Sims speaks to Shoreline Rotary

Published 11:28 am Friday, February 22, 2008

King County Executive Ron Sims wants to make several changes if elected governor in 2004. Sims outlined his gubernatorial goals as a guest speaker at the Sept. 9 Shoreline Rotary luncheon.

“King County is significantly impacted by the state government, and we have been waiting for more precise leadership,” Sims said. “We did a lot of the Boeing work, and with tax incentive financing you create a lot of loopholes. I would have passed something differently.”

Sims said he would make education a top priority, and make cuts or go to the voters to fund it.

“The state now only spends 43 percent of its budget on education, which is down from 51 percent 10 years ago. I believe education is a core value and responsibility for the state,” he said.

“In King County, I’ve had to reduce 14 departments to eight, and we’ve made more of our people entrepreneurial, and I haven’t seen that at the state level.

“You don’t spend reserves. You put reserves in there for the catastrophic, not to spend them, but this state doesn’t do that,” Sims said.

“You’ve got to make cuts, no matter how difficult. First, establish the core and fund the core. The go to the voters when the cupboards are bare,” he said. “I did that with Sound Transit, with the parks, on EMS, that’s what the state should be doing.”

Sims says calling the Legislature into special sessions is a sign that the system is broken.

“I work toward bringing consensus, by getting all the stake holders together to sit down with the governor, not staff, and taking adversarial issues and working through them.”

Sims said he would establish a ‘best practices’ program as an incentive that rewards companies by exempting them from regulations. He would also move the state away from punitive measures such as the Business and Occupation tax.

On the state of the economy, Sims said “The state must look at small businesses, they are the largest employers of this state. We need to rethink who to attract to this state for a sustainable economy.”