PORT TOWNSEND— State Rep. Steve Tharinger said he is satisfied with this year’s state budget but thinks that some legislators made it harder to write than it had to be.
“I think some of what was holding us up is what I call ideological ego flexing,” Tharinger said.
“One of the things these people brought up was a balanced budget amendment, which wasn’t practical.
“We match our revenue projections against our caseload, but that is always done by looking in the rear-view mirror at what was spent before. In the real world, it’s very difficult to project forward and to be locked into what is just not real.”
Tharinger, D-Sequim, is completing his first two-year legislative term and has announced that he is running for re-election.
During his first year in office, he served simultaneously as a Clallam County commissioner, and said he is now relieved to have just one job.
“When I was a commissioner, I was working all the time” he said.
“I have more time now, even though my email still tends to pile up.
“It was much harder to do both jobs, but I wanted to honor my commitment to the people of Clallam County.”
Tharinger said that he hadn’t sponsored a lot of bills during his term but did go to the mat for critical-access hospitals, such as Jefferson Healthcare in Port Townsend.
Support for the hospitals was “zeroed out” in the governor’s budget and the house budgets.
“We had to work pretty hard to get those dollars back into the budget,” he said.
“There are a few of these hospitals in Western Washington, but most of them are in Eastern Washington in Republican districts. So I worked across the aisle, building a coalition to get this back in the budget.
“In the end, we prevailed and maintained the funding.”
Tharinger said that he supported investments in infrastructure during bad economic conditions in order to stimulate growth but said that such funding can’t be counted on in perpetuity.
As a result, calls by the state Department of Transportation for dedicated ferry funding probably won’t happen, he said.
Although “you have all made a very good point that the ferry system is part of the state highway system, that discussion is over,” he said.
“Every department wants a dedicated fund that works for them but doesn’t work for the system as a whole,” he pointed out. “The challenge is to maintain funding for the ferry system, and we need to do that.
“But there are some issues around the DOT,” he said, adding that “someone told me that it has something like 150 public information officers.”
Tharinger said that no legislator reads all the bills. Instead, they rely on reliable sources to help them make up their minds about an issue.
These sources include lobbyists.
“They have a lot of good information, they are very talented, and if they aren’t giving me good information, they aren’t going to stick around very long,” he said.
“And you learn to trust the committee chair, the staff members to give you the best information.”
Tharinger said that tax reform — especially with the business and occupation (B&O) tax — is necessary but that he doesn’t know how that will shape up.
“We are looking to get a better, a more fair revenue system that moves us into the 21st century,” he said
“That’s one thing that I want to work on in my next term.”
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Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.