Roger on the Issues
Below is a list of Roger's top priorities for the coming session. Click on the title to read details.
JOBS AND THE ECONOMY – AN URGENT MATTER
Each day passes with more disturbing news about the financial markets and the economy. We’re now bracing for a severe recession – or worse. The national, and now global, slowdown is dramatically affecting our pocketbooks. I know households are really feeling the pinch. 
Out in the neighborhoods every day I’m meeting many people who have been laid off, students just graduating who cannot find jobs and older adults having to come out of retirement.
I believe the Legislature can do a lot to improve the state economy and to help workers and homeowners hurt by this economic crisis. Washington’s economy, with the nation’s third-highest growth rate, is comparably strong but we’re still destined for some very challenging times. Back in the Legislature I intend to continue my work supporting education and providing more opportunities for good jobs.
Supporting Commerce and Entrepreneurship
In the current crisis Washington businesses have already suffered, including the nation’s largest bank failure with Washington Mutual and a commercial credit market frozen for small and large businesses alike. This is a time perhaps unlike any other.
As we move forward we need to continue supporting our cornerstone industries such as aerospace, agriculture and timber. We should keep our focus on infrastructure projects that spur economic development and on tax breaks and employee training for those companies with good-paying jobs.
Just as important is the small business community, the main engine of job creation and innovation. We need to keep our small business owners successful and encourage entrepreneurship. Measures I support include:
- the continuation of small business tax incentives
- enhancing our loan and grant programs to provide capital access and development assistance
- maintaining our national lead in research and development in “green technologies” and continuing to forge ahead in that market
Continued Investment in Education
Our economic resilience will depend on increased investments in education. 
We must continue to boost the state’s share for public education as we dig out from decades of disinvestment. Even in the current budgetary climate, we just cannot afford to go back on our support for education.
I will continue my work to promote and expand early childhood education, which yields the highest return on our tax dollar. I also strongly support the transformation of our K-12 system along with increased resources.
We need to foster more partnerships with schools, including:
- targeted scholarships with business matching
- enhanced workforce training
- apprenticeship programs
- business internships in high schools
Our community and technical colleges are also key links to good jobs and economic security. I am already working closely with community and technical colleges to make sure they have the resources to train our working age adults for the middle-skilled, professional-technical jobs we have TODAY. I will continue the progress I made last session by expanding high-tech training in our district for the high wage jobs in our district.
FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY – BALANCING THE BUDGET
In the current economic turmoil we still have to balance the budget, and we will.
The state is facing an imposing budget shortfall in the next cycle. I believe the shortfall can be closed entirely without raising taxes.
I will not support any general tax increases, whether they are excise taxes, property taxes or business and occupation taxes. The tax burden is already too great for property owners, small businesses and people on limited incomes.
I will not support any new type of tax. We are regrettably far off from comprehensive tax reform. As I have said before, no cherry picking allowed.
As we deal with the budget we will have to cut to the bone. Before looking at across-the-board cuts, we should:
- implement a hiring freeze
- reduce full-time equivalent (FTE) state employees
- cut non-essential programs
- cut state employees’ travel
- continue creating efficiencies in information technology spending through consolidation and standardization
- roll back tax breaks that have not proven their worth, and
- insist on a “best-practices” approach to the budget to ensure cost-effectiveness and accountability for taxpayer dollars.
Preserving Education Funding
As I visit the voters every day at their doors I meet many teachers and school employees who say, “I guess we’re not going to get a raise next year.” I am very averse to halting the growth in teacher compensation after we’ve just begun to make progress. A Washington state teacher still makes only half of a Pennsylvania teacher’s average salary. Voters are also telling me that class sizes are unacceptably large.
As we make the difficult decisions to cut the budget, our investments in public education should be the very last to put on the chopping block. When the state faced a budget deficit in 2003, the Governor and Legislature opted to suspend the voter initiatives that provide pay raises for school teachers and money to reduce class sizes. I will not support doing that again to address the latest shortfall.
I hope my colleagues in the Legislature share my belief that early learning, K through 12 and higher education funding should be pretty much sacrosanct and protected from budget cuts.
Property Tax Relief
Property taxes in our area have become unbearable for many homeowners on fixed incomes. Every day I meet one or two couples who have to move out their long-time neighborhood because of the crush of property taxes. That is unfair. I support a circuit-breaker mechanism to relieve homeowners from paying such a huge percentage of their income in property taxes. Homeowners with limited incomes should never be in a position of having to move out of their homes because of high property taxes.
Comprehensive Tax Reform
In times of prosperity it was 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.
We feel now for the second time this decade the crush of a budget deficit. Our state budget is too dependent on retail sales and housing growth so we’re vulnerable to the boom-and-bust cycles of the economy. Depending on consumption taxes will keep us on this roller coaster.
We cannot wait any longer. We must devise a revenue system that is less regressive and less unstable. I am intrigued by the bipartisan proposal from a legislative workgroup on this matter, which looks like a more fair and stable plan to provide sustainable revenue without increasing the burden on taxpayers.
The challenge is more political than it is practical. It’s time for legislative leadership on tax reform, to convene all the stakeholders – the taxpayers, the education community, small business, corporations and trade unions – and to hammer out consensus. In the process we can also restore some trust in government as the agent of positive change.
EDUCATION – OUR TOP PRIORITY
Without question, our top priority is public education. “Ample” funding for education is our constitutional obligation; it is also critical to our competitiveness in the global market and to our good citizenship at home.
We must carefully redefine “basic education” and invest in it with transparency and accountability so we know what we are paying for.
The state must fully fund its own mandates, including special education and pupil transportation.
Even in this constrained budgetary climate, amidst a financial meltdown in the markets, we still need to keep our eye on the ball and invest for the long term in our most valuable commodities – our children.
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 education, including:
- sufficient local control of our schools
- bolstering the infrastructure of school buildings and classrooms
- ensuring sufficient training and compensation for our teachers
- optimal classroom sizes
- a curriculum that embraces a much wider range of skill sets, and
- fair and authentic ways to assess student learning beyond the use of high-stakes tests.
I will follow up on that progress and continue championing investments in early learning – kids from birth to age five – and strongly supporting our community and technical schools as a key link to local high-wage jobs.
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.
We must do more than merely widen 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.
The new 520 bridge is our top transportation priority, both to reduce congestion and for urgent safety reasons. Last session, I helped to broker the deal with the Seattle side of the lake on the width and design of the new 520 bridge, so we’ve made major progress.
In addition to federal assistance and state debt financing, we can also establish funding partnerships with business and other public entities to support the 520 bridge. We will have to acknowledge the need for tolls, hopefully variable tolling according to time of day. I will carefully examine the Transportation Commission recommendations in this regard.
I support a huge expansion of bus rapid transit and enlarged park and ride lots. Light rail just may not be affordable any longer, given the cost of the seismic retrofits on the I-90 bridge. Light rail also won’t work on the 520 bridge because of the steep grades.
Locally, the roads in the 45th District are in desperate need of upgrading, including Avondale Road, Woodinville-Duvall Road and State Route 203.
As we sit behind the 8-ball on transportation problems, we have to address the core issue of poor transportation governance. There is no unified transportation strategy for the region and there are too many fiefdoms, so reforming the governance structure for transportation in this area is critical.
HEALTH CARE – ACCESS, AFFORDABILITY AND QUALITY
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 have access to quality health care and I strongly support the initiative to make that happen. We should focus on preventive care rather than having to be reactive with expensive trauma and chronic disease care.
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.
What should the state do to ensure health care for all residents? I believe it’s time for the 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.
All Washington residents can have access to affordable healthcare through one statewide pool of insureds, spreading the risk across the entire population to achieve the lowest per capita cost. All residents would be required to have at least catastrophic coverage, so the low-risk cohorts (from 18 to 34 years old) would help bring down the cost for the rest of us.
Business should no longer have to bear the burden of providing their employees with health care coverage. Individuals should have their own portable plans and their choice of private doctors and private insurance, NOT “socialized medicine” where doctors work for the state. The state would only be the broker for individuals to buy private plans, thereby consolidating the financing to reduce the shockingly-high overhead in the current health insurance market.
Too many voters I meet every day are taking undue risks with their health care. The conflicting incentives for business and health care are running headlong into each other and people are denied procedures or medication because insurers won’t make a profit. I believe that’s unethical.
PUBLIC SAFETY and PUBLIC ORDER
I bring many years of expertise in the criminal justice system to my work on the House Judiciary Committee and the House Public Safety Committee. 
I am committed to working to make us safer on the roadways, in public spaces and in our homes. I enjoy the support of our state troopers, sheriffs, police chiefs and rank-and-file officers.
I have a strong record from the first session, having sponsored and led the Legislature to enact a landmark drunk driving bill and a court reform measure that will save the taxpayers money and offer better access to the courts for crime victims.
As we move forward in the Legislature I will focus sharply on the chronic problem of domestic violence. It is shocking to learn that half of all of the women who die each year in our area are killed by their abusive partners. This epidemic deserves major attention and I will convene law enforcement, the courts and other concerned parties through the Judiciary Committee to find better solutions.
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.
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.
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
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 planetary health and 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.
Puget Sound is the heart of our life support system. Last session, I supported the first down payment in the urgent cleanup of Puget Sound – and there is a lot more work to do. We need to support the newly-created Puget Sound Partnership and give it the resources it needs to continue its important work in coordinating the long term cleanup.
We cannot neglect the need for major storm-water system retrofits, creosote log disposal, habitat restoration and other critical measures to secure clean water and a healthy ecosystem for flora, fauna and humans.
MANAGING POPULATION GROWTH
Our region will experience a doubling of its population over the next two 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.