Stokesbary talks budget woes, taxes, and law enforcement recruitment with KIRO’s Charlie Harger

March 7, 2025

House Republican Leader Drew Stokesbary recently spoke with KIRO Radio’s Charlie Harger about many of the legislative challenges this session, including the massive budget deficit created by the Democrats. Despite being in the minority, Stokesbary underscored some positives, detailing productive talks with Governor Ferguson on agricultural fuel exemptions, emergency powers reform, and bolstering law enforcement numbers—the lowest per capita nationwide.

Full transcript:

KIRO’s Charlie Harger: Lawmakers in Olympia are in the thick of it right now. They’re considering hundreds of bills, and soon the heavy lifting begins with, depending upon who you ask, $12 to $15 billion dollars in a budget shortfall. And they got to figure out what to do. Joining us now is House Republican Leader Drew Stokesbary from Auburn. True, Republicans are in the minority, but are you able to get your points across? You strike me as the kind of guy who doesn’t just wanna be at the opposition. You wanna come up with solutions.

Drew Stokesbary: Yeah, you know that. That’s exactly right. And we have 39 Republicans in the house. There’s 59 Democrats, so yes, we’re in the minority, but the 39 Republicans, first of all, we represent about 3 million Washingtonians across the state. But the all 39 of us are dedicated people that want to do real good work for the people of Washington state. We’re serious legislators, and while we’re in the minority, and it’s very easy in that position to just say no to everything, that’s not what Washington state House Republicans are doing. We wanna come up meghup with real solutions to solve real people’s problems.

Charlie Harger: So by understanding is you are meeting occasionally, if not regularly, with Governor Ferguson, and that that’s new. That wasn’t happening with Governor Insley. How are those meetings going?

Drew Stokesbary: They’re going great, you know. I got to say, while we’re certainly not going to agree with Governor Ferguson everything, it is refreshing to have a governor who lives on the same planet as the rest of us, you know. His predecessor was laser focused on one thing and didn’t really care about much beyond that, you know. To give you a couple points for context, one, I think we’ve had four meetings with the governor now this year. He’s been on the job for probably five or six weeks. I think for context, when I was House Republican Leader last session when Jay Insley was governor, I think we had one meeting the entire session. That one meeting I had with Governor Insley last year, the very first topic I brought up was this idea that the climate came in and acted literature past a couple years ago. They created this carbon tax scheme that, in my opinion, has led to a dramatic increase in the price of gas. That bill included some language exempting fuel used for agricultural purposes from the bill. The idea was, you know, hey, we don’t wanna hurt our farmers, but the bill didn’t really define how that would work, and it has turned out to be really hard for farmers getting gas for their combine, you know, just for the truck to haul their hay to market or whatever, to be exempt from the additional fees that have been added up. So when I met with Governor Insley last year, this was the very first topic I brought up, and his answer was, well, Department Ecology tells me they’ve solved the problem, so I don’t know what you’re complaining about. Next topic, please. That was it. Fast forward to a year later, Governor Ferguson, in his inaugural address, stands on the roster of the house and, you know, says, in probably the biggest speech he’ll give all year, that the state government has failed to deliver on the promise to provide this exemption, and he promises to fix it. Now the ultimate test will be four years from now. Is it fixed or not? But to have a guy on day one admit that the state government has failed and promised to find a solution, that’s a heck of a lot better we were than we were getting from the other guy.

Charlie Harger: What have you been talking about with Governor Ferguson?

Drew Stokesbary: You know, we’ve been trying to find areas where we agree on this. This is one of them, trying to make sure that farmers can be exempt from the surcharge of the Climate Command Act. Another topic that the governor talked about in his inaugural address was reforming emergency powers. The other big one is law enforcement officers. We’ve got the fewest number of law enforcement officers per capita of any state in the country, and Governor Ferguson, to his credit, campaigned on fixing that and has been working as governor, try to figure out ways we can provide more resources to cities and counties to bring more folks into the profession.

Charlie Harger: We’re speaking with House Republican Leader Drew Stokesbary. So, depending on who’s giving the number, we’re anywhere from 12 to 15 billion dollars in the red in this state. How did we get in this mess, and how do we get out of it?

Drew Stokesbary: I’m actually not sure I would put the number quite that high, but no matter what you put it at, I don’t worry that there’s a big range right now because it depends on what sort of assumptions you’re making. And as we write the budget, we will stop assuming things, and we will put things into law. I’m a lawyer by trade, and there’s a joke about lawyers that you can ask him any question you want, and the answer is always the same: it depends. And that’s sort of what we’re talking about with the budget. And, you know, in my opinion, we got here for a couple of reasons. We had tremendous increases in state revenue, speaking of COVID, over the past couple of years. As we’re dealing with COVID, there is this bizarre economic shock where, in the immediate aftermath of COVID and kind of the spring and summer of 2020, the economy kind of shut down, state revenue plummeted, we thought we were gonna be in a huge recession, and then all of a sudden, there was this huge stimulus package that created a lot of state tax revenue coming into the door. At the same time, the federal government, just when they were given, you know, all of us those 500 or thousand dollar checks, they were giving states lots and lots and lots of money. Also, the state had accumulated a very large rainy day fund over the past couple of years as the economy had recovered from the Great Recession. And so, unfortunately, and I think very, very stupidly, the Legislature decided to spend all of that money all at once, and we spent on a bunch of things, on a bunch of programs that are well intended, and some of them are probably doing very good work, but it is now creating what we call this bow wave where now we’ve obligated ourselves to future spending. The other thing that has happened is the Legislature has been very creative. You know, we’re in the politics business. We’re in the business of trying to do things that make people like us. And so the Legislature will pass a program that, again, well intended, sometimes might even be effective, but it will cost money to run that program. But we want credit from our constituents for creating the program, so there’s a technique that legislators will sometimes use where they will pass a law in year one that says it won’t take effect until year 3, and that way, you don’t have to pay for it in years one and two, but you can go home in year 1 and tell all your constituents what a great legislator you are because you helped create this program.

Charlie Harger: Does that give us the wiggle room that if we don’t start these programs that were going to start, that we don’t have this deficit, or are other measures going to need to take place?

Drew Stokesbary: Yeah, great question. Hundred percent, there’s, you say other measures, you know, I think I would call most of the other measures people are talking about a tax increase, a massive billion dollar tax increase. No, you know, we can balance our budget. We can continue to provide services to Washingtonians who need them without raising taxes. And the easy way to understand it is state tax revenue is continuing to grow organically. I’m not saying we’re raising the sales tax rate or raising property tax rate. Just there’s more economic activity happening, so even at the same tax rates, more tax revenue is coming in. And we’re gonna collect more tax revenue this year than last year, and we’re gonna collect more tax revenue next year than this year. So if we simply spent the same, if we pass the same budget that had applied for the last two years, if we pass it this year, it would have a billion dollar surplus.

Charlie Harger: So it sounds to me there is no tax increase you would support, even like the cigarette vape tax, the self-storage, none of those are gonna fly with you?

Drew Stokesbary: No, no, you know, in the couple taxes you mentioned, there are disappointing because one of the things we hear from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle is how regressive Washington state’s tax code is, this idea that relatively less affluent people have to pay a higher share of their income than more affluent people. And there probably is some truth to that, but the reason why that’s true, there’s a couple reasons, but one is because Washington state has the country’s most regressive excise taxes on things like cigarette and alcohol. Also, you know, people that need extra storage units are oftentimes people that don’t have very large houses. Typically, very affluent people can afford a large house where they can store other things, and taxing those things will be regressive, and Republicans will be opposed to making life in Washington state even less affordable than it is now.

Charlie Harger: Drew Stokesbary, the House Republican Leader. Drew, take care.

Drew Stokesbary: Yeah, you too. Thanks, Charlie.