Scoring error costs Vancouver millions in state funds

SEATTLE – A state board yanked millions of dollars in redevelopment funding from the city of Vancouver and Whitman County on Tuesday after discovering a scoring error in the way the awards were made.

Instead, the money will go toward a mixed-use redevelopment in Puyallup.

“I’ve had better days,” Vancouver lobbyist Mark Brown said.

Brown said Vancouver filed a public records request for documents associated with the projects to seek grounds for an administrative appeal or, failing that, a lawsuit.

Nine projects statewide vied for “local infrastructure financing tool,” or LIFT, awards, which are given by a board in the state Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development. The awards essentially allow local governments to keep state sales tax receipts to help retire bonds.

The projects are scored on factors such as how many jobs they are expected to create and how well those jobs pay. On Friday, a day after announcing the selections, the department said it had discovered a data entry error.

A member of the Community Economic Revitalization Board accidentally entered an “88” instead of an “8” – on a scale of 1 to 10 – for one of the criteria in assessing Vancouver’s proposal. When the mistake was fixed, Vancouver’s project dropped from the top score to fourth place, behind projects in Yakima, Mount Vernon and Puyallup.

Whitman County finished behind Vancouver.

Vancouver would have gotten $500,000 a year for 25 years for rail and road improvements as part of a waterfront community development plan at the old Boise Cascade paper mill site along the Columbia River.

According to the Columbian newspaper, investors planned to spend more than $1 billion to build 2,700 condominiums and apartments, plus stores, restaurants, offices, two hotels, and 10 acres of park and open space.

Whitman County stood to receive $362,000 for up to 25 years for retail development near the Idaho border that was expected to create 1,400 jobs.