Madore: Fee waiver program is “working fabulously”

Clark County Commissioner discusses report critical of fee waiver program in an exclusive Q&A

David Madore

The Clark County Auditor’s Office released a report this week finding that the county’s Job Creation – Fee Waiver Program is largely ineffective. The report calls on the Board of Commissioners to eliminate or make significant changes to the program, which was created in 2013 to spur economic development by removing permit application and traffic impact fees on commercial building projects.

The program’s champion, Clark County Commissioner David Madore, spoke with the Vancouver Business Journal in exclusive interview to discuss the report’s findings and the future of the fee waiver program.

Q: After having read the report from the Auditor’s Office, are you considering eliminating or tweaking the Job Creation – Fee Waiver Program?

Madore: Why would we fix something that is working fabulously? [The report] is nothing but politics.

The response I wrote and posted on “the Grid”

(www.clark.wa.gov/thegrid) is very objective and contains very little commentary and is respectful of the position of the Auditor’s Office. It just simply allows for two contrasting views to speak for themselves.

If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.

Q: Based on projections by Clark County’s Department of Community Development, the report says the fee waiver program may not be sustainable. How do you respond to that?

Madore: Is a positive rate of return sustainable? We thought you might have to prime the pump [when we started the program]. We thought you’d have to have some extra contingency funds to supplement the program. We put aside $3 million for the first biennium to support this and we didn’t need it.

We’re about ready to adopt a 2015-16 biennium budget and absolutely there are no funds in there to support the fee waiver program because we don’t need it. It’s going to give us revenue instead of us giving it revenue.

Every business is paying all of their taxes. No businesses are getting any kind of tax deferred thing the way Vancouver does it where they waive their future tax revenue. We have waived no tax revenue. All of these businesses will be paying revenue to the county which lightens the load for everybody else.

Q: Do you agree with the report’s findings that millions of dollars in fee waivers has gone to projects that, according to national studies and past fee waiver recipients, would have occurred anyway?

Madore: [The report] is confusing national policies with a business-friendly environment in a local community. They have nothing to do with each other. National policies raise or lower the tide on a national scale.

As for the past fee waiver recipients, the report refers to a 2011 survey that says for 60 percent of the people surveyed the fee waivers wouldn’t make any difference. Well, they were talking to the wrong people. They were talking to contractors and builders that would just pass that cost on to the owner of the business.

It’s kind of like a bunch of race cars going around on a track. Clark County was one of the last cars on the track and something changed about the same time as our free waiver was adopted. Now that car in the last position has a two-lap lead over every other car. To claim that would have happened anyway and that there’s no cause… that takes a lot more faith than I have to believe it would just happen, especially when you look at what was forecasted by the CREDC (Columbia River Economic Development Council) or by the Employment Security Department. They forecasted more status quo, lagging behind, mediocrity, pain and stagnation. That’s what they forecasted for the foreseeable future. Well what changed?

I’m not claiming causation. I don’t want to necessarily take credit, but something is happening. And whatever it is, we aren’t going in the wrong direction.

Q: The report finds that most of the jobs created and forecast by fee waiver recipients are not high-wage positions and are unlikely to reduce the number of out-of-county commuters. Was the quality of jobs being created something that was considered when enacting the program?

Madore: No, it wasn’t. It was to welcome free enterprise and don’t mess with it. Let the private sector do what the private sector does best. Government’s job is to get out of the way and to build a culture within our staff here that focuses on making our customers successful. When we do that, everybody wins. I trust the free market to create because what is the free market? It’s entrepreneurs out there with imaginations, creativity and a vision to go out there with a plan and do something. When they do that they create brand new revenue from scratch. They’re not dividing a pie that’s a fixed size. They’re making new pies.

Business is like the engine under your hood. Every individual business is like another cylinder in the engine. One of the smartest things that communities can do is to allow those who want to add new cylinders to the engine of the community to go ahead and do so because businesses are a net gain for everybody. They generate revenue.

Q: How do you plan to constructively work with the Auditor’s Office on future issues, given that you strongly disagree with their findings?

Madore: If you’re going to welcome transparency, that comes with welcoming scrutiny and welcoming dissent – really engaging in a conversation and being able to answer the question and talk about the different viewpoints and the different issues. It comes down to a basic core principle: truth knows no fear of exposure. Light doesn’t fear darkness, darkness fears light. When we talk, engage, answer questions and listen – that’s all turning on the lights.

I don’t make enemies … My job is to be unoffendable. My job is to get along and to always be respectful, always be courteous, always treat them with honor regardless of what they say, regardless of what they do. We’re entrusted as somewhat of an ambassador. We’re supposed to represent decency and the best of human behavior. It doesn’t matter what differences we have, we can still disagree agreeably.