Gov. Ted Kulongoski made a gutsy move Thursday when he told an East Coast ship dismantling company that it is not welcome to break up scrap ships in Oregon waters. It’s drydock or nothing.

Kulongoski is a bit late in coming to this conclusion, but it’s the right one.

The question remains why he ever backed the efforts of the state’s economic development agency to recruit the company in the first place. I wonder — as I did when Kulongoski backed a plan to build a casino in the Columbia Gorge — just what was he thinking; that Oregon is a place for dreamers, even if their idea of a dream is a heavy industry no other municipality on the West Coast wanted?

That San Francisco didn’t want it is obvious. Although 60 old ships in the National Defense Reserve Fleet are now moored in Suisun Bay near the city, Bay Bridge Enterprises of Virginia had to look elsewhere on the West Coast to locate a water slip where the so-called “ghost fleet” could be towed and cut up.

The company’s plans prompted an outcry from many in Newport, which was Bay Bridge Enterprises’ first choice for an Oregon locale for its ship-breaking facility. Kulongoski’s opponents for the nomination, Pete Sorenson and Jim Hill, heeded and joined in this protest, and Kulongoski withdrew the invitation.

Somewhere, the late Gov. Tom McCall is smiling.

It was in the midst of a major recession of the early 1980s when the frail McCall, dying of cancer, traveled to the Oregon-California border in 1982 to oversee the placement of a sign welcoming all to Oregon.

The event was intended to bury McCall’s infamous “visit-but-don’t-stay” comment of a decade before.

Oregon is open for business was supposed to be the core message that the members of the press took with them that day.

Instead, the small group of reporters witnessed an upsurge of vintage McCall, at the top of his game:

“Oregon is demure and lovely, and it ought to play a little hard to get,” he said.

“And I think you’ll all be just as sick as I am if you find it is nothing but a hungry hussy, throwing herself at every stinking smokestack that’s offered.”

Oregon remains a lovely state because we know when to say no. Bay Bridge still could locate here if it agrees to drydock dismantling. Otherwise, no thanks.

Theresa Novak is the editorial page editor at the Corvallis Gazette-Times. An audio version of this column is available via the “Podcast” link at gazettetimes.com.