In the final stretch of a bitter campaign, former Federal Prosecutor and U.S. Attorney Diane Tebelius is gunning for Position 1 House seat in Washington’s 48th District, hoping to unseat Rep. Ross Hunter (D-Medina).
The candidates sat down with the Reporter in separate interviews and discussed their priorities for office with less than a month to go before the Nov. 2 General Election.
Tebelius said she is someone who is “looking at all of our fiscal problems outside the box.” In this economy, voters “need a fresh face and a fresh approach” to politics.
That experience includes a stint as a math and journalism teacher in Southern California, a George H.W. Bush appointee to the U.S. Trustee’s office -working as “a watchdog” for fraud and abuse in the bankruptcy-court system – and a year as chair of Washington’s Republican Party, The Seattle Times wrote in an endorsement.
She’s earned the endorsement of state Attorney General Rob McKenna and former U.S. Senator Slade Gorton and the Women of Washington organization.
Hunter, who is hoping to win a fifth two-year term in the Washington State House of Representatives, said he knows how voters pick their candidate.
“You want to make sure that person has the tools, the personality, the background, the juice to do it – and I think I win on all three,” Hunter said.
Hunter sits on a number of committees, including the House Ways and Means.
Hunter has earned endorsements from Kirkland Mayor Joan McBride, Microsoft Corp. and Boeing Corp.
Biggest criticism
Tebelius said that her biggest criticism of Hunter is that he “marches to the drum beat of Seattle liberals,” always towing the party line and not listening to Eastside voters. He voted 98 percent of the time with “spending” Democrats, she said.
Tebelius said that as the chairman of the House Finance Committee, her opponent is the key architect of the current state’s budget crisis that raised $757 million in taxes.
Hunter shot back, saying that Tebelius’s background is “deeply partisan” despite attempts to distance herself from it.
“I don’t think the voters in the 48th District want someone who’s that heavily involved in partisan politics,” Hunter said. “I have a long history of reaching across the isle.”
Top priority
Tebelius said education reform is “being held hostage to the deficit spending that we have in this state,” she said.
Tebelius said it would be unlikely the legislature will be able to focus on her top priority – education – until the budget gets under control, noting lawmakers in the next legislative session will grapple with a $4.5 billion budget shortfall in the next biennium.
“We can’t have a budget based on sticks that are going to fall down,” Tebelius said. “It is a house that does not have a good foundation.”
So, what are Tebelius’s plans for tackling the budget crisis? One idea is for voters to pass I-1053, giving power back to the legislature to require a two-thirds majority vote before raising taxes. Hunter led the charge to overturn I-960 during the last legislative session, she said.
Tebelius’s other ideas include providing real spending projections outside of the current budget cycle, and greater transparency with a 72-hour “waiting period” to release a budget plan to the public before a vote is taken.
Tebelius has also proposed a constitutionally secure rainy day fund, and spending limits tied to the rate of inflation and population growth, according to her candidate blog.
Hunter believes the state government must undergo a “structural reset” since the economy is in dire straights. He said the state has three budget problems – short-term, 2011-13, and long-term.
In the short term, the current budget was brought back into balance after the governor made “across the board cuts of about $520 million, effective Oct. 1,” Hunter wrote in a newsletter devoted to his budget plans.
Now, Hunter said, “The legislature and governor should work together to craft a supplemental budget that we adopt very early in the 2011 session,” Hunter wrote. “This would include additional cuts of perhaps $150 million to provide cushion and an ending fund balance. These numbers will change as the November revenue forecast changes.”
In the long term, what is hurting the budget structure is medical costs growing “1.5 times more” than revenues coming into the state.
“We cannot allow this,” Hunter wrote. “We must put health care in its own box and manage it separately so that we have clarity around the decisions made. It must not be allowed to eat up the rest of the budget. Defining the box as the growth rate of the state’s revenue stream is a reasonable start.”
Hunter also said the budget’s inefficiency is due to the growth of state government.
Education
Tebelius’s plan for education is based on the following key points:
• Pull out education funding from the general fund so that there is more transparency and accountability for how and where the money is spent.
• Implement cost-saving measures through performance audits from the State Auditor, so that more money goes into the classroom and less to the education bureaucracy. The smaller districts need to be consolidated to save money.
• Give parents more choices among public schools, including alternative and charter-like schools.
• Implement the CORE 24 graduation requirements, which Hunter also wants to see move forward.
Hunter’s claim to fame with the state’s education system included re-writing the “(formerly) incomprehensible” school funding formulas to produce an education budget that can be understood at both the state and local levels. This includes a “step-up in funding over the next 8 years,” according to his campaign Web site.
