Opinion A15
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THE DAILY HERALD
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WWW.HERALDNET.COM
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Editorial Board Josh O’Connor, Publisher Jon Bauer, Editorial Page Editor Neal Pattison, Executive Editor Carol MacPherson, Editorial Writer
WEDNESDAY, 05.20.2015
IN OUR VIEW | Traffic fine increase
State must better fund courts The punishment for traffic infractions and other relatively minor violations of state law ought to hurt a little and make us think twice about texting while we drive, speeding or not wearing a seatbelt. Starting July 1 it will be $12 more painful. The state Supreme Court earlier this week signed an order that increases the base penalty for traffic and some other infractions by $12. Revenue from the increase will be split between funding a badly needed new computer system for the state’s district courts and to help pay for the defense of those who can’t afford an attorney in criminal courts. The need for more funding for both is clear. District courts are handling huge case loads that go beyond driving infractions to include drunk driving, domestic violence and other
criminal matters and are using a computer system that many have called obsolete. Likewise, cities and counties need increased funding to provide the services of public defenders for the indigent. For most of us another $12 for a speeding ticket is only added incentive to obey the rules of the road. But the effect of the order for many lower-income state residents amounts to fining Peter to defend Paul. Chief Justice Barbara Madsen, in defending the increase, admitted that operations of the courts shouldn’t be dependent on fines and fees but that the modest increase was reasonable. Four of the court’s nine justices disagreed. Justice Mary Yu, in her dissent, compared using an increase in fines to help fund the courts to “cash register justice.” Justice Gordon McCloud
noted that the justices in a separate court case recently faulted a fee system in criminal courts that causes indigent offenders to owe more over time than most, because, when they are unable to pay, fines and interest are added to what they owe. “The majority of those fees comes from penalties imposed when a payment is missed, for whatever reason,” McCloud wrote. “In other words, the people who are least able to pay up front, all at once, are the ones who end up paying the most.” McCloud also criticized the wisdom of relying too heavily on fines and fees to run the courts, again citing the court’s recent decision: “The state cannot collect money from defendants who cannot pay.” The U.S. Department of Justice, in its recent examination of the relationship between
legal fees and court revenue in Ferguson, Missouri, faulted a court system where fees were based on revenue needs rather than the goals of justice, McCloud wrote. Of a typical $136 fine for a traffic infraction, the base penalty will now amount to $48. The remaining $88 goes to various other worthy accounts, fees tacked on by the Legislature, such as $51 for public safety and education. Traffic infractions have become, rather than solely a law enforcement tool, a shadow source of revenue for the state. As it is now being mandated to do for education and treatment of the mentally ill, the Legislature needs to increase the general fund support for all state courts, rather than taking the easy route by expecting the state Supreme Court to go after the poor to pay a greater share.
■■UNITED STATES
And if not actually impeaching the president, they’ll tie him or her up in knots. His or her agenda will go right down the toilet. As will all nominations. As will domestic and foreign policies. No, any CEO who becomes president and tries to play the dictator, will end up a toothless, powerless joke. So, Carly? Go ruin another company and leave Uncle Sam alone.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR ■■SNOHOMISH COUNTY
Declare war on caterpillars
Watch out! The tent caterpillars are here. I have seen them infesting fruit trees along the Larimer Road, and other trees on the river road. Also I have had two of the brown orange little fuzzies walking in my garden. Please, do not let these destructive critters get out of control! Clip, snip destroy and squash. Best if you can burn the infected branches. A firepit works. Thanks, front yard gardener, Michele Hoverter Everett
■■LEGISLATURE
How dare they ignore voters’ will? I am a longtime resident of Washington and I am writing (to the Legislature) for three reasons: I write as a parent of schoolage children. All children in the state have the right to the very best education that we can provide. It is our duty as adults to ensure this for our youngsters; 47th worst class size in the nation is not the best we can do. When my children cannot interact with their teachers, cannot have questions answered during instruction due to overloaded classrooms, something is fundamentally wrong. It is time to do right by our children. I write as a voter. We voters passed class size and COLA initiatives into law. Passed them into law! How do legislators dare to think that it is OK to ignore the will of the people? I demand an answer! And, while claiming there is not enough money for education, they accept outrageously high pay increases for themselves! This shows a blatant disrespect for voters, and it is time that we are listened to! I write as a teacher. Last Friday I participated in a oneday strike with my colleagues, directed at the Legislature. I was filled with pride to unite with those men and women and finally stand up for our students, and for ourselves. I demand that lawmakers fully fund class size and COLA laws written, and that they stop any further misuse of testing in our schools. They must immediately cease any attempt to strip teacher rights to bargain at the local level. And I insist that they protect educators from falling even further behind in healthcare expenses. It is time that educators are given the respect that we have earned and that we, as professionals, deserve. Educators from almost 60 districts across the state are
Have your say Feel strongly about something? Share it with the community by writing a letter to the editor. You’ll need to include your name, address and daytime phone number. Send it to: E-mail: letters@heraldnet.com Mail: Letters section The Daily Herald P.O. Box 930 Everett, WA 98206 Have a question about letters? Call Carol MacPherson at 425-339-3472.
united in saying, it is time that the Legislature fully funds public education! Robyn Hayashi Monroe
■■EVERETT
Rampant crime sadly ignored I attended a funeral Monday afternoon, at Evergreen Funeral Home on Broadway. During the service, one of the people who attended had her car broken into. They smashed two windows and took her cell phone and a lot of important papers. She was devastated because there were irreplaceable things taken. Of course, the police department doesn’t feel this is enough to warrant any kind of follow-up, like taking prints or pinging her cell phone to find out where it is. The funeral home did not have a camera or any kind of security for the parking lot. What a shame that these kind of petty crimes are so rampant that the authorities have just given up. Neena Blackwell Everett
Former CEO can’t be president So, Carly Fiorina, a good, solid Republican, has decided she should be president of the U.S.A. Is she worthy of such an office? Hmm. Fiorina ran one of the biggest, high-tech companies in the country, Hewlett-Packard. She did so for six years. She also canned 30,000 Americans and sent the jobs overseas. For this and other blunders, she eventually got the sack. The day after the board of directors showed her the door, the company’s stock went up. Quite a qualification. (Please visit www.carlyfiorina. org) Carly Fiorina — and all other corporate poobahs who aspire to the Oval Office — have one glaring disqualification: They’re all dictators. They only have one constituent to please, i.e., themselves. Just like Stalin, Hitler or Pol Pot or Henry VIII. Think I exaggerate? Consider that if a dictator issues an order or a policy that will ruin the country, everyone must nevertheless toe the line. Should anyone dare to disagree or raise a question, it’s off to the gulag or the gibbet. In a corporation, the CEO enjoys similar power, though milder: You just get fired, which is the corporate version of the death sentence. Dictators and CEOs, rule by fear. If you are unwilling to endure humiliation or a demand to do something unethical, you get the boot and a bad recommendation. Ah, but with a president, it’s way different. The president can only rule through cooperation and accommodation. Is a president is going to fire an uncooperative Congress or Supreme Court? Hardly, if the president sufficiently irks them, they can fire the president.
Tom LaBelle Snohomish
■■SNOCO PUD
Rates are not among the lowest The latest publication of the Snohomish County PUD’s newsletter “Current” has an article “ABCs-Rates” in which it tries to tell us how lucky we are because their rates are among the lowest in the U.S. My latest residential bill for Feb. 12 through April 13 was $421.47 for 4,212 kilowatt hours. Deducting the 6 percent Snohomish city tax leaves $397.61 for the PUD’s share. If I were getting service from Grant County PUD, the cost would be a service charge of 49 cents a day for 61 days plus energy charge of 4.406 cents per KWH for a total of $215.47. Similarly, Chelan County PUD charges $7.70 a month (2 months. $15.40) service charge plus 2.7 cents a KWH for a total of $129.12. Douglas County PUD charges 33.3 cents per day plus energy charge of 2.33 cents a KWH for a total of $118.40. Snohomish County PUD rate of 9.451 cents a KWH would look even better if we compared it to the cost of energy on the International Space Station. Ralph Sterley Snohomish
State makes it easier to save for retirement
W
hen you think about retirement, you can imagine a life in which you are freed from decades of work, having to put up with a bad boss or difficult co-workers, able to take your time waking up in the morning and go for a walk, a bicycle ride, garden, or just talk to your neighbors and enjoy the local coffee house or tavern. But the majority of people retiring will not experience a retirement of relative security, enabling them to JOHN BURBANK enjoy their leisure. Most will retire into near-poverty. How does this happen in one of the wealthiest states in one of the wealthiest countries? It doesn’t help that wages have stagnated since the turn of the century or that companies have terminated their defined benefit pensions, which guarantee a monthly annuity to retirees. The stagnation of wages has resulted in workers not saving for retirement, when their mortgage or rent, utilities, car payments, student debt and health costs pile up and come first. Half a million Washington citizens between the ages of 45 and 64 have less than $25,000 in savings. That $25,000 in savings will get you a monthly annuity of about $160 when you retire. The end of pensions has taken away a guarantee for income throughout your old age. These pensions did not make retirees wealthy (except for the overloaded retirement products for corporate management), but they did keep retirees economically secure. The majority of retirees depend on Social Security for two-thirds of their income. The average Social Security check is $1,300 a month. Add the $160 in your savings annuity and your Social Security and you have $1,460 a month, or $17,520 a year, or $48 a day. Another reason that workers don’t have much in savings is that millions of them can’t save for retirement at work. In our state, 75 percent of workers who work for employers with fewer than 100 employees can’t make a simple pre-tax retirement savings deduction from their pay checks. That’s because these businesses haven’t set up a retirement plan. It isn’t really their fault. The retirement savings market is flooded with all sorts of companies and products, each of which will claim to be better than the rest. As an employer, I have gone through the song and dance of financial services companies coming in, each with their own colorful charts. The easiest thing is to throw up your hands. After all, an employer just wants to insure quality and production, find customers, be successful and make a profit. Hassling about the best retirement savings plan is easily pushed off the agenda. So while we may think that the Legislature is stuck in limbo, it is good to recognize that it enacted a new policy to make it easier for workers and employers to establish retirement savings plans and put money into those plans. This bipartisan legislation, Senate Bill 5826, was developed and guided by state Sen. Mark Mullet, D-Issaquah and state Rep. Larry Springer, D-Kirkland. Gov. Jay Inslee signed it into law on Monday. What does it do? It establishes a Small Business Retirement Marketplace. In this marketplace, financial service firms can offer retirement savings products, as long as they meet certain “good business” criteria. They have to offer these products at no cost to employers and they can’t charge more than 1 percent on the savings of participating employees. The marketplace will enable both employer and employee contributions for retirement. So if you save 3 percent of your wages in the retirement marketplace, will it really make a difference? Yes, it does, especially if your employer matches your savings, and you start saving early in your worklife. Starting at age 25, with a wage of $12 an hour, and even with only a 2 percent increase in wages every year, and even if you get laid off one year in every ten years, and even if you retire at age 62, you can still gain a monthly annuity from your retirement savings exceeding $1,400 a month. That is $17,500 a year. You will have doubled your Social Security payments. Even if your employer doesn’t match your contributions, you would still have more than $700 a month in this annuity. That’s a lot better than nothing, better than $160 from your savings, and better than hovering just above poverty. John Burbank is the executive director of the Economic Opportunity Institute, www.eoionline.org. Email him at john@ eoionline.org.