Several dozen local citizens gathered Saturday morning at the Northshore Senior Center to meet with and ask questions of the three state legislators from the 1st Legislative District, which includes Bothell.
Representatives Derek Stanford (D – Bothell) and Luis Moscoso (D – Mountlake Terrace), along with Sen. Rosemary McAuliffe (D – Bothell), spoke about their recent efforts in the legislature, shared their ideas for solving tough problems and opened the floor to comments and suggestions from citizens, as well as the first of three town hall meetings across the district.
Stanford started the town hall by saying he was “so thrilled to see such a huge crowd” in attendance, before describing one of his major projects during the recent legislative session, which was a bill to help people deal with debt collections.
Stanford described a “loophole in the law that allows collections agencies to make use of our courts for debt collection purposes” and, eventually, bring about jail time for people who cannot pay their debts. Stanford believes this is wrong in several ways, as it “takes our resources for the court time and the jail time, and it doesn’t help get people out of debt.” The bi-partisan bill, which increases notification requirements and eliminates the use of courts to settle debt, passed the house unanimously and is now awaiting Senate approval.
Moscoso said some of his work has been dedicated to finding a solution to fund transportation projects, as the state currently has no money for maintenance or construction of roads.
One of the major ideas, he said, is “tolling the high occupancy lane on 405 to pay for projects.”
McAuliffe used her introduction time to discuss the recession and why it is so difficult for Washington state to recover, saying, “The bad news is voters rejected the sales tax on pop and candy, rejected the income tax, and supported the Tim Eyman initiative that restricts us to get a two-thirds majority to raise fees and revenue,” adding, “which isn’t going to happen.”
The main bill she has been working on would eliminate the high-stakes test high-school students have to pass to graduate, and instead take the $46 million spent on it “and buy K-third-grade kids in poverty smaller classes and it would only cost $31 million.”
The questions from the audience ranged from property taxes to immigrant medical interpreters to juvenile crime punishment to collective bargaining, and everything in between. One audience member asked what could be done to convince people taxes are good, to which Moscoso answered, “That is the problem, it all started 30 years ago with Reaganomics. There is a war going on between the middle class and the people who are ignorant to what the real problem is.”
Moscoso said the solution is to enact a revenue package, but added, “But it’s not us; we can’t do it until you tell us we can tax and spend again.”
Stanford suggested closing tax loopholes that allow companies to not pay their fair share of taxes, but noted, “It is really sad we have to get a two-thirds majority to close a loophole . . . so we can help the middle class.” Moscoso added, “It’s time for those who have more money than we do to start supporting the rest of us for the common good.”
McAuliffe answered a question about how to balance the budget without cutting state employee benefits, saying, “We have two years until we can fix that initiative . . . we have to dig deep until we can set it to a 50-percent majority, which is our only hope.”
When the topic turned to union benefits outpacing benefits employees in the private sector receive, Moscoso replied, “Nobody cared about the public sector when the private sector did well.” He went on to say, “Now that they ate their own, they look at the public and say, ‘I want what they have.’”
When questioned further about maintaining union bargaining rights, Stanford said, “Collective bargaining is a constitutional right we have to honor.” Moscoso promoted the unions further, adding, “The unions gave you the 40-hour work week, weekends, and got your children out of the mines.”
Another audience member brought up crime among minors, and asked about why juvenile offenders do not always receive the same punishments as adult offenders, which Moscoso said “is not the answer.” He instead offered that since brains of teenage boys are still developing, they have a chance of changing their ways. McAuliffe said a new program actually helps these young offenders get back into school and helps straighten their lives out. The state-funded program is run by the U.S. Army at a school in Bremerton, where the students go for six months and “come out spit and polished” at the end.
After the question-and answer-session, reaction from citizens was mixed. Linda Newton, who describes herself as an Army recruiter-turned de-cruiter, expressed concern about the Army-run program for kids who cannot make it through traditional school, saying, “A military establishment . . . (is) not a job-training place, it is training for war.” She also feared those students would feel compelled to join the military, stating, “The odds for those students (enlisting) are exponentially increased by being in that environment.”
Other local residents, like Bob Carsrud, offered opinions that differed from those of the legislators and the public-education employees that dominated much of the audience, saying it was “disturbing to see how much of the attitude in the room was looking for the magic bullet that will allow government service to continue at current levels” rather than look for new, innovative solutions. McAuliffe’s idea to repeal the two-thirds majority rule in two years also did not sit well with Carsrud, who said, “To my way of thinking, if an idea is not solid enough to gather a two-thirds majority, perhaps it is not as important as its proponents think it is.”
