Dear governor
Gov. Chris Gregoire, thank you.
We appreciate that you are reading our newspaper and we are still happy to see your efforts on behalf of Eastern Washington.
We were wrong about who paid for your trip to Copenhagen, Denmark. The state did not pay for your trip to Europe to attend the gathering of nations to settle on a greenhouse gas agreement.
We stand behind the opinion you should have stayed home to work with both sides of the aisle to fix the $2.6 billion deficit. As our governor, we believe Washington’s financial status should have been more important.
But Deputy Communications Director Karina Shagren helped explain how the trip was paid.
“The funding for the trip, came from two nongovernmental organizations focused on energy and climate policies — The Climate Registry and the Georgetown State-Federal Climate Resource Center,” she wrote.
You were more than a spectator. You were on panels with premiers from Canada and “fellow governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jim Doyle from Wisconsin.”
On your free time, we greatly respect your decision to work on our behalf. Remember, we still enjoy the time you played golf in Moses Lake.
But your sponsorship coupled with the executive order drafted by former Department of Ecology Director Jay Manning, troubles us.
The Climate Registry has a pretty professional Web site, a huge board of directors and an office suite in downtown Los Angeles. The effort to record greenhouse gases to gather data is a great idea, if they are actually gathering factual data and not trying to set policy for states and Canadian provinces.
We must ask about Georgetown State-Federal Climate Resource Center. The center is part of Georgetown University Law Center. Would you approve of the University of Washington or Washington State University funding a governor’s trip to Europe with our current budget crisis? It could be a fund created by donations to the law center, but at first glance it appears you let a university to pay for part of the trip.
This brings us back to the executive order.
The legislature and the public did not support a greenhouse gas cap-and-trade system. Even the usually green hungry urbanites in Western Washington balked at the idea.
It was proposed to be a program for several states and provinces in Canada. It was a program estimated to cost a lot of tax money while damaging businesses’ ability to provide jobs. It was another level of bureaucracy we didn’t want to pay for, be it by higher state taxes or the additional costs passed to consumers through price increases or worse, the loss of jobs to different states.
We are one of the greenest states in the nation, perhaps the world. Why the executive order? Why such a high profile trip to Copenhagen?
Rep. Matt Shea had harsh words for you because of the executive order.
“It’s extremely disturbing that the governor is attempting to take on dictatorial powers by using executive orders that bypass the legislature. The governor is trying to be the legislature through the executive order process and that’s a total misuse of her power.”
We are not ready to agree with him. But the dots are connecting to make a disturbing agenda. It is starting to look like you are ready to ignore logic, fiscal responsibility and forget the cross aisle leadership you displayed in the past.
Please help us understand why you are pushing a green agenda so hard. We are all ears.
— Editorial board