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Campaign Phone Number
5096094155
Biography (max 750 char)
Michaela Kelso grew up in Germany and immigrated to the US in 1993 as the spouse of a US Soldier. Growing up she was surrounded by people who fought for the environment and against war mongering. Michaela Kelso joined the United States Army in 1995 and (together with her husband) retired from Active Duty in 2018. During her service she deployed to Bosnia Herzegovina, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and was stationed in Germany, Hawaii, California, and Texas. She honors her oath to the Constitution to this day! After she retired from Active Duty in 2018, they settled their family in Chattaroy, WA, an area they chose after coming here on a vacation between schools and deployments. Now she wants to serve her district to ensure all are represented.
Schools, Housing, Healthcare, Infrastructure!
We need to make it expensive for corporations to have a majority part-time workforce to avoid having to pay for benefits.
Our current revenue system is upside down, extracting more from those with less. One example is utility rates. Residents pay more for utilities on a per unit basis than large industry or corporations, just like lower income residents pay taxes on a greater portion of their income than the highest earners.
Schools shouldn't have to beg for funding every few years, and the threshold to pass school bonds should be lowered to 50%.
Support rural hospitals, prevent/limit corporate takeover of clinics and hospitals.
Save funds by reducing corporate subsidies.
The state needs to increase the efforts to educate the public on how votes are counted and the measures in place to ensure only eligible voters cast ballots. There is a lot of misinformation and outright lies being spread about our elections, and that needs to be addressed year-round.
When people have safe places to live, decent jobs, and financial stability, we will have less issues with crimes.
LEOs need appropriate training and funding. We need to increase access to mental health resources throughout the state. Jails and prisons are not the place for individuals with mental health problems. When LEOs can concentrate on actual crime prevention, instead of having to respond to individuals in crisis, we will have less officer involved shootings and the crime resolution rates may also improve.
Pre-trial incarceration of suspects of non-violent crimes because they cannot make bail is expensive and counter productive. They will lose their jobs, their families could lose their homes, and the criminal cycle continues.
Hold LEOs accountable for excessive force violations.
Washington state already has strong laws protecting journalists and their confidential sources, but the 24-hour national news cycle has devastated local news rooms. SB 5400 would have created a mechanism for journalists to be compensated for their content that was shared on social media, but it didn't make it this year. There have been reports of FOIA requests taking too long, and municipalities starting to charge significant amounts of money (due to FOIA request abuse by content creators).
I prefer a non-partisan or independent redistricting commission over the current system. As evidenced by the court cases that took years to work through the system, letting partisan groups divide up the state amongst each other is neither fair, nor efficient.
The commission members could be selected based on actual skills from professions with high ethics standards, such as auditors and accountants, or they could be drawn by lot from lists of individuals who volunteer to be on the commission (as long as they have certain qualifications).
Legislative District 6 encompasses rural, suburban, and urban areas. It is home to some of the most affluent residents in the county, but also includes some of the poorest. There is a lack of affordable housing, especially in the areas with the highest population density. New (rental) housing being built is not affordable. To increase the housing supply while preventing surging rents I would propose to add requirements to include affordable units as part of each project, in exchange for the state funding some of the local development fees. The greater the proportion of affordable units, the higher the amount of state subsidy.
Significant population increases mean our school districts are in trouble, but the 60% bond threshold has prevented funding for new schools. We need to change that.
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Campaign Phone Number
5099038593
Restoring fiscal responsibility within our state needs to be the #1 priority and our fiscal problems are 100% spending driven. Rep Travis Couture published an affordability first budget, which is an excellent starting point for getting to a balanced budget. In the long run, state government spending needs to be significantly decreased, reducing or eliminating functions that are not core government functions.
First, voter lists should be scrubbed to ensure they are current and non-citizens are not receiving ballots.
Voter registration should not a separate and distinct process from other tasks such as obtaining a driver's license and require proof of citizenship.
While I appreciate the convenience of voting by mail, the process offers tremendous risk of fraud. It is creating significant and justified distrust of our election system and changes need to be made to it.
This is 100% an accountability issue. Democratic leadership has been undermine the idea that individuals have personal responsibility for their actions through repeated attacks on the criminal justice system. Diversionary programs do have a place, but incarceration is also needed to create and maintain law and order.
First off, Washington State leadership needs to allow equal access to all journalists regardless of political affiliation. The decision to deny Brandi Kruse, Ari Hoffman and Jonathan Choe press passes is an unacceptable curtailment of the journalism. Beyond that, the state's role should be limited to supporting the first amendment's right to freedom of speech.
The entire approach to districting is nonsensical. It is crazy that a region has two representatives in the legislature. Districts should be reduced in size and have a single representative.
It also ridiculous to have state senators essentially be a supersized representative. The federal concept of the house versus the senate was a brilliant compromise for balancing population with the interests of individual states. We do not have that approach in our legislature, both house entirely tied to population since districts define both the house and senate seats. In Washington, the county is the state-level equivalent to the makeup of the US Senate. Senators in the state legislature should be redistricted to represent counties.
The list is long and most result from bad policy in Olympia. I will pick education to keep the discussion narrow, because it is the "paramount" duty of the state according to our constitution and because the solution is within our grasp.
In short, we need to give greater choice to parents in where their children are educated. This could be in the form of expanding charter schools and easing choice between school districts. Neither would create the conflict a vouchers style system would cause, but would give more opportunity to parents to have choices to receive quality education.
Another solution is to opt-in for the Educational Freedom Tax Credit. Gov. Ferguson refuses to do so, apparently due to union pressure, but it would create new funding options across education in our state.
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