Letters to the Editor

Letter to the editor | Looking for a glimmer of hope in politics

I attended two local town hall type sessions on Saturday, March 15th, mainly to hear what two of our 26th District representatives in Olympia (Republican Michelle Caldier and Democrat Adison Richards) could offer up to deal with the financial state of our State (and to look for a glimmer of hope for some cooperation between parties in the legislature).

The public narrative paints a very contentious and imbalanced situation in Olympia politics as a manifestation of the first political party super-majority there since 1994. Games in exclusivity erode the potential for the two parties to work together and diminish the capability of the system to solve problems.

The ‘elephant in the room’ in Olympia, and at these town hall sessions, is the State budget. Washington State is facing a multi-billion dollar shortfall for the 2025/2026 biennium. One quarter of our revenues come from the Federal Government, the future of which is a complete unknown at this time, too, leaving even the quantification of the problem impossible.

There are no easy answers, nor silver bullets, on this one. Forgive the “out-of-the-box thinking” cliché but we must demand some very innovative, and cooperative, thinking to solve this session’s financial dilemma. We also need to put Washington on a long term path for a healthy and manageable financial future. Focusing on the short term alone can potentially put future legislative sessions in even greater peril.

What our situation begs is our elected representatives putting their shoulder to a major overhaul of our system of taxation as well as of cost management. I’ve repeatedly heard complaints from current and past representatives about this state’s taxation process, and not just in dollar terms, but in the many crippling functions in our bureaucracies commonly labeled ‘red tape’ — permitting usually being the poster boy for that.

I know that lots of us put our finger down our throat as we read about the insensitivity of the apparent current federal approach to ‘downsizing’. But a severe level of creating change can become necessary if government entities, just like businesses, don’t review the viability of their activities. And, by ‘kicking the can down the road’, they run the risk of facing consequences which can include serious, unwanted, and once preventable, collateral damage.

I hope we have the talent, and true interest in serving, making up our field of representatives to take on the degree of review and renew that is so obviously needed.

Back to the issue of hope. I believe both of the two representatives I just visited with have the necessary dedication to service and skills to do what is needed. They were complimentary of each other and both gave credit where it was due – including Governor Ferguson’s rejection of some bill elements flying through the Democratic party’s caucus.

A glimmer of hope there? Yes, but we must all get involved and tell our representatives that to get this job properly done we need much more than we are currently getting from our State legislature.

Jim Braden

Fox Island