Constituents fill 17th Legislative District town hall

A legislative town hall for constituents in the 17th District held Saturday, March 18, at the Port of Camas-Washougal, kicked off with a barrage of bad news. "Crime is skyrocketing," said Republican Sen. Lynda Wilson. "It's at a 25-year high. We're third in the country for auto thefts ... homelessness is off the charts. We have 20 times more homeless per capita than the U.S." The senator also decried the opioid epidemic and "learning loss" in Washington's schools. "We used to be No. 10 in the country (for education), and now we're not," Wilson said. Other legislators present at the town hall -- Republican Reps. Paul Harris and Kevin Waters -- spoke more positively about their role in state government. "Education is a top priority," Waters told the standing-room-only crowd of 17th District constituents packed inside the Port's headquarters on the Washougal waterfront. "We want to get education funded." Waters, a native of Stevenson in Skamania County, said he attended schools that are now more than 50 years old and "haven't had a dime put back into them" to maintain aging school facilities. Harris, who has represented the 17th District for 13 years, currently sits on the state legislature's education, appropriations, health care and rules committees. "This is my third time on the education committee," Harris told the crowd. The longtime state legislator said he was working on several pieces of legislation during the 2023 legislative session, which is slated to end April 23, including House Bill 1112, which would allow judges overseeing negligent driving cases to impose criminal penalties for negligent driving resulting in the death of a "vulnerable user of a public way" such as a pedestrian or bicyclist. Constituents who attended the town hall asked the legislators to weigh in on issues involving funding for public education, tackling climate change, addressing gun control and giving updates on the ongoing Interstate 5 (I-5) Bridge replacement project. A constituent of the 17th District who said he volunteers in four local middle school classrooms asked the legislators to "seriously consider raising" the amount of per-student funding the state gives its K-12 schools. "The administrators are in a bind," the man said. "They can't go out and just get more money. That comes from you." Donna Sinclair, a former Washougal School Board official, said she appreciated the bipartisan work that had gone into addressing funding for special education in Washington's K-12 schools, but said the state's school-funding model "does not fit our needs." "The reason why we need levy money is because we don't fully fund things like nurses and psychologists and all the things we really need," Sinclair noted. John Anzalone, the superintendent of the Camas School District, also asked the legislators to address regionalization, which gives "bonus money" to districts like Camas that have higher-than-average costs of living, including higher home prices. "We were receiving 12% a few years ago," Anzalone told the legislators, noting that the state's school-funding formula has since decreased those regionalization funds by 1% per year, which equals roughly $1 million per year in losses for the Camas School District. "We are now at 9%. Will that last in perpetuity or will it rebate back to 12%?" Another constituent told the legislators that an advisory group tasked with looking at the regionalization funding needs for school districts in southwest Washington recently concluded that the state should be giving a 16% regionalization "bonus" to several school districts in the region -- which has the state of Washington's second highest cost of living next to the Puget Sound area -- including the Camas, Evergreen and Washougal school districts in the 17th Legislative District. Harris said he would keep in touch with the local school district legislators to make sure the legislature addressed the regionalization question. "In the next week or so, you and I need to keep in touch and keep an eye open for that," Harris told Anzalone. "We will make sure that, if it's not in the budget, it can be added." Harris said education funding was "a really difficult topic" and that "COVID didn't help." "If you understand how formulas work, we drive out money per pupil," Harris said. "And during COVID (school districts) got extra money, federal money, and so that money is going away and enrollments are slightly down." He added that he had recently spoken to Templeton about learning loss. "Kids are coming back to school who have been at home for two years, who haven't related to students, who haven't related to a classroom ... it's more difficult," Harris said. In Camas-Washougal, kindergarten students returned to in-person learning in November 2020, and most students were back in the classroom part-time by March 2021. Harris said legislators are working to address the school funding model. "I hope we can do something. I hear you," Harris said during the March 18 town hall. "We passed (a 3.8% increase) for teachers ... and put more money into kids with (learning needs). That's going to happen. We're putting more money into (school) transportation. That's going to happen. So, there is some hope." On climate change, I-5 bridge project and gun violence The legislators also addressed questions not related to education -- including those related to the I-5 bridge replacement, a question about why Harris and Wilson voted against a bill addressing climate change, which updated the state's greenhouse gas emission goals and called for a 95% reduction by 2050; and what the legislators are doing to address gun violence. Harris said he would have considered voting yes on the 2020 greenhouse gas emissions bill, which passed the Democratically controlled legislature, if his Democratic peers had been willing to negotiate on natural gas. "I wish it had been bipartisan. It could have been ... if we could have brought natural gas along," Harris said, before adding that, as the bill is written, he would still vote "no" on it today. Wilson said "there is a bill ... in the House, right now, that will ban all (natural) gas as of July 1, 2023." "So, in a few months, if you don't have a gas line to your house, or any new gas, up where Puget Sound Electric, where they have their, where they serve, you can't do that," Wilson said. "They're going to ban all this gas." The bill, which passed the state House on March 6, would ban Puget Sound Electric from extending natural gas lines to new buildings beginning in June, and would, according to its sponsor, Rep. Beth Doglio (D-Olympia) "provide aggressive financial assistance to keep rates fair and just." The bill only impacts the Puget Sound Electric, however, and would not impact homeowners or utilities in southwest Washington. "We don't know how to move forward with this," Wilson said. "It seems that we have to ban this gas, but we have nothing. In California, they banned all that but had to bring back gas because they didn't have enough power for the whole state. So that's what's going on here." Wilson referenced House Bill 1623, which would have looked into the stability of the state's electricity grid, and which had unanimous approval in the House and Senate during the 2022 legislative session, but was vetoed by Gov. Jay Inslee. "We want to know what will happen to our energy grid," Wilson said. Inslee told legislators he vetoed the bill because it was redundant: "Ensuring that our electricity grid continues to reliably provide power to Washingtonians is a priority for me as well, which is why we have multiple state agencies already working on this issue," Inslee wrote to legislators in March 2022. Addressing questions about the I-5 bridge replacement project, Wilson said it was "very hard to get actual answers" from the committee working on the needed bi-state bridge replacement and that she does "not particularly like" plans that call for light rail to extend TriMet's yellow line MAX from north Portland across the bridge. Harris talked about Oregon's Rose Quarter Improvement Project, which includes a highway cover in the Rose Quarter to help reconnect the Albina neighborhood -- an historically Black neighborhood torn apart by the creation of the highway in the 1960s -- that will, according to the Oregon Department of Transportation, "create new community spaces and enhance safety and connections for people walking, rolling, biking, riding transit and driving on local streets" in the area. "They're considering capping the bridge on the Portland side," Harris told town hall attendees. Highway caps, or lids, are being installed throughout the nation, in places like Pittsburgh, Dallas, Washington D.C. and Los Angeles, to help reconnect neighborhoods -- typically neighborhoods where people of color lived -- and improve noise and air pollution. "Because of equity, they'll cap it and take that air and pump it somewhere else. Air is bad in that area. They want to make sure everyone breathes the same air. My suggestion is to send it to Lake Oswego," Harris said. "When you think about what's going on. They're seriously going to cap that, and they're seriously going to move the air." "I'm not saying, 'Don't build a bridge,' but we went from a relatively expensive project to a horrendously expensive project," Harris said, adding he would like to see a "commonsense bridge ... or retrofit the bridge so it can sustain what we want for another 100 years." Mimi Latta, of Washougal, addressed gun violence and asked the legislators what they were doing to make residents safer. "Where I grew up, we had guns for hunting. We were very poor, and it was for subsistence hunting, so I'm not against guns," Latta said. "But I cannot stand to see many more of these reports where we've got more mass shootings this year than we've got days in the year." "Children are being shot down in schools. People (are being shot) in grocery stores," Latta said. "And we're seeing hunters going, 'My rights (over) dead children,' and I don't understand this in America." Wilson put the blame on mental illness. "Mental health is one thing, but what are we doing?" Latta responded. The legislators did not answer Latta's gun violence question. Wilson cut the Washougal speaker off, saying, "OK, I understand what you're saying. I understand ... We have a mental health issue." To view videos from the 17th District town hall held March 18 in Washougal, visit The Post-Record's Facebook page.

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