Residents of Ridgefield and La Center will have a different set of faces representing them in Olympia next year, and Rep. Peter Abbarno believes his focus on infrastructure will help support the growing communities.
On March 24, Abbarno, R-Centralia, officially announced his bid for re-election as representative for Washington’s 20th Legislative District. Due to changes made by the Washington State Redistricting Commission, the 20th Legislative District has picked up more territory in Clark County, including Ridgefield and La Center, as well as the unincorporated area north of Battle Ground.
The 20th district already represented much of the most northern parts of Clark County, so the delegation has been involved with county-level issues, Abbarno said.
He said the Clark County additions are more suburban than the majority of the 20th district’s existing reaches. The area is more similar to Woodland, and in Lewis County where Abbarno lives, is similar to Chehalis and Centralia.
Abbarno said the new Clark County area is “very dynamic” in regards to its population growth and economic development. He said planning out that growth is key and entails infrastructure that is sustainable in the long term.
“This is the time of the growth of a city where you don’t want to be making mistakes and you don’t want to have to re-do infrastructure,” Abbarno said.
He said working with the cities and Clark County on comprehensive plan issues will be one of his major focuses. Elected to the Centralia City Council in 2015, Abbarno said his municipal background gives him an understanding of the issues Ridgefield and La Center face.
“Housing doesn’t just drop on a piece of land. … It takes infrastructure,” Abbarno said.
From the state level, Abbarno said it is important to make sure the cities and county have support in the state capital budget.
Abbarno, who serves as the assistant ranking minority member for the House Capital Budget Committee, said the “bottom-up” nature of the capital budget put the focus on the local governments that know their jurisdictions’ needs best.
“It’s not the state and Olympia telling you how you should grow, how you should form your city. It’s you telling us what your needs are and us trying to find funding for it,” Abbarno said.
The state’s capital budget also tends to be more bipartisan, Abbarno said. That was especially evident this year where supplemental operating and transportation budgets passed along party lines.
“We didn’t agree on every aspect of (the capital budget), but it was done in a way where we sat down virtually daily to meet and go through this where we didn’t see the same cooperation on operating and transportation (budgets),” Abbarno said.
Abbarno took issue with the state’s other budgets this year, which he said neglected to take advantage of a $15 billion surplus to provide tax relief to citizens and businesses.
“There were a lot of bills that could have provided meaningful tax relief, and none of it was passed,” Abbarno said. “It was an unprecedented operating budget at a time when you didn’t need that type of expenditure.”
He also was at odds with the Democrat-supported $17 billion “Move Ahead Washington” transportation package. He said the package relied heavily on additional fees and taxes, and was mostly focused on the Puget Sound area.
“You can’t pass a budget — a good budget, I don’t think — that doesn’t have bipartisan support,” Abbarno said.
Abbarno said the work to replace the Interstate 5 bridge over the Columbia River is a common topic even farther north of Clark County. He said congestion is the biggest issue, saying any fix should require an additional crossing or increasing the number of lanes in the replacement.
Generally, Abbarno is supportive of the replacement project as an investment not only for transportation improvement, but because of the jobs supported by the project’s construction. With the amount of discussion and work that has gone into the current or past projects to replace the bridge, he said it is time to finally get the job done.
“We can’t be the obstacle for communities to grow and plan,” Abbarno said.
Alongside capital budget work, another area of bipartisan collaboration was focused on early learning, Abbarno said. He worked with Vancouver Democratic Rep. Monica Stonier, who introduced a bill recognizing Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library as a statewide program, which Abbarno co-sponsored.
Abbarno said early learning should be one of the chief issues in Olympia with more bipartisan support.
“There is no greater investment than early learning,” Abbarno said.
Programs like the Imagination Library, which mails monthly books to children up to 5 years old, can have lifelong positive impacts on youth development, Abbarno said.
“We should be doing more as a state to invest in that (early childhood timeframe) than we do in any other timeframe,” Abbarno said.
He made the distinction that early learning should be supported by the state, not run by it. For both that issue, and the capital budget and general economic development, Abbarno wants to keep government control to a minimum.
“A lot of times the fault of Olympia is thinking they know how to run your business, families and community better than you do,” Abbarno said. “I see my job not as telling people how to manage their cities or what funding they should request, but to work with them on their solutions and their ideas.”
He later added: “We don’t want to just create government jobs. We want to create an environment where jobs can be created in the private sector.”
Abbarno said working to build a community where his family wants to stay is paramount among his reasons for holding office in the 20th Legislative District.
“One of my biggest fears in life is my kids will grow up, look me in the eye and tell me ‘I’m leaving. There’s really nothing for me here,’” Abbarno said.
Though his district has taken on more of Clark County and has him representing new citizens, Abbarno said his familiarity representing a district that previously neighbored Ridgefield and La Center will help him as he meets new constituents ahead of this year’s election.
“It’s going to really take me introducing myself and making myself available for folks, understanding that I’m there,” Abbarno said.
