Report from San Juan County Democrats

— from David Turnoy —

Prior to our regular Democrats meeting on Saturday, Jan. 12, we had a special meeting with new Representative Debra Lekanoff.  We assembled people representing the county council, the planning commission, public schools, the Comprehensive Plan, the Agricultural Resources Board, the Clean Water Advisory Committee, the Conservation District Energy Program, the Orcas Exchange, the Solid Waste Advisory Committee, the County Land Bank, the Friends of the San Juans, Friday Harbor Labs, Kwiaht, the Housing Advisory Committee, the SJ Islands Museum of Art, the SJ Local Integrating Association, the Friday Harbor and Lopez Port Commissions, OPALCO, and the Sound Defense Alliance/Quiet Skies. 

Debra had each of these entities share programs they are working on and asked how she could be helpful to them in her role in the legislature.  It was an example of democracy at its best, our elected rep gathering input from locals about how best to represent them in Olympia.  Debra is going to be amazing!

Also at this earlier meeting today, Stephanie Buffum of Shaw Island expressed willingness to become Shaw’s PCO.  Therefore, this is hereby notice that we will vote on confirming her as a PCO at our meeting on Feb. 9.

The result of our reorganization conducted at the meeting are the following officers:

David Turnoy     Chair                                               

Cindy Wolf     Vice Chair

State Committee Man     Learner Limbach               

State Committee Woman     Sharon Abreu

Treasurer     David Dehlendorf                                  Secretary     CJ Collier

Deputy Vice Chair San Juan Island     Laura Jo Severson

Deputy Vice Chair Orcas Island     Keara Axelrod

Deputy Vice Chair Lopez Island     Bob O’Connell

SJC Liaison to the 40^th Legislative District     Bev Layman

If anyone is interested in helping with our project to bypass the Electoral College with the National Popular Vote Compact, I welcome your contacting me.  I have this all organized and am hoping several more people will volunteer.  This simply involves a few phone calls and emails. Or if you have relatives or friends in Colorado, Nevada, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin, or Arizona, I can provide you materials for them to contact their legislators to ask them to sponsor appropriate legislation.  Somebody has to do this, and it might as well be us.

This year’s women’s march will be in Friday Harbor from noon until 2:00 on Saturday, January 19.  Please meet at the courthouse at noon.  This will be the event for all the islands, and Rhea Miller will be the guest speaker.

If you haven’t heard the news, Senator Kevin Ranker resigned Saturday.  A replacement will be nominated by the local Democratic Party organizations and selected by the county councils of the legislative district. 

 Unions used to be one of the main constituencies of the Democratic Party.  But as I am sure you know, private sector union membership is down to about 7%.  Public unions are still hanging in there, especially as we saw multiple states’ teachers go on strike last year.  The teachers in the Los Angeles schools, which is the second largest district in the country, will be going on strike this Monday to protest the district’s failure to use its massive reserves to address huge classes, abysmal building conditions, teacher pay, and many other issues.  Our local party would like to be more attuned to union actions, and our Rick Rhoads has written a letter expressing our support of the teachers’ action to be sent to the union and the school district, with possibly a press release also.

How can you help support Democratic legislative action?  Attend Environmental Lobby Day in Olympia.  Cindy Wolf, our vice chair, is the one to contact if you are interested in attending.  You can reach her at cwolf@seanet.com.  She will be coordinating with Stephanie Buffum of Friends of the San Juans to make this happen.

Sharon brought to us a resolution that calls for the county council to support 100% clean, renewable energy.  There is an effort to get county councils around the state to do this in order to show enough support to get the state legislature to do the same.  We are sending the resolution to the county council.  As it happens, Councilor Jamie Stephens was in attendance at our meeting and said that the council will actually be addressing this shortly.

It is time for the SJC Democrats to come up with an action plan for this year.  We won’t be dealing with elections that much, so we have time to work on some other issues.  As mentioned earlier, one of these issues is reforming the Electoral College.  Another issue has to be moving away from fossil fuels and doing all we can to combat climate change including a Green New Deal.  Other items mentioned today included recruiting more young people, looking at the Washington Military Alliance and its various impacts (environment, land use, war training zones, etc.)  along with decreasing dependency on the military for employment, having a discussion of Israel/Palestine (possibly a talk by Sandy Strehlou and/or a showing of James Longley’s “Gaza Strip), more author or movie maker talks, ranked choice voting, flipping the national government in 2020, what to do if Trump declares a national emergency and/or martial law.  If you have other ideas, feel free to bring them to the next meeting or send them to me.  This is your party, let’s consider doing what you think we should.

Ken Crawbuck introduced a resolution related to making our income tax system more progressive.  We discussed this at length today, and the net result is that we decided people should send Ken feedback so that he can re-craft his message.  Looking at significant increases to income tax at the very high end of the scale is becoming much more mainstream, so this is no longer just a pipe dream.  Related to this issue, Learner mentioned that there is now an economic equity committee as part of the state party.  We have our next state meeting in two weeks, and a number of us who will be attending will check it out.That’s all for now. 

Please join us at our next meeting at Skagit Valley College in Friday Harbor on Feb. 9