Public works, redistricts part of report

EPHRATA - State Rep. Judy Warnick, R-Moses Lake, spoke to the Ephrata City Council about state changes in public works, public records requests and redistricting.

Warnick told the council restoring the fund, now called the Public Works Assistance Account, was one of her top priorities in the coming session.

The city wanted the restoration of the fund, so it could obtain the funding necessary to finish its water pipe and road replacement project. The city received a $2.7 million loan to finish replacing aging water pipes and repave roads in the southwest section of the city next year.

"I sat down at the very beginning of session with the chairman of the capital budget, and that's Rep. (Hans) Dunshee, (D-Everett,) and he and I agreed that was going to be one of our priorities," Warnick said. "If not one, the top priority, because we could see how many communities were suffering because of not having it."

They worked hard to fund capital budget projects to help employ people, she said.

The public works board is meeting to evaluate what type of projects are funded, Warnick said. She argued with Dunshee about the projects he didn't want to see included in the Public Works Assistance Account.

The urban Democrat wanted to remove street, road and bridge projects.

"He feels pretty strongly those should not be in the public works account," she said. "I know there's very few places that transportation projects for smaller communities can be funded, so we had a bit of an argument there."

After the session ended, both representatives went to the public works board in June and they committed to figuring out how the state will fund street, road and bridge projects, she said.

"I received a call today. I'm being nominated to be put on a committee that the speaker ... is putting together to review that," Warnick said. "We'll be meeting in the interim, between now and December."

Warnick also pointed to Ephrata Recreation Director Ray Towry's contributions in Olympia. She said Towry was a champion for small cities, especially for the parks.

"I think because of people like Ray, we've been able to look at it a little bit more from a balanced approach, as far as how we fund and how we maintain our parks."

Warnick also spoke about issues surrounding public records requests to small cities, saying some of the penalties imposed in the past for frivolous requests are astronomically high for small communities.

"I know you folks expressed some concerns about that," she said. "We had four different bills, three of them did not pass, so we'll be back. They're still alive because they've been introduced at the beginning of the biennium,"

The Legislature had a bill stopping inmates from getting financial gains from using public records requests, she said.

"That was a bit of a success," she said. "I know there's still some issues around that area and we need to continue work on that, to have access without undue burdens."

She finished with bringing up the upcoming redistricting meeting on Thursday at Big Bend Community College. A non-partisan committee started working on changing the legislative districts on Jan. 1.

"I'm thinking that Ephrata is going to be fairly impacted by that change, at least the maps that I've seen," she said. "District 13, which is the legislative district we are in right now, we have to lose 6,500 people because we have gained that many new residents in, primarily, Kittitas and Grant counties."

District 12, which includes a portion of northern Grant County and Soap Lake, needs to gain 4,700 new residents, Warnick said. Depending on where the change is made the district may lose part of Ephrata or Quincy.