The Challenge:   Jobs.  We need to generate a huge number of jobs.  This recession has already cost us about 170,000 jobs; we need to get those people back to work and off unemployment.   We need a fired up economy which also creates every year another 70,000 new jobs for Washingtonians entering the workforce for the first time.  That’s not all.  In order to provide the sustained living wages needed to support working families and prepare for retirement, many of these new jobs have to come in the new, high-tech and service industries that are forming the mainstream our our 21st Century globalized economy.

My work plan:  Frankly, I’ve had it up to here with the same old rhetoric about “workforce development.” We’ve been wasting time and taxpayers money on programs that produce brochures, not jobs.  I’m pushing for two key actions:

• Upskill our unemployed.  Almost everyone who is unemployed now will need new skills to get back into the workforce.  We need to stuff as many people through our community and technical colleges as possible.  We have nearly 10% unemployment -- I propose we “surge” our CTC system by 10 percent to assure that everyone has an opportunity to get back on a payroll with a meaningful job asap.
• Let our local businesses lead.  We don’t need more studies. Business leaders in each local area know where the business growth opportunities are and what we could do at the state level to help.   In our area many of those new opportunities are going to be in green energy and green construction.  I propose a statewide campaign to “ask the business community” in each local area what practical help they need to see sustainable job growth.

The Challenge:   This severe recession has permanently changed the terrain for Olympia.  Our state budget will be squeezed in a vice — costs growing, revenue shrinking -- as far as we can see into the future.  We need a “reset.”  The simple economic fact is that we must quickly downsize our state government by more than 10%.  Since we must increase spending on education, our social and health programs have to become vastly more efficient and effective.  The bottom line:  Reform is Job One for state government.

My work plan:  I’ve been the “reform guy” since I was first elected.  Here is what I have going on and what’s coming next:

• Streamlining our executive service.  We have about 6,000 senior executives working in our state agencies — 6,000!  Most are in the Washington Management Service, more than a thousand are “exempt” -- the governor’s political appointees.  We do need outstanding executives.  But I don’t think we need this many. I started the overhaul with my bill, HB-2049, passed last year with unanimous, bi-partisan support in both houses.  This year I’m working with a Republican colleague and the State Government to completely overhaul this senior executive corps, cut the numbers, and open up career opportunities for the best of our public servants.
• Radically reducing state audits.  I discovered that our excellent Kitsap Mental Health Service gets six separate audits from the state every year — different teams from different offices combing through the same data.  Obviously this requires extra staff on both ends.  Our Kitsap health providers invented a way to consolidate all those inspections into one.  I took their “one contract, one audit” proposal DSHS Secretary Dreyfus.  She agreed to launch a test program in Kitsap. To back that up, I wrote an extensive “proviso” (orders from the legislature) requiring DSHS to overhaul its entire audit program.
• Cutting DSHS spending.  About half of all our spending on health and social services goes to about 5% of our clients.  These exceptionally complex cases often get taxpayer-funded services from several different state agencies.  I’ve proposed that the governor and the DSHS Secretary (who spends almost 40% of our entire budget in just that one, huge agency) get all hands working together on these expensive cases.  I didn’t win the battle to force this requirement into the budget — but I won’t quit.  This is a key reform.  I’ll keep insisting.
• Putting pedal to the metal on reform.  House Speaker Frank Chopp and Ways & Means Chair Kelli Linville have asked me to help organize a full court press on state government reform. We’ll bring in a number of legislators; our goal is to have a major package of reform bills ready for the next legislature.  Do you have a big reform idea? A money-saving idea?  Let me know, please — I’d be glad to help write the legislation to put your idea into action.

The Challenges:   We have three big education tasks ahead:  1:  We need to accelerate our early learning programs to make sure that every child in Washington is ready to excel in school.   2: We need to start up the ramp of increased funding for our K-12 education system with the goal of seeing 100% of our students finish high school fully ready for college or a career.  And 3: We need to “surge” our community and technical college system to meet the retraining needs of our unemployed citizens.

My work plan:  These education fixes are at the heart of what we have to do to pull this state out of this deep recession.  Here’s what I’m working on right now:

• Increasing early learning quality.  We don’t have the money for the state to support early learning programs in every corner of the state.  What we can do at low cost is develop the quality standards and licensing mechanisms that will let us assure every mom and dad that their child is going to receive top quality, pre-school care.  I wrote the requirement for this into our budget; I’ll be working with the Department of Early Learning and the stakeholders across the summer to have these procedures ready to go.
• Working toward fully-funded K-12. The Constitution says it is our “paramount duty” to provide “ample funding” forevery child’s education (emphasis in the Constitution). I’m working with education budget experts and my Vitamin E(ducation) group to map a practical path to marching up the ramp to full funding — that is quickly going to require $billions more per year.  It is rubber meet road time.
• Designing a CTC “surge” program.  Our community and technical colleges are already working above 100% of normal. But we must stuff even more people through if we are going to get tens of thousands of people off unemployment and back into meaningful, family wage jobs.  I’m working to move us from the staid and inefficient old world of workforce development into the high-tech, high volume career restart programs that our desperate-to-work-again citizens need now.

The Challenge:    The old war between the economy and the environment is over.  Green won.  Every good business leader knows that going green (saving energy, avoiding pollution) is the only route to sustained profits.  And every good economist knows that the road out of this deep recession is painted green.  But we have a problem: our environmental cleanup and protection agenda hasn’t caught up.   We need an ambition overhaul.

My work plan:   We need to raise our game.  Instead of the pursuit of a handful of individual, constituency-oriented goals, we need to advance a strategic agenda that recognizes that since the environment is a huge, interconnected system, we have to act on a broad, systemic scale.  Here are two things I continue to work on:

• Attacking the stormwater runoff problem.  Over the past 30 years, we’ve gradually reduced the “point source” pollution problem where factories or other polluting sources dumped contaminants into public waters. Now we have to take on a much harder — and bigger — problem: the pollution that comes from the general runoff as rains carry pollutants from contaminated roadways, parking lots and so on.  For two years the advocates have been unable to design a bill that could get the broad approval necessary. I’m determined to try — we must solve this problem in a way which is economically and environmentally sound.
• Accelerating innovative local energy production.  We’re on the edge of a revolution where much of our electrical power can be generated locally — either right on or around our homes and offices or at our neighborhood utility treatment site.  Think wind, solar, tidal. And think of making money for generating electricity, not just buying it.