Campaign Phone Number
4257374594
Biography (max 750 char)
My name is Kathryn Lewandowsky, I have lived in Arlington on our seven acres for the last 18 years. I am a Wife, Mother, Grandmother and a concerned citizen. I truly value our rural way of life and want to be a voice in Olympia for real change. Forty years as a registered nurse — oncology, ICU, hospice, from large regional hospitals to our local community hospital — taught me what’s breaking us. Health care and housing are human rights, not yield-generating assets for hedge funds. Public dams shouldn’t shift electricity costs from massive data centers onto families. Rural hospitals shouldn’t close while insurers post record profits and billions in excess reserves. In Olympia I’ll fight to put money back in your pocketbooks!
I consider myself fiscally conservative and take issue with the fact that Olympia does not embrace savings in their budget decisions. I was a single mother of three putting myself through LPN school. I know all about how to borrow from Peter to pay Paul. Olympia's refusal to look at policies that can save us billions must be addressed. Where those savings can be put back into the pocketbooks of everyday people allowing them to then spend it on what they and their families want and need would be a huge stimulus to our local economies. Allowing third party intermediaries to skim dollars off of our state budgets while adding no benefits has to stop. My expertise is in healthcare and I believe that the savings we can achieve in healthcare can be better used by families in other areas.
I am very proud of our current election procedures and will push to keep our voting data private within our Secretary of State's domain and control. I do agree that we need to address our public confidence in civic participation. Our citizens are tired of promises made but not delivered. The best way to improve that confidence and their participation is to actually deliver their requests for change from elected officials. Washingtonians need to see first hand that their elected officials are passing policies that help them to meet their and their families needs. They are tired of elected officials just bending to the wants of corporate donors. They may have access to our dollars, but they don't have access to our vote! We outnumber them 100 to 1 and when we FIGHT, we WIN!
Initially, I feel that there has been such a mistrust by citizens of our local policing entities. Where they should feel that our police and court systems are there to protect them from danger, they instead feel they are there to harass, threaten and trap them into saying something incriminating. This has to change and it has to start from those agencies themselves.
I believe that improving local community policing is the best way to accomplish this. Keeping officers in their local community should be the goal.
Secondly, I feel that many people who might commit crimes do this because they feel they need to in order to provide the necessities for themselves and their families. We must make improvements economically that actually reach constituents pocketbooks. People just want to do right!
Having a free and independent media is in the First Amendment of our Federal Constitution for a reason. Our founding fathers recognized the importance of citizens having access to transparency in our government and in our communities. An honest and independent media is an integral part of guaranteeing this transparency and protecting our democracy, keeping our natural world clean and healthy and creating that avenue for public participation in our government and local communities.
Our state and our federal representatives need to guarantee that we are enabling a free and independent media that is accountable to truth and justice. This transparency is even more important with the advent of our rapidly changing information technology systems and must be adequately regulated.
I believe that our redistricting committee needs to be changed to a citizen led committee and should not include any elected party officials or party leaders. We need to stop letting elected officials pick their voters. This can only be done here in Washington by our elected officials. I will call on them to do all that.especially if we achieve a supermajority of progressive leaders!
While every district has many challenges that need to be addressed by our legislature, I feel that the most important challenge for the 39th is affordability. Where we can make a huge initial difference is in decreasing the costs within our current healthcare system. It is important that those savings be directed back into our pockets where we can determine where we want to spend them.
We also need to look at housing affordability. I am very impressed with Seattle's proposal for creating social housing to address the immediate affordability crisis we are in. They also have an excellent way of financing their social housing plan. Other communities may not be able to replicate that financing and I believe that the state should help them to address their local financing needs for housing.
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