Washington governor's debate: Ferguson, Reichert on state budget, possible new taxes

Uh Thank you. Um Washington's last uh gover government tax uh revenue forecast was down $500 million from previous estimates. Uh It's not a crisis for state, for state government yet, but I want the next governor could face financial pressures. Uh balancing the services that Washingtonians expect, expect and both of you in case some cases proposed even new programs and balancing that with what's actually coming in. How would you keep the state on a strong, strong financial footing? Do you think there are any new taxes the state should consider some in the Democratic Party? Want a wealth tax on the very wealthy, for example, or would you like to cut spending? And in your answers, please be specific on a tax or program. If you wanna cut something, tell me what it is you want if you're considering a tax, tell me what that is, tell our viewers what that is. And Mr Ferguson first, thanks so much. So I'm a believer that past performance is your best indication of future action. My time on the King County Council, I served on the budget leadership team and actually was the budget chair for a multibillion dollar budget. It's not the state budget, but it's big. How do we produce bipartisan balanced budgets that provided for the citizens and residents of King County? Because we worked together when I was the budget chair, it was two Democrats and two Republicans. Even though Democrats controlled the majority of King County Council, we locked ourselves in a room and we hammered out that budget line by line and could bring it to the full council. We all voted for it. That's the approach I'll take, I've done that as Attorney general, I've expanded services, the work that we do taken on Donald Trump over and over again having a civil rights division advocating for farm workers and winning huge cases. How do we do that? I didn't go to the state legislature and ask for money. I got smart with our budget to prioritize as a result. The tri city Herald from a pretty conservative part of our state wrote an editorial praising me saying Ferguson runs his office like a business. That's what we need more of in state government prioritize our spending. Make sure we're spending more of our budget on things like education and making sure we're focused on serving all Washingtonians, Mr Riker. Well, first of all, uh running your office like a business uh in the last 12 years, you've hired 400 additional attorneys. You now have 800 we have 800 attorneys working in the Attorney General's office and we've lost hundreds of police officers that doesn't make any sense to me. And it also doesn't make any sense to me is in regard to being budget conscious. So we have a $4.1 billion surplus right now. In the state budget 2.8 billion of that is available for us to use and, and apply to different problems across the state. The problems that are, that, that we can address really are crime. Uh hold people accountable. Um There has to be consequences when we start holding people accountable. For example, if you're a drug addict, I know in parts of this state, what's happening is you are waiting for grocery stores, you are waiting for department stores to open, you walk in, you fill your arms with goods, you walk out, you sell those goods for 40 or 50 bucks and you buy yourself a head of dope. That's what's happening and that's what's causing the rising cost in, in, in all of the goods across our country. That's one of the things homelessness is another. It goes back to fentaNYL and my opponent legalized fentaNYL helped to legalize fentaNYL. The congressman mentioned my budget. So I'd like to respond to that. So, yes, Dave, you're right. We have 800 attorneys and I'm proud of each and every one of them. That's what those attorneys do. We grew our criminal division in our office to make sure we're fighting on behalf of Washingtonians we create an organized retail theft unit in our division to prosecute those cases. We create a consumer protection division that can now take on the biggest corporations in the world that fueled our opioid epidemic. What's the result? More than a billion dollars for Washingtonians? The A GS office, Dave is a revenue generator for the state of Washington. We return hundreds of million dollars in case settlements, we return millions of dollars to Washingtonians. The total is literally in the billions of debt relief and dollars back in the pockets of Washingtonians. That's how you run a budget. That's how you run an office. Ok. Look, you hire 800 attorneys and you create a task force that does nothing in two years. You make two shoplifting arrests. The state patrol doesn't even have enough people to have an auto theft unit and we're losing 100 cars a day in King County, Pierce County and Snow Beach County. I just talked to the state troopers yesterday. They don't have an auto theft unit. Bob, you're using your money to hire attorneys to sue people and that money is not being used to stop crime on the streets of Seattle because we all know the crime has increased over the past 12 years. Murders have increased by 50%. Domestic violence up 100 and 34%. Uh, we could go on about every five minutes. There's a crime committed here against a person in Washington State I wanna follow quickly, Mr Reicher. You, I didn't really hear an answer from either of you looking forward on the state budget. But um I there are gonna be times perhaps if you're governor where you know your desire to keep taxes low. You, you even said you would cut property taxes might conflict with some of the demands that are, that are out there for services. There are uh people out there now in school districts around the state looking at closing schools, they're saying that we need to revisit the funding formula and how the state sends dollars to school districts if it comes down to it, would you consider a new revenue source or are you just an absolute hard liner on? No, I think that's one of the things that different differentiates, uh Mr Ferguson and I, and that is I'm going to veto any new tax law that comes to my, my desk when I'm the governor that needs to happen. We've been taxed to the hilt. I hear that in every part of the state that I go to and when you start looking at the programs that we want to fund, we have the money within our budget. One of the problems is that money is being misspent and on programs that just don't work and we're gonna find out which programs work, which ones don't. We're gonna shift monies and we are gonna create those private public partnerships, uh, here in Washington State. So for example, 11 of the major uh organizations here, companies in Washington State spent $780 million on homelessness and told me total waste of money. So I'm happy to answer that question more directly. So my apologies not getting to an earlier. So I think an earlier question went to the Climate Commitment Act. I support that. I was clear about that. And also importantly, he opposed it. What does that mean? That means cuts to our budget on transportation, cuts to our budget on ferries. He also opposes the capital gains tax. Some of the very small number of Washingtonians pay a couple 1000 and but brings in hundreds of millions of dollars for early learning and for childcare. I support that. I think those are the right kind of investments. And by the way, Dave, it's entertaining to listen to you talk about uh budgets because when you served in Congress for 14 years, you guys couldn't balance a budget. You drove up deficits year after year after year during your time in Congress, heck when you're a sheriff, you overs spent your budget in the sheriff's office in King County.