Friday, March 14, 2008


Washington State Once Again Disses its Parks System!


Well here we go again. The Washington State Legislature which is overwhelmingly controlled by Democrats has once again given our State Park system the short end of the financial stick. What the heck?! They manage to find money in the budget to spend millions of tax payers dollars on educating illegal immigrants and dimwit home owners who can't figure out what they can afford- but no money for expanding our park system! I'm getting pretty sick of this and from the tone of this entry you can see that I'm angry! I blogged on numerous occasions a couple of years ago on this topic and here we go again.
Democrats have controlled the state house since 1985 and what have our parks gotten under them? We had to buy day passes to support our parks under Gary Locke while he closed a handful of our parks for good. What a travesty! Meanwhile our population base has increased by 1.5 million in that time and our park system has grown by nary a park. Now the Republicans don't exactly have a great record here too-but Dan Evans was probably our last good governor when it came to our parks. And in 2004 Dino Rossi (who sat on the board of the WA Nature Conservancy) made part of his platform to better fund our state park system. All I can say now is, Dino are you ready to make good on that promise again if (re-) elected?
We need somebody in our state house who cares about our parks. Voters-think about this as new parks like Miller Peninsula (which I write about in my Day Hiking Olympic Book) and Mashel Valley are now put on hold. Parks that were supposed to be showcases for the upcoming 2013 centennial. This is getting tiring. I would like to enjoy these parks before I die and before the legislature takes more of my money away to give to social welfare programs and sports franchises. When will this state's legislature start showing that parks are important to our natural and cultural heritage, our economy, and to all of our residents regardless of their social status? When?
(photo- Miller Peninsula State Park)

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