Cyrus was absolutely brilliant in the town hall meeting today. He took one after another of Rodney'sarguments and just demolished them.
Rodney said that 60% of the voters in the district voted for the Eyman initiative. Cyrus said that if you ask any person whether they want to spend $100, people would say no. But if they are in Nordstroms and you show them nice shirts and ask them whether they want to buy them, people buy them. This means you have to explain to people what they are getting in return for the expenditures and if people understand what they are buying they will accept it.
Rodney was talking about the need for reforms before providing more funding (in education). Cyrus said a teacher and school evaluation system has already been designed with input from teachers and voters and that first we have to fund the reforms that were already made.
Rodney was talking about making sure schools had reforms that showed success in improving graduation rates. Cyrus said that the kids who weren't graduating are the ones who are sleeping on couches and who don't have nutrition or medical care. He said that the kids not graduating weren't from Medina and Clyde Hill, which brought down thehouse with applause. He criticized the Fund K-12 first slogan because children can't learn if they are homeless and sick. He also said that they can't fund reduced class sizes if that means people going without health care and social services.
About gun policy and mental health Cyrus said that 99% of mentally ill are not dangerous and that they should not be stigmatized. They all were disappointed about the background check bill not passing in the House.
He frequently received applause from the audience. He completely brought down the house when he said that states that follow a policy of deregulation and low taxes are not the ones that attract high tech industry. He said that Silicon Valley started in California, which is the most labor friendly state and that we don't want to be Mississippi.
Ross was very rational, factual and scientific and presented the numbers showing the need for more revenue and said that he did not support the Eyman initiative. He mainly stressed the point that more revenue is needed to fund the Supreme court mandate for education and that if they funded education first the amount for social services and health care would be so small it would not be reasonable (not his exact words, but that was the concept). At one point he referred to Rodney's caucus as the Republican caucus, but he did it in a nonconfrontational way. He put the real world numbers on the table and did not seem optimistic that they would be able to get the amount of revenue that was actually needed. He didn't have specific information yet about what was going to be the outcome in the budget negotiations. He was very serious and no-nonsense about the need for revenue and taxes.
Rodney's attempt to pack the audience did not work, as there were only about 4 or 5 people applauding for his points of view. This only reinforces my intuition that he does not have the endorsement of the Republicans in this LD and that he may be in the Man Without a Country position. I do not see any groundswell of Republican support materializing for him in this neighborhood. Rodney was making very sinister, nasty faces at us in the audience, which I have never seen before.
I was dismayed that there were no labor unions there arguing about the workers compensation or state employee pension proposals. The teachers union was there, as well as the medical care interpreters union.
The questions were taken on 3x5 cards. My question on SB5242 was taken up. My question was whether allowing principals to reject the transfer of any teacher would allow principals to get together and blackball teachers who made complaints or had a differing point of view. Ross referred this question to Rodney, who said that they could write protections into the bill preventing that, but he did say that the principals should be able to decide who was on their team, as in private industry, and that they should be able to get rid of a teacher they don't want. Zach recorded the forum on video, so Rodney's comments are now on video on the subject of principals getting rid of teachers they don't want.
The only members of the Redmond City Council to attend were Hank Margeson (Democrat), who sat in his city council seat on the stage, and Richard Cole (retired from the Council). Dave Asher was there from Kirkland.
Linda Seltzer
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