Helen Sommers: An Oral History

Bernard Dean
down the road, suddenly you start talking about a
substantial fiscal cost. So, frequently you’d see in
committee hearings that if there was legislation that
was relatively inexpensive in the short term, she was
always cognizant and aware of what the impacts
were down the road. And, she wanted legislators
to understand the long-term costs.
Helen would frequently point that out in committee,
asking staff to discuss or reiterate the longer-term
impact of legislation on the budget. Some members
would focus on the short term, but not Helen. Maybe
it was because she had been here for 36 years, but
Helen always took a long-term view of the budget.
She was always leery of setting up either entirely
new programs or passing legislation that somehow
binds the hands of a future Legislature. She wanted
to protect future legislatures so members would
have flexibility to make changes. She frequently
opposed legislation that made it more difficult for
future legislators to make reductions in the budget
later on down the road. For instance, she was opposed
to the “Rainy Day” fund that passed in 2007.
I think in terms of state government and the
services that are provided by the state, Helen
Sommers definitely had a large impact in the area
of higher education and supporting high demand
academic areas; growth industries, and technology
for example. She very much had an interest in
early learning. I recall there was one year where she
brought in some research professors from University
of Washington who talked about early childhood
brain development.
This wasn’t my issue area, but committee staff
typically had on their squawk boxes to listen in on
committee hearings just in case something may
come up that would be pertinent to their area of
focus. I remember hearing on the squawk box
these baby voices, and people speaking in Mandarin!
And they were discussing some research that
talked about early childhood brain development.
Now, this was kind of an off the wall topic for the
Appropriations Committee hearing, but Helen had
an intense interest in this area. So she wanted to
share the information with others.
Another great interest she had was legislation to
contain the costs of health care because for many
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years our state had basically double-digit inflation
in health care. So the per-capita costs were going
up substantially. I think she was very careful to try
to contain those costs because it was consuming a
larger and larger piece of the budget.
Each biennium, there is less and less discretionary
spending in the budget. Around 40 percent of the
budget is K-12, another 10 percent, or so, is higher ed.
So much of what’s left is health services. Then, you
have very little left for things like natural resources
and general government. So I think Helen wanted
to insure that the portion of spending on health
care didn’t end up growing so much that it would
affect some of the other spending priorities of state
government. That was her fiscally conservative side.
One last great story I’d like to share. Helen had
spent 14 years in Venezuela before she moved to
Seattle. She was fluent in Spanish, but not many
people around here knew that. But, one day – I think
it was 2002 – during a floor debate one member
injected some Spanish into his floor speech. Well,
Helen stood up and grabbed the microphone and
proceeded to give her floor speech entirely in Spanish,
I think one or two members followed her lead.
It was a kind of surreal moment! She was engaging
in a floor speech in Spanish! She probably hadn’t
intended to even speak on the bill, but she wanted
to respond. It was just great!
Helen Sommers had an amazing career in the
House of Representatives for 36 years. I admired and
respected her all the years I worked with her. And her
legacy will continue on for a long, long time.