(calm music) - Good evening and welcome to the Candidate Forum.

My name is Ruvine Jimenez and I am a member of the League of Women Voters of Benton and Franklin Counties.

The League is a nonpartisan organization that neither supports nor opposes candidates.

In presenting these forums, it is our goal to provide opportunities for voters to become better informed about the people who are running for public office.

The 2024 general election candidate forums have been prerecorded in person by Northwest Public Broadcasting at WSU Tri-Cities.

They will be available through November 5th general election day on YouTube, the League's Facebook and website, on NWPB, and through the League's additional partners, the cities of Richland and Pascal, and the Columbia Basin Badger Club.

At this time, I would like to introduce our moderator, Matt Loveless, from the Murrow College of Communications at WSU Pullman.

Please welcome Matt.

- Hello, everybody, and welcome to those watching us here on Northwest Public Broadcasting, and thank you to the League of Women Voters.

Welcome to NWPB Vote 2024 coverage of races happening all over Eastern and Central Washington.

In this program, a chance to learn a little more from candidates running for positions in Benton County.

We'll have candidates for Superior Court Judge, County Commissioner, and Public Utility District Commissioner.

And before we begin, we'd like to remind viewers, the views expressed in the following program are those of the candidates on stage and do not necessarily represent the views of Northwest Public Broadcasting and or the League of Women Voters of Benton-Franklin Counties.

And we mentioned here, we're on the WSU Tri-Cities campus in Richland.

WSU Tri-Cities is located on shared traditional homelands of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and the Confederated Tribes and Bands of Yakama Nation.

And with that, let's get some ground rules for today's debate.

All candidates will hear questions from the League of Women Voters.

No opening statements today.

We will get at what our candidates' priorities are in our line of questioning here.

There will, however, be time for some closing statements.

All timers right now set at 90 seconds for responses.

Now, as moderator, within the time parameters of this program, I do reserve the right to include more questions or, time permitting, allow for shortening the time.

For now, that is not part of the schedule.

Of course, we will all do our best to stay on time and on topic for the sake of fairness and transparency.

So let's get to it.

Our first race tonight gives us the opportunity to speak with candidates for Superior Court Judge in Benton County.

Joining me on stage are Bronson Brown, currently a Superior Court Commissioner in Benton County and Judge Pro Tem in Franklin County.

And Shawn Sant, a County Prosecutor here since 2011.

I wanna thank you both for being here as you run for this vacancy this election.

Now, as I said, no opening, so we'll get right to the League's questions.

The first two, Mr. Brown, we'll start with you, sir.

Lately much has been said about the shortage of defense attorneys in the Tri-Cities and the release of defendants as a result.

What are your thoughts about any solutions to this dilemma?

- You know, Matt, that is a complicated problem for a couple reasons.

First, one of the reasons why we have an OPD shortage, a public defender shortage, is a lack of funding.

And unfortunately the counties in the state of Washington are the ones that are tasked to provide the funding to provide public defenders.

And throughout the state, there are a lot of counties that, you know, their budgets are tight.

That's one problem.

The other problem is, on the flip side is people are arguing the public defenders are overworked.

Their caseloads, mandatory caseloads need to drop, and that will then bring in more people, more attorneys that will wanna do the job.

That's the debate going around the state.

Now, what the fix is, I think the fix is a couple things.

One is trying to get the decision makers together and figure out what a good adequate caseload would be to attract some quality public defenders.

The other one is, I think more on the attorney level, is we need to provide more of an emphasis of mentoring some of the younger attorneys and bringing them along and training them in these different fields so that they feel comfortable taking these types of cases.

I think that will increase the numbers.

- Alright, Mr. Brown, thank you very much.

Mr. Sant, same question to you.

- Well, I've been the County Prosecutor here for 14 years and one of the things that we've had to deal with over the years is priorities.

Those that are arrested, is there adequate facilities, whether it's in juvenile or in our jails?

So I think one of the things that is highlighted with the more recent problem is as a prosecutor, I've had to be mindful of the type of cases that we charge.

Sometimes we're in very close discussion with the Office of Public Defense to make sure that we're managing our resources.

What I mean by that is being able to prioritize, making sure that we always have the ability to house the most violent offenders.

And I think what that has done is opened us up to making sure that we involve both prosecutors as well as the Office of Public Defense in the discussion to figure out ways that we can make sure that we always have adequate resources.

Looking at the issue with funding, one of the things that was mentioned is I think there's always an effort for judges to be involved in improving our justice system.

That would include also making sure that we're working with elected officials, asking for adequate funding, making sure that they're recognizing our local needs, but also realizing that it is really a state constitutional issue to provide an adequate defense.

And if our public defenders don't have those resources, we as judges can be involved in that process, making sure that everybody is appointed a proper public defense within a reasonable time period.

We've looked at recent lawsuits that occurred in Oregon that addressed a similar system where the state adjusted their caseload limits at a time when they were already struggling to have adequate public defenders.

So I think something that we can do as judges is be proactive when we start seeing issues, kind of seeing the bogged down of lack of defenders being appointed, we can make those inputs and get the parties discussing it.

- Alright, Mr. Sant, thank you very much.

That was question one and we'll move right into question two.

Mr. Sant, you'll go first here as we alternate responses here during this debate.

And I'll give some context here to our viewers as well, as the Benton County Recovery Court has been operating since October of 2022.

And you can scan their social media, plenty of success stories that have come out of that.

In your opinion, Mr. Sant, how effective are therapeutic courts compared to alternatives?

- I think this is long overdue and one of the things that we've been able to build in Franklin County, since we are in a Benton and Franklin Judicial District.

It's important to recognize what have we learned from Benton County successes, what have we been able to do and implement in Franklin County?

As the prosecuting attorney, we were able to expand our prosecution diversion program and that was kind of like a first look of somewhat of therapeutic court, but not quite the full functioning therapy part of it, where if individuals required mental health counseling, drug resource counseling, things like that, we didn't quite have those kind of resources.

But we've learned is that these tools can be very effective.

Therapeutic courts give individuals the opportunity to keep criminal offenses off their record.

As a previous public defender, being involved in trying to help people that have kind of drifted off the law following path, it's been important to be able to represent individuals that have gone through therapeutic courts like drug courts and be able to break the cycles of addiction.

And I've even been able to see where people weren't really that enthusiastic about starting such a program, but as they go through it, they recognize a change, their family members see a change in the person, and they, the individual, see how it has helped and benefited them.

It saves taxpayer dollars because it really gets people on a path away from drugs that are typically, or mental health issues, getting them access to mental health so that they could basically get their lives in order.

And I think it's a great process.

- [Matt] Thank you, Mr. Sant.

Mr. Brown, how effective do you think therapeutic courts are compared to alternatives here in Benton County?

- I'm a big fan of them, and so since I've been on serving as a Superior Court Commissioner for the last couple years, the times where I'm sitting in my office and crack a smile is, I can hear the cheering going on in one of the courtrooms when they're holding drug court and it's graduation.

And some of these folks have successfully completed their treatments, completed the requirements, and now they have their family, their friends, court staff, judges there to cheer them on and tell 'em great job.

And I've seen some of those people as they exit the courtroom with big smiles on their face.

Their self-esteem is boosted.

And I've heard stories of a lot of 'em now.

They don't go back to their former life.

Now, they have a purpose.

They get trained in employment and they're successful.

Now, this isn't without failure.

In anything, there are always a few that aren't making it through.

But for the most part, as I've talked to in Benton County, Judge Burrows, who presides over drug court, he says it's been most of the people are pretty successful going through that.

And I can't say what the success rate is in other parts of the state, but for Benton County, I think it is successful and those types of courts are what gets to the root of the problem of people's behavior.

And I think that's what will ultimately reduce some of the criminal activity in our community.

- Alright, Mr. Brown, thank you very much.

All right, let's move on to question number three and an interesting one from the League here as we talk about protections of the First Amendment and certainly as people perceive them in the area of hate crimes.

What are some of the issues in balancing free speech against the need to control potentially offensive activity?

Mr. Brown, you're first.

- So I see this on almost a daily basis.

One of the dockets I preside over is the ex parte docket, which each day we will receive petitions for protection orders and we routinely will get petitions in where people want protection from someone else because of things that were said and published on social media and other types of things that can be considered hate speech.

Sometimes it's not, but for the individual it's extremely disturbing.

And as a court commissioner, as a judicial officer, I have to balance that and figure out whether someone does have a First Amendment right to say the things they're doing or whether it goes over the, crosses the line.

And a lot of times when I'm looking whether that speech crosses the line is, are there any really direct threats?

Do the person that is the recipient of this speech, do they feel threatened?

Do their safety feel threatened or not?

And that's ultimately a lot of times what it comes down to.

Now it is a fine balance and I think in today's world...

When I was growing up, I didn't have to deal with it quite as much.

But today because the advent of social media and other mediums, people can say things just when they want and published immediately.

And so that's why it's just ballooned into a huge problem.

- [Matt] Thanks, Mr. Brown.

Mr. Sant, same question to you in balancing that free speech from a legal standpoint and the need to control potentially offensive activity.

- Obviously free speech is an extremely important right.

I mean, it's one of the things that's listed as our, you know, first amendment.

It's mentioned first probably because without that ability to question government, question us as elected officials, people feel very isolated if they can't express that.

Now, as we look into how does that unwind into crime, as a prosecutor, we have seen cases that are referred to us for charges where the allegation would be is that, hey, this is a hate related crime.

We've actually had to review several referrals of that.

So similar to a person being on the bench as a prosecutor, we have to figure out is this the type of case, based on the facts and circumstances of those cases, is this something that we could actually prove beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury?

So that experience, I think, has given me a good insight as to how do we balance those issues.

Looking at the rights of the accused, is this individual committing a crime for other reasons other than violating one's protected status?

How do we balance those issues as we go on?

As a member of the bench, if we're hearing a case, we're gonna have to ensure, one, I think people are gonna say, "Wait a minute, I wanna be able to say what I want to," in court.

Well, sometimes there's limits, there's limits to what people can say.

But I think the goal that we have as members of the judiciary is going to be making sure people have the opportunity to be able to express their views, but also recognize when you cross over and turn that into action where it actually becomes a crime.

We don't allow that.

And I think that's something that we can curtail in the future.

- Alright, thank you very much, Mr. Sant.

Alright, let's move on to our fourth question and final question, which is meant to dig into the nuance between state and federal law.

And certainly initial people were curious about it enough here to submit this question.

What should the common citizen know about the distinctions between provisions of the US and Washington state constitutions when it comes to the areas of search and seizure?

The difference between US law and Washington law.

Mr. Sant, we'll have you up first.

- One of the things that I've been able to evaluate over the years that I've had, both as a law enforcement officer in this state as well as a public defender deputy prosecutor, and now as the elected prosecuting attorney for the past 14 years, an issue that has always presented to us is that, wait a minute, Washington is so hard to enforce the laws.

It's hard to prosecute individuals that violate the law.

We've seen restrictions come up of limitations on search and seizure.

Under Washington law, the constitution grants a lot more freedoms than what maybe people would think of under federal constitutional standards.

We've seen changes within our state.

We work hand in hand frequently in our jurisdictions in Benton and Franklin County.

We have many of the task forces that are built up of federal agents working with our state agents or local law enforcement officers.

So there's a balance.

We have given legal guidance to ensure that we're operating under the protections offered under the Washington Constitution to ensure that if we have to prosecute those crimes in our state courts, that we're following those guidelines.

One of the things that I think is important is for people to recognize that obviously we're in the Eastern District of Washington for federal courts.

That's a much broader jurisdictional area.

We're focused here locally and primarily all the cases that we are going to see coming into our court system is primarily going to be dealing with those added protections under our state constitution.

But of course, the federal constitution also applies and we have to balance those rights.

- Alright, Mr. Sant, thank you very much.

Mr. Brown, that same question to you.

What should the common citizen know about distinctions between the US and Washington state constitutions in the area of search and seizure?

- (clears throat) I think the most important distinction to make is there are several additional protections under the Washington State Constitution than there is under the federal constitution.

And some of these protections have been enacted via case law through the last couple years.

It's made it harder for law enforcement to do certain things just because of some of the laws that have changed throughout the state of Washington versus under federal law.

It's not quite as restrictive.

And I think as a community and statewide, probably the reason why you got the question.

And I know there's several citizens that are frustrated and upset.

I know that, you know, there's law enforcement that have had to change the way that they do their jobs because of the extra hurdles that they have to jump over to make sure that they're complying with the Washington State Constitution versus the federal constitution is not so much.

And so I think that's the biggest distinction.

The Washington Constitution's a bit more restrictive than the federal constitution.

- All right, Mr. Brown, thank you very much.

Well, before we go, we do wanna get some closing statements.

I'll be honest, we had a list that included about a dozen more questions.

We could get to a bunch of 'em, but we just got a snapshot today.

So that time for closing statements set at 90 seconds.

Mr. Brown, you're up first with your closing.

- Thank you.

So I am a proud citizen of Benton and Franklin County.

I grew up here, born and raised.

My family came out here, my grandparents came out here in the '50s to work at the Hanford site.

And over the years, I've been able to touch on several different areas, working in the community and working under the law.

I've spent the majority of my 21 year legal career working for public agencies, cities, school districts, worked for counties and all over the Tri-Cities, and working with police departments and so forth.

And I've gained a broad base of experience.

I've also had the opportunity in my former firm to, we were contract prosecutors for most of the cities and the Tri-Cities.

And then a couple years ago, I took all this experience and then focused it, and the judges in Benton-Franklin County Superior Court appointed me as a Superior Court Commissioner, which Superior Court Commissioner is a judicial office that performs most of the same functions as a judge and assists with the dockets so that it frees up the judges so that they're available for jury trials.

And so as this November, I ask you for your vote and I am excited to be able to serve as your next Benton-Franklin Superior Court Judge.

- Mr. Brown, thank you very much.

Thank you for being here.

Mr. Sant, your closing statement, sir?

- Oh, thank you.

I am honored to be able to be here and continue to serve the citizens of Benton and Franklin Counties.

I have served the citizens of Franklin County over the last 14 years as their elected prosecutor.

We've seen tremendous growth in our community, which obviously brings about many good things, but also brings about a growth of other complex issues such as the rise in crime and criminal activity and how can we curtail that.

As a judicial officer, I look back at my experience and what I can offer to the members of the public about that experience.

My grandfather as well moved to Richland during the '40s, 1940s, and was part of the first police department with the city of Richland.

That kind of inspired me to look at law enforcement as a potential career.

I started as a reserve officer with city of Richland.

Ultimately I was a full-time officer with the city of Prosser before I went active duty in the Air Force.

Since returning back to the area, I've been able to serve as a deputy prosecutor, but also as a defense attorney.

I carried several defense contracts as a public defender in both Benton-Franklin and Grant County.

That gave me an experience being assigned cases from everything from homicide down to DUI.

So I've been able to have that experience both prosecuting and defending cases from the highest levels.

And I think that puts me in a good seat to recognize the interests that we have.

Victims have rights under our state constitution and of course the defendants have rights as well.

Being a prosecutor and public defender has put me in the front row seat of being able to recognize the importance of securing those rights.

Thank you.

- Alright, Mr. Sant, thank you very much.

Mr. Brown, thank you as well.

That does it for our time with the candidates in this race.

We really appreciate you both taking a little bit of time outta your day to join us here on the WSU Tri-Cities campus.

Bronson Brown, Shawn Sant, candidates for Benton County Superior Court Judge.

Elsewhere in Benton County, a race for one of the three County Commission seats.

Incumbent Jerome Delvin back on the ballot, having served almost 12 years now in position one.

And challenging him is Jeff Smart, longtime realtor in the region and current President of the Washington Association of Realtors.

We mention no opening statements, but that's because we wanna get right into your priorities with our first question from the League of Women Voters of Benton and Franklin County.

Mr. Delvin, first, what's the most pressing issue for Benton County and how can it be resolved?

- Well, I think the most pressing issue, as you ask, Matt, is the drug and mental health crisis that we have right now.

And something I've been working on for years.

We have a momentum now thanks to the Recovery Coalition to build a recovery center.

And the county, we bought the old KGH or Trios Hospital there on 10th Avenue and we've raised a little over $35 million to refurbish that.

We're on track to open that next year.

So that will do a lot to solve the issues in the ER rooms.

They won't have to go to ER rooms.

And also in the jail, they won't need to go to jail.

They can go for treatment and the police officers and medics will be able to drop 'em at the front door, no one will be refused entrance into that facility.

So I think that's a problem that we're working on and I think that we have a solution for that.

We just need to get it built and opened up.

- Alright, thank you Mr. Delvin.

Alright, Mr. Smart, I got the same question for you.

What are the biggest issues in Benton County and how would you resolve them?

- Well, there's a couple very large issues that we have in Benton County.

One is a lack of affordable housing.

We are way behind in being able to afford to be able to build and offer blue collar housing, workforce housing.

I'm not talking about low income housing, I'm talking about affordable housing.

Pricing has gone up so high with our shortage of buildable lands that it has priced the American dream of owning a home out of reach for most of our citizens around here.

So we need to work on that.

We need to figure that out and be able to bring more land into the county that can be built on.

Another big issue that we have is a mental health crisis.

And this is something I brought up four years ago as well, that we have a very small amount of beds available for inpatient services.

And although the county has acquired the old Kennewick General Hospital, there's still a question there about whether or not we can do inpatient services there, in which case we would not be able to solve mental health crisis between eight and five.

So we need to make sure that we have the proper amount of beds for the citizens that need help.

We also need to be able to support our law enforcement and we need to be able to bolster our sheriff and all the deputies that are in the area to make sure that they have everything that they need and they're able to keep us safe.

- All right, Mr. Smart, thank you very much.

And once again, thank you both for being here.

We are underway.

And our second question, and it's an interesting one, Mr. Smart, as you talk about being open eight to five and the opportunity to get access to services.

I appreciate the League's question, and this is on a different topic though, as a professor who teaches some early classes and perhaps wishes for better attendance in them.

Commission meetings are held at 9:00 AM in Prosser.

So the question is, if elected, would you advocate for changing the meeting time for the commission in order to encourage a little bit more public participation?

Mr. Smart, what are your thoughts on that?

- 100%, I would.

I think having it earlier in the morning at 9:00 AM prohibits a lot of people from being able to attend.

There are a lot of people that wanna be able to attend in person, but they can't make it at that time.

So I would advocate for a later start, an evening meeting.

- With a lot more time, I'll ask a follow up, a part two of that question.

When would be a good time to allow people to show up to your meeting?

- I would think that, you know, take a page outta the playbook of the city councils, and so 7:00 PM is a great time to start a meeting that allow citizens the opportunity to get there after work and be able to attend.

- Alright, Mr. Smart, thank you very much.

Mr. Delvin, I'll ask you that same question.

Any thought to changing the timing of the meetings?

And if so, when would be a good time to encourage more public participation?

- Well, we've had several discussions on that, on the time.

And we've tried night meetings in the past and we didn't see any more rise in attendance because we moved it to night.

Now it really, on the commission meeting, it comes up, there's a a subject that a lot of people have issues with or want to speak to, then you'll have a turnout.

We offer WebEx for citizens to call in.

They can call in on the WebEx and give public comment.

One thing I worked on with our lobbyist in Olympia is we changed the state law because the state law prohibited us from meeting anywhere but the county seat.

We got the law changed last year.

That allows us to hold one meeting a month in Kennewick.

And by doing that, that's where the area population is for Benton County, we've had some more attendance at the Kennewick meeting when we hold it there on the second Tuesday every month.

So we've talked about that.

We've tried night meetings, but I think with the WebEx and the chance of coming to Kennewick once a month, I think that's really helped the citizens access the commissioner meetings.

- Alright, Mr. Delvin, thank you very much.

All right, let's move on to question three.

We're going quickly through this.

This time we're asking about the American Legislative Exchange Council or the ALEC.

Mr. Delvin, if you've heard of it, can you describe it to our viewers in your words?

And what are your opinions of its policies?

- Well, I was a founding member of the ALEC, a lifetime member when I was in the legislature.

And it was created because you had the NCSL, which was more seen as a more Democratic group of legislators.

Republicans and conservatives formed the American Legislative Exchange Council in response to the NCSL.

I don't know, I haven't paid attention to it in the last 12 years, to be honest with you.

So I don't know if they're still having meetings.

You know, I still hear about NCSL now and then.

But really that was created to give a voice to Republican state legislatures and at a nationwide level.

- Thank you, Mr. Delvin.

Mr. Smart, same question to you about the ALEC.

- I'm one that's going to tell you that if I don't know something completely, I'm going to admit it.

And I don't know everything about the ALEC.

But anything that's out there that's going to help bridge the gap between the citizens and the government is a positive thing for me.

If this, and like I said, I'm not familiar with it, it kind of caught me off guard a little bit, but that's okay.

I will be looking it up after we're done and I will be educating myself more on it.

However, anything that's going to facilitate discussions between not just citizens and their representatives, citizens and the government at large, and anybody else that needs more information, business to business, business to government, whatever it's going to be, anything that can be built as a bridge to foster and improve communication is paramount to me and I'm all for it.

- Alright, thank you, Mr. Smart.

Question from the League.

We don't mean to try to catch you off guard by any means, but I'm just curious about your knowledge of that.

Let's move on to our fourth question and I know you guys know about this because you said it in your first response and we'll be able to elaborate on it.

Asking you to evaluate this multi-phase effort for the Columbia Valley Center for Recovery.

That plan, obviously for viewers out there, is to help address mental illness, substance abuse disorders in your area.

Mr. Smart, in your opinion, what are some of the pros and cons of that project underway so far?

- Well, pros being that you're offering more services to the body of the citizens of the county, or both Benton and Franklin County.

Being able to have more services available, more access to those services is a great thing.

That's a big pro and I've always fought for that.

Another pro is the opportunity to have more than the current 10 beds that are available in the area because there's a much greater need.

And this will also allow us to treat mental health issues non-criminally, being that the person going through a crisis is not treated as a criminal, not taken in by the sheriff's office or some other jurisdiction, but they're able to get the help that they need.

Right now, if you have a, let's take a teen in crisis, you're gonna take them to what's currently available.

And if you do not have insurance, if you are a cash paying type person, which there's a lot of people out there that way, you cannot get access.

You are turned away.

No matter how much money you want to spend on this, you can't get in.

So you have to have a certain insurance in order to be able to get that type of service.

Having a facility that's gonna be a lot larger to be able to offer more services to the citizens of Benton and Franklin County is gonna be astronomically changing of life for those in crisis.

- Alright, Mr. Smart, thank you very much.

Same question to you, basically asking you to elaborate what you said in your first response, Mr. Delvin.

- Sure, well, I don't see all but positive for that recovery center.

I started working on some type of a recovery center when I first got elected County Commissioner 'cause I saw what was going on in the jails.

Too many people are being housed with mental health problems in the jails or they're showing up in the ER rooms, right?

Taking up space there in the ER rooms where, so the recovery center was a dream.

What helped was the Recovery Coalition coming along 'cause then now you had the community asking for such a facility, wanting such a facility, and that really got the county going with that recovery center.

Again, as my opponent said, with the juveniles, that's one of the future projects that we're looking at.

We're trying to raise some money now.

We're looking for a provider that can provide juvenile services in this area.

Right now, there are none.

You have to leave the area to get such services.

We found some providers that are maybe willing to work with the county in that new facility to provide those services.

One thing I worked in the legislature, he brought it up, mental health parity, something, a bill that I passed working with the mental health advocates around the state and here in the Richland area and got that law passed.

So mental health parity for insurance.

People who have the insurance can use that.

So I'd seen nothing but positives from that recovery center for our community.

- Alright, Mr. Delvin, thank you very much.

Well, we've left a little bit of extra time so I'm gonna include another question in here.

And Mr. Delvin, we'll start with you first 'cause I wanna talk about land use as a member of the commission here.

What impact has the Growth Management Act had on county zoning issues?

- Well, it really hasn't affected county zoning issues, that the GMA has affected really the cities for growth because they have to go out into the county.

Every five years, we submit a plan, our Growth Management Act plan that we're required to by the state.

And that's supposed to look at future housing, future sustaining agriculture, and other issues that for the whole county.

Now, the city's come to the county and asked for that Growth Management Act to be, you know, enlarged.

We've done that for the city of Kennewick twice.

Once we were sued by Futurewise and we lost, and once we did it again in a different way and we were sued again by Futurewise, but we won.

So we're one and one with Futurewise.

Futurewise is a group out of the west side that fights land use when you propose to take agricultural land out of ag use, except for when it comes to renewable energy, they won't fight that, right?

So if you take ag land out for that.

So yeah, it's up to the cities to decide how they want to grow their city.

And if they ask the county, then we submit on behalf of them in our growth plan.

And of course that can be challenged again by the state but also by other organizations out there that...

So it doesn't affect county zoning in that sense on zone laws or anything like that.

I mean, the state law requires that, you know, certain lot sizes have to be held in the county.

You can't have small lot sizes in the county unless you're doing a mixed use development and you have a water right.

And water rights are hard to come by.

- Alright, we'll turn that same question to Mr. Smart, as you've talked about housing as well in terms of the Growth Management Act.

- So the Growth Management Act was enacted 30 some odd years ago.

It is time for it to have some sort of regeneration or for it to go away.

It was enacted in order to protect farmland predominantly in Eastern Washington, but it does affect some counties in the west side as well.

Now the issue we have with the GMA, it isn't about counties zoning, it is about allowing our cities to grow in a proper sustainable way by expanding our boundaries, which the cities do come to the county to ask for.

The county then forwards that request on to the state.

The state checks with Futurewise.

Mr. Delvin's correct about that.

Futurewise then makes their decision and then that decision comes back down.

Most of the time, Futurewise will say no, they don't want that kind of growth.

City of Kennewick did beat Futurewise, but it was for an industrial growth, it wasn't really for housing.

So what we need is to be able to take on Futurewise because they're not going away and we need to be able to find ways to work with them to allow our cities to grow so that we can bring in more land into that urban growth boundaries.

Once we have more land, the price of land will come down.

Simple supply and demand.

Once the price of land has come down, the price of housing comes down as well because underneath all is the land.

Now price of two by four stays the same, but when the price of land goes down $100,000 per lot, your house becomes a lot more affordable.

- Sorry, no time for rebuttals or follow ups.

However, we do have time for closing statements and we're allowing you to address whatever you would want because we do have a lot of great topics that are worth covering.

But we need to move on to our next race.

So let's make our short debate conclude here with closing statements.

And actually, Mr. Smart, we'll start with you.

90 seconds to start your closing statements.

- Well, thank you, I'm glad to be here and thank you for the League of Women's Voters for doing this again.

I did this four years ago as well.

So I'm here, I have three reasons for being here.

Three reasons for running.

I wanna keep everybody safe.

I want to be able to support our sheriff's office to the level that they need, to have all the deputies, to have all the equipment, to have all the services that they need in order to keep us safe.

I wanna keep everybody housed.

I want to be able to expand the cities in the county in order to offer affordable housing.

And I want to keep everybody well.

I want to keep the process going and find ways to do inpatient services for our citizens that are in mental health crises.

Not sending them to the jail, not having to send them to the emergency room, but to send them to a place that can take them in, house them for a time being, and be able to give them the services to overcome whatever issue that they may be having at that time.

Those are my three points and that is what I hope to do.

Thank you.

- [Matt] Alright, Mr. Smart, thank you very much.

Mr. Delvin.

- Yeah, just to follow up on the GMA, that was voted in by the legislature.

It was a failed initiative originally.

The voters turned it down, but the legislature enacted it, and I tried changing that the whole, you know, Republicans tried changing that for 20 years I was in there.

No success.

So that's just the way it is over there with the GMA.

You gotta work within it.

Why I'm running again, you know, I come from a long history of public service, joining the Army outta high school, coming back, working on Hanford patrol, being hired by the Richland Police Department, served for 28 years, became interested in the legislature because of things that I saw as a police officer.

Ran for the legislature, served 10 years in the State House of Representatives, since 10 years in the State Senate.

Former commissioner asked me if I would consider running for Commissioner.

I resigned my Senate term, ran for Commissioner.

Why did I run for Commissioner?

Because I saw a lot of needs in this community.

I was certainly helping them in this community, this area in the legislature by, you know, the one science center funding, funding for the first STEM high school here in this area.

So, you know, but I thought as a local elected, I could do a lot more.

And so the recovery center, the building on the infrastructure of the county, making it good enough for the next 15 to 20 years past my time as Commissioner.

But we have a really well run county now, the three Commissioners.

We're very strong with each other, working with each other.

We have a good chemistry, we talk about issues, we decide our issues, and we move forward.

So it's a pleasure working there, I enjoy it.

And I want to just keep working for the citizens of Benton County and ask for your vote.

- Alright, thank you, gentlemen.

We appreciate it.

And that does it for our time with our candidates here.

Once again, Jerome Delvin, Jeff Smart, vying for the Benton County Commission position one seat.

And that brings us finally to our last race featured here in our Benton County program, the race for Public Utility District Commissioner, a position with a six year term.

Incumbent position three Commissioner Barry Bush on the ballot again, looking for his third term, facing challenger Mike Massey.

Mr. Bush, Mr. Massey are here, ready to answer questions from the League and certainly we know our candidates are prepared for this first one, at least they ought to be.

What sources of energy should be the highest priority to prevent power outages here in Benton County?

Mr. Bush, we'll start with you, sir.

- Nuclear.

I believe we need to start thinking about building a new small modular nuclear plant on the Columbia generating site.

We have all of the expertise already in place.

We have the transmission that's available on that site.

As many of us will know, you know, looking back into our history into the 1980s, we'd initially tried to build two plants out there and only one of them was completed.

So everything basically that we need to build a new facility is already in place.

I think at some point we're gonna have to start thinking about building some new natural gas.

I don't think we're there yet.

The reason I don't believe that is, one, they're incredibly expensive.

A small 250 megawatt plant right now will cost about $400 million.

We currently in the northwest have about 10,000 megawatts of natural gas.

About 2,000 of that is sidelined right now.

So we need to start working with the legislature so we can continue to, well, to restart and start continuing to use some of that capacity that we're not doing now.

I think if we focus on those two things, then we'll be in good shape for a while.

In the future, six, eight, 10 years down the line, we're gonna have to start considering other base load type facilities though.

Thank you.

- Mr. Bush, thank you very much.

Mr. Massey, same question on priorities for the kinds of power in Benton County.

- Absolutely nuclear power and we live in a community that has the history of power development.

We have a nuclear power plant here, we have the skills here, we have the infrastructure here.

And I think we need to go beyond just advocating nuclear power.

We need to build it here.

We need to build the small modular reactors here.

And I wholeheartedly believe if our state leadership would be as interested in nuclear power as they are with wind, we would have these small modular nuclear reactors working for us now.

And it's been a long time, we need to roll up our sleeves.

But this is a nuclear community.

We have to get nuclear going and I'd be happy to work with the legislature and happy to work with the state leaders.

And I'm not there to dis 'em, I just want them to know that we have the talent and the capability of building, rebuilding the nuclear power industry not only for this country but for this world.

We are in a huge competition with the Chinese and we need to be able to develop those resources.

Nuclear power is a base load power and you just ask any grid operator, they love it.

So I'm all for nuclear power.

Thank you.

- All right, Mr. Massey, thank you very much, and we'll start with you for our second question.

And this is a two-parter, as obviously constituents in this area are concerned with how things are hitting their pocketbooks, energy costs among them.

And really this is an exploratory question.

Is there anything the Benton PUD can do to mitigate rising energy costs or, Mr. Massey, is there any piece of advice you would give to energy consumers?

- Well, I think we're doing a very good job right now.

Our PUD is just a crown jewel of our county.

We work with Bonneville Power Administration, they work with Energy Northwest, and the Columbia generating station sells them the nuclear power, which sells to us.

I think we've got a really good relationship with all these entities.

We've kept the power rates very low.

But I think we need to look to the future.

If we can get more nuclear power built at Energy Northwest and get those power costs low, we can bring in more industry that can help our community and our economy.

- [Matt] And any advice for consumers out there?

You do have some extra time left.

- Well, you know, I've went ahead and bought a new HVAC system, 16,000.

It was quite a commitment, but my power rates did go down.

I used to have, you know, $360 a month and now it's down to $230 a month and it's because I've bought also some heat pump water heaters and that's really reduced the energy usage, so reduced costs of power.

- Alright, thank you, Mr. Massey.

Same question, Mr. Bush, that two parter being, what can the PUD or can they do anything to mitigate costs of rising utility?

- Well, we're doing it now.

As a matter of fact, I'm proud to say during COVID, many utilities were raising their rates.

Some had two and three rate increases.

We at Benton PUD have not had a rate increase in five years.

That's not the norm.

We're doing it now.

So it's not a future thing, it's now.

Conservation is a big thing.

The least cost megawatt ever is the one that you never have to produce.

So we spend a lot of money and time on conservation.

That is helping as well.

You know, there's also things called time of use rates.

If you're looking to save a little bit of money, the energy rates in the night, at nighttime, off peak hours, are less expensive.

So if you're willing to adjust your schedule and do some of those things, that's a way to save some money.

Some people like to, we have a program that we introduced just last year where you can literally pay as you go.

People want to be in tune with their electrical use and this allows them, instead of getting a bill every month and not really knowing what to expect, they can literally go to a kiosk or go in and talk to one of our customer service reps and pay.

They can pay $20 at a time, $50 at a time, whatever they choose to do.

When it starts getting down to a couple days of use, they'll get an email, text, whatever it is, and then they know that they need to find a way to pay more to keep their lights on.

- Alright, thank you very much.

Well, let's move on to question number three and this is another question of priorities here.

And since you both addressed it in the first response, let's take nuclear energy off of the table.

What is the most important issue related to energy in Benton County right now and how would you resolve it?

Mr. Bush, we'll start with you.

- Well, we need more of it.

You know, we recently at Benton PUD switched to a full requirements customer of Bonneville.

We did that, quite frankly, to save a little bit of money.

It's not a whole lot, but also to take a lot of the risk.

In the past, we were doing a lot of our own planning, you know, spending a lot of money doing that.

Now we've chosen to allow Bonneville to do that.

That's a big deal.

We are gonna need more energy in the future.

We're growing.

You know, we're growing at a very quick rate, whether it's going to be nuclear or some type of small hydro in certain locations or maybe, you know, a small natural gas in the future.

We're not ready for that yet.

But I think right now, if we're going to try to get more energy, which is what we need, we really need to focus on contacting the legislature and allowing the plants that are not operating or only operating at a certain percentage to start operating.

For example, there's a huge plant in Clark County in the Vancouver area.

It's a 248 megawatt natural gas plant and they're only legally allowed to operate that at 120 megawatts.

So you have 128 megawatts sitting there ready to go, just like that.

But they need the legal, they just need to be able to legally do that and they're not able to do that now, so.

- Alright, Mr. Bush, thank you very much.

And Mr. Massey, I would assume this question could also be rephrased as what caused you to run, but I do want to ask what you think the most important issue is for the PUD?

- Well, I think it's...

The biggest issue we have, and I have to reiterate this, what I was told, but we almost had a blackout last winter.

Now we had, the wind didn't blow and the windmills weren't turning.

And that's an intermittent source that our state leaders want to go to 50% of our energy generation and that's what they forecast by 2030 or 2040 or whatever.

But I just believe that this growing intermittent power source, it's almost like it's... (sighs) It's like it's... How do I say it?

It's almost like it's leaching on the power grid and it's gonna drive up a lot of costs.

And so again, when, if you're a grid operator and you're looking at getting sources of power from different power sources and you're having to, the wind blows and we've got all this wind energy, the wind blows, and then all of a sudden you gotta call the nuclear power plant and ask 'em to power down.

That's not a good call.

- All right.

- Thank you.

- Thank you, Mr. Massey.

Well, let's move on to our fourth and final question, which is less about the what, more about the how.

As the county considers and crafts energy policy, should that policy be concerned with its effect on climate change and why or why not?

Mr. Massey, time is yours.

- Can you repeat the question again?

Thank you.

- Yes.

As you craft energy policy, should that policy be concerned with the effects of climate change?

- Absolutely, we can do that.

I know a lot of people on the west side are very concerned about the climate change.

We have a different culture over here, more like Idaho.

But if you really wanna go to net carbon zero, you have to go nuclear.

And nuclear energy is the only way we're gonna get and it's base load energy.

And again, with the intermittent energy of wind, it, again, it's like the wind harms our grid because when the wind blows, the grid operator has to ask somebody to power down.

Well, if you're, I used to be a banker and I know what it's like to give people loans and they've got a business and they've gotta produce as much as they can to produce profits and to keep the power cost low.

And if you're Energy Northwest and you're asked to power down, or if you're natural gas plant, you're asked to power down for the wind, then why did we build the wind?

Why did we build the wind?

When we need base power, we need the nuclear power.

And I'm telling you, if we don't get the nuclear power, we're gonna have to go to natural gas power because that's what California has done.

They're 47% natural gas and our state leadership is against natural gas.

So we're gonna have blackouts if we don't get this resolved.

We gotta have a vision for our grid and the vision is nuclear power.

- Thank you, Mr. Massey, thank you very much.

And Mr. Bush, just restating the question.

As you craft a policy, what are the considerations about climate change within that policy?

- Yeah, sure, a couple things.

First of all, Energy Northwest does not do anything with their plant as it's associated with wind.

They're not gonna power it down over wind.

That doesn't happen.

Benton PUD is currently 95% clean, non-carbon emitting.

So I would say we're already doing that.

Mike had mentioned nuclear.

We're gonna have to build more nuclear.

We do need more base load nuclear.

There is room for some other types of, you know, solar, things of that nature.

Personally, I'm not a big fan.

It's intermittent and it doesn't produce most of the time.

This big project that they have proposed up here, it's literally probably gonna have a capacity factor of about 26%.

Well, I can tell you most people when they're sitting in front of their big screen TVs or working on their computer or charging their electric car, they don't want their power to work 26% of the time, they want it all the time.

What you need for that is to have more base load plants.

Again, going back to the natural gas.

We have 2,000 megawatts out there that are sitting ready to be used.

We simply need to change the legislation so they're allowed to use those.

Pretty simple.

Thank you.

- Mr. Bush, thank you very much.

Well, I promised we would go quickly here today and that leaves us with an opportunity for some closing statements.

We're offering you 90 seconds to wrap up what you might think are the most important things that we have missed.

And I know we can't spend nearly enough time on this topic, but for our closing, we'll turn to Mr. Bush for 90 seconds.

- Thank you very much.

First of all, thank you to the League of Women Voters for the invite.

As you know, my name is Barry Bush and I'm the current Benton PUD Board President.

I am pro Snake River dams and believe we should be building a new small modular nuclear reactor on the Columbia generating site.

I've worked in public power for 16 years, the last 12 as your PUD Commissioner.

By my account, I have attended over 400 PUD-related meetings in that time.

My opponent has attended two and he just skipped the last meeting on Tuesday.

My opponent has also refused to commit to putting in the time to learn how to be a PUD Commissioner.

Recently, I explained the time commitment to Mike.

I told him he will be expected to travel to four weeks of commissioner training in Olympia, as well as week long trips to Santa Rosa, Houston, New Orleans, Washington DC, and 24 half day commission meetings.

Now, Mike works 70 hour weeks in Oregon.

He is committed to giving the job of PUD Commissioner eight hours every other week and traveling to two of the eight necessary meetings.

For context, the state of Washington considers this position to be a minimum of 90 hours per month.

The PUD has 55,000 meters that consist of families, businesses, and massive multimillion dollar farms.

I can tell you they deserve and expect far more than eight hours every other week.

Over the last 16 years, I have not only shown up, I have excelled.

The PUD has some of the lowest rates in the entire United States.

Our debt ratio is considered excellent and our commitment to safety and keeping the lights on is second to none.

I would appreciate your vote so I can continue to serve this amazing community that I have called home since 1972.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

And Mr. Massey, your closing statement, sir.

- Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen, especially the the ladies of the League of Women Voters for their time and efforts into getting the information out to the community so that they can have an informed choice.

And I thank you, and especially Bev Torelli, I wanna say special thanks to you.

I do work hard.

I work in agriculture.

I have extensive experience in many of the agriculture production, the ag processing.

I've also been a banker in Bellevue and lent a lot of money to the apple industry.

And I've been involved, I grew up in the Quincy Valley.

Agriculture is just part of my life and we don't work like normal people.

We put in a lot of hours, especially when we gotta make hay.

And right now we're making hay.

Basically we're packing a lot of potatoes at the potato packing shed.

And these meetings are at 9:00 AM to noon.

Now, the last meeting I went to, it was five minutes, was it?

- [Barry] It was nine minutes.

- It was nine minutes.

- Last one you didn't show up to was 2 1/2 hours.

- Okay, well, I did ask some people there at the PUD and they said, "Just make the October meetings," and I said thank you.

So I will make all those October meetings.

But anyways, folks, we need a vision for nuclear power.

We need a vision for this nuclear power industry.

We need to build it here.

Richland, the Tri-Cities has got to be the lead on nuclear energy and I want to be part of that.

Please vote for Mike Massey.

Thank you.

- Well, gentlemen, thank you again.

Barry Bush, Mike Massey are two candidates for Benton County Public Utility District Commission position three.

Really appreciate your time here today.

And thanks to all of our Benton County candidates showing up on your ballots this fall.

And that wraps up this hour of NWPB's Vote 2024 coverage.

Some voter information before we sign off here.

That general election coming up on November 5th.

And speaking of ballots, those will be going out beginning on October 18th.

And a few deadlines here.

If you have not registered to vote and you wish to do so by mail, that deadline is October 28th.

That's eight days before the election, so that's a Monday.

You can register in person all the way up to election day until the moments those polls close.

And if you happen to be watching the first airing of this program, our next set of debates will cover races in a few legislative districts around the Tri-Cities, as we'll meet representative candidates in the eighth, 14th, and 15th.

We will also have our full programs online at Northwest Public Broadcasting on YouTube, including our previous coverage of the State Commissioner of Public Lands, as well as the races in the 16th legislative district.

I wanna thank you all for joining us here and wanting to learn more about the people seeking public office in your community.

Have a great night.