Welcome to Seattle Week in Review, I'm Barry Mitzman.
Many county voters go to the polls next Tuesday, at least a few of them will, to help determine
the future of Seattle Center.
But will the city of Seattle's money problems sabotage the center levy?
That's one of our topics.
Also we'll learn about some of the candidates maneuvering to position themselves to run
for Congress next year, even though no one knows yet where the districts will be.
We'll find out why the legislature reduced the child support payments required of non-custodial
parents and why the governor vetoed some of what the legislature did.
And just in case you're not yet thoroughly depressed, we'll also talk about spotted
owls.
Warming to their respective subjects are Rebecca Boren, political reporter for the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, John Carlson, columnist for the Journal American in Bellevue, Barbara
Laker, social history reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and Mindy Cameron, editorial
page editor of the Seattle Times.
Rebecca, you have a story in the PI today, Friday, about Paul Barden, King County Councilman,
who has a form of cancer, but nevertheless is planning to run for Congress, right?
Well, I don't think that Paul Barden is a very determined man who's going to let a little
thing like the fact that he has had surgery for skin cancer in the last two months slow
him down a bit.
He's busy polling, organizing, and getting ready to roll, and doesn't want his skin
cancer, which had been kept very quiet, to blow things out of proportion.
Your story today really was the first that people knew about the fact that he had been
under treatment.
Yes, there had been rumors going around the King County courthouse for a couple of weeks
because he's been in obvious discomfort from some of the later treatment.
As one of his colleagues said, the moment he calls in sick, rumors begin to fly, because
he is normally this really bouncy, healthy, outdoorsy type who wants to go hunting and
fishing and all sorts of stuff.
But it had been kept very quiet.
In fact, the first several people I talked to lied their heads off and said, oh no, no,
no, no, no, no.
He finally called me up and said yes.
Paul Barden is a conservative Republican.
He's planning a run for Congress in the 9th district, which doesn't exist, right?
Yes.
Well, Paul got caught 10 years ago.
He ran for Congress too for the new 8th district.
And he got caught back then by what he kind of describes as his own naivete, which is
he ran it like he was running a county council race where he's been successful.
He's in his fifth term.
And so he raised a little bit of money and he kind of wandered out there and he started
running.
And meanwhile, Rod Chandler had out-organized him, out-financed him, and was a virtual
shoe-in before Barden ever got started.
So this time he's saying he's not going to make the same mistake.
He's also making a really smart political move by saying that he's going to run in the
new 9th district, rather than saying that he's going to be running in Rod Chandler's
8th district, for which there's a host of candidates already and which a lot of people
are holding back their bets on.
He's put together probably one of the most impressive exploratory committees that I've
seen.
And he's got some excellent polling data behind him.
If Rod Chandler is off to a fast start running for the U.S. Senate, I think Paul Barden is
off to a very fast start running for Congress from where the 9th district will likely be.
Well, but first of all, we don't even know where that 9th district is going to be.
Can he be confident that his Normandy Park home is inside this new district?
Well, even he's saying a lot of things like, if I'm not in it, I'll give the money back.
Well, he'll move.
No, he's not saying that.
Unlike past, I mean, there have been past members of Congress who, before redistricting
looms, bought a house virtually everywhere so they could run almost anywhere.
But no, there's a pretty strong feeling in the political world that probably the new
9th, if we keep it, and that's still open to question, if we keep it, we'll be somewhere
down in that South King County, North Pierce County area, because although we usually are
immensely preoccupied in all the growth management stuff, talks about the east side and the north
end and all sort of stuff like that, the really, really, really fast growing area is down there.
There are a million people now who live south of I-90 in King County or in Pierce County,
east of Tacoma.
Oh, and you've mentioned there's a possibility that we might not keep this district, however,
how are we going to find that out?
What's the process?
Oh, depends on how many courtrooms you really like.
There's a combination.
The Census Bureau is currently reviewing their allocations that gave and have to come up
with an explanation.
I believe it's by mid-July is to essentially, you know, justifying what they have done.
This state has already filed a lawsuit to keep the district.
Other states that have lost a district are, of course, going to have their own little
lawsuits trying to get their seats back.
So it's a fairly long and complicated process, but, you know, it's a year and a half until
the election for that district, so there's time to settle a fair amount.
If, in fact, a district were carved out in South King County and East Pierce County,
would it be predominantly Democratic, Republican, a swing district?
What's your sense?
Assuming that there's a balance of power on the so-called nonpartisan redistricting or
so-called bipartisan redistricting commission, chances are it will be a vaguely sort of swing
district.
Now, I haven't seen, I haven't seen Barden's poll yet that John mentioned, and it, which
was done by very well respected Portland pollster, Bob Moore, but Barden claims that actually
his chunk of that South End, where he already represents, is probably the most Democratic
piece in there.
I'm not certain that's true.
I suspect what you're going to have when you get down there is a district that's like a
lot of the other suburban districts, not very easily classified in any partisan terms.
That area down there has elected both extremely conservative Republicans and quite liberal
Democrats, generally speaking, even sometimes running in the same legislative districts.
Real fierce independence streak, in fact, that's where a lot of state senators had some awfully
tough races, that same piece of turf.
And Rebecca's right, that kind of independence streak can give you, gives you a swing district,
definitely, and can give you either a conservative Republican or a liberal Democrat.
And so at this early date, are there any other mentionables, either Republican or Democrat,
possible candidates for the office?
The only one who's out there organizing that I've been able to find certainly is Barden.
There's other possibilities.
Mike Lowry is being mentioned as one of the former congressmen from the seventh district.
Several ways you design the new ninth end up looking an awful lot like the seventh district
did when Mike Lowry first represented, that blue collar working class, at least that's
a perception of it, largely Democratic district.
Other permutations are possible.
Maybe somebody from Pierce County like Executive Joe Stortini.
You can, and once you get beyond that, you're starting to talk about every legislator in
the universe.
A Paul Barden, a Paul Barden, Mike Lowry race would offer a voter's clear choice and would
be a heck of a lot of fun.
Yeah, I want to go to the debates.
I really want to go to the debates.
All right.
Mindy, as I mentioned, voters are going to the polls this Tuesday, but kind of under
a cloud, at least in the city of Seattle with $11 million in budget cuts under consideration
by the Seattle City Council.
Let's talk first of all about the problems that local government is facing.
Yeah, I think it's a real sorting out time for city government, and I think it's interesting
to note that it's really an example of the sorting out that I think governments at all
levels really have to do, recognizing that the 90s are not going to be like the 80s.
The revenue flow is different.
The mood of the taxpayers may well be different, and I think that's what's going to be interesting
to watch for in Tuesday's vote on the Seattle Center.
Is there a taxpayer revolt out there, and are people going to, even though the election
has not been widely publicized, it's very carefully targeted mailing to those potential
voters that the organizers presume would be supportive of the fix-up of the Seattle Center?
Is there enough word out there about it that it will attract some of the folks who just
are going to go out and vote no because they don't want to see any increase in taxes?
At the same time, the city is indeed sorting through some tough budget realities.
The first, the proposal that the mayor has is a fairly typical one, just kind of look
across the board and make cuts here and there.
He kind of started with a presumption that looked for 4% in each department, but holding
some departments to a lesser standard because of priorities.
Most of the focus of his response to his cuts has been on the police department.
There's a strong feeling, sort of the political mood is that the voters have said very clearly
in a couple of elections in previous years, not too many years ago, that they want public
service well-funded, public safety well-funded, and they voted to do that.
And now with about a 2% cut in the police department, there's a sense that this is
breaking faith of the voters, and that's been the focus, but there's lots of other issues
out there that need sorting out.
Isn't there kind of a sense of betrayal here too, Mindy, because not only do the voters
make clear that they want public safety as a first priority, but they agreed to raise
their taxes to put more police officers on the beat, to put more officers in uniform.
Yet here we have, well, we're going to have to cut budgets.
So it seems to a lot of voters, it would seem that the city is giving with the one hand
and taking from the other.
That's very clearly the way it seems.
I think in fairness to the mayor and his budget office, they show the charts and they look
at the dollar amounts, and in fact, what they're proposing to cut in the police department
does preserve the increases that the voters have voted for, but it's a tough sell to the
public, obviously.
The bottom line is they are proposing some cuts there that people feel like they said
don't cut here, and no matter how you shake out the numbers, that's where it falls.
What do you think is going to happen on Tuesday?
Boy, you're asking me to predict on this show.
We've been through this before on this show.
I don't know.
I think this one I just can't call because there's no organized opposition out there,
but I think there's a fair chance that it might not pass.
It wouldn't be...
You're unpredictable because the turnout is expected to be so low, and any change in that
expectation might really skew the outcome.
Well, also, the people that they are trying to appeal to, it's very much like a school
levy campaign.
The fundamental premise of a school levy campaign is you get out the precincts, they're going
to vote 85% on your behalf, and you ignore the rest of the voters.
I am not entirely sure since I live in one of those precincts and have been talking to
my neighbors, I'm not entirely sure that's a valid perception this time out.
Well, and anybody who's been to the opera, the ballet, any events at the opera house
or on the Seattle Center in the last month or six weeks has seen a fairly unusual occurrence
with the foremost person connected with that arts event coming out on stage in a direct
solicitation absentee ballot in the program, so it's been a very targeted, well-run, well-organized
for that strategy.
Actually, two levy measures, one in the city, one county-wide, together they'd raise about
$144 million.
And one could pass and one could fail.
In property tax revenues, which would mean about, they say about $40 a year in additional
property taxes for a $150,000 house, which doesn't sound like a lot, but I guess the
question here, if there is a repudiation of either one of these measures, do you think
that local government around the state would take that as evidence that a tax revolt might
be in the offing, a potential that they really have to be worried about what's happening
now in Oregon?
The Times had an interesting story this week about what's happening in Oregon with rollbacks
in property taxes.
It could happen here too.
Who's to say whether they would or not?
They certainly should.
And I think that's what I think is the real, so far the opportunities presented by the
reality of the 11, 12, however many million dollars deficit you, however you figure it
for the city right now, there's a real opportunity to go, to be more creative than 2, 3, 4 percent
here and really look at some programs and make some, develop some new priorities in
the city.
And so far that's not happening.
I think there's some sign that that may, if not in the current short-term fix in preparation
for the 92 budget, but it seems to me it could happen now.
It would seem that there are two strikes against this levy.
The first is that, you know, it's one thing to say we need money for schools, we need
money for police.
You know, the Seattle Center, a little lower on the priority list of a lot of people.
And secondly, a lot of people, especially those who live outside Seattle, are probably
trying to still figure out why regionalism seems to mean paying higher taxes where they
live to support things going on in Seattle.
Well the reality is that I think a fair number of people out in the region, the polls have
showed this and good numbers I think that people out there, they know why, they know
why they're being asked to support it because they spend a lot of time there and they like
it.
It really is a regional facility.
Yeah, I see families with kids flooding the center and as we all know there aren't that
many of those in Seattle.
Mindy, as of Friday anyway, I haven't seen an editorial on the Seattle Times on the levies
as yet.
We have been very, very supportive of the levy process all along and Sunday we will
be endorsing it, saying this whole notion of the quiet campaign as being attacked is
sort of unfair but in fact it's, I think it's well targeted, you're just targeting your
supporters with a message.
The bottom line is we've waited too long to fix up the center and it's really time to
get on with it.
You heard it here first.
Barbara, the governor vetoed some legislation this past week.
First of all, tell us what this legislation would have done.
Well it would have done a lot of things.
The first thing that he did not veto was a uniform system for child support payments
which allows non-custodial parents to get up to a 25% reduction in their child support
payments.
That's the part of the bill he did not veto and the primary reason for that is because
right now there is not a uniform system in this state and the state would have lost or
could have lost 70 million dollars in federal funds for social services and for child support
enforcement.
Now the child support rates are set differently in different counties.
Right, 26 counties have one system, a higher system and then 13 counties including King
County opted for a system where they could get, I'm sorry I have that reversed, 26 counties
have a system where you can get a 25% reduction and the remaining 13 counties including King
County do not have that.
So now under the new system and the part of the legislation that Gardner did not veto
will make it statewide basically.
A few years ago as I understand the state raised the child support payment levels considerably.
Why now roll them back?
Well there was intense lobbying by a group called Parents Opposed to Punitive Support
in Olympia at the time of this legislation when everyone knew that the state really needed
a uniform system so it was whether they went with a higher system or a lower system and
it was very controversial in Olympia and there were several options on the table, one for
a 15% reduction and one for a 25% reduction.
The legislature decided to go with this up to a 25% reduction which is based on the Clark
County system.
Now Barbara, why are these arguments for reduction being made, what's their case for a reduction?
Their point is that it's mostly by non-custodial parents who say that when they remarry and
have a second family that they are giving so much money to the first family that the
second family is being penalized, so they are being penalized they say and the children
of the second marriage are in order to support the first family.
They also feel that some of the money that goes to that first family, there's no guarantee
they say that it's going to the children and rather to the first ex-wife.
And on the other side of that women's groups are saying that the 25% reduction would endanger
some of these children and may put them in a situation where they are pushed further
into poverty.
Last year when the parents tried this thing, the fathers basically tried this same legislation,
there was no evidence except for anecdotal evidence on their part and there was ample
evidence that one of the primary causes of poverty in this entire country is divorce,
single parents trying to raise and there is a study also that in 1989 the average child
support payment was $352 a month and that is for all children, all expenses including
daycare so some can argue that that's not a high amount of money.
Right, but the POPs group says that they offer anecdotal examples of some of the child support
payments being $800, $1000 a month.
I think that's what's interesting in the success, at least in the legislative end of this effort
last year, the success of the POPs group, it was really the power of the anecdote over
analysis.
I mean they had some single individual stories that were quite compelling.
They also had, I think one of the real influential groups were some of the second wives who came
in and said their money was going to support a family that they had no part of and I think
that's what got a lot of legislators involved in trying to do something about that.
Also unfortunately there is a basic tendency when people come in and start making a set
of demands on a legislature, by and large the legislature starts thinking of ways to
compromise.
If there's a lot of you and if you're persistent and if you're there day in and day out, you've
got a heck of a good chance of getting something rather than just having the legislature say
sorry, no thanks, we think the child support schedule is just fine, go away.
Governor apparently had some distaste for this legislation but he couldn't, as I understand
it, he couldn't veto it entirely because he needed to get this consistent statewide rate
in order to keep the federal funds that supplement that.
He vetoed 14 sections of it, I mean it was obvious he did not like this legislation.
No, he took a jack hammer to it.
And having been brought up in a single parent household myself, I have a natural inclination
to favor as much enforcement of suitable child support levels as possible but I guess one
of the things that mystifies me is the political momentum and the success that Mindy alluded
to a moment ago that this Pops group has had, surely there must be something to these anecdotes
that made legislators more sympathetic or perhaps even empathetic to their claims.
There was, I know there were several anecdotes, it wasn't like they had just two and they,
like I said, I do think that one of the things that really pushed them was the numbers that
they gave them, the dollar numbers that they gave them and examples of how the second families
are suffering financially and things that they can't do that the first family they say
was able to do.
John, the big story this day I guess, yesterday and today, has to do once again with the subject
we've talked about at this table many times before but it continues to be a tremendously
important issue, the spotted owl, old growth forest, yesterday big rally in Olympia, the
whole town of Forks turned out, lots of other folks and also yesterday federal judge Dwyer
came out with a decision which first of all among other things, her tails, wrecked the
rally, logging on public lands.
Help us understand what is your sense of what's at issue for these timber families?
The economic fallout of the Dwyer ruling will potentially be catastrophic to logging towns,
in other words, towns that are one industry towns that base their economic survival on
having a strong tree farming trade.
On the other hand, the case can be made that Bill Dwyer was simply reading the letter of
the law when he was interpreting these statutes and that if there's anything wrong it's that
there were unforeseen consequences of federal legislation to protect the environment and
to protect endangered species.
Now John, that's not what Dwyer said, let's make it very clear, what Dwyer said is that
there was a failure to enforce the law by federal agencies, I mean one of the points
that keeps getting, every time we see this, oh my gosh, the logging towns are going to
be ruined, an awful lot of the genuine problems that are going to result, and I think they're
generally speaking highly overstated, the genuine problems that are going to result
results from the fact that the feds did not apply the law properly when they should have,
I mean they've had ten years basically to deal with this problem and they have persistently
tried to ignore it and make the Endangered Species Act go away.
Well what they say of course, what the feds say is look, we're trying to pragmatically
manage to protect the spotted owl and also preserve the sustenance and survival of these
logging towns.
What Dwyer did say was in effect, you're not following the law and your methods, your pragmatic
methods of trying to preserve balance have strayed afar of the letter of the law.
I think it is very fair to say that especially the Endangered Species Act has had consequences
that no one foresaw when the law was passed and that it's time to review federal legislation
not just to measure the environmental impact and the impact on animal and plant life, but
the impact on human beings who depend in logging towns on logging and who depend in Eastern
Washington on hydroelectric power, they're the next ones who are going to get clipped.
That may be true John, but I think the political, you have to look at that, the political reality
from a national perspective and just because this is a real hot issue in Washington State
doesn't mean that you're going to have, let congress people from all around the country
are very willing to undermine an act that is seen as a very important scientific based
environmental law that serves the country pretty well.
Not to mention a wonderful political rallying point, you know it's great to get up there,
it is great for politicians to get up there and say spotted owl isn't it terrible, spotted
owl in the Endangered Species Act isn't it terrible.
Most of the jobs that have been lost in logging communities in the past ten years have had
little or nothing to do with the spotted owl.
There are long term economic changes going on here that have nothing whatsoever to do
with the spotted owl, they need to be dealt with, that's the problem.
It's a disservice I think to the logging communities and the loggers themselves to say let's change
the Endangered Species Act because I think that's so unlikely to happen in the near term
in time to really help out the communities that are suffering now because nationally,
politically it's not going to happen for a long time.
I think just the opposite is going to happen Mindy, what you're going to see is more and
more people at the blue collar level are going to see their jobs endangered in one way or
another from animals that are classified under the Endangered Species Act and you're going
to see growing momentum for change and I'm not talking about gutting the Endangered Species
Act, I consider myself a conservationist but I think we have to look at did we think this
would happen when we passed this law and is this what we want to continue happening.
On the steps of the Capitol yesterday in front of this huge crowd including folks from Forks
and other timber families, Public Lands Commissioner Brian Boyle announced his plan to run for
the Senate.
He likened the Fish and Wildlife Service plan to close off logging 11 million acres of public
land.
He likened it to the invasion of Kuwait, said this cannot stand, he seemed to be setting
up a campaign theme here running as the candidate of the disaffected and disenfranchised timber
families.
Do you think that free market conservatives opposed to the consequences of the Endangered
Species Act will now rally behind Brian Boyle?
I think he thinks that Brian Boyle is trying to find an issue here.
Land Commissioner does not give you a very strong base to begin a campaign from and Brian's
problem is that he is credible in terms of being a state elected official who has done
a very good job in being the custodial, custodian of public lands in Washington State, however
he's not viable.
He can't raise money, he doesn't have a statewide presence and he's trying to harness the anger
of these timber families and ride this issue into front page media attention to generate
the political momentum and money he needs to run a serious race for the Senate.
I like Brian, I respect him but frankly I don't see it happening.
Of course this is to some degree the Slade-Gorton strategy all over again, Slade-Gorton's people
strongly believe that the votes in the timber counties and his stance on issues affecting
the timber counties are what got him back in the U.S. Senate in 1988.
In fact there's an awful lot of fairly compelling evidence also that there are an awful lot
more tree huggers in this state than there are out of work law huggers and whether or
not your average say Bellevue Republican who likes to hike and loves trees and is seriously
concerned about growth is going to rally to try and keep people at work in forks.
Well what isn't is that I have to say join us next week on Seattle Week in Review.
Good evening everyone.
A very messy Christmas.