Vote Judy Arbogast for state senator

Published 9:46 am Thursday, October 30, 2014

I noticed your recent article on District 26 candidates running for the state House and Senate seats. A number of issues came up like classroom size, campaign donors, etc.

It’s good to remember that economists have enumerated the benefits of smaller class sizes. They concluded that smaller class sizes result in higher graduation rates, more students going on to college, fewer students ending up on welfare and lower rates of incarceration.

Currently, classrooms in Washington state are very over-crowded, with our state ranking 47th out of 50 states for students per classroom. The average class size in our state in grades K-3 is 25.3 kids.

This spring a loophole in our estate tax law threatened to drain $160 million from our schools and give that money back to the heirs of muti-millionaires. A bipartisan group of legislators worked together on a compromise to close this loophole and protect our schools. But Jan Angel voted no. Instead of protecting funding for our schools, she voted to send the money to the estates of multi-millionaires.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has been characterized by Bloomberg Business Week as a “bill laundry” for corporate policy. Over 80 firms, including some of the largest Fortune 500 firms in the nations, have dumped ALEC since 2011. But Angel is the state co-chair for ALEC and states that she’s “proud” of ALEC’s values. I might add that ALEC members have donated more than $150,000 to her campaign, among them are Big Oil (BP), the Koch brothers (Georgia Pacific), etc.

Arbogast has been a teacher and community leader here in our community for many years. She’s working for you and me, and not beholden to special interests. Arbogast for state Senate.

Donna Munro | Bremerton