Roger On The Issues
Health Care Access and Affordability
Despite the failure on the federal level to provide universal access to health care, Washington State can still take important steps to ensure greater levels of access for its own citizens.
First and foremost, all children in Washington must be insured and I will strongly support any initiative to make that happen. We should focus on preventive care rather than having to be reactive with expensive trauma and chronic disease care.
Next, we should re-invest in the state’s Basic Health Plan (BHP), which was a model for the nation but has begun to wither away. We have to repair that hole in the safety net.
We also need to innovate. In an environment of narrow profit margins and budgetary restraints we must be more creative in the health care field. There are models of health care plans that put in place disease management guidelines focusing on health rather than health care, and achieve the best outcomes while containing costs. We should provide incentives and create an atmosphere that allows us to replicate those successful models.
We should also have an important conversation about reforming health care financing so we can reduce the enormous administrative costs of the current system while also preserving patients’ freedom of choice and the quality of care.
Fiscal Responsibility and a Good Business Climate
The wisest use of our scarce public resources is my top priority. I believe that every aspect of government must be subject to performance measurement to ensure that taxpayers get what they pay for.
As a director of a state agency in Olympia I have already witnessed government waste first-hand. I will work toward greater efficiencies in government services without compromising the essential functions that help to secure our quality of life. I will consider spending public dollars as if they are coming out of my own wallet.
In times of prosperity it is easy to forget that Washington’s current state and local tax system is very unstable and very unfair. Small businesses, the backbone of the local economy, are overburdened while some of the largest companies benefit from questionable tax loopholes. Property owners suffer from rising taxes and are sometimes forced out of their neighborhoods. Local governments are forced to react to our unpredictable revenue system by putting ad hoc tax levees on the ballot. And with so many excise taxes, Washington’s system is embarrassingly the most regressive in the nation. I will support measures that restore stability and fairness to the tax system.
We are very fortunate to have a vibrant local economy. Beyond that, we also have many businesses in our region that serve as proud examples of “doing well by doing good.” We must encourage and promote this responsible business climate to prove further that caring about employees’ quality of life and about resource conservation is always good for the bottom line.
Wise Investments in Education
We often hear that “Children are Our Future.” I disagree. Children are Right Now! We must make sure that our children are ready to learn when they go to school, and beyond that we must pay attention to a host of complex issues in the area of education. This includes sufficient local control of our schools, bolstering the infrastructure of our buildings and classrooms, ensuring adequate training, preparation time and compensation for our teachers, optimal classroom sizes, a curriculum that embraces a much wider range of skill sets and fairer and more effective ways to assess student learning beyond the use of high-stakes tests.
The quality of public education is generally quite good in our region and I will work to preserve and enhance our public school system. However, the portion of state dollars devoted to schools has declined alarmingly, leaving local areas to struggle for adequate school funding. Washington’s constitution requires sufficient support for K through 12 education, I will work to increase the state’s investment to satisfy that requirement.
Special Issue Focus: Education
Roger plans to help improve education in Washington. Detailed report.
Managing Economic Development and Population Growth
Our region will experience a doubling of its population over the next few decades. We cannot ignore the need to plan and provide the infrastructure necessary to support this dramatic growth. This requires tough choices as we strive to balance the need to grow with the other critical need to preserve open spaces.
Our approach to growth management has helped somewhat to attract some density and growth to the cities and thereby reduce some suburban sprawl. But much more work needs to be done. We must find a better balance of the needs to provide more affordable housing and more transportation choices with better protection of open spaces and better mitigation of the effects of development, while being much more sensitive to private property rights. The process of managing growth has often been more troublesome than the substance, so we need fairer and timelier permitting processes and we must improve the public input process so that the people are truly listened to.
Traffic Problems and Transportation Choices
Our region’s crush of traffic is maddening. Anyone who tells you that we can “solve” our transportation woes easily or quickly is lying to you. Frankly, our region is so extraordinary that too many people want to live here. We now find ourselves scrambling to make up for decades of inadequate transportation planning. We cannot build our way out of this mess but we can finally begin to work toward providing more transportation choices for the Eastside. This means more than merely widening highway lanes – we must build a truly multi-modal system that allows us to move commerce faster and that equitably gets us where we want to go. But I won’t lie to you - in the meanwhile, we’ll still be sitting in traffic because these developments will take some time.
Public Safety and Public Order
Local budgets are busting across Washington State because of the increasing burden of the criminal justice system. Something is way out of balance. It is time we took a serious look at how our criminal justice dollars are spent so we focus primarily on crimes against persons and property instead of squandering huge sums on a punitive approach toward the mentally ill and the addicted, an approach that research has clearly shown to be counterproductive. By investing in cost-effective alternatives to wasteful incarceration and by employing more effective public safety strategies we will give our law enforcement officers the support and respect they deserve and help make their jobs safer, while making our public spaces and our neighborhoods safer at the same time.Protecting the Environment
Having been trained in environmental law and having worked for many years on major environmental and energy legislation while on staff in the U.S. Congress, I am passionate about preserving our natural resources. We need clean water and clean air, we must dispose of waste properly and we must preserve species and habitat in order to maintain our own good quality of life. Today we face some critical environmental challenges that require immediate attention, including water shortages, water quality threats, the need to preserve Puget Sound and the need to wean ourselves from fossil fuels and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Special Issue Focus: Securing our Future Water Supply
Roger plans to manage the Eastside's impending water issues before it's too late. Detailed report.