Legislative Commentary

For a while this past month my office at the state Capitol was taking call after call from people who had been transferred there by an automated phone call, better known as a “robo-call”.

Some callers were surprised to find a real person on the other end of the line; others were upset because they thought the robo-calls originated from our office. Not true – I’ve only used this technology during legislative sessions to invite constituents to take part in telephone town-hall meetings.

The recent wave of callers seemed to be prompted by partisan robo-calls, about topics like money for state lands and public-recreation projects. The funding is in the proposed capital budget, which should be approved soon after we agree on a permanent remedy to the restrictions on water access stemming from the Hirst decision.

One caller told my staff that a proper Hirst fix is more important than money for recreation areas. I’ll bet his response (which used much stronger language) is not what the robo-call promoters had in mind.

Speaking of recreation, the list of fairs includes five that are under way or coming soon in the 9th District. Today is day two for the Columbia Basin Junior Livestock Show and Fall Festival, both going through tomorrow in Connell.

The Palouse Empire Fair began Thursday and continued through Sunday at the fairgrounds west of Colfax.

The Adams County Fair takes up next Wednesday through Saturday in Othello, and the Garfield County Fair and Rodeo kicks off its three-day run in Pomeroy a week from today.

The first day of fall (Sept. 22) will bring another area fair – the S.E. Spokane County Fair in Rockford, which also runs three days.

Fairs are an important part of our communities and a great place for people of all ages to learn and make memories; for the entire list of fairs in our state check the Washington State Fair Association webpage.

WSU on right track with response 
to student’s fall from window

There has been a lot of focus lately on helping members of “Cougar Nation” travel to and from Pullman safely, including money in the new state transportation budget for highway improvements. The serious injury of a WSU freshman in a fall two weeks ago has understandably put new attention on helping students to stay safe while they’re on campus.

I reached out to the student’s father earlier this week – he was at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, where his 18-year-old boy is undergoing treatment for a head injury suffered in a fall from a second-story window at Community/Duncan Dunn Hall.

We talked as one dad to another, and also with me as 9th District state senator and him representing a 9th District resident.

The young man’s dad has used his many hours waiting at the hospital to launch and moderate a social-media conversation within the WSU community about on-campus safety and emergency-care resources.

While the subject of accident prevention can cover a lot of ground, I appreciate how the family is using the injury of their loved one as inspiration to talk about actions that could spare other families from being in the same situation.

WSU operates 17 residence halls, and they still account for a significant percentage of student housing in Pullman.

The university’s response to this accident seems to be on the right track; steps have been taken to review the safety of residence hall windows, and other efforts are being launched to increase awareness among students about the risk of falls.

I expect President Kirk Schulz and his team will remain committed to making the campus as safe as possible for all who study, live and work there.

Thousands more teachers in classrooms

There is already plenty of proof that our Senate majority is the best friend students and their families have in Olympia. Senator John Braun, our coalition’s budget leader, offers more evidence in the 10th and latest edition of his “Economic Sense” policy paper.

Having a politically divided Legislature has made for some contentious, drawn-out sessions, but as Senator Braun points out, the teacher-student ratio in Washington classrooms has certainly improved since one-party rule of the Capitol ended in 2013.

And the compromises that produced this year’s once-in-a-generation education reforms would have been far less likely were it not for the philosophical differences between the Senate and House of Representatives, as a recent Walla Walla Union-Bulletin editorial suggests.

Inslee still wants it both ways on state income tax

Governor Jay Inslee is at it again. This week the Everett newspaper reported how he was back to touring the state, at taxpayer expense, to complain about how our Senate majority is holding firm about finding a permanent solution to the Supreme Court’s Hirst water-access decision.

One of his stops yesterday in Snohomish County was at a middle school attended by relatives of the Republican state senator who serves the 39th District – who, like me, wants to settle the Hirst situation before approving a new capital budget.

Late last month, ahead of a visit to the Boeing aircraft plant in Everett by Speaker of the U.S. House Paul Ryan, Inslee’s office published an “open letter” to Ryan entitled “Four things Washington, DC can learn from Washington State.”

The very first sentence of his “letter” refers to our state having the best economy in the nation and links that phrase to a CNBC news story. The story, “Washington is America’s Top State for Business in 2017,” highlights the fact that our state has no personal income or corporate income tax.

It’s amazing how Inslee selectively highlights the lack of a personal income tax in our state, even though he wants one (specifically, a tax on the personal income from capital gains).

CNBC ranks our state No. 32 for the cost of doing business. As part of the new budget package passed in June, the Legislature voted to lower business costs for manufacturers across Washington.

But despite solid bipartisan support for the legislation to set a flat business-tax rate for manufacturing in our state, the governor chose to cross working families across the state, the many family-run manufacturing businesses in Washington, as well as Boeing by vetoing the bill.