The striking feature of last week’s news release announcing the planned departure of Executive Director Timothy Farrell from the Port of Tacoma wasn’t the news itself, or the explanations the involved parties did or didn’t offer.
Phrases such as “going in a different direction,” “spend more time with my family” and “pursue other opportunities” have become such standard boilerplate in these transactions that they fade into the background as a sort of corporate white noise, devoid of any real insight or meaning (although Farrell and the port do deserve some points for managing to crowbar all three into one release).
The more thought-provoking aspect was in another piece of standard boilerplate, phraseology appended to most port press releases and announcements.
The Port of Tacoma, the release says, is the “economic engine for South Puget Sound, with more than 43,000 family-wage jobs in Pierce County and 113,000 jobs across Washington state connected to Port activities.”
Forty-three thousand. Hmmm. Uh, is that good? Bad? Too many? Not enough? Should it be more? Could it be more? What would it take to make it more – and can the taxpayers afford to? Can they afford not to?
It’s an impressive-sounding number, given that total nonfarm employment in the Tacoma metropolitan area in September was 266,500, according to the Employment Security Department. No job, especially one that comes with a decent paycheck, is to be sneered at in the midst of the current economic calamity.
And if the community has gone through convulsions of garment-rending over the move of Russell Investments, with more than 900 employees in the area, then certainly the fate of the Port of Tacoma, with 47 times that many jobs at stake, is worthy of considerable worry among those who care about the economic future of the South Sound.
The problem, though, lies in knowing just what the region’s taxpayers are getting for their money. The benchmarks are so nebulous. That 43,000 figure, for example, comes from a study the port commissioned in 2004 and includes direct, indirect and “induced” jobs. That definition, a spokeswoman says in response to a query, includes “dockworkers, rail and truck drivers who handle the goods, manufacturers and farmers who make or grow the exported goods, shippers who have warehouses and distribution centers nearby because of the port, and then a multiplier that factors in the wages for those local jobs being spent at local restaurants, grocery and retail stores and other businesses.”
(Economic multipliers are a sore subject already for your business columnist, given their spongy nature and potential for manipulation. If I go buy a stapler at the local office supply store, do I then get to claim a multiplier effect for all the jobs in the store, the delivery and supply chain and production necessary to deliver that one $20 item to me?)
All right then, why not compare the port to similar operations? That methodology has its limitations too, at least locally. The Port of Tacoma has benefitted – or coasted, depending on your interpretation – over the years from comparisons to the Port of Seattle, which people in King County often have reason to not care for much. The Port of Tacoma, by contrast, seemed to be better managed, more focused and more possessed of a sense of its future.
Is that still true? The new executive director will have to deal with short-term issues including cargo volumes pummeled by the recession, the financial residue of the NYK and Maytown projects and disgruntlement in the rank and file.
But the lucky new hire will also be asked to deal with issues that are likely to be more crucial to the port’s long-term health and which are likely to prove even more vexing than the immediate headaches: Competition with ports up and down the West Coast, shifting international shipping patterns, whether there really are new opportunities that many of the candidates in the port-commissioner races say they want to pursue.
That’s a lot on the plate of whoever lands the executive director’s job. Then again, he or she will be drawing a nice paycheck (one of those family-wage jobs the port creates) to conjure up some legitimate answers to those challenges.
The Port of Tacoma’s commissioners and their present executive director might be going in different directions. The port itself and the taxpaying citizenry asked to support it, however, aren’t going anywhere in literal terms. They, their elected representatives and the next executive director now have to decide whether, strategically speaking, the port is going anywhere and, if it is, whether that destination is somewhere they want to go or is a trip too expensive to take.
Bill Virgin’s column on business and economics appears Sundays in The News Tribune. He is editor and publisher of Washington Manufacturing Alert and Pacific Northwest Rail News. He can be reached at bill.virgin@yahoo.com.
