We had the great pleasure of sitting down to an intimate dinner last night with Jamie Pedersen, the state representative for the 43rd district (that’s you, Wallingford, and parts of Fremont, Green Lake, Ravenna, U District, Eastlake, Cap Hill, Madison Park and Downtown). Our friends Scott and Karen “bought” the dinner as part of a fundraiser for the Wallingford United Methodist Church, home to the (religiously unaffiliated) Wallingford Child Care Center and generously invited us, along with three other friends, along.
Before we anything else, we want to wish Jamie a huge congratulations on the birth of triplets! Jamie and his partner Eric doubled the size of their family earlier this year with the addition of three boys (like the older son, the children were conceived with an egg donor). We saw pictures of the little ones and they are certifiably adorable. However, we must admonish Mr. Pedersen for rubbing in the fact that all three are sleeping through the night at 7 months.
The conversation was easy and varied, ranging from parenting to legislative issues to pizza (Sally’s is unbeatable). Despite our role as Community Blogger, we’re not ourselves particularly knowledgeable about local political issues, so the evening was very educational. We’ll share with you a few things we learned:
- Citizen Initiatives: We sent out a quick tweet before dinner asking if anyone had any questions we should bring to the table. Jacqui asked a question many of us have pondered as we rubbed our heads at one of Tim Eyman’s greed grabs: “please ask the rep if there has been any discussion of how to stop Eyman. Perhaps time to rethink the initiative rules?”What we learned is that Washington has an unusually high bar for changing the constitution: an amendment must first pass with a 2/3rd majority in the state house and state senate, after which point it is passed on to the people, who must pass it with a simple majority. In practice, this means amendments are very, very rarely passed. So for now, we must put up with it.
- 1033: Jamie was very clearly against Eyman’s latest masterpiece, I-1033. Like many of Eyman’s ideas, it only presents half the picture, in this case, limiting property taxes. Hey, we all want lower taxes, right? The problem is that it doesn’t specify what the results will be. In this case, it would mean cutting $1.8 billion in spending. Where’s that going to come from? Well, let’s start by closing all the parks, medical services for the poor, conservation and ecology efforts, etc. In short, it would be a disaster.His challenge (and ours) to anyone who supports I-1033: describe exactly where that $1.8 billion will come from, or don’t take the money away. We’re already barely getting by with a non-recurring $4 billion influx of cash from the federal government as stimulus money. When that’s gone, we’re already going to be in a hole.Jamie also made an eye-opening point about the weird layout of the ballot we wrote about earlier this week. You might think that it cuts both ways (i.e., both those for it and against it will overlook it equally). Not so! The weird layout is unique to the King County ballot, where extra instructions were added to account for the fact that this is the first all mail-in election. In the rest of the state, its placement is normal and unmistakable. Unfortunately for us, King County is expected to vote against I-1033 handily, while the rest of Washington State is typically more conservative. Thus, the layout hurts the No vote disproportionately.
- Referendum 71 (Preserve the Domestic Partnership Law): He’s for it. Duh. The interesting bit was whether it was likely to pass. It sounds like it may come down to turnout. In this case, the fact that the expectations are being set off the election four years ago, in which Nickels and Sims ran essentially unopposed and prior to the Obama-inspired surge in young voter registration, may work in the favor the progressives. So vote!
- Mayoral Race: Like every other conversation we’ve had about the Seattle mayoral race, this focused on what was wrong with one of the candidates, rather than why we were excited about the other. In this case, Jamie was concerned that McGinn lacked experience hiring and running an organization as complex as the city government. Mallahan, though he lacks McGinn’s policy background, has run a team of 500.At this point, we think we may just write-in Randy Engstrom.
All in all, it was an evening very well spent. Big thanks to our Scott and Karen, to our hosts Nancy and Eddie Speer and to Jamie for making the time to chat with us.
If anyone knows about lacking experience and policy background it’s Jamie Pedersen. He pretty much rode kingmaker Ed Murray’s coattails into the state legislature, surpassing much more qualified candidates.
If you’re still undecided on the mayor’s race I suggest you watch the debate on KCTS tonite at 6pm. If it’s anything like yesterday’s debate on KING-5 you will get an opportunity to see for yourself just how in-over-his-head Joe Mallahan is.
Correction to my comment above: The KCTS debate is at 7:00 tonite. For the Wallingford hippies without a TV, it will also air on KUOW 94.9.
I-1033 is a wealth transfer scheme. It takes tax dollars paid by everyone and uses them to only pay property taxes for property owners. But not everyone owns property.
Initiative 1033 is a giant tax shift that hurts lower income citizens and mainly benefits those with lots of property. Renters, who make up 1/3 of households in the state will pay the same taxes as before but see no rebate. Their tax dollars instead will go to pay property taxes for property owners.
Danny Westneat’s article in the Seattle Times says it all with his headline “I-1033 A Windfall for the Rich”
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/dannywestneat/2010058262_danny14.html
As Westneat says, Eyman
“…could have targeted his tax relief to help those who most need it. But he didn’t. This is the rotten core of his initiative.
Forget all the caterwauling about spending cuts. At its heart this is a massive giveaway to the rich that does little or nothing for the poor.”
A vote for I-1033 will help millionaires and corporations pay their property taxes at your expense. Why should taxpayers with little or no property help pay taxes on million dollar mansions or second homes or investment properties. Vote No on I-1033
Re: Initiatives, I agree (I think) with Jamie’s POV — i.e., the glass is half-full, rather than half-empty — based on what goes on in Oregon.
Oregon has a much lower threshold for allowing voter initiatives on the ballot, and a lot more of them show up. This has led to the Oregon state legislators often (maybe even usually) throwing any halfway-controversial measure onto the ballot as an initiative, rather than potentially take heat for voting for/against said measure.
So in the end, getting a state budget figured out for Oregon is a nightmare; and each election means researching and voting for ~10-30 initiatives. Their ballot pamphlets look like phone books.
I write in Sherman Alexie when I don’t know what else to do.