Voice of the Mid-Columbia | Kennewick, Pasco and Richland, Wash. |
 |
 |
Chris Mulick has worked for the Herald since 1998 and has served as the statehouse correspondent covering state government and politics since 2000. He works year-round out of the Herald's Olympia bureau on the state Capitol campus. Have a question? Send Chris an e-mail and he'll answer the best questions regularly. |
Print
E-Mail
tool name
closeToday the Herald published a lengthy story and sidebar that takes a look at the governor’s role in the failed recruitment of Areva’s $2 billion uranium enrichment plant to the Tri-Cities. Despite its considerable length, there’s still lots of material that didn’t make the final cut.
You can find the mainbar here. We posted pertinent e-mail for download there and included links to Herald editorials included in the story. You can find the sidebar here.
A condensed story that greatly abbreviates the whole package for other McClatchy-owned newspapers can be found here.
In this space we’re going to break down the governor’s support of the project. Make no mistake, in the end, Gregoire did support it. What is in question is how strongly Gregoire supported it since her backing was believed to be unusually important to the company.
I talked with the governor Friday morning and to hear her explain it, her support for the Areva plant was unequivocal and that was understood by Areva.
Now, I didn’t get to listen in to her phone conversations with Areva President Michael McMurphy. But the record shows something different.
The first we heard her speak about Areva was following a bill signing ceremony April 1. It was the first time in a while, and the last since, the press corps had a chance to ask her a wide range of questions. Since at least the new year she has done away with what had been pretty regular Q&A sessions with the press.
After saying she’d raised concerns about the plant’s waste stream with McMurphy Gregoire was asked directly if she could support the project if it met all the usual regulatory and permitting conditions.
“It depends on whether they’re able to deal with that, but, yes, they’ve been a good corporate citizen,” Gregoire said. That did not sound like something a governor says when they’re rolling out the red carpet.
She reacted unfavorably to subsequent coverage and a Herald editorial that suggested her support was limited, even though her lead staffer on the issue in an e-mail had written the editorial’s characterization of her support as “conditional” was “EXACTLY the right message.”
E-mail obtained by the Herald indicates project supporters had been trying to squeeze a position out of Gregoire, followed by her personal help in recruiting the company, for some time. It also showed how the governor’s office developed two different responses to constituent inquiries on the subject, one for pro-Areva messages and one for anti-Areva messages.
And in responding to some inquiries about Areva the governor’s office distributed not its own words but a follow-up Herald editorial reporting she had called to protest the suggestion her support was “conditional.”
Perhaps the most revealing thing the governor ever said about her position came the day Areva announced it was heading to Idaho. In a statement she said she was “disappointed.”
It could be that Gregoire simply didn’t understand how her words and actions sounded. Because to others it sounded as though her heart wasn’t in it.
Stay updated with the Olympia Dispatch RSS feed: http://www.tri-cityherald.com/944/v-highlights/index.rss
@Nyx.CommentBody@