Gary Locke: Governor Fix-It 2/6 | Asian American Personalities

Asian American Profiles

Gary Locke: Governor Fix-It

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GS: How would you grade yourself in reaching the goals you had when you took office?
GL: That was part of the dilemma of not seeking a third term. There's so much more to do, so much more to be done, especially since the down economy has really kind of stymied made it very difficult for us to accomplish many of the things that we wanted to do. Foty-seven states in America have huge budget problems. Look at the problem of California, even Oregon to the south of us. Many midwest states are in worse financial difficulty than the state of Washington. We still have that significant deficit and yet we were still able to provide additional money to help schools reduce their class sizes, still increased enrollments, still provided more money for scholarships and financial aid. Not as much as a lot of the advocates would have liked, but we were still able to move forward albeit at a slower pace. We have accomplished a lot and unfortunately in this tough tough economy we've had to make some cuts in programs or just focus on priorities. That has made it harder for us to achieve all that we were hoping to.

GS: An A for effort?
GL: If you look at the context that we were operating in terms of the 47 states having to make huge cuts in programs and the huge national recession brought on by September 11 and the fact that the Boeing company laid off 25,000 people just in the Seattle area in one year, and the implosion of the dot-com industry and the downturn in telecommunications and the high unemployment rate to begin with, I think we've done a remarkable job. It's how we respond to the crisis and all the curves that have been thrown our way, including how I've managed to move ahead even though we've had a Republican-controlled state House and Senate. Later on we had a tie between the Republicans and the Democrats. If you look at all the circumstances in which we had to operate, we've made incredible progress notwithstanding those impediments.

GS: How do you view Arnold Schwarzenegger in terms of the significance to the nation's political climate? Even for Washington's own next election?
GL: I think it shows how much people are concerned about the economy and how people are concerned about domestic bread-and-butter issues. People are very upset that electricty rates have skyrocketed. People are very concerned about the downsizing, the mergers and acquisitions and layoffs that have occurred. I'm all in favor of rebuilding Iraq but how about rebuilding America?

GS: Do you see it as a movement?
GL: Instead of giving a trillion dollar tax cut that primarily benefits the most wealthy Americans, why not take just a fraction of those trillion dollars and provide true prescription drug coverage to all seniors. How about taking a fraction of that to create jobs by putting money into public highway construction and mass-transit construction and renovation and repairs of our colleges and universities and matching money for local school districts to repair and expand their public schools? That would pump so much money into the economy, putting millions people to work and providing good family-wage jobs and at the same time building and repairing the things that have to be done sooner or later.

GS: Do you think Arnold Schwarzenegger's election signifies more a desire to fix the eocnomy than a shift toward the policies that Republicans are known to espouse?
GL: Look at Arnold Schwarzenegger -- he's pro-choice, in support of affirmative action...

GS: He's definitely a social liberal or a center-of-the-roader but...
GL: ...he's pro-gay rights, pro-choice and he's in support of more controls on guns.

GS: How about in terms of economics? He seems to be focusing on cutting taxes to encourage more businesses to locate in California. You don't see that as a trend that many overtake Washington?
GL: That's very different than giving billionaires a tax breaks. Even the democratic governors have been calling for targetted tax relief to help stimulate business growth and expansion. I said that in my response to President Bush's State of the Union Address. Targetted tax cuts for working families as well as business investment. We're doing that in the state of Washington. Democrats in the state of Washington in my administration have been supporting targtted tax relief and tax incentives for business growth to create family-wage jobs for everyday people. But to do that you don't need to give the billionaires of the country, the wealthiest 1% of the population, a trillion dollars in tax cuts. And they get more tax relief than the other 90% of Americans combined. Even the administration's own officials and even the research arm of congress concede that this trillion-dollar tax cut for the super wealthy does not create more jobs.

GS: So you don't see any grounds for a movement toward having a Republican governor in the next election?
GL: No.

GS: One thing that no one disputes is your success with the educational system. It's ranked number four in the country now. What was the key to your success in getting the resources directed toward education at a time when there are many competing demands.
GL: My mantra is that education is the great equalizer in our society. Regardless of your income level your ethnicity, your gender, with quality education we're all on a more level playing field. Does America stand for freedom, hope, opportunity? How do you achieve that? With quality education! And I keep saying that we want the young people at the state of Washington to have first crack at the jobs that are being made available by Washington employers. Don't we want Washington companies to hire Washingtonians first? If our kids aren't educated, then those Washington companies will recruit people from outside the state of Washignton while our kids go unemployed. That makes no sense. We've gotta focus on education, we've gotta focus on giving our kids the tools they need to realize their dreams. How can you go around denying our kids opportunities to be whatever they want to be?

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GS: Was it your passion in making that argument that allowed you to get the resources directed toward education?
GL: Especially when we had huge welfare savings in the first few years of my administration because we did such an incredible job of transforming our welfare system. We didn't kick people off welfare, we really focused on job training and retraining and helping people find jobs. Even after they found a job we focused on helping them get even better-paying jobs and getting more training. We constantly got all these awards for being number one in our country in welfare reform. We offer childcare, subsidized childcare. We're ranked number one in affordability and access to subsized childcare.
That subsidized childcare is not just to people on public assistance but to all low-wage workers. We don't say, “As soon as you leave public assitance, you don't get any benefits.” That's unfair. That discriminates against people who are just above poverty level, who are struggling just as hard. And we shouldn't just give all the benefits to people on public assistance. It should be based on income. So we put a lot of money into childcare, job training and retraining. Because of that our welfare rolls dropped dramatically. We took the savings and put it into education, saying that if we can educate a lot of our kids so they get good paying jobs, they won't really need to go on public assistance.

GS: So your success with public education was powered by your success in cutting welfare costs?
GL: And just taking whatever additional money was flowing into the state because of a booming economy and putting it into education as well.

GS: Did you have much oppostion to devoting so much resources to pumping up the educational system?
GL: There were people who resisted some of our efforts. So like on finding money for reducing class size, we helped write an initiative that took it to the people, and the people overwhelmingly supported it. PAGE 3