Helen Sommers: An Oral History

David Ammons
The University of Washington wasn’t in her district,
but she saw sort of the ‘big picture’ of higher ed. as
the economic engine of the state, and she understood
the nexus before anyone was talking about
economic development, job creation, job training,
and sort of how you want to get there! If you want
to progress, you have to have a world-class higher
education system that’s going to cost real money.
And, of course, higher ed is the one piece of the
budget where there’s no constitutional protection
as there is with K-12; and no entitlement as there is
with many social programs. So if you have to make
cuts, it turns out that higher education is always
the budget balancer and Helen was in a position
to really call that out.
That’s my view of Helen; she was kind of a technocrat.
Maybe she hid it from me and other visitors
who were in the room, but I don’t get the impression
that she was into the power politics of it, which is
so fascinating to probably a third of the legislators;
that’s why they really enjoy coming here. I think
she loved coming here to do her job, represent the
people of the 36 th , but again, to really put her stamp
on a good sustainable budget!
She was talking about pension policy and sustainability.
She was preaching the gospel on that long
before. Even during flush times, she was preaching
on that!
Helen wrote the law about unfunded liability;
and she was talking about that long before it was
cool. She did some important things – sort of big
picture budget history of the Legislature. Her work
ethic is very admirable. I never caught her in a lie.
She never told me something that wasn’t so. She was
very fact-based on how she did her politics and how
she wrote her budgets.
McCrady: Yes, but she never volunteered information,
you had to ask the right question. I could
have had her do a seminar for my other members
(laughter).
In your sign-off article for A.P., you talked about
Gov. Dan Evans pursuing state income tax. Helen
had great interest and enthusiasm for an income
tax and worked with it.
Ammons: I think that was a motivating issue for
pg. 125
many progressives in both houses. I think it was
probably Dan Evans’ biggest disappointment of his
entire tenure that he wasn‘t able to persuade people
that you could reform the whole system and cap
other taxes and that the Legislature wouldn’t sneak
around and jack them up again. The public was just
always thinking that it was subterfuge for higher
and more taxes! It’s one of the greatest disconnects
between Olympia and the public I’ve ever seen, and
I’m not seeing that level of trust coming back to
the point where you could get a simple majority!
In this day and age, the place is so partisan, you
probably couldn’t get two-thirds coming together
on that! You’d see the ‘hit pieces’ in the fall campaigns.
It was a different era back then when Evans
was governor. He put the issue on the table twice,
and legislators from both parties gathered a twothirds
vote to put it on the ballot both times! Back
then, you could have genuine dialog on the issue,
and you could have a really good campaign that
wasn’t shriek; and hit pieces, and all. Then, it was
either “Do you think the system needs reformed;
and is this a trustworthy way of doing it or not?”
That was how Helen operated in Olympia; having
a good, high quality conversation, the likes of
which we haven’t seen since! There was a little bit
of conversation last year on Lisa Brown’s ‘soak the
rich’ tax. After the Gates Commission came out
with their report on tax options, there was at least
conversation about it, but nothing more. I’m sure
that was a big disappointment for Helen. Anybody
who truly believes that our state has one of the
country’s most regressive tax structures and how
it hurts the poor must be disappointed.
Monahan: The other thing Helen commented on
was the difference between the first tie and the
second tie. She was the only member to serve in
both. She talked about Bagnariol and Berentson
having a good relationship; that they were drinking
buddies; there was camaraderie in the first tie
(1979-80). Helen was a co-chair of the Revenue
committee in the first tie with Rep. Ellen Craswell.
They were absolute opposites, but she said ‘we’ve
got to make this work!’
Ammons: I think the campaign cycles have gotten
so nasty, that that kind of camaraderie is unheard