Voters guide statements should be limited to local residents
Published 1:30 am Thursday, April 13, 2023
I wrote a letter to the South Whidbey Record regarding an upcoming school bond election and wanted to make other Island County residents aware of something I found in the voters’ pamphlet pro and con statements.
The pro statement was written by school district residents. The con statement was not. Jeff Heckathorn lives in Snohomish County but has ties to 1990s alumni here on Whidbey. He has a website that analyzes school district data across the state. He then offers to write statements opposing a school levy/bond without knowing anything about that school district’s day-to-day operations.
In 2022 he wrote the con statements “for some 50 other tax measures across the state” according to Cascadia Daily News in Bellingham. In Everett he opposed “14 of the 23 school and fire district levy propositions” for a special election, outlined by Joel Niemi in a letter to The Daily Herald.
This is legal because the 2015 state statute does not contain language requiring statements on local measures, levies and bonds to be written by district residents. The Whatcom County Auditor’s office amended its guidelines requiring residency for pro and con committee members after their special election for school bonds.
Heckathorn is following a nation-wide movement to gut public school systems by levy/bond destructive financial means. The movement then promotes school voucher systems so that our taxes for public institutions/services can also be used to fund student allocations to private schools.
Whatcom County saw the “con” in the voters’ pamphlets and did something about it. Island County needs to do the same thing. So, call or email our three county commissioners, our county auditor and our state House/Senate members. Non-resident political voices should not be allowed to weigh in on our local ballot measures when they don’t live in or know anything about our local communities and how they function.
Charlene Davenport
Clinton
