Finding the middle ground Moses Lake woman strives to solve problems

MOSES LAKE - Carol Conley is sort of a jack of all trades.

The Moses Lake woman served eight years in the state legislature, lobbied for workers' compensation and health coverage, oversaw Habitat for Humanity, and is now acting as president of the Moses Lake Lions.

Regardless of which organization Conley is part of, she always works on helping people improve.

Starting life in Raymond, Wash., Conley attended Grays Harbor College. She found one class led her into politics, which would eventually lead her to the Columbia Basin.

In 1976 she was elected to the state House of Representatives, where she served eight years, including a short stint of less than a year in the state Senate representing the 19th district.

She said many of the issues involved the environment and she kept pace with the issues affecting the community by using media, one-on-one discussions, group discussions, and mail to keep open communications.

Following her time in politics, she lobbied for Industrial Indemnity, on issues such as workers' compensation and health coverage with employees in different states.

"I'd worked for this company in Olympia for several months, almost a year and then transferred down to San Francisco to cover seven western states, and sight unseen, you're down there looking for places to live and you're going from a 3,000 to 4,000-square-foot condo that's overlooking the lake and it's glass all over and it's a beautiful place. You get down there, and if you're lucky, you can find 800 square feet that survived the last earthquake."

It turned out the deciding factor in her choosing her residence was the location which offered a washer and dryer hookup.

She lived in San Francisco's East Bay, which includes Oakland and Berkeley, an area she describes as urban, with rolling hills. San Francisco had lots of activities to offer and she said a lot of fun was to be had in California.

"In a day you could go to the ocean or you could go to Napa or you could go to Reno or Tahoe … there were all these different benefits," she said.

When not taking advantage of the surrounding recreation and urban activities, Conley kept busy at her job as a lobbyist.

Her job wasn't grounded in San Francisco, but took her to several states including Oregon, Washington, Hawaii and Alaska.

She found once she learned the slight variations, the issues were basically the same in each state, making her effective at any location.

"With workers' comp, you want to keep the business making a profit, but you also want to take care of the workers and make sure that they are adequately covered and received adequate benefits. Everything's a balancing act," she said.

The communication methods she accumulated became useful when discussing matters with the people they affected, working as a liaison between them and the lawmakers.

"You're going into states as an outsider and you try to advise your district offices as to how to approach the legislature … and how to approach making changes within those laws," she said. "Because they knew the issues, it's your responsibility to try to get them to interact with their legislative body. You're sort of the go-between."

Traveling was fun at first, but became tiring after a while, she said.

"You live in a suitcase, You're going to three division offices, one might be in Alaska, one might be in Oregon, one might be in Arizona. So you're packing and you're going from one airport to the next," Conley noted.

She has a sense of humor about any drawbacks from her traveling, describing the effect of carrying heavy suitcases on either side as "orangutan arms."

In 1989 her house was for sale at the time of the large San Francisco earthquake, but she still managed to sell it and returned to Olympia.

"I love California, but I'm a Washingtonian," she said.

Upon returning to Olympia, Conley went to work for the state Utilities and Transportation Commission. It oversees private utilities, transportation and some water districts.

She headed the public affairs department and 16 people worked for her dealing with consumer complaints and electricity shutoffs, for example.

Conley does not consider herself confrontational and tries to find a middle ground to both sides of an issue.

"It's usually trying to work through that, either to resolve the issue to the satisfaction of both parties," she added.

It helps to have an ear to listen, even if a solution doesn't present itself and her mediation skills come from daily experience, she said.

"That's life. That's every day and you find it in everything that you do. Whether it's in the grocery store, whether it's on the city street or whether it's driving your car, you have all these situations or issues that could become (adversarial)."

After a couple years, she returned to contract lobbying, working with various clients including Blue Cross, Blue Shield and King County Medical.

There was primarily an insurance focus and when asked about the current U.S. health care system, she hopes to find the middle ground.

"What that happy medium is, is yet to be seen. We haven't found it yet," she said.

Her next job was with the Association of Washington Business, handling regulatory and legislative issues affecting businesses large and small, Conley said.

She said she was instrumental in the School to Work program, which helps students select a career path and even see what the job entails through an internship or job shadow program.

It wasn't a job, but marriage that would bring her to Moses Lake.

Carol Conley and her husband, Mike Conley knew each other from Raymond, where she was the legislator and he was CEO of a local bank.

"He thought I was just a left-wing legislator. I thought he was this right-wing banker. And so in our pasts we'd crossed off and on over the years."

Mike Conley worked for the Port of Mattawa and Carol Conley's sister and brother-in-law had a place in Desert Aire, where she spent time visiting.

"One of the port commissioners wanted me to be introduced by this one guy and he says 'Oh he's a really nice guy, you'll really like him' and he goes through this list of things and I said 'Sounds like Mike Conley to me.'"

They discovered they shared similar interests and a year later they married in 1998.

Upon moving to Moses Lake, she started Conley Consulting and organized the youth task force.

For the past 8 years, Carol Conley has been a lioness, and recently became the Lions first woman president. Soap Lake, Ephrata, Quincy Valley, Moses Lake and Wenatchee all had woman presidents installed this year. Her first board meeting as president was in July.

She and her husband, a 35-year member of the Lions recently visited Chicago for the 90th Lions International Convention. Carol Conley said her favorite memory from the convention was the parade of nations, representing the 200 countries with Lions chapters.

Carol Conley said another highlight of the convention was a re-creation of a speech Helen Keller gave to encourage the Lions to become knights of the blind.

"It was really emotionally moving," she said.

She was able to meet with Quincy Valley's twin club from Nepal. Nepal has a sherpa club, which climbed Mount Everest and planted a Lions flag in it.

A mountain is to become a part of the Conley family memory is Mt. Hood, where Carol Conley's daughter Sharron Monohon was married at the 7,000 foot level.

Carol Conley says she and her husband are looking forward to doing some traveling in Canada and the United States, specifically Alaska.