West Coast Wonders

Freese draws a distinction between his operation, where offset work is being increasingly outsourced, and Washington's Department of Printing.

"We are different operations," he insists. "I don't consider us to be just running a printing plant. That's one of many things we do. Our job is to coordinate the printing...and get the best value on behalf of our customers. The state of Washington operation...[has] more latitude than we do. They have the ability to offer services to a wider array of customers, and their job, very clearly, is to run a printing plant. The other thing is scale. They're at least twice the size of Oregon when you look at Washington's budget, population and so on. They can achieve greater economies of scale."