From TCTV, the 2010 The League of Women Voters Primary Candidates Forum

Chris Ward · Voters Supporting Justin Kover for 22nd District State Representative Position 2.

I am very pleased to have finally gotten an opportunity to compare ideas in front of the public with Sam Hunt at the Panorama City candidate forum. It was even more pleasing to have gotten to meet so many of the Panorama City Democrats and other citizens at the forum. Special thanks to Ruth Shearer and Joe Lashaway of the Panorama City Democratic Study Group for inviting me and for putting on the forum.

One thing I can agree with my opponent on is that we showed some wide differences. I want to lower the sales and gas tax, and my opponent thinks it’s not a good idea. I want to cut unnecessary spending and use it to fund state worker jobs and end furloughs, layoffs, and benefit cuts. My opponent chose not to do this. He says that “If there was a budget line for fraud, waste, and abuse, it would have been cut long ago.” He implied that it’s necessary to spend $255 million on a building we don’t need, with lease rates negotiated by the state to be 50% above market value rather than using some of that money to stop these needless state worker furloughs because he “knows the difference between the capital budget and the operating budget.” Sam Hunt tells us that because the money is in one budget and not another, that workers get to pay the price while developers get fat on our tax dollars.

It’s not the first time I’ve heard this sort of nonsense out of elected folks. As an activist in Tumwater I learned that the people of my town are paying inflated sewer rates in order to subsidize the Tumwater Valley Golf Course. The law says that revenue from the sewer fund can only be spent on sewer infrastructure, and cannot be moved to other funds. What was the city council’s answer? Do not “spend” the money, simply loan the money. This loophole has cost the people of Tumwater millions of dollars. When I suggested that we take that money and fund the North End Fire Station for the people of Tumwater Hill and their neighbors, Mayor Osgood said to me, “We can’t spend the sewer money on the fire department. The law says we have to spend it on sewer.” When we hear that we have to furlough workers because we can’t spend the building money on jobs, we’re hearing the same scam.

The bottom line is our leaders are using accounting tricks to get their way. The Legislature in particular has spending authority, so they use the law to say they can’t do things they don’t want to do, then use accounting tricks to do the things they do want to do. We will probably never know just how much money our elected leaders have cost us running this scam on the taxpayers.

It’s not right that our people must suffer layoffs and furloughs because Sam Hunt and his friends put their jobs in the wrong column on the state’s ledger. If a column on a ledger is enough to cause layoffs and furloughs for our workers while we fund waste that could have saved their paychecks, then it’s time to reorganize how the state does business. One possible answer to this problem is to implement a system of zero-base budgeting at the state. Rather than rolling over agency budgets from year to year, they would itemize the things they expect to need throughout the year. This would take the incentive away from the “use it or lose it” culture of spending within our state agencies, and help put more realistic controls on discretionary spending. By building a budget every year from the ground up, we don’t pay for new computers every year while an agency is still using the old ones, pay for last year’s allocations while good equipment is still in use, and we put an effective check on the “use it or lose it” mentality that exists in some of our agencies. It will also create greater accountability, since agency executives would have to justify the things they need rather than be given lump sums of money to do with as they please.

I want to thank you all again for your support. See you at the polls.

Justin

22nd District · Justin Kover · Open Government · Protecting our Initiative Process · Sam Hunt · Truth in Budgeting · Voters Supporting Justin Kover for 22nd District State Representative Position 2. · Washington State

This is raw video from our August 10th forum at Panorama City, now on YouTube. A straight up comparison between myself and Sam Hunt. Enjoy
Justin Kover

22nd District · district 22 · Justin Kover · Open Government · Protecting our Initiative Process · register to vote · Sam Hunt · Truth in Budgeting · Voters Supporting Justin Kover for 22nd District State Representative Position 2. · Washington State

AFSCME council 28 local 1926 sponsored a meeting dealing with the Maple Lane School closure.

Voters Supporting Justin Kover for 22nd District State Representative Position 2.

In response to a comment left on www.justinkover.com:

Justin Kover is not a conventional candidate. He has been a soldier, a student, a bartender, an office manager, a landscaper, a precious metal buyer, and is now the legislative representative for the Olympia Patient Resource Center. Justin’s main experience in government has been volunteer activism.

Justin effectively lobbied the City of Olympia to reduce the 37% cumulative water rate increases in the 2009-2014 Olympia Water System Plan, making him the only candidate in this race whose work has produced a net savings for the taxpayers of the 22nd District.

As candidate for Mayor of Tumwater in 2009, Justin exposed the City of Tumwater’s policy of charging inflated sewer rates in order to subsidize the Tumwater Valley Golf Course. He demonstrated how this misallocation could be better spent to open the North End Fire Station, improving public safety and fire response times.

Justin was the Southwest Washington coordinator for Sensible Washington, sponsors of Initiative 1068. Justin was part of a team that got more results for their campaign dollar than any organization in recent memory, as well as effectively lobbying the Washington Democratic Party to endorse the initiative.

Justin testified against the repeal of Initiative 960 at the Legislature, and in favor of the 2/3 requirement for the Legislature to raise taxes.

Justin’s most important qualification is that he does not come from the culture of entrenched government in Olympia. Justin is a citizen activist using the system for what it made for: for people like us to have a say in our government.

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Hunt vulnerable on bill sponsorship

Originally posted on www.theolympian.com

I still can’t believe what I heard at Pickin’ on Summer, a local music festival. Actually, I didn’t believe it until I looked for myself.

Justin Kover came to speak to us about how and why he’s running for the Legislature. I already knew he is a signature gatherer for I-1068 (marijuana legalization) and read his stuff in The Olympian, but what I learned about his opponent, Sam Hunt, made my stomach turn.

Kover said that Hunt took money from big oil for two years in a row, and then sponsored a bill to kill the Washington oil spill advisory committee and give its work to an outside firm. As an environmentalist and loyal Democrat, this claim made me skeptical.

Kover said we could look for ourselves, so I did.

Sure enough, Hunt sponsored House Bill 2372, which would kill public oversight of oil spills and give those duties to some sort of independent review. Also, he took money from the Washington Oil Marketers Association, whose primary members include Exxon Mobil, Chevron and BP.

While I was at www.pdc.wa.gov looking, I also noticed he took money from Triway Enterprises.

Kover doesn’t have much money in his campaign, but he has a message I’m going to vote for. If you care about making sure we don’t have another Olympic Pipeline disaster, join me and vote for Justin Kover.

Beth Andersen, Olympia

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Disctrict 22, Washington State

Please Vote Justin Kover for 22nd District State Representative Position 2 on August 17th, 2010

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22nd District · district 22 · register to vote · WA · Washington State

Kover understands needs of business

Originally posted on www.theolympian.com

Having a small business in this economy is tough, so I’m putting a lot of thought into who I’m voting for this year. In the state House of Representatives Position 2 race in the 22nd Legislative District, I’m voting for Justin Kover.

Other candidates make their way in the public sector and claim to have real business experience, but Kover is truly in touch with what people
like me and my family need.

Kover knows how hard it is to keep track of all of the different layers of city, state and local taxes, and what a burden it is for small business. Kover is in favor of getting rid of the business and occupations tax because it’s a tax on business whether it profits or not. He’s also in favor raising no new taxes, fighting frivolous spending, and using the savings to protect state worker jobs and prevent these needless furloughs.

My guy works for the state, so our household needs his state worker income just as much as it needs my business income. That’s a thing
that Justin Kover understands. He’s a moderate that I’m going to vote for this year.

Kristi Dohring, Tumwater

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I had heard the stories, but it wasn’t until yesterday that I personally encountered the famous arrogance of Representative Sam Hunt.

On Saturday 10 July 2010, the candidates for 22nd District House representative were invited by the League of Women Voters to a candidate forum at TCTV. This forum is regarded in our local politics as the main event of the primary election. Barb Theiss had informed me that Sam couldn’t make it due to some other event.

The next day at the Thurston County Progressive Network Picnic, Sam arrived in a campaign shirt from two elections ago. As we sat on deck waiting to speak, I said to Sam, “Missed you at the forum yesterday, Sam.”

“Yes,” he replied. “I was having lunch underneath a 648 year old tree. Wouldn’t have missed it for the world.” He then got up and gave a speech which was primarily a quote from Booth Gardner’s 1989 inaugural address. That would be the second time I saw Sam give a speech which was mainly a quote of someone else. I concede that he reads other people’s speeches in a powerful manner.

I took his statement to me as meaning that Sam thought his date with a tree was more important than responding to me. Fair enough, I thought, but then it occurred to me that he also thought his date with a tree was more important than responding to candidates in an election. Sam put his lunch date with a tree above the League of Women Voters, and all of the TCTV viewers who use that forum as a way to be informed. Where does this man who presumes to represent us get the temerity to blow off his constituents for a lunch date with a tree? I thought it arrogant that he afford state workers more privacy than other Washingtonians, or that he would take money from developers and Big Oil while he claims to represent us. His statement indicated that his constituents weren’t even a consideration; Sam views his opponent in an election as beneath him, so the tree was more important, constituents be damned.

At the League of Women Voters candidate forum, I met Chris Ward. It was his first TV forum as a candidate, and the young man was nervous. Even as he stuttered and froze, he showed more courage than our elected representative Sam Hunt. Disagree as I might with the gentleman, he wants to make a difference bad enough that he faced his fear and met me in the public forum to tell the people he signed up to represent how he stands on the issues. Sam Hunt, who sits as our representative, showed no such courage. He takes it fore-granted that he need not answer for why he’s raising taxes when the people don’t want it, or for why he counts Tri-Way Enterprises and the Washington Oil Marketers Association among his supporters.

For this blatant insult to our people, I challenge Representative Sam Hunt to a public debate at the earliest opportunity. If he would continue to represent the people of Greater Olympia, then he can join me on display before the voters like real candidates do. I will say a little prayer that Sam doesn’t have another date with a tree that day.

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