17th District candidates face off at Camas forum

Washougal Mayor David Stuebe and longtime Vancouver nurse Terri Niles — candidates vying for the state’s open Legislative District 17, Position 2 seat — recently faced off during a League of Women Voters of Clark County candidate forum held Saturday, Oct. 5, at the Camas Public Library.

Niles, the Democratic candidate, offered clear differences between herself and Stuebe, the Republican candidate.

“While my opponent spent 20 years marketing and selling pharmaceutical drugs I have dedicated my life to caring for people and advocating for better healthcare, not for special interest groups or corporate profits. In Olympia, I will bring that same commitment to working with both Republicans and Democrats to deliver real results for our communities, not for big drug companies,” Niles said.

“As I talk to people at their doors, I hear the same thing over and over: people are tired of the extremism and hyperpartisanship that’s holding us back. In contrast, my opponent publicly endorsed (Joe Kent, a Republican candidate for Washington’s Third Congressional District), one of the most divisive and extreme candidates in the country – someone running against our congresswoman who’s done so much for the city of Washougal and our district,” Niles added. “We need someone who will stand up against extremism and bring us together. That’s what I will do in Olympia – work across the aisle to get results together.”

Stuebe, who has said he plans to remain the mayor of Washougal — and a member of the Washougal City Council — if elected to the state legislature, argued that his military and local government experience has prepared him to be a state legislator.

“I’m all about bringing (people) together and solving problems. I’ve been doing that my whole life. I’ve taken oaths since being an Eagle Scout to the Marine Corps to being the mayor,” Stuebe said in his opening statement. “As mayor, I’ve been working up in Olympia, working up in D.C. … bringing back tax dollars, working with people and coming up with solutions. A lot of people say, ‘I’m gonna do this and I’m going to do that.’ I have been walking the walk my whole life. … I want to continue to do that because that’s what I care about.”

League of Women Voters moderator Sally Hale asked the candidates a series of questions about education, transportation, helping unhoused students, the Climate Change Commitment Act and other issues important to 17th District voters. Here are a few excerpts from the Oct. 5 candidate forum. To view the entire forum, visit cvtv.org.

On equitable ways to fund transportation infrastructure in Washington

“It’s a great question, particularly for the 17th Legislative District,” Niles said. “If anybody has driven across this district, down (Highway) 14, they’ve seen how bad our highways are. … I know that the transportation budget is very strained and very behind, and so I know (during the) next legislative session we have to make some very serious decisions on a fix-it-first approach or (if we will) fund new projects that have been promised. The Climate Commitment Act gives a lot of money to transportation, so having that repealed would really hurt my district and hurt our ability to make some changes.”

Stuebe agreed that the 17th District has issues with highway and road maintenance.

“There’s a lot of problems with our roads. … There needs to be funding. I think the issue is – and again I don’t know everything – we’re collecting money but it’s not going to those causes,” Stuebe said, adding that he would want to “bring people together to say, ‘How do we fix our stuff?’”

On helping homeless students who are facing unique challenges

“This is a big one. Four percent of our students … 45,000 in Washington (are unhoused),” Stuebe said. “That’s a lot of kids out there. I’ve been talking to the Washougal School Board (about) what we do to help those kids.”

Stuebe mentioned a Camas-Washougal Community Chest grant-funded program known as “Principal’s Checkbook,” which allows school principals to help students in financially struggling families have access to programs they may not have otherwise been able to afford.

He added that he believes the state also needs to fund school counselors “to follow and track those guys to make sure they get the education they deserve.”

Niles said there are “many things we can do legislatively to support our homeless youth.”

“We need to help (unhoused students) remain in their schools of origin,” Niles said. “(We need to) make sure they have access to transportation to get to school. Make sure they have access to very basic needs, and create partnerships with local organizations to provide food, clothing, hygiene … But we also need to make sure that their mental health (is being) supported while they’re in schools and homeless. … Providing counseling and support groups is super important. We need to encourage volunteer programs that involve community members as well, but legislatively we can do quite a bit.”

On legislative solutions to support childcare providers and ensure parents can find childcare

“I’ve been endorsed by the Children’s Campaign Fund and Stand With Children, two of the state’s largest childcare advocacy groups,” Niles said. “Things we can do? We can increase subsidies for low-income housing for families and create a childcare framework that is inclusive. (We can give) tax credits for childcare expenses and grants or loans to help childcare centers stay open, especially in … rural areas. And we can make sure that childcare workers are earning a living wage and that childcare workers are paid what they deserve. We need to offer tax incentives for businesses that provide on-site childcare and subsidies for employees’ childcare costs.”

Niles, who spent nearly 30 years working with families as a nurse and was a single parent herself added that “the lack of childcare is not just a personal struggle, it has a significant effect on our economy with people leaving the workforce.”

Stuebe said he believes the lack of childcare is a “big issue” for 17th District voters and noted that he’d recently talked to a family who lived “in the middle of nowhere” with four children, a father who could not work and who could not provide childcare and a mother who was in need of affordable childcare.

“Childcare is huge …How do they go out there and be able to work and take care of kids?” Stuebe said. “Talking to this person — they have no childcare service, and if they do there’s like a year’s waiting list, and it’s really expensive. We have to get rid of red tape to be able to make these places and bring in care for our kids.”

On state funding for higher education

“Bringing kids up is the most important thing. It starts with elementary, middle school, high school and college. We want them to be competitive, to have jobs that support the way (they) want to live. We want them to be independent, be happy, raise a family, go on vacation, save for retirement, care for their kids. It’s really important to do that,” Stuebe said, adding that he had helped the city of Washougal collaborate with Clark College after attracting an aerospace company to Washougal to make sure the college had courses that would help train students to someday work for that or similar companies, which need a highly trained workforce.

Niles noted that the state’s financing for higher education has not kept up with inflation.

“This is a focus of mine,” Niles said. “We’re trying to take care of these workforce shortages we have, particularly in trades and in healthcare.”

Niles said she would propose subsidizing higher education by looking at things such as making community colleges free and subsidizing people going into the trades.

“I think a lot we can do to encourage people to increase our funding to higher education and think people can count on me to make that change,” Niles said.

On school safety

“I support safe, livable communities and having safe schools is part of that. We can do some things around increasing funding for safety resources — infrastructure improvements, secure entry points, emergency response plans,” Niles said, adding that she also believes it is important that the state support mental health, provide counseling for students in every school and make sure students know that type of mental healthcare is available to them.

“I would definitely support any measures that would improve safety in our schools,” Niles said. Stuebe said he had recently been “hanging with a bunch of nephews” when the oldest, a sixth-grader, began talking about guns in schools.

“It was like, ‘Wow, you’re talking to me about that?’ When little kids are talking about that — and it just happened the other day, a kid got his parents’ guns in Camas and was actually (brandishing) and displaying the guns. I think they arrested the dad,” Stuebe said. “We have to do whatever we can to make sure kids are not threatened, not bullied, that they can go there and parents are comfortable. We used to have officers in schools but got away from that. (We should) bring them back and make sure students feel safe.”