Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Long-form interviews and conversations from Mason County, Washington. Host Jeff Slakey sits down with local leaders, legislators, small business owners, and community voices for unhurried conversations about what's shaping the Hood Canal region — government, education, healthcare, the outdoors, and the people making a difference.
New episodes drop throughout the week. For daily local headlines, subscribe to KMAS Morning News with Jeff Slakey.
Well, the legislative session is underway. I had a chance to talk with Representative Dan Griffey and Travis Couture earlier in the week, and now it's time to check in with State Senator Drew McEwen. Drew, how are you? I am good.
Thanks, Jeff. How about yourself? I'm doing well, and good to see you and good to hear from you, Deputy Leader, again, of the Senate Republican Caucus for the State of Washington in the 35th. We heard from the Governor this week in his State of the State.
I've been seeing some of the media reports coming out. Tell me a little bit about your thoughts on that. Yeah, well, definitely a different tone from a year ago.
A year ago, he struck a more bipartisan tone. It certainly did not feel that way this year. And as we saw through the session last year, the bipartisan tone he did at the beginning faded as the session progressed, and there ended up being not a single tax bill that he did not like.
He signed every tax into law last year to the tune of over $9 billion in new taxes on the State of Washington, and, you know, came into this session and immediately proposes an income tax. So there's no stopping, I don't think, how the other side feels about the taxation in the state. They want more of it.
They will always throw out that the Governor does this and the legislative Democrat majority does this as well. They say that we have a regressive system, yet they offer no tax relief to the working class. They only propose more taxes.
And that's problematic. People are getting taxed out of the state, and that's unfortunate. I think there's a complete detachment from reality of what is being experienced by working-class citizens in the state.
And just the ability to keep their homes because of high property taxes is becoming insurmountable. So we've got our work cut out for us this session, and we'll see how things progress here. But I intend to be a loud voice on the opposition to more taxes.
The state revenue coffers have grown at an exponential rate that far outpaces what family incomes have grown over the last decade. And again, there continues to be a spending problem here in Olympia. I saw on the Senate Republican website, a infographic there about the price of a kid's meal here in our state versus elsewhere around the country.
The South was the closest next price. And you say on there in Washington, families paying 90% more than the next highest, which is the South of the United States. What do you attribute that to? Well, a lot of it is our labor cost.
This legislature and the governor in the past administration as well artificially inflate wages in the name of driving down costs. And again, there isn't an economics 101 course out there outside of socialism that purports to, if you raise wages, that prices go down. It's the exact opposite.
And we're seeing that more and more. We've also got the highest fuel tax in the nation, or one of the highest fuel taxes in the nation. Our gas and diesel are more expensive than anywhere else.
And guess what? All of our goods, food, dry goods, everything else is transported at one point or another via a system that relies on gas or diesel. And we have those high costs. And so when you combine labor, you combine transportation costs.
And then I would also argue our property tax system, the regulatory environment, those all are cost drivers. Our restaurant industry in this state is higher priced. You go out to eat at a comparable place in Western Washington versus New York or San Francisco, a lot of times we're going to be more expensive or at least on par.
And that's just not a sustainable trajectory for people in the state. And we see that with a number of closures that have happened, frankly, in the Seattle area, but even so more locally, just within the hospitality industry. And again, there's a detachment from reality by this legislature and administration on what those cost drivers are.
One of the things that the folks sitting around their kitchen tables these days penciling out their budgets, you mentioned the property taxes, the schools all across Mason County and the 35th, many of them are putting out for levies to help supplement some of the dollars that may not be fully in. Coming from the state legislature, talking to Shelton superintendent, wife, Jesse, at least he claims for the Shelton school district in particular, it's about a $4 million deficit between what the state apportions and what they need to run the Shelton school district. So the levy is upcoming for that.
What do you say to districts and superintendents across the state on how, what is, people would say the number one mandate of the state constitution is education, yet we're seeing these numbers kind of deficit? Yeah, there's a number of items there to tackle. First and foremost, we spend roughly $19,000 per pupil for K-12 education in the state of Washington, one of the highest. And we've got declining test scores and we continue to have declining test scores.
The answer isn't more money, answer is right-sizing education. And one of the things the legislature can do is end the unfunded mandates. The legislature does put down a number of mandates and then doesn't have the money to back those requirements on school districts.
That would go a long way in helping local districts. But again, you look at some other states that spend less per pupil and have higher test scores. We, in this state, I believe that through the OSPI and again, especially the past administration, put more focus on things not education-related in our K-12 system.
And those are cost drivers. And instead of investing those dollars into education itself. So again, we need to right-size education.
The biggest thing we could do right now to help local districts is to get rid of the unfunded mandates. And look, I understand why districts need to run some of these levies. I get that.
But you speak to the kitchen table and folks are tapped out. There isn't more to give. And that's the harsh reality that is before a lot of families right now.
And that's completely unacceptable. When it comes to, I was talking to Representatives Griffin and Couture about this earlier in the week. And they were talking about some of those taxes that you saw get enacted over this course of this year after the last session.
And some of those unintended consequences. And Representative Couture says, you know, the likelihood of those, even with the unintended consequences being shown and brought to light, are not likely to, you know, change or be rolled back. What are you hearing from some of the folks in the 35th on those? Yeah.
Again, the new taxes caught a lot of people off guard. I mean, I'll give an example. My wife went to a paint and sip party early in December for a Christmas party.
And now that's a taxable event. It's a live demonstration. And that's now taxable.
And I think people are finally scratching their heads saying, what's going on here? We're having less services, less infrastructure. Our K-12 system is not functioning properly. And we're paying more in taxes.
That is a hard spot for a lot of folks to be in. As to rolling these back or getting rid of them, yeah, I'd love to. Absolutely.
But I have yet, in the time that I've been here, ever see this legislature propose a reduction in taxes. It's the exact opposite. And so, again, we're going to be vocal about this.
I hope we can prevail and get some folks on the other side of the aisle to come to an understanding that this is not a sustainable trajectory. You cannot tax your way to prosperity. And we're seeing the consequences of that today.
If there are these taxes remain in place, are there ways that they can be shifted or moved maybe towards some of those unfunded mandates that we were just talking about in education? Or is everything so specific that it kind of really is an overhaul that would need to be looked at? Yeah, that's a great point, Jeff. It comes down to priorities of budgeting. And everybody preaches about K-12 education being our paramount duty.
But I would argue that the priorities of a number of budgets over the years have done the exact opposite of that. And, yeah, the funds are there. They were there before these tax increases.
But the wrong choices have been made. And that's a course correction, again, that needs to happen. So, yeah, we could address a lot of these things.
And again, I go back to when I was first elected, I took office in 2013, and our state budget was $32 billion. And today it's over $80 billion. And you look at all these things that are underfunded or haven't been funded, the money has gone to waste, frankly.
That is a substantial growth that far exceeds, as I mentioned before, families' income growth over the last decade. And the opportunities have been there, and they've been squandered. Yesterday or earlier this week, at least two of the sheriffs from the counties you represent, Mason and Thurston, were at the legislature talking about this proposal that would essentially, and Sheriff Sperling and I have talked about this for a while now, take the installation or removal of a sheriff from a county away from the voters in that county, and more of a kind of a commission, I think, is what he was talking about.
What do you know about that? And what have you heard about that? Yeah, I oppose this legislation. Look, sheriffs are duly elected in their jurisdictions in their respective counties. And there is a mechanism to remove a sheriff if need be, and that's by a recall petition, as it is for any elected official in our state.
And so that exists there. And the notion that we're going to take an unelected body, the Criminal Justice Training Commission, and give them the authority to remove a sheriff is draconian to me and unacceptable. The root of this has to do with a clash in values between some very progressive Democrat legislators, frankly, and sheriffs in eastern Washington and some even in western Washington that they don't like.
And, you know, we continue to have this ongoing conflict in our state where we don't recognize federal law on one hand. On the other hand, we do. We then criticize sheriffs that take a similar stance.
And this is the problem you run into when you pick and choose which laws you want to follow. You're opening Pandora's box. We either follow the laws or we don't.
And again, if a sheriff needs to be removed, the voters have a mechanism to do that. To allow an unelected body to remove a sheriff is flies in the face of democracy, frankly, and is unacceptable to me. One of the things I heard from the Mason County Commission as they were starting up their first couple of sessions here this new year was a letter they were proposing to the governor, but it may be just going to the state in general.
And it kind of falls in line with this crime and legislation. And it's the unfunded mandates, the changes when it comes to public defense and how the changes in some of the ways the Supreme Court was, it was almost like, for lack of a better term, it's kind of like points on a Weight Watchers scale where different crimes get different weights. What do you know about how that is moving through or the impact there? Well, this relates to essentially managing the caseload for public defenders, which I think there's a valid reason for that, right? I mean, if you can't afford an attorney, you have a constitutional right to have one appointed for you at the public expense.
And that cost is shared between the state and the counties. And it's a large amount of money for, especially for counties the size of Mason County. And as caseloads increase, I mean, my gosh, if you're a defendant and your public defender is representing 12 other people at the same time, how effective is that counsel? And that is a grave concern.
And there's also a constitutional issue there because you're entitled to a fair trial. Well, is it fair if your attorney isn't fully focused on your case? I'd argue it's not. The good news is on a bipartisan basis, we all recognize this.
We've got to fix this. The bad news is there's not an easy fix. I toyed with some legislation last year to try to address this and kind of got stalled out because of the Supreme Court.
We're waiting on a ruling from them. Now that we have that, I'm hopeful we can find a path forward to help address it. It's not going to get cured overnight, but we need to get on a path that sets that up.
I think the state's going to need to take on more of that because it's just not financially feasible for counties to be able to do it. And I'd also argue one of the things that I had in my legislation that I was working on was that, frankly, I think public defenders should have equal resources as a prosecutor's office. I'm going to make this up because I don't know the exact numbers, but prosecutors have X number of investigators.
They have assistant prosecutors. A public defender, they do not have those same resources. They might be sharing one investigator amongst a litany of cases.
And so those resources are not on par either. I believe that raises other constitutional issues as well. Then again, this is completely different.
If you have the ability to hire an attorney, you have to. That's a different situation. But when we're providing the public defense for somebody that can't afford it, I believe they should be entitled to equal resources as the prosecution.
It's a short session, a 60-day session, and it's up and running here. Senator McEwen doing the best he can to work and advocate for the folks in the 35th. And we'll continue these conversations all throughout session and kind of see where we land at the end.
It's good to see you. Likewise. Good luck out there.
Hey, thanks, Jeff. Thanks for having me.