Author Archives: Erik Smith

House approves Rep. Drew MacEwen’s bill eliminating end-of-course graduation testing requirements

SATTGAST: Representative Drew MacEwen said the assessments have forced teachers to teach to the tests and students to focus on passing the tests. He’s concerned that passing the tests to graduate have drawn attention away from the real focus of school – and that’s educating kids.

House Bill 1046 wouldn’t eliminate the assessments. But it would remove the requirement to pass them before a student can graduate.

MacEWEN: “There’s two things I want to stress. One is it saves 20-million dollars because it would get rid of a lot of requirements and the bureaucracy within OSPI, so we’re saving money. But also, I believe it is our job to ensure that we create life-long learners and not life-long test takers.

SATTGAST: Republican State Representative Drew MacEwen of Union. The bill eliminates the Certificates of Academic Achievement and Individual Achievement as proof for graduation that a student has passed the tests.

The measure passed the House 92 to 6. It now goes to the Senate for further consideration. John Sattgast, Olympia.

House passes MacEwen bill to delink state tests from graduation requirements

In a 92-6 vote Monday, the House passed a bill sponsored by Rep. Drew MacEwen, R-Union, to delink state tests from high school graduation requirements. Under House Bill 1046, the state’s testing system would be left intact, but successful completion of the Certificate of Academic Achievement or Certificate of Individual Achievement would no longer be required for students to graduate.

“Requiring our students to pass a federally designed test that was never intended to be linked to graduation is an unnecessary burden that’s been more of a hindrance than a help,” said MacEwen. “If we simply trust the curriculum and our great teachers, I believe students will be adequately prepared for the important next steps of life.”

The changes proposed by House Bill 1046 would save the state roughly $21 million in the 2017-19 biennium, and $18 million each biennium thereafter.

“This bill would not only save our state tens of millions of dollars, but it would also put a stop to an ineffective system that has diverted students away from learning,” said MacEwen. “I’m encouraged by the vote we took today, which sent a strong statement that we believe our job is to help create lifelong learners, not lifelong test-takers.”

House Bill 1046 now advances to the Senate for further consideration.

Sewage spill reveals double standard in environmental priorities

If hundreds of millions of gallons of untreated stormwater and raw sewage flows into Puget Sound, but politicians and environmental groups don’t make a peep, did it really happen? That’s what we’re left to wonder after the catastrophic failure at King County’s West Point Treatment Plant last month.

Due to a power outage that caused critical equipment to fail, more than 300 million gallons of untreated stormwater and raw sewage were sent straight into Puget Sound.

 This isn’t the first time the West Point Treatment Plant has had problems. In 2009, 10 million gallons of untreated wastewater were dumped into Puget Sound because of a malfunctioning switch. At the time, it was the worst spill the region had seen in decades.

Now, a spill roughly 30 times larger has caused beaches to close and families to be displaced. It has also threatened the vitality of our aquatic ecosystems and undone years of hard work and hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to keep Puget Sound clean.

Aside from the recent vote by the Metropolitan King County Council to expedite the cleanup, action has been slow, causes have not been fully determined and outcry has been minimal.

Less than three years ago, Gov. Jay Inslee and King County Executive Dow Constantine were calling for Victoria, B.C., to get its sewage treatment in order due to the negative impacts it was having on regional waterways. Today, as this newspaper’s editorial board pointed out Feb. 24, these politicians and Mayor Ed Murray now seem more interested in taking shots at the Trump administration than addressing their own management problems.

Futurewise, an anti-sprawl group concerned about our state’s natural resources, has been relatively silent on this failure. Back in December, they tweeted: “Tell the EPA: No vessel sewage in our Sound!” We find it hard to believe in a matter of two months, their priorities have changed.

Don’t get us wrong: Everyone should do their part in keeping our waterways healthy and protecting our environment. Republicans in the Legislature have supported, and in some cases led, efforts to clean up toxic sites, remove legacy nets, clear fish passages, improve oil-train safety, and combat synthetic and pharmaceutical runoff. But we find it odd politicians and groups historically ready to pounce on any threat to our water quality would go silent on this new environmental disaster.

This seems like a classic example of the double standard politicians, state agencies and environmental groups apply to rural communities versus urban communities. Instead of focusing their efforts on a real environmental problem happening in our state’s most populated city, they would rather push policies that punish landowners and jeopardize development in rural communities. They would rather go after a county’s potential water quality impact due to septic systems than hold the officials and one of the largest culprits in devastating our water quality accountable for discharging hundreds of millions of gallons of untreated stormwater and raw sewage into Puget Sound.

Rural counties can’t rely on septic systems, but it’s OK for King County to continue to sweep its ongoing sewage treatment problems under the rug?

King County must restore accountability and upgrade its failing system. And if politicians and the state’s environmental movement can’t find their voices on this catastrophe in their own backyard, they are more likely to find their words fall on deaf ears when complaining about other problems. Their credibility is just as much at risk as our state’s heritage of clean water.

Rep. Drew MacEwen, R-Union, serves as the assistant ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee. Rep. Vincent Buys, R-Lynden, serves as the ranking Republican on the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee. Rep. David Taylor, R-Moxee, serves as the ranking Republican on the House Environment Committee.

Rep. Drew MacEwen’s Legislative Update: Feb. 23, 2017

Last Friday marked our first major deadline of the session — policy committee cutoff. This means non-fiscal bills that did not pass out of committee are now considered “dead” for the year unless deemed necessary to implement the budget (NTIB) or necessary to pass the budget (NTPB). Bills with these designations are exempt from cutoff dates and remain alive throughout the budget negotiation process. This Friday marks fiscal committee cutoff, which means bills that do impact the state’s three budgets (operating, transportation, capital) must pass out of appropriations committees or be considered “dead” for the year unless deemed NTIB or NTPB.

Outside of committee action, our top priority as a Legislature remains coming up with a comprehensive K-12 education funding plan. The most difficult piece of the budget puzzle will be agreeing on what that plan looks like. Yesterday, the majority party in the House brought their proposal, House Bill 1843, to the floor for a vote. We had a robust debate, with Republicans introducing seven amendments — including one of my own — that would have drastically improved the bill.

Rep. Drew MacEwen, R-Union, speaks on the House floor during debate over SHB 1843. Feb. 22, 2017.

The intent behind the amendment I sponsored (you can watch my floor speech here) was to provide more affordable and equitable health benefit coverage to classified school employees, who tend to be disproportionately burdened by the current K-12 health benefit system. It’s a fact K-12 employees with families pay seven times more for coverage than individuals. My amendment would have helped lower their costs by requiring health benefits to be provided to them through the Public Employees’ Benefits Board. This would have ensured these classified state employees would pay no more than three times more for coverage than individuals. The amendment was voted down, as were five others.

The one amendment the majority party did accept would require that funds allocated for smaller K-3 class sizes would go exclusively toward that purpose and nothing else. While I’m glad the amendment was accepted, with six of the seven others voted down, I could not support the bill. In its current form, it doesn’t create a K-12 funding system that is ample, equitable or accountable, nor does it provide adequate reforms. We also have no idea how it would be paid for. Nobody in the majority party revealed any details on that front yesterday.

In addition to not having an adequate funding system in place, another major problem of the plan is that it continues the existing local levy policy where property-wealthy districts can generate more funding per student at a lower tax rate than property-poor districts. The Senate Republicans’ proposal would replace this existing system with a flat, statewide local effort property tax, which would provide equal funding to students, regardless of their ZIP code. It would also mean reduced property taxes for taxpayers in many legislative districts, including the 35th. This idea makes far more sense than simply relying on what’s not working. We must ensure all students have an equal opportunity to succeed, and that will not happen as long as we keep the current regressive local levy policy in place.

To watch yesterday’s entire floor debate, click here.

Telephone town hall a big success

Thank you to all of you who participated in last week’s telephone town hall! We took 13 calls, with topics ranging from the Hirst Decision and infrastructure improvements, to education funding and the nuances of the levy cliff.  We also had time to ask two poll questions.

1. Legislation has been proposed to abolish the death penalty. Do you support ending capital punishment?

Yes: 24.1%
No: 63.9%
Unsure: 12.0%

2. Do you support legislation to reform the state’s B&O tax to exempt all businesses from B&O tax liability on their first $200,000 of taxable income?

Yes: 76.6%
No: 7.5%
Unsure: 15.9%

I really enjoy these telephone town halls because they allow you and I to have an open and honest dialogue with one another. Whether we agree on a particular issue or not, please know I am focused on solving problems in our district and am here to serve you. I have and will continue to bring your voice to the forefront in the Legislature.

Rep. Drew MacEwen in the HRC broadcast studio before his telephone town hall. Feb. 16, 2017.Upcoming in-district listening tour; contacting me

If you missed my telephone town hall, please feel free to send me an email or give me a call any time at (360) 786-7902. I’m also working on securing dates and times for an upcoming in-district listening tour. I’ll have more information about that in future updates, but if you have any ideas for locations in your community where I could come and visit, please let me know.

It’s an honor to serve you in the state House.

Washington Middle School student serves as page in state House

Ariana Henry, a student from Washington Middle School in Olympia, recently spent a week serving as a page in the state House of Representatives. She was sponsored by her 35th District Rep. Drew MacEwen, R-Union.

Ariana is the daughter of Cris and Annette Henry. She enjoys playing soccer, and is also musically gifted. She not only plays the piano, but the cello and bass as well.

“Ariana was a big help to myself and my fellow legislators, and I am grateful for her service,” said MacEwen. “It’s always exciting to see young civic-minded people engaged in the legislative process. Ariana represented the 35th District well, and I hope she made some great memories during her time here.”

While serving as a House page, Ariana attended page school, delivered messages and documents to legislators and staff, and fulfilled other tasks critical to the efficient operation of the Legislature.

Each year, students from around the state apply to participate in the House Page Program. To become a page, applicants must have a legislative sponsor, be between the ages of 14 and 16, and obtain written permission from their parents and school. Pages earn $35 per day while serving in the program. For more information about the House Page Program, click here.

For more information about Rep. MacEwen, visit: https://representativedrewmacewen.com.

Rep. MacEwen sponsors Rochester Middle School student as House page

Rochester Middle School student Josephine Neff traveled to Olympia Jan. 23-27 to serve as a page in the state House of Representatives. She was sponsored by her 35th District Rep. Drew MacEwen, R-Union.

Josephine is the daughter of Johan and Alisha Neff, and the granddaughter of Paul Buerger. Earlier this year, MacEwen had the opportunity to take part in a ceremony formally awarding Buerger with the Bronze Star Medal. Josephine was paging during her grandfather’s ceremony, but got to meet with him and other family members in the State Reception Room at the Capitol later that afternoon.

As part of Josephine’s page duties, she attended page school every day, delivered messages and documents to legislators and staff, and fulfilled other tasks critical to the efficient operation of the Legislature.

“I really appreciate Josephine’s hard work while serving as a page here in the House,” said MacEwen. “She helped me and my fellow legislators do our jobs more effectively. I hope she enjoyed her week here at the Capitol, and wish her the best of luck in all her future endeavors.”

Each year, students from around the state apply to participate in the House Page Program. To become a page, applicants must have a legislative sponsor, be between the ages of 14 and 16, and obtain written permission from their parents and school. Pages earn $35 per day while serving in the program. For more information about the House Page Program, click here.

For more information about Rep. MacEwen, visit: https://representativedrewmacewen.com.

Rep. MacEwen to host telephone town hall Feb. 16

Rep. Drew MacEwen invites all 35th District residents to join him for a telephone town hall Thursday, Feb. 16 from 6-7 p.m. to discuss the 2017 legislative session.

MacEwen, R-Union, has hosted a number of telephone town halls since becoming a state representative in 2013.

“I always enjoy the opportunity to hear directly from Thirty-Fifth District residents about the issues they’re most passionate about,” said MacEwen. “I believe forums like this are critical because they allow us to have open and honest dialogue with one another about a wide range of subjects. I’m looking forward to taking as many questions as I can during the hourlong call.”

To participate in the telephone town hall, 35th District residents can call (360) 355-3025. If listeners have questions during the call, they can press the star (*) key on their telephone keypads.

Residents who are unable to participate in the call can contact MacEwen by calling his Olympia office at (360) 786-7902 or sending him an email at drew.macewen@leg.wa.gov.