State Rep. Jeanne Edwards, D-Bothell, and the challenger for her First District seat, Republican Leo Van Hollebeke, don’t agree on much. They don’t even agree on issues related to the siting of the Brightwater sewage plant, one of the subjects that has elicited the most agreement from state legislative candidates in this election season.
Van Hollebeke says he would support reintroduction of legislation along the lines of that introduced last year that would have required a jurisdiction to receive formal consent of another jurisdiction to site a facility within its borders. That legislation, a response to King County’s proposal to build the plant at one of two locations in Snohomish County, was not approved.
Though the facility likely will be sited on Highway 9 north of Woodinville and the pipeline is proposed to run through King County to Puget Sound – alleviating the concerns of those in Mountlake Terrace, where residents had raised the biggest fuss – Van Hollebeke still supports the legislation as an accountability measure.
“That’s just good public policy,” he said.
Edwards doesn’t see a need for it. She said King County Executive Ron Sims and Snohomish County Executive Bob Drewel agreed years ago to the need for the plant in Snohomish County, so there was not a lack of representation.
“We have to site that somewhere,” Edwards said, citing the fact that more than 60 percent of the sewage that will be processed by the plant will come from Snohomish County.
“It’s really a Snohomish County facility,” she said. Passage of the bill could interfere with siting of needed facilities, Edwards said.
Edwards is seeking her third two-year term in Olympia. She is a past member of the Bothell City Council and the Snohomish County Board of Health and chairs the board of Community Transit. She said her experience will come in especially handy this year, in which the Legislature faces a projected shortfall of more than $2 billion over the next two years.
“This is a big and difficult year,” she said. “There’s not time to train new people.”
Edwards said that making small cuts here and there probably won’t be enough to balance the budget. She said health care and services for children and the elderly, along with teacher salaries, would be priorities for her to keep. Candidates for cutting, she said, could include state employees in some agencies, boards and commissions, legislative staff and combining some departments.
Van Hollebeke, a Lynnwood landscaping contractor, said regular performance audits of agencies performed by independent, outside organizations would uncover a lot of waste that could be cut. Current audits directed by the state Legislature and carried out by the state Auditor are not thorough enough, he said.
“Let some state employees go,” he said. “We’re not in the business of employing people.” Van Hollebeke also called for the Department of Social and Health Services to be broken up into smaller units.
Edwards defended the Legislative-directed audits as adequate and said breaking up DSHS would “just run ourselves into more money.”
Regarding education, Edwards said the state does a good job providing funds for students who need extra help and that the schools are doing a good job with testing. Van Hollebeke – who ran in 2000 against state Sen. Rosemary McAuliffe, D-Bothell, on an educational reform platform – called for fewer mandates and regulations passed down to the local level to allow school districts to reduce the number of administrators and keep or increase the money in teacher salaries.
“I will make the tough decisions to make that happen,” he said.
Van Hollebeke opposes state Referendum 51, the statewide transportation revenue package proposed for the November ballot.
He believes accountability measures built into the referendum won’t be enough to ensure that the projects are built as intended, and called for a 50-year transportation plan.
He suggested the state tie sales tax funds sent to local governments to development of monorail and dedicated right-of-way bus systems in place of Sound Transit – which he acknowledged would “not be easy to do.”
Edwards supports R-51, saying that it includes deadlines for reporting progress to each area and timelines for each project, that it is needed and will create jobs. She said said a 20-to-25 year plan would be more realistic than Van Hollebeke’s suggestion.
“How are we going to know what it’s going to cost 50 years from now?” she said.
In general, Edwards said her accomplishments include pushing for and getting the Legislature to approve receiving health insurance for children available through the federal government; stricter training for technicians in kidney dialysis centers; bills to adjust speed limits in areas where it was needed, and help for seniors on home health care.
Van Hollebeke said his community involvements, including youth sports and church activities, keep him in touch with what residents want. He said he is the person for the job because “I have long-term vision and will be a thoughtful person. I have the guts to make necessary changes.”
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