business backgrounder | economy
Forget the Feds and Think Local
Talk of booming regional economies contrasts with bickering politicians,
downbeat health law analysis at annual business gathering.
Jason Hagey
AWB’s 24th annual Policy Summit, the last one for retiring President Don Brunell, covered everything
from health care and education to political war stories and an upbeat prediction for the economy.
Joe Scarborough ran for Congress in 1994 because he wanted
to “stop Bill Clinton,” and yet Clinton still managed to “seduce”
Scarborough when they eventually met at the White House.
Mika Brzezinski dumped a plate full of caviar in Deng Xiaoping’s
lap when she was 12 years old, and then amplified her miscue by
trying to clean up the Chinese leader’s pants.
Those were a couple of the anecdotes that television’s “Morning
Joe” co-hosts offered up during their keynote address at AWB’s
24th annual Policy Summit held Sept. 17-19 at Suncadia Resort.
Scarborough and Brzezinski, the political odd-couple who host
the early morning news program on MSNBC, capped a series of
high-profile Policy Summit speakers that also included Gov. Jay
Inslee, Rana Foroohar, assistant managing editor and columnist at
TIME magazine, health care expert Hadley Heath, and a host of
panelists who tackled topics ranging from education to health care.
AWB also presented awards to legislators, lobbyists and business leaders to recognize their work on behalf of the state’s business community.
And the summit was remarkable for another reason: It was the
final summit for AWB President Don Brunell, who is retiring at the
end of the year.
Brunell, who took over as AWB president in 1988, transformed
the association’s annual meeting in the early 1990s, giving it the
name “Policy Summit” and turning it into the state’s premiere
public policy gathering.
2013 Policy Summit CEO panel: (left to right) Scott Morris, CEO of Avista Corporation; Ezra Eckhardt, president and COO of Sterling Savings Bank;
Colin Moseley, chairman of Green Diamond Resource Company; and Don Brunell, president of AWB.
46 association of washington business