https://www.ever47.com Ideas, data, and practical solutions for making Washington the best state to build, create, and live. A civic ideas publication — part digital magazine, part policy lab. en-us Sat, 27 Jun 2026 00:52:38 GMT https://www.ever47.com/essays/the-washington-century https://www.ever47.com/essays/the-washington-century Fri, 26 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Vince Graham Essay Washington has extraordinary advantages. Its future now depends on whether it can convert them into homes, power, infrastructure, talent, delivery, and trust. https://www.ever47.com/articles/the-housing-unlock https://www.ever47.com/articles/the-housing-unlock Thu, 18 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Vince Graham Housing & Communities Washington legalized the missing middle in 2023, but legalization alone produces no homes. Three operational reforms — ministerial approval, pre-approved building plans, and honest connection-fee pricing — determine whether the law translates into housing. The binding constraint is time, not ideology. https://www.ever47.com/articles/the-47-index-spring-briefing https://www.ever47.com/articles/the-47-index-spring-briefing Thu, 11 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Vince Graham Economy & Innovation The spring 47 Index finds Washington getting easier to build in on net: median residential permit time fell to 94 days (the first sustained drop in a decade), and advanced-manufacturing apprenticeships grew 18% — but clean-energy interconnection queues lengthened again, making the grid the state’s binding constraint. https://www.ever47.com/articles/ai-in-the-real-world https://www.ever47.com/articles/ai-in-the-real-world Thu, 04 Jun 2026 12:00:00 GMT Vince Graham Economy & Innovation Away from demos and doom, three Washington institutions — a port authority, a rural clinic, and a city permitting office — are using AI to clear the queues that keep human judgment from being applied. The lesson is operational: AI pays off in organizations that had already digitized their work. https://www.ever47.com/articles/the-grid-that-says-yes https://www.ever47.com/articles/the-grid-that-says-yes Thu, 28 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT Vince Graham Infrastructure & Energy Washington runs on some of the cleanest power in America yet has a multi-year backlog of projects waiting to connect. The fix is procedural — cluster studies, meaningful deposits, and a utility culture that treats interconnection as a service delivered on a deadline rather than a risk studied indefinitely. https://www.ever47.com/articles/apprenticeship-state https://www.ever47.com/articles/apprenticeship-state Wed, 20 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT Vince Graham Education & Workforce As four-year degrees grow more expensive and less certain, Washington’s registered apprenticeships have quietly become one of the most reliable debt-free on-ramps to the middle class — and the state is, almost by accident, building one of the country’s most interesting workforce systems. https://www.ever47.com/articles/salmon-economics https://www.ever47.com/articles/salmon-economics Tue, 12 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT Vince Graham Environment & Resources On the Skagit, a new generation of habitat-restoration projects is reframing stewardship as an industry rather than a cost — designing arrangements where conservation and the agricultural economy finance each other instead of competing. https://www.ever47.com/articles/permitting-as-state-capacity https://www.ever47.com/articles/permitting-as-state-capacity Sat, 02 May 2026 12:00:00 GMT Vince Graham Government & Policy Nearly every state ambition — housing, clean energy, semiconductors, transit — routes through a permit counter. Treating permitting speed as a measurable, owned, improvable public-sector metric is the unglamorous core of state capacity. https://www.ever47.com/articles/the-cascadia-corridor https://www.ever47.com/articles/the-cascadia-corridor Wed, 22 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT Vince Graham Infrastructure & Energy High-speed rail linking Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver in under three hours would knit three metros into one labor market. The studies are done; the frontier is delivery — land assembly, a credible cost estimate, and governance that outlasts any single election.