The state collected general fund tax payments $62.5 million less – or 5.3 percent less – in the past month than estimated in November, the Economic and Revenue Forecast Council reported late this afternoon.

Actual general fund collections between Jan. 11 and Feb. 10 were $1.106 billion. compared to the previously estimated $1.169 billion.

Revenue Act receipts were $53 million, or 4.7 percent, lower than expected; and non-Revenue Act receipts were down by $9.7 million, or 18.1 percent, from the prediction.

The cumulative shortfall since the November forecast stands at $196.8.

• The council statement said taxes paid by the retail trade sector were 12.7 percent below the level a year ago, following a decline of 13.4 percent the month before. Retail sector payments have declined for 12 of the past 13 months.

• Although food and beverage stores reported an increase of 9.5 percent in tax payments, all other retail sectors reported declines. The greatest of these came in furniture, down 30 percent; motor vehicle dealers, down 26.8 percent, gas stations and convenience stores, down 19.9 percent; clothing and accessories, down 18.6 percent; and building materials and garden supplies, down 17.9 percent.

• The construction sector marked a 9 percent decrease over the same month a year ago, and the manufacturing sector was down 20.6 percent in tax payments.

• Real estate excise tax payments were $11.7 million below the estimate, while real estate tax receipts excluding penalties and interest came in at 47 percent below the level of a year ago. The month before, December receipts declined 49.1 percent from the year before. Taxable real estate activity has fallen for 24 of the last 26 months on a year-over-year basis.

Alaska Airlines today asked the federal Department of Transportation to investigate whether its upstart rival, Virgin America, violates foreign ownership limits.

Those rules prohibit non-U.S. investors from owning more than 25 percent of a U.S. airline.

The issue of Virgin America's ownership delayed Virgin's start up in 2007 when other airlines raised questions about who would finance the fledgling San Francisco-based carrier.

Alaska counsel Keith Loveless said that recent media reports raise questions about whether Virgin America will remain a corporate U.S. citizen.

Virgin America is partly owned by financial partners headed by Britain's Sir Richard Branson. Branson is a founder of Virgin Records, Virgin Megastores and Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Blue, Virgin Nigeria and VAustralia airlines.

A story in the Financial Times on Jan. 18 raised the question whether two major U.S. investors in Virgin America, Black Canyon and Cyrus Capital Partners, will exercise options to extract their $150 million investment in Virgin America. Their ownership stake would revert to the Virgin Group.

Virgin America said Alaska's suspicions are baseless.

"This is a meritless petition. We are a U.S. owned and controlled airline that is in full compliance with the law and all Department of Transportation regulations," said the airline.

"Nothing has changed in our ownership structure which was approved by the DOT. Should our ownership structure change in the future, we will of course notify the DOT in advance, so they can confirm our continuing compliance," Virgin said.

Denver's ProLogis has told the City of Tacoma it is halting plans to develop the former Northern Pacific Railroad shops site in South Tacoma into a 115-acre industrial park.

But the land's current owner, BNSF Railway, intends to continue the planning and permit-seeking process that ProLogis had begun, said Tacoma Community and Economic Development Director Ryan Petty.

ProLogis, smacked hard by the recession, has halted all of its early stage development planning worldwide, put millions of square feet of warehouses on the market and sold off its interest in Japan and China.

The company, the world's largest warehousing and distribution center developer, just today announced new losses even as it consolidates its business.

ProLogis spokeswoman Mo Sheahan said the company is moving swiftly to reshape the company to cope with feeble demand for new warehousing space.

Petty said he first became aware that ProLogis was likely to back out of its commitment to develop the land west of South Tacoma Way late last fall.

When he heard news that the company was having financial issues and that its executive ranks were changing, he called his ProLogis contact who gave him the likely bad news.

At a meeting last month among all the parties in the development program, ProLogis formally declared that it was no longer pursuing the development.

The good news is that BNSF has picked up the development where ProLogis left off, said Petty. The city is now renegotiating agreements with BNSF regarding the land.

Officially, BNSF had little to say about the land deal.

"The matter is under further review," said BNSF regional spokesman Gus Melonas.

The city's utilities arm, Tacoma Utilities, had been set to sell ProLogis land at the north end of the tract near Tacoma Utilities headquarters to provide access to the site from Highway 16.

ProLogis had hoped that when the business park was fully built out it would contain businesses that would employ between 572 and 950 workers.

The land, bordered by South 36th Street, 56th Street, Tyler Street and Burlington Way, was once the site of NOrthern Pacific's South Tacoma shops.

Those shops employed hundreds of workers maintaining locomotives and rail cars. The railroad quit using the shops in 1974, demolishing many of the red brick structures on the site.

Other than a few small users, the site has been unused for three decades.

Petty said BNSF has told him it wants to secure all of the development permits and zonings and then sell the property to another developer.

The city is not directly involved in marketing the property, he said.

"We have a Rolladex with lots of potential contacts on it and we're mentioning its availability to people we know at trade shows and elsewhere, but it's BNSF's property to sell," he said.

The Air Force has award Boeing Co. a nearly $3 billion contract to build 15 more of its four-engine C-17 transports.

The new contract will help keep the C-17 assembly line in Long Beach, Calif. open at least through the summer of 2010.

The Long Beach assembly plant, which Boeing inherited when it merged with McDonnell Douglas in 1997, is the last major aircraft assembly plant in California, a state that once was the aircraft manufacturing capital of the world.

Boeing is also attempting sell more of the transports to European governments still waiting for their first Airbus A400M military transport. That project now is predicted to be four years behind before the first production aircraft is delivered.

The C-17 is the mainstay of the Air Force transport fleet. Pierce County's McChord Air Force Base is a principal post for C-17s.

BNSF Railway's Stampede Pass line, a major connector between the Puget Sound region and Eastern Washington and the Midwest, is expected to reopen from storm damage in mid-March.

Torrential rains in January shut down the former Northern Pacific Railroad line from Auburn to the Yakima area when landslides blocked the route.

BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas said several slides cut the track including one which swept away 250 feet of track, Trains Magazine reported.

The Stampede Pass route carries half-a-dozen trains a day providing a third route across the Cascades. The others are the former Great Northern route through the Cascade Tunnel near Stevens Pass and the former Spokane, Portland and Seattle route on the north side of the Columbia River.

About 75 BNSF workers are clearing the Stampede Pass route, which passes through Tacoma's pristine Green River watershed.

Gasoline prices inched upward again today in the Tacoma area, continuing a trend that began in mid-December when gas prices hit a four-year low here.

That upward march, albeit a slow one, has continued almost unabated for nearly two months.

According to TacomaGasPrices.com, the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular in the Tacoma area today was $2.127 a gallon, up just .001 cent from Monday.

A week ago, the average price was more than 10 cents a gallon less, $2.02.

Gas is still available in the Tacoma area for less than $2 a gallon as several ARCO, Costco and Fred Meyer stations. The lowest price reported by TacomaGasPrices today was $1.93 a gallon at Costco in Puyallup.

Why are gas prices rising? Experts say two factors are in play:

*Producers are making efforts to cut back supplies.

*Demand is rising as a result of relatively low prices in spite of the deep recession. In December, for instance, gasoline purchase nationwide were just three percent less than the year before compared with 7.6 percent in November.

Prices still are significantly below last year. This week in 2008, gas in Tacoma averaged $2.95 a gallon.

As spring moves closer and driving increases, gas prices have historically begun to rise, usually peaking in late May. That didn't happen last year with gas prices continuing to accelerate through mid-July when they reached $4.35 a gallon here.

New figures from the Association of American Railroads show intermodal rail traffic dropped 12.9 percent last month.

Intermodal traffic includes shipping containers such as the ones handled by the ports of Tacoma and Seattle and highway trailers carried on train cars.

The total carload traffic, including other cargoes, on the U.S. rail network fell even farther, 17 percent, the association said.

The Port of Tacoma hasn't published its January figures yet, but for 2008, container traffic fell 3.3 percent to 1.861 million container units.

In December, that volume was off even more, 12.3 percent, port figures show.