BOOTH WHO? - Washington State Digital Archives

The Republicans had also lost several seats in the state House and, worst of all, the
U.S. Senate race. Gardner and Adams barnstormed the state on election eve. Gorton was
also hurt way more than helped by a campaign stop in Spokane by President Reagan, who
made a weak statement about the state’s concerns over the prospect of Hanford becoming
America’s nuclear waste dump. While Gardner gained some IOUs in both Washingtons,
things were too close for comfort in the State Senate, where blue dog Democrats, notably
Brad Owen of Shelton and Slim Rasmussen, resisted the leash. “It’s a ‘Slim’ majority,”
quipped Karen Marchioro, leader of the State Democratic Party. Booth would need
Republican help to achieve anything big in 1987 and 1988 when he’d be up for re-election.
The governor moved Bill Wilkerson from the Department of Fisheries to the
Department of Revenue because he needed a talented salesman to help him raise taxes to
improve public schools and universities. Appointed fisheries director by Governor Spellman
in 1983, the 40-year-old lawyer helped negotiate a new U.S.-Canada fishing treaty. He
waded into even more troubled waters to try and resolve the tricky resource management
disputes between the tribes and non-Indian commercial fishermen through negotiation
rather than litigation. Joseph Blum, the deputy regional director of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife
Service in Portland, succeeded Wilkerson at fisheries.
* * *
Booth’s sweeping $520 million education-reform package for the 1987-89 biennium
was unveiled just before Thanksgiving. Washington’s kindergarten through third-grade
classrooms were among the most crowded in the nation, Booth said, emphasizing that the
early grades were crucial to learning basic skills, forming good study habits and developing
character. He said the state needed to spend $67 million to hire 900 new teachers and
also proposed extending the teachers’ work year by five days to give them more time to
prepare lesson plans and strategize with their colleagues. That move was estimated at $82
million. Some $14 million was proposed for teachers’ “in-service” continuing education,
while about $6 million should be earmarked for drop-out and drug and alcohol-abuse
prevention programs, the governor said. Higher education, meantime, needed an infusion
of $190 million, with most of that earmarked for sorely needed faculty raises of up to
20 percent. The 43,000-member Washington Education Association heard a lot to like. It
was wary, however, of merit pay in disguise and “unalterably opposed” to Booth’s plan to
establish a statewide salary schedule. WEA President Terry Bergeson said a uniform pay
scale would make it more difficult for urban districts to compete for quality teachers. Also
criticized as expensive and impractical was Gardner’s proposal to scrap undergraduate
degrees and require every teacher to have a master’s. Gardner countered that the result
would be better trained and better paid teachers. The governor maintained that the WEA
opposed the plan because it tied the infusion of money to higher standards and more days
of professional development.
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