Several shades of conservative were on display Thursday as five candidates for the open 18th Legislative District seat fielded questions from the League of Women Voters at the Cedars on Salmon Creek golf club.
Republicans Jon Russell, Brandon Vick and Ann Rivers, Democrat Dennis Kampe and unaffiliated candidate Jon Haugen took part in the hourlong forum, which covered a range of issues, from the Columbia River Crossing to the state’s unfunded pension liability. Republican Anthony Bittner declined to take part. Independent candidate Rich Carson did not show up.
The top two vote-getters among the seven candidates who filed for the seat will advance to the general election after the Aug. 17 top two primary.
About 60 people attended the forum, which was moderated efficiently and with firm time limits by Marjorie Ledell of the League.
All five candidates said they are alarmed by Southwest Washington’s persistent high unemployment rate and agreed that state spending must be reined in. Several said small businesses are being crippled by excessive taxes and regulations.
No one came out in favor of tolls to pay for a new bridge over the Columbia River.
Russell and Vick took positions on the right end of the political spectrum. Rivers and Kampe came across as more moderate. Haugen said he is running primarily to block tolls over a new Columbia River bridge.
Russell, who owns a family health clinic in Washougal, said he knows firsthand the challenges small-business owners are facing in the lingering recession. He also touted his experience balancing a city budget while cutting property taxes as a member of the Washougal City Council.
Vick, a landscape contractor, said he’s feeling the pinch too. “Times are tough for our customers and for our business,” he said.
One of the biggest problems businesses face, candidates agreed, is the state’s Business and Occupation Tax.
“The B&O tax is a horribly regressive tax,” Vick said, and it’s about to increase from 1.5 percent to 1.8 percent of gross receipts. The 2010 Legislature increased the B&O tax rate on service industries temporarily to help plug a budget deficit. The increase took effect May 1 and will expire in mid-2013.
With worker compensation premiums going up as well, Vick said, his business isn’t hiring as many workers this summer.
Russell said businesses “already pay an income tax” in the form of the B&O tax . “The B&O tax is the number one stifler of economic growth,” he said.
“We have created a very closed-for-business atmosphere,” Rivers said. “The key to helping businesses is to roll back fees, and the B&O tax has to be reformed.”
Rivers said she’s committed to transparency in state spending and wants to tap the expertise of state Auditor Brian Sonntag. “He told me he could cut 10 percent from the state budget and people won’t feel a thing,” she said.
Kampe, the longtime director of the Clark County Skills Center, said his main concern is that “we’re not developing a highly skilled workforce in Washington. We need to make that a priority.”
On other issues:
• On addressing the state’s unfunded pension liability, which Sonntag recently pegged at $23 billion, several candidates agreed that public employees will have to adjust their expectations about their retirement income just as private sector workers have had to do.
“The government has made promises to people we can’t keep,” largely due to the influence of public employee unions, Haugen said.
“We have to renegotiate those contracts,” Vick said, but he added that it will have to be done with some sensitivity. “It’s not the fault of the employees.” He pledged to address the issue “head-on” if elected.
Russell cited the pension problem is an example of the power of public employee unions.
“Olympia is out of touch,” he said. He noted that while Clark County has an unemployment rate of 12.4 percent, Thurston County, where Olympia is located, has a rate of just 7.6 percent. “That’s where the capital is, that’s where the state workers are,” he said.
The job of the unions, he said, is to win more money for their members. “As long as politicians are beholden to those special interests, we will have those problems.”
Kampe said Washington has a good record on investment of pension funds. “But we’re in a recession,” he added, so it’s expected that investment will come up short.
• On the Columbia River Crossing, most candidates said a bridge is needed — but qualified their support.
Rivers said projections show that the cost of a new Interstate 5 bridge, calculated in dollars per lane mile, will be 10 times the cost incurred in building the I-205 bridge in the early 1980s. “The concern is, there is no fiscal oversight to this project,” she said. The ultimate answer to traffic congestion, Rivers said, is to create more jobs on the Washington side of the river.
“We need a crossing,” Kampe said. “We need to reduce congestion.” A key question, he said, is, “Will we settle for something that isn’t going to meet our needs in the long run?”
Vick said he once believed that the existing spans were unsafe and needed to be replaced, but he no longer is convinced of that. “The bridge is sound,” he said. “Traffic is a pain.”
Haugen said he is the only candidate who has attended meetings of an eight-member panel appointed by the governors of Oregon and Washington to evaluate the bridge project. He vowed if elected to oppose tolls on the bridge.
“The bridge needs to happen,” Russell said. But he said it doesn’t make sense to build a new bridge that relieves congestion only as far south as Delta Park. He said he opposes light rail, calling it “a complete disaster and a public safety issue,” and added, “If we do a third bridge, it needs to come through Camas.”
• On funding for education, which suffered a $1.8 billion cut in the current biennium, most candidates said more money needs to go to classroom instruction.
Only 59 cents of every state education dollar makes it into the classroom, Rivers said. She’d like to see performance audits of the Department of Education. “I do think there’s a level of bureaucracy we need to take a look at.”
Russell said that if the state mandated that 65 cents of every education dollar went to the classroom, that would generate an additional $400 million for schools without a tax increase.
Vick took a contrarian view, saying that what the public school system needs to improve is more competition from private schools. He said he favors giving parents vouchers and letting them choose the schools their children attend.
• On the question of bipartisanship and the need to build cooperation and consensus, there was disagreement.
Haugen said that when he ran as a Democrat against state Sen. Joe Zarelli two years ago, many voters refused to talk to him. This year, as an unaffiliated candidate, he said, he hasn’t had that problem. “Good ideas are on the left and the right,” he said. “We need the best ideas.”
Kampe said he has worked successfully with legislators on both sides of the aisle over the years to win state funding for the Skills Center.
Rivers said she has also worked effectively with legislators in both parties as a political consultant to businesses. “On both sides of the aisle are people who are being run over by their caucuses because they won’t toe the party line,” she said.
Russell and Vick dissented.
Wherever there are political parties, there will be friction, Russell said. “It keeps both sides honest.”
“Cooperation and consensus are important, “Vick said. “On the other hand, I believe the state’s broken. I believe the state needs to do a 180. Representatives need to take hard stands.”
That’s easier in the 18th District, he said, “because you can speak your mind. This is a district that, sorry, is going to vote Republican every time.”
