King County Councilmember Kathy Lambert, who represents District 3, and contender John Murphy went head-to-head at a Sept. 20 candidate forum at Blakely Hall in the Issaquah Highlands.

Lambert has represented District 3, the county’s largest district, for eight years and was previously a state representative for the 45th Legislative District, a teacher and a small business owner. Murphy, a retired Eastside Fire and Rescue firefighter and Navy corpsman, is a physician’s assistant and attorney who lives in North Bend.

Environmental challenges

Both candidates agree that protecting the natural surroundings of Issaquah is incredibly important. For Murphy, this means continuing to work to “reduce our carbon footprint.” He lauded Eastside Fire and Rescue Station 73 in the Issaquah Highlands for earning a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design silver designation.

The station “puts out no pollution and it creates a neutral environment where you still have the public safety in mind and serves the public, but it doesn’t create any sort of carbon footprint,” he said.

Murphy also would like to see trail improvements made at local hiking hotspots.

“Improving the trails and the access to the trails will help preserve the trails,” he said.

Additionally, he believes that there should be stronger environmental regulations for people who build in rural areas.

Lambert countered that “there are strict standards in unincorporated areas and they’re monitored by an agency called the Department of Permitting and Environmental Resources.”

For Lambert, “flooding is a huge issue.” She said that she helped form the Flood Control District in 2007 because before that, flood control only received $3 million per year. With the new tax revenue, the district is now able to put $60 million per year to flood projects.

“We are doing a very good job of making sure that every one of the municipalities and the unincorporated areas get their projects so they can deal with flooding and make sure that their rivers are in shape for the fish,” she said.

She said that she is also “interested in our landfill and also our biosolids and biosolids distribution.” She looked at waste energy plants in Germany and would like to “bring to this area a waste energy plant very much like what’s in Hamburg so we can be processing our waste in a way that’s a resource.”

Safe injection sites

The council candidates also discussed the possibility of a safe injection site being located in the east part of the county.

In Lambert’s view, there is no such thing as a “safe” injection site.

“I don’t support a safe injection site. I don’t think that even is possible,” Lambert said. “Injecting yourself with heroin or allowing the person next to you to do that is not safe. I think what we need to have is therapy on-demand.”

Lambert said that her first husband had been a live-in drug rehab counselor, and that she herself had seen “up-close and personal” with the struggles that heroin addicts face.

“These are really important people that just really need therapy and counseling,” she said, pointing out that studies show that 70 to 80 percent of addicts would willingly enter a rehab program.

“We need to get that readily available on-demand so we can get people clean and sober,” she said.

Murphy disagreed with Lambert and would support having a safe injection site in King County.

“As a health care provider, I think this is a public health emergency, and certainly the opioid epidemic in our country is killing thousands every day,” he said. “To do nothing is not a solution.”

Murphy cited the safe injection sites in Vancouver, British Columbia and in Europe, as “very successful” in getting people into rehab and preventing the transmission of diseases like HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C. He has seen people in his practice who have contracted infections through dirty needles.

“Yes, we need to do rehab. Yes, we need to do safe injection sites,” Murphy said, calling the sites “one aspect in an entire spectrum” of helping drug users.

“We have a horrible substance abuse problem in this country and we need to do something about it,” he stated.

Budget revenue

Murphy believes the property tax cap hurt the county in terms of finding revenue and would like to lift this while still finding a tax balance.

“We can’t be continually taxed up and up and up because we’re not gonna have any money,” he said, adding, “We have the highest gas tax. We’ve got the highest of everything.”

He would access revenue by “[trying] to squeeze more money out of the federal government” and “be[ing] very creative as to how we think about collecting money.”

Murphy said that he understands the difficulties of his constituents when it comes to taxes.

“I’m a taxpayer … I am on a fixed income,” he said.

Lambert agreed that “people have tax fatigue and that’s really a problem.”

“The money that we do get needs to be spent wisely,” she said. “And that was why I think it’s so important that we have become very transparent with our spending.”

With King County bigger than 13 states, Lambert said that the county budget is complex, but has been a product of teamwork.

“Our budgets … have been mostly unanimous because we have worked together, all nine of us,” she said.

She pointed out that King County receives only 18 cents from every tax dollar, and noted that the only money that can be moved around is the general fund.

“I cannot take airport money and spend it on wastewater. I cannot take wastewater money and spend it on roads,” she explained.

Transportation projects

When it comes to transportation improvement projects, Lambert wants to see all county residents pay for county roads.

“We are going to have to have another dedicated source,” Lambert said. “The roads that connect, that are county roads, are not paid for by everybody in the county. Only 200,000 people pay for all the rural roads.”

She said that maintaining county roads takes $400 million, yet taxing the 200,000 raises just $80 million. The county, she said “has got to change that funding formula” because “2.2 million people use these roads and 200,000 pay for them — that is not OK.”

Murphy said that large corporations, which have caused the local population to skyrocket, should in turn pay their fair share for infrastructure improvements that are now needed more frequently than if fewer people lived here.

“I think it’s important that they understand the impact they have with their employees on our infrastructure,” he said.

He added, “They’re using our roads but they’re not paying for them.”

Murphy would also consider having sales tax from unincorporated people who shop in incorporated areas going back to unincorporated areas to pay for roads.

The next candidate forum at Blakely Hall will be held on Oct. 18 and will feature Issaquah mayoral candidates Mary Lou Pauly and Paul Winterstein.