Island County Commissioner, district 1

√  Helen Price-Johnson, D, incumbent  We’ve had our differences with Helen, but she is at least willing to listen, even if she’s not willing to appoint one of us to the county’s Noxious Weed Board. She has had time to learn how the county works, and understands its various functions on behalf of citizens. She donated back 10% of her salary to help balance the over-tight budget. She believes that the county has more functions than just cops and jails. Providing health services, public land, and veteran and senior services prevents the crime that sends people into the cops and jails system. An ounce of prevention is far less expensive and far less personally painful than the many pounds of cure offered by the sheriff. She has shown surprising patience with Kelly Emerson and her irrelevant, illegal, and sometimes dangerous grandstanding and petty obstructionism.

Helped create and continues to support the Clean Water Utility. Supports Conservation Futures.

Jeff Lauderdale, tea party R, focus on law’n order, “the real environment is  the human environment . . . protecting our property and our freedoms.” He thinks open space refers only to agriculture, and believes property rights should trump environmental protection. His knickers are twisted because Island County chose not to opt in to the “Voluntary Stewardship Program” offered to farmers as an alternative to obeying the county’s Critical Areas Ordinance. The farmers thought this would be a state gravy train. Which makes it odd that Jeff Lauderdale, who wants to shrink the state’s budget, should argue in its favor. One has the distinct impression that he doesn’t really know the issues or the impacts and is talking out of his hat.

            He makes some pretty questionable claims on his website about Commissioners Homola and Price-Johnson bending county policy as a personal favor to my partner and me. I have just posted notice on his website requesting that he remove the false and libelous statements by October 9. His website features the classic tea party video about ‘if I wanted America to fail’ and then lists such things as curbing fossil fuels, dealing with climate change, ‘demonizing prosperity’, etc. as causing America to fail. He works closely with Kelly Emerson and wants to abolish the Clean Water Utility and Conservation Futures.

            He doesn’t see that the recession has hurt county government, which only goes to show that even though he attends many commissioner meetings, he is not understanding what happens. All he can see is that county offices are shut on Fridays. He can’t see that some departments have only a single staff person. The whole department shuts down when they want a cup of coffee or need to use the bathroom. There are huge information technology issues which a little bit of money would resolve, saving staff gazillions of hours. He has obviously never looked under the hood of county government. He just knows he wants less of it - and more cops.