Snoqualmie’s Matt Larson doesn’t have easy answers to the state’s budget and transportation problems, or to its regressive tax system. Now serving his third term as Mayor of Snoqualmie and running for the state House of Representatives, Position 2, he says there are no easy answers.
“It’s a complicated mess. There have to be some painful conversations about everybody stepping up and doing their part,” said Larson.
He was speaking generally, about the state’s multiple budget priorities and specifically, about the 2012 McCleary decision, a State Supreme Court ruling that the legislature has failed to fund basic education. Since 2014, the legislature has been held in contempt of court for continuing to not resolve the funding problem, and has been subject to a fine of $100,000 per day the problem persists.
“The McCleary decision is going to be all-consuming, but I’m very concerned that the resolution will do much greater damage to the state infrastructure,” he said.
Increasing funding for education will invariably mean decreasing funding for something else, he explained, and “there’s such interconnectedness of all the components of community life, and if you let one of those fail, it ripples through… to all the others.”
As an example he points to reduced funding to the state’s Public Works Trust Fund, in recent years to increase school spending. The trust fund awards grants to cities for infrastructure work such as sewers and sidewalks.
The state will have to consider tax increases at some point. “There’s going to have to be additional revenue…. It’s probably going to have to move toward a combination of increasing taxes and reforms,” he said.
Education funding has become every legislator’s and every candidate’s top issue in this campaign.
Larson said that in in his door-to-door campaigning, he actually has heard from more people who are frustrated by traffic than by school funding, but the education issue shares similarities with many of the state’s problems.
None of the voters want to hear that, and Larson doesn’t really want to say it, either, but “we still need another $3.5 or 4 billion biannually to resolve (McCleary),” he said.
“It’s an equity issue,” Larson said. The four school districts in the 5th Legislative District rarely struggle to pass maintenance and operations levies every four years, but some school districts in lower-income regions do. Since state funding provides only about 65 percent of school district revenues annually, all districts rely on local levies to provide many of the elements considered basic education.
Similarly, the tax burden in most of the state’s revenue mechanisms is disproportionate.
“We live in a state with inequity,” Larson said. “About half of the revenue is from sales tax, which hits the lower-income class harder,” since they are paying a larger portion of their income to sales tax than higher-income classes.
Tolling and the gas tax have the same effect.
Of the 4,200 5th District residents Larson has spoken to in the last few months, the majority wanted to talk about transportation.
“What people are really seething about is sitting in traffic for 45 minutes, just trying to get to I-90,” he said.
The state’s failure to fund what he considers crucial transportation improvement projects, is “a threat to our area and what makes this such a great place to live… there are too many parts of King County… whose quality of life depends on quality roads .”
While education funding is unquestionably the legislature’s top priority, Larson said, “it’s essential that we do it in a way that doesn’t continue to throw the state backward.”
The work ahead, for whoever is elected to Position 2, will be long and difficult, Larson predicted. He feels his qualifications for the job are in his 14 years of experience as an elected official and, more importantly, the relationships he’s built in his career with other city and county leaders.
“If you see an endorsement… they’re not endorsing me because I’m a Democrat, they’re endorsing me because they know me and have worked with me,” he said.
Larson has been endorsed by U.S. Congresswoman Suzan DelBene, 5th District Senator Mark Mullet, State Representatives Chris Hurst (31st), Judy Clibborn and Tana Senn (41st), Larry Springer and Roger Goodman (45th), and Joan McBride, (48th), King County Executive Dow Constantine and numerous city mayors.
Learn more about Larson at http://votemattlarson.com.
