Issues

A Policy Outline for a Brighter Future

 

Education

• Define Basic Education and fund it!

• School Boards need reasonable authority to carry forward levies that do not exceed the combination of student population growth and inflation.

• Open up more access for students to attend colleges and universities

• Establish an emergency enrollment pool that will allow colleges and universities to train laid-off workers during recessions.

 

Environment

• Uphold the core values of the Growth Management Act – focus on urban density to avoid rural sprawl

• Focus on Puget Sound cleanup

• Embrace the recent EPA declaration that Green House gasses are harmful to human health

• Support Cap and Trade legislation

• Tighten emissions standards

• Create clean-energy jobs to transform our economy

 

State Budget

• Admit that we have a structural budget problem and build long-term strategies that provide adequate funding for schools and programs for vulnerable individuals.

• Explore more stable, less volatile revenue sources

• Establish a more aggressive savings plan during good times to sustain us during bad times -- protect those savings from radical initiative writers

 

Taxes

• Build a coalition to reform our state’s tax structure

• Focus on tax fairness first and then revenue adequacy

• Significantly expand the tax credit for small businesses

• Shift the sale tax burden from low- and middle-income families to the wealthy by offering an annual sales tax credit to working families.

 

Transportation

• Adopt constitutional and statutory changes that permit gasoline taxes to be used more flexibly to reduce congestion and enhance freight mobility

• Move our focus away from increasing highway capacity and towards more sustainable public transportation options

 

Healthcare

• Create a public insurance option that will lower costs and improve coverage for everyone

• Eliminate the term “pre-existing condition” from the health care dialogue altogether, bar insurance companies from using them as an excuse to deny coverage

 

Election reform

• Limit the election season

• Consider a public option

• Reform the initiative process to bring greater accountability to those who seek to slash critical state programs