By Susanna Ray
Herald Writer
Think for a minute about some of the most annoying problems in your life.
The unbearable traffic.
Enormous electricity bills.
Skyrocketing tuition for state colleges and universities.
Anyone who could find the solutions would be as popular as the Seattle Mariners’ Ichiro Suzuki and end up with their face on bobblehead dolls all over town.
One hundred and forty-seven state lawmakers will kick off their pitch to be bobbleheads with Monday’s start of the 60-day 2002 legislative session.
Most people don’t realize that the part-time citizen Legislature has the power to affect their lives in dramatic ways.
Take Sarah Dillon.
Like most 19-year-olds – or almost anyone, really – Dillon doesn’t follow politics much.
She was able to correctly identify Gary Locke as Washington’s governor, but when it came to state legislators, who knows what district they are in, let alone who represents that district?
But it’s those unknown politicians who control a lot of the strings in the opening act of Dillon’s adult life.
Dillon just moved to Everett from southwest Washington a few months ago to live with her mother and go to school at Everett Community College, so the threat of steep tuition increases is foremost on her mind. Can she afford them with her part-time job at a downtown Everett sports store?
If she manages to pay for school, get good grades and transfer to the University of Washington to study business, as she hopes to do, the traffic along I-5 is going to force another huge change in her life. There’s no way she could make the Everett-Seattle commute every day, she said. So she’ll have to move again.
Even though Dillon is aware that legislators are talking about fixes to the transportation problem, she has no expectation that anything will be better in time to help her out.
“What can they really do about traffic, anyway, if it’s going to take them five years to build a big project that will only take a minute off travelers’ total commute time?” she said.
The traffic nightmare came as a shock to Todd Stuart, who moved here in 2000 from Oklahoma to be the youth pastor at the First Baptist Church of Everett. Even though he doesn’t have a long commute to work, “if we go anywhere during the day, we have to plan around traffic,” Stuart said wonderingly.
As soon as he moved here, it became clear to him what the state’s biggest problem is.
It’s clear to legislators, too, and has been for years, although the contentious issues involved make a solution murkier than the view from your windshield during a downpour on I-5.
Where will the money come from at a time of recession when everyone’s strapped for cash and Tim Eyman is breathing down lawmakers’ backs with tax-cutting initiatives? Who will pay for what? Which projects are most important? Will new roads or other transit options ease the traffic crunch better? Should the state contract out some of the work? Should voters get a direct say, or should elected officials make the choices?
And there are loads of other, inside issues involved, such as the makeup of various transportation committees and who has jurisdiction over what.
Legislators have other things to deal with as well. The Capitol buildings damaged by last February’s earthquake still need to be fixed, farmers are still dealing with last year’s drought, businesses are still suffering from astronomical increases in electricity bills, and the dot-coms remain busted.
Some problems have worsened. Boeing not only moved to Chicago, it is in the middle of laying off up to 30,000 workers, and the state has a $1.2 billion budget hole to fill (it’s not allowed to carry debt, as the federal government does).
And at a time when social services are in more demand than ever, the governor and legislators say they have no choice but to cut back on funding to keep the state in the black.
That’s a concern to people like Lisa Blassingame of Kirkland, who works out of an Everett office to help disabled adults find jobs. She doesn’t keep up with the Legislature, but she does know about the cuts looming for social services such as hers.
“I think the huge cuts in taxes with the Tim Eymans of the world filter down to so many levels that the public doesn’t understand,” Blassingame said of the Mukilteo man’s initiative that led to the elimination of the state’s motor vehicle excise tax. “People just think, ‘Oh, it’s $30 car tabs, that’s great.’”
Bryan Hagen, an 18-year-old from Arlington, just started reading the paper a year or two ago because “I hate being ignorant,” he said. Keeping up on current affairs also gives him topics to chat about with customers at the downtown Everett coffee shop where he works.
While steaming milk and tamping espresso shots, he’s done a lot of thinking about the issues the state is facing, and says he wouldn’t mind paying higher taxes if it would help ease traffic and take care of vulnerable people.
But that’s certainly not everyone’s view.
And that’s what lawmakers will have to balance over the next two months.
One thing that has changed from last year is the political makeup of the Legislature. For the past two sessions, the House has been equally divided between Republicans and Democrats. Both had to agree on bills before they could even come up for consideration. That led to a lot of finger-pointing and not much agreement.
Now, thanks to two special elections in Snohomish County in November, Democrats control the House, the Senate and the governor’s mansion. This will make it somewhat easier to push their agenda through. The margins are slim, however – only one seat in the Senate and two in the House.
In addition to transportation and the budget, lawmakers will have other issues to look at, such as providing extended aid for laid-off Boeing workers, keeping state residents safe from terrorism, making sure the state is a competitive place to do business, easing prison crowding by changing sentencing guidelines, whether to take advantage of gambling’s popularity to fill the state’s coffers, and figuring out where to put violent sex offenders once they are released.
“Last year, I told people it was my 15th year in the Legislature and it was the worst session I’d been in yet,” Sen. Harriet Spanel, D-Bellingham, told a roomful of reporters at a session preview last week. “This year’s problems aren’t any smaller, and the solutions won’t be any easier. … (But) this is why we were elected.”
You can call Herald Writer Susanna Ray at 425-339-3439
or send e-mail to ray@heraldnet.com.
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