endorsed Tim Eyman’s anti-democratic I-1053 at its May 13 board meeting, but after a bit of digging, the folks over at the Washington State Labor Council can’t find a single AWB board member who admits to attending the meeting and endorsing the initiative.
Can this be true? Amid severe recession-related budget cuts to higher education, transportation and other state funding priorities strongly supported by many of our largest private employers, the AWB board voted UNANIMOUSLY for this starve-the-beast strategy to avoid taxes?
Not Boeing. Company spokeswoman Susan Bradley says the company has no position on I-1053 and had no representative at AWB’s May 13 board meeting in Spokane.
And not Microsoft. Government Affairs Director Delee Shoemaker, an AWB board member, reports that the company will not take a position on I-1053 at least until it qualifies for the ballot. She adds that she wasn’t at the May 13 meeting either.
And the list goes on: Weyerhaeuser, Avista Corp., Ben Bridge Jewelers, US Bank… nobody would admit to even attending the meeting. In fact, of the AWB board members who responded to WSLC’s inquiries, only one, Safeway Director of Public Affairs Cherie Myers, expressed support for the initiative. But… “I was not there to vote,” Myers told the WSLC.
Huh. Reminds me of a lyric from Les Miserables:
Phantom faces at the window.
Phantom shadows on the floor.
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will meet no more.
The bulk of the board members WSLC contacted wouldn’t respond to inquiries, but there’s a reason why local businesses might be reluctant to embrace I-1053 despite the business community’s natural knee-jerk support for anything that makes it harder to raise their taxes: as WSLC explains, the Californiafication of Washington government simply isn’t good for our state’s business climate:
Our biggest private-sector employers report that one of their greatest challenges is the insufficient number of skilled workers available. Microsoft regularly argues that more H-1B visas are needed to meet its demand for engineers. Boeing’s aging workforce — of both machinists and engineers — is considered a looming crisis.
This problem has been exacerbated by the recession. Plummeting state revenue has resulted in college and university budgets being slashed; University of Washington reports that its state funding was cut by one-third in the past 15 months. College instructors are being laid off, departments eliminated, class sizes sharply increased, and double-digit tuition hikes imposed. And all this is happening as Boeing laments its demand for engineers consistently exceeds the state’s production by a two-to-one ratio, a supply gap that is widening as its aging work force retires in droves.
WSLC includes a list of companies that have refused to respond, and it wouldn’t hurt if they heard from their customers that we don’t particularly enjoy doing business with companies that spend their profits ensuring that a one-third minority of the Legislature has veto power over our state budgets. At the very least, they need to know that they can’t continue to hide behind their empty chairs.
The conservative mentality is to avoid obesity by not growing food.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com.....b2ec_o.jpg
Personally, I’m in favor of everyone being well-fed.
http://i37.tinypic.com/20u6dmo.jpg
(NSFW)
Nice scoop! Take that MSM!
If you have to do your business (like voting on or supporting this initiative) in “secret” and are afraid of letting anyone know…er…you might be on the wrong side.
Reminds of the bigots behind the last attempt to remove the expanded domestic partnership benefits last fall. The PRO partnership folks (mostly gay) had an open forum, open rally and voting night had their HQ open to the press. The ANTI partnership folks (religious nuts) met in SECRET and wouldn’t let in any from the public or any press…and of course they’re trying keep their names from the petition signing a secret too. If you have to hide and lie about your support of an issue, you’re probably not on the right side. Whether pro or con on any issue (marijuana law reform, taxes, etc) you should stand up proud and make your view known.
It seems to me that this could be a case where the HA community could out up or shut up.
must be a list of members, and demand that they speak out about this? I doubt many of them want to be in the unanimous camp unless their main line of business is selling Suckme teabags.
Are the AWB’s May 13 Board minutes published anywhere? As the former Secretary of a nonprofit, I know for a fact that the minutes I wrote were legally required to report:
a) the names of the Board members who attended the meeting
b) the outcomes of all votes taken by the Board
I’m not certain whether I was required to identify how each member voted, but I always did. I included the status of every member of the Board, even the abstentions and absences.
Now, this was based on Illinois law, as the organization was chartered in that state. But I’d bet a whole lot that WA law supports at least as much openness of records as IL law. And probably more.
Must have been the April meeting….HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAhhaahahhaah..ha..hup…hep….cough, cough.
HA BLOGGERS UNITE
Ok here are the names of some of the WAB board members . HA bloggers may want to pay special attention to the presence of Microsoft, Weyerhauser, Swedish Hospital and the Hutchinson Cancer Center in the UNANIMOUS vote!
The AWB voted to endorse Tim Eynman’s latest antitax measure. If you want to do something real, write to the company listed here and tell them what you think of the initiative.
Here is a model text:
Dear (Customer Relations?)
I am a very upset at this endorsement by the Washington Association of Business .. and by the membership of on the board of the WAB:
Employers back measure requiring two-thirds vote on taxes
Employer representatives on the Association of Washington Business’ Board of Directors have voted UNANIMOUSLY to support Initiative 1053, a measure requiring a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to raise taxes. Board members approved the vote May 13 during the state chamber of commerce’s annual Spring Board Meeting in Spokane. (from AWB Press Release http://www.awb.org/articles/pr....._taxes.htm).
Does ___________ actually want to stop all taxation reform in Washington State?
Hard to believe!
Sincerely yours —–
Dan Youmans, AT&T, Redmond, 2011
Megan Lawrence, Alaska Airlines, Seattle, 2011
David Swartley, Bank of America, Portland, 2012
Daniel Church, Bastyr University, Kenmore, 2010
Mike Schwenk, Battelle Pacific NW National Laboratory, Richland, 2011
Rich White, The Boeing Company, Seattle, 2011
Santana Gonzalez, Chevron, Bellaire, 2012
Rhonda Weaver, Comcast, Olympia, 2012
Art Jackson, Costco Wholesale, Issaquah, 2010
Tom Lemly, Davis Wright Tremaine, Seattle, 2012
Jim Spady, Dick’s Drive-Ins, LTD, LP, Seattle, 2010
Shane Skinner, Enterprise Rent-A-Car Company, Renton, 2012
Doug Morrison, Environmental Law Northwest, Redmond, 2012
Linda Gainer, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, 2010
Diana Birkett, Group Health Cooperative, Seattle, 2010
Melinda Merrill, Fred Meyer, Portland, 2010
Tracy Mihas, Kraft Foods, Portland, 2012
Arlo Corwin, /u/Horizon Wind Energ, Portland, 2012
Tom Hosea (6th), KeyBank, Tacoma
Carl Kester, Lakeside-Milam Recovery Center, Kirkland, 2011
Violet Boyer, Independent Colleges of Washington, Seattle, 201
Nate Miles, Lilly USA, Seattle, 2010
DeLee Shoemaker, Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, 2010
Jack McRae, Premera Blue Cross, Mountlake Terrace,PAST CHAIR
Ken Johnson, ,Puget Sound Energy,, Bellevue, 2012
Kirk Nelson, Qwest, Seattle, 2011
Tom Walker, Qwest, Seattle, 2010
Ross Baker, Regence BlueShield, Seattle, 2012
Cherie Myers, Safeway, Inc, Bellevue, 2011
Jay Jennings, Sanofi-Aventis, Olympia, 2010
Roy Heynderickx, Saint Martin’s University, Lacey, 2012
John Bishop, State Farm Insurance Company, DuPont, 2012
Ron Smith, Seattle University, Seattle, 2011
Dan Dixon, Swedish Med. Ctr., Providence Campus, Seattle, 2010
Kip Knudson, Tesoro Refining & Marketing Company, Anchorage, 2012
Russell Sarazen, T-Mobile USA, Denver, 2012
Terry Finn, Burlington Northern Santa Fe RR, Seattle, 2011
Tom Curry, WA State Medical Association, Seattle, 2010
Bill Hurlbert, Wells Fargo Bank, Seattle, 2010
Wes Uhlman, Wes Uhlman & Associates, Inc., Seattle, 2012
Brock Nelson, Union Pacific Railroad Company, Portland, 2011
David Hansen, UnitedHealthcare, Mercer Island, 2012
Kathleen Paul, Virginia Mason Medical Center, Seattle, 2012
Lew McMurran, Washington Technology Industry Association, Seattle, 2010
Kristen Sawin, Weyerhaeuser Company, Olympia, 2010
Hmmmm…I guess the press release from the AWB would be correct if a. the AWB board had a quorum and b. the ones present voted for it, thus, “unanimous”. I’m not sure why they would say unanimous if it wasn’t.
I am very curious to see how former AWB president and former Seattle Mayor Wes Uhlman voted. As he was also a former legislator, I would think he’d know better than to support, well, ANY Eyman initiative…
Others not likley to have voted this way .. The Hutchinson, Washington Technology (tightly associated with the UW), Microsoft. …
I hope folks here will finf a likely person an write! I am doing that with the Hutch and have made a longer post on this subject over at The-Ave.us
Got email from the Hutch, they were not represented.
Sounds like the press release lied.
Does anyone see the parallels in the Teabagger and republican tendencies to want services but not to pay for them?
They want an educated workforce but are unwilling to share any of the burden to help create it. They want government services but are unwilling to share any of the burden to support it.
The culture of greed?
@9 — I think the point is not that AWB is somehow lying, but that they claim to represent the state’s business community — in particular, the biggies like Boeing and Microsoft — but this “unanimous vote” that they say represents the concerns Washington employers have about taxes, really doesn’t at all.
It appears that a small handful of board members actually showed up to approve this I-1053 endorsement, and a number of them may have been voting based on personal anti-government ideology rather than their company’s official position. Either that, or they are using AWB to do their comapnies’ dirty work, while maintaining plausible deniability so customers won’t get angry at their bottom-line-driven dismantling of state services.
@12 “They want an educated workforce”
Nowhere as much as they want an inexpensive one.