Some of my positions

Here are some of the issues that have come up in conversations with voters, and some of my thinking about them, along with brief comments about my opponent's views. (If any of my comments about my opponent's views are incorrect, I will of course correct them as necessary; my contact information is on the left side of this page.).

Well moratorium: I have written quite a bit about this, and I may be making some adjustments as I get to know SOWR better, but briefly, I think the County Commissioners failed the county by allowing the moratorium to happen. (During the Daily Record candidate forum, my opponent said he would not have behaved any differently than the current commissioners did. As recently as this past weekend, video of the DR forum was on their web page, but seems to have been taken down.)

Teanaway solar reserve: I have written quite a bit about this one too, mostly in late July and early August: I was against TSR before I was for it. I was against it because the project disregards the intent of the government incentives that make it possible. The intent of the incentives is to encourage renewable energy projects in the most productive locations; the TSR site is not a good location, so it is a misuse of the taxpayer money that makes it possible. Now that it has been approved (pending the results of the appeal) I am for it because it will bring at least some jobs to the Upper County. I do have doubts about the developer's claims about job creation, but this is a separate problem.

Wind power: I am basically in favor of wind power. While Kittitas County is not a very good place for utility-scale solar energy, it is an excellent place for wind energy. In addition to our famous wind, we have several important east-west power lines running through our county, which means this issue will be with us for a long time. We already have a wind farm zone overlay that encourages wind farm development on the east end of the county. We should fine-tune the location of that overlay. (During the Daily Record candidate forum, my opponent was unaware that we have a wind farm overlay, which really surprised me; he seemed generally poorly informed about energy issues.)

County economy: we need to move away from the boom-and-bust economy that we've been dealing with since the timber and coal days. Construction was the most recent boom, and is the cause of the most recent bust, and economists agree that it will take a long time for this industry to recover. Unfortunately, it will be a very long time until we see anything like 2007, when the county had the lowest unemployment rate in history. We need to work to diversify our economy and take better advantage of assets like CWU. We need to be working now to fix our economy ourselves, not waiting for the country's economy to recover. (My opponent seems to believe that a return to 2007 is just a matter of not very much time, and that while we wait we should be getting ready for its return.)

CWU: Central Washington University is the largest employer in the county, and over the last three years Central has seen its budget cut by almost one-third. This is a huge problem for our county, but the county has been distracted by other things. County Commissioners should be the chief lobbyists for the county in Olympia, but to do that most effectively the county needs to have good relations with Olympia. As a former CWU faculty member, I understand how the university works, and can address this issue with a great deal of credibility. (My opponent, like the current Board of County Commissioners, doesn't seem to be paying attention to this problem.)