In the three years that I have served in Olympia I have attempted to bring what I consider transparent financial management, analytical objectivity and fiduciary oversight of the public’s tax dollar. If nothing else I have tried extremely hard–as a citizen legislator and businessperson–to elevate the dialogue and educate the public about both sides of the ledger.

After three years it is particularly obvious that a key area calls out for a rigorous, financially objective, effective examination: The hundreds of valuable tax exemptions, credits and preferential rates we have created over the past 80 years.

Our lack of oversight and courageous honesty in examining our state’s hundreds of sales, B&O and property tax exemptions is, simply, fiscally irresponsible regardless of one’s politics or intentions.

I am not, of course, arguing that all 567 exemptions, credits and preferential rates are structurally broken or inherently corrupt. I am arguing that our lack of intellectual rigor in examining whether they actually work is irresponsible. Tax exemptions and credits should be forced–every 10 years at least–to prove that they actually work. Today, they face no such scrutiny.

Thus, this week I introduced a major tax exemption bill, House Bill 2762, with the forceful support of Rep. Glenn Anderson (R-Fall City) and many others, in an effort to seriously examine our state’s paralyzed tax structure.

With the passage of I-1053, we have by any standard created an economically inefficient model by which our tax policy is effectively locked in perpetuity. But this does not mean we should retreat from protecting the public’s interest by pretending otherwise.

It is undemocratic and foolish that while it takes a simple majority to establish a tax exemption or credit, it requires a 2/3 majority to end, resize and even slightly modify one. No intelligent business executive on the planet would institute such a poorly designed policy, and I feel a public obligation to challenge the wisdom of this irresponsible structure.

I feel an obligation to attempt in my small way to educate the public to the destructive force of the small print of I-1053. I don’t accept that even one in ten voters who favored I-1053 believed then or now that it makes sense to lock our current tax exemptions into law effectively forever. It’s irresponsible, inflexible and goes counter the very notion of wisely managing the public’s resources.

HB 2762, “An Act concerning tax expenditure reform to provide transparency and accountability in fiscal matters,” is not a modest approach.

This bill is designed to place an expiration date—in buckets over the course of 10 years—on all sales and B&O tax credits and exemptions with the following exceptions: 1) those constitutionally and contractually included, 2) those with an existing date of any sort are left untouched (such as Boeing’s 2024 expiration date), 3) sales tax on food and prescription drugs and a small handful of others.

The Seattle Times has recently editorially embraced this general idea because, I believe, it is philosophically consistent to require all tax exemptions to prove that they actually work. Exemptions and credits should be required at least every 10 years to show a return on investment, a financial metric based upon sound data and clear criteria. They should expire, in my view, and be forced to prove to future legislatures that they actually achieve their objectives for taxpayers.

There are many tax exemptions and credits that I myself will clamor to reauthorize. Many of them work well and can easily prove their effectiveness given our B&O and sales tax dependencies. But others have grown stale with the insulting idea that they work yet cannot produce even so much as a face-saving argument or data set. Occasionally the blind ambition of the tax exemption’s proponents go no further than the companies or organizations that benefit from the credit.

It is not liberal or conservative to require tax exemptions to face renewal, it is simply a fiscally responsible move. It is not a back-handed attempt to raise taxes as evidenced by the provision that implements this new policy in 2017. It is sound fiscal management that graces both the halls of prestigious public policy schools as well as business schools.

The default policy of our state should be that tax exemptions and credits, like we currently require for spending on any program or project, must be able to objectively prove efficacy and financial return on investment. Without a requirement that tax exemptions and credits expire every 10 years or so, taxpayers are assured only that special interests declare victory once and the battle is over—virtually forever.

One key goal of this bill is to empower the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee and the Citizen’s Commission for Performance Measurement of Tax Preferences to succeed. The well-designed process can work but only if their recommendations are used as the foundation of action. Today, many of their best ideas and suggestions are left to the dusty shelf of political inaction. I seek to create the expectation that their recommendations will lead much of the decision making in this area. Today, while their work is highly regarded, it is effectively impotent due to our inability to execute upon recommendations.

In this bill, I purposely begin the implementation in 2015 in order to add weight to my argument that this is not a short-term tactical way to raise taxes. This is structural, long-term reform that is responsible and practical.

Rep. Glenn Anderson, a thoughtful iconoclast who comes to the Legislature with a legitimate knowledge of business and is not driven by ideological rigidity, is lead co-sponsor. I appreciate his willingness to elevate the dialogue in our state about these profoundly important public issues, and to help lead the discussion.

There are those who will laugh at the idea of even embarking on an effort to secure 2/3 majority vote for a major tax bill. I readily acknowledge the difficulty and the poor prospects in the Legislature. But I am unwilling to cease from my belief that your citizen legislature can rise above ideology and return to fiscally responsible management of the public’s dollar.

We are so much more than what we’ve become.

Your partner in service,

Reuven.

Few projects have provided a sense of quiet personal meaning and value as efforts to help thrust open the doors of next generation educational access for students in K-12 and higher education through the use of Open Educational Resources.

I have blogged about this issue many times here and here.

I have introduced two major bills this year, HB 2336 and HB 2337, to bring open educational resources to K-12 and to create a bold policy by which the ‘default’ of access to educational materials in higher education is ‘open’ rather than today’s ‘closed.’ I believe both represent important steps forward not as exclusive answers but as representatives of our state’s willingness to embrace this initiative.

The public has an innate sense of fairness and today’s textbooks have crossed the line of economic and academic market failure on virtually every account. A $8 billion industry fueled primarily by tax dollars and student funds calls out for major systems reform on every level.

The state of Washington spends at least $125 million a biennium on textbooks in K-12 alone, while college students pay hundreds of millions more. Still, textbooks are just the most obvious challenge.

The Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges has shown that open educational resources are possible logistically and operationally. These bills strive to move forward with the natural next step. While there are numerous legitimate technical and operational concerns among higher education officials about academic interests, and negotiations continue in earnest to find a win-win, the larger value proposition is difficult to deny.

I value the knowledgable view of academic leaders in our state and I am striving to learn from them how we can build a better model using open educational resources together. We have a long way to go together.

As California and other states embrace this same cause as well, my hope is that Washington can continue our march of progress.

This journey, as well as that of my California colleague Senate President pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg’s efforts, show that state governments will lead where larger markets have unquestionably failed. President Obama has recently elevated the issue of the high cost of textbooks, but state governments continue to be the primary customer and we must be so much more intelligent about our purchases and expectations. For too long state and local governments have failed the public by accepting an old, broken system but we can begin anew.

Educational materials created and funded by tax dollars should be openly licensed and available to the public who paid the bill. And everyone else.

Your partner in service,

Reuven.

In four years as an elected official, few things have troubled me more than the systematic retreat in Olympia from the Legislature’s ethical responsibility and fiduciary role of managing the public tax dollar. There is a lethargic and borderline cowardly unwillingness to question the newly emerging argument that only the voters—or a supermajority of councilmembers—are morally qualified to approve any and all tax increase.

This strategically planned and well-orchestrated trend is unwise on every level and is in my view an assault on the role of representative democracy itself. It says, in effect, that raising taxes is a higher moral priority, authority and obligation than any other function or decision of government.

If decision-making authority over raising taxes is so profoundly more weighted than other policy issues, why did our nation’s founders systematically and categorically reject the idea?

And I must ask where are the learned voices on the right that often stand in defense of the original constitutional guidelines during this new assault on the system of democracy designed and developed by our nation’s founders? Would the right be silent or strive to change our constitutional construct in this same fashion if the left was attempting to implement this same policy for social issues? Simply because the right believes taxes are too high is insufficient reason to embolden them to change our very system of government to institute tyranny of the minority.

We begin with taxes. What policy area will be next?

For example, last year among the most contentious policy issues was the Legislature’s authorization that King County could raise emergency funds for METRO bus service only if approved by voters or a supermajority of county council members. My dear friend Sen. Scott White, may his memory be a blessing, (a Jewish refrain for the departed) masterfully managed this sensitive issue and I fought against endorsing this construct without at least an acknowledgement that it was a dramatic exception and not a new normal.

I do not imply that representative democracy is more weighted than direct democracy, of course, since all power must ultimately rest with the people. I suggest only that our nation’s founders created a system where we both have a specific and carefully crafted role. This move repudiates and rejects our founders’ well-crafted and nuanced relationship between the two.

Many of us are resentful of the nefarious trend that we are seeing this insulting affront to the role of representative democracy again.

None would deny that there is meaningful value in sending some important public policy issues to voters within the context of careful consideration and appropriate statement of the people’s voice. And despite its many inefficiencies initiatives remain a vital tool of direct democracy.

But we have retreated to a humiliating deference to voices of political rage arguing that elections of representatives of the people are essentially invalid. We have allowed ourselves to be intimidated by disguised rage that state taxes are so high, so destructive, so onerous that our very survival is imploding. It is simply not true. By sending any and all decisions about raising taxes to the voters–no matter the size or measure–we fail to exercise our constitutional duty to govern.

Society elects representatives to give voice to issues and ideas, to govern, to study the data and make objective decisions. By making the claim that taxes are effectively the one policy issue of more importance than any other issue, we emasculate our society’s belief that representative democracy has the intelligence or ability to function on any meaningful level.

Washington State is 35th in the nation in the level of local and state taxes. Is the ‘burden’ of taxes so great, so harmful, so destructive to our quality of life, so inefficiently ‘out of control’ that we must effectively restructure our state and nation’s constitutional design even without an open public debate?

This year there are rumblings that additional local authority may be provided to cities and counties but only on the condition that voters or a supermajority of a council possess the authority to raise any taxes. I will resist this effort on every level not because I casually embrace taxes but rather because I so respect our founding principles. I respect local government officials.

If the Legislature acquiesces and lazily accepts this undemocratic notion following last year’s clear statement that it was an exception, we will have effectively forced the constructs of I-1053 on local governments.

This is bad policy, bad politics and bad economics.

When do we fight against this assault on representative democracy and in defense of our constitutional obligations? If not now, when?

We are so much more than what we’ve become.

Your partner in service,

Reuven.

“Make your way to death row and speak with the tragic victims of criminality. As they prepare to make their pathetic walk to the electric chair, their hopeless cry is that society will not forgive. Capital punishment is society’s final assertion that it will not forgive.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

As we pause during Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday to reflect upon the challenges of our time, we look for inspiration among our heroes. We see severe economic crisis, educational lethargy, social division, discord and extremes and we are forced to question why we have seemingly lost our way.

We are so much more than what we’ve become.

Titans of political discourse and civic dialogue in America: King, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Robert Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Hatfield and others all would, I believe, approve of representatives within a representative democracy bringing forth issues of the day for public discussion and not to self-censure ourselves for want of comfort.

No one in public office in our state seeks to contribute to the distraction from work to resolve our severe economic challenges, but I am also not comfortable with retreating into silence about the great moral issues of our time that I believe warrant a healthy, open and embracing civic debate.

It is, therefore, valuable to attempt not to righteously criticize but to elevate, to lift up our state’s level of discourse, to attempt to show the people that representative democracy can indeed give voice to real issues for reasons of conscience and not convenience.

With the support of many colleagues, I introduced a bill today, House Bill 2468, that is extremely unlikely to pass this year, unlikely to secure the support even to hold a hearing, but one that must be given voice because the arc of history bends toward justice.

One of my heros is Holocaust survivor, human rights activist and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel who spoke about his belief that such criminals must be harshly punished but not executed. I believe life in prison without the possibility or prospect of parol is such harsh punishment.

I seek to eliminate the death penalty in Washington State because it is beneath us as a civilized society. It is economically inefficient. It is unjust to the victims’ families because of the frustration of years of delay in allowing a form of closure. It is inequitably applied across race, class and social status. It does not achieve deterrence for other criminals.

Some of my blog posts about my views are here, here and here, here.

Recently a prisoner from Georgia shockingly murdered a constituent of mine. Our community mourns. I have lost much sleep thinking about her young daughter, now alone in the world. I cannot imagine the pain of such sorrow, the exhausting assault upon the human spirit. I am angry about our state’s policies in such regard in that we clearly allow too many out-of-state recently released prisoners to move to our state with little policy structure or guidance. And yet so much more could be accomplished in our criminal justice system if we could resolve to prioritize policies and programs that work rather than those with dismal records of performance. We can do so much better on all fronts in this regard.

As a husband, father and citizen legislator my conscience and religious conviction compels me to reflect upon the journey of victims of crime in direct ways, to attempt to elevate our state’s dialogue about both the death penalty and those policies we pretend work within our criminal justice system. And to take a step forward.

Your partner in service,

Reuven.

Welcome to the 2012 Legislative Session of the Washington State Legislature.

Elected officials at every level of government freely demand accountability, performance measurements and evidence-based outcomes from teachers, nurses, firefighters and other public employees on behalf of taxpayers.

Sometimes the oversight works responsibly and sometimes, of course, it’s vacuous rhetoric with no real intention of doing much more than putting on a show.

Perhaps not surprisingly, by nature of the job, most in the legislative branch at the state and national level fail to hold themselves (ourselves) to the same level of expectation of accountability. It is not exactly news that we are often uninterested in holding ourselves to a level of accountability and measurement that we expect of other public employees.

I have tried to be different not to put on a show to the outside but to rationalize in my own heart–and with my wife Wendy– the true opportunity cost of this job: Hours, days, weeks and months away from our family. Simply, I cannot emotionally justify the extraordinary amount of time it takes to serve effectively as a part-time citizen legislator without tracking my own performance in an open and honest fashion.

As I was sworn into office for the first time, three years ago this week, I promised myself that I would strive to hold myself both publicly and privately accountable for my own performance. I do so everyday in the private sector. I don’t have a choice. I promised as I set up this blog that I would strive to transparently communicate what I’ve done well, what I’ve failed to deliver and where I’ve made progress on behalf of the people of the 36th District, Seattle and our state. I remember one blog commenter who said, “what a fool for disclosing where he failed.” I couldn’t disagree more. By publicly discussing failure I not only learn, I grow and evolve as a public servant. There is no shame in failure, only dishonesty from hiding beneath the truth.

Failure makes us human and reminds us that we’re alive. It teaches us how to teach children.

It’s always a bit presumptuous or foolish to outline a specific agenda in detail when the Legislative Session moves so rapidly in 60 days and is so fluid relative to the hard-ball political dynamics of our $2 billion shortfall in revenues.

And so, with apologies in advance for inevitable surprises and changes, including complete changes in direction as needed, here are the public policy bills (they do not yet have numbers) I intend to introduce this session.

First, an obvious but important qualification: As a member of the budget-writing Ways & Means Committee, my central objective is to reach a balance of spending and taxes to enable us to protect the core public services in early learning, K-12 education, higher education, environment, foster youth services and many other programs that I believe represent the essence of our quality of life. My work on the budget will consume a vast majority of my time and most of it, of course, will be done quietly relative to the noise that most bills garner.

Second, there are a number of bills that I have co-sponsored or support that will consume untold hours that will never show up on a performance card–sort of the equivalent of a teacher spending extra time tutoring another teachers’ student because it’s the right and just thing to do for the greater good. Marriage equality being an obvious example here. I recently posted on Facebook: “Nothing that I may accomplish this legislative session is as morally important as pushing the green “yea” button on my desk in the House chamber in favor of full marriage equality for all families.” The post garnered 121 ‘likes’ and 41 mostly positive comments.

In the coming days, when I have co-sponsors lined up and bill numbers, I’ll go into more detail. For now, to the line!

1. Passport to College Promise Program: This bill will reauthorize and institutionalize the highly successful (yes, we have data to prove it) pilot program to successfully recruit, retain and graduate foster youth from high school and college. In the past nationally less than 3% of foster youth ever achieved the dream of a college education while 10 times that number go almost straight to prison after leaving the state’s care. Through Passport we are working to reverse those numbers.

2. Expiration of tax exemptions after 10 years: This bill, a major lift for the session, will require a 2/3 vote in order to require state sales and business & occupation tax exemptions and preferential rates to have an expiration date, to prove their efficacy with financial return on investment metrics, and to be reauthorized by the Legislature in order to continue after 10 years. I am pleased and honored to have the Seattle Times editorial board endorse the policy idea on Sunday.

3. High Tech R&D Tax Credit Reauthorization and Reform: This bill will take the current tax credit for R&D and resize it so that smaller, early stage companies are in effect the only recipients. Today, 558 firms receive the credit and most are small–but a majority of the money is taken by large companies that do not need the incremental tax credit support from Olympia. I want the money to remain with small companies that need the support and the rest to be dedicated to funding higher education to educate more engineers, scientists and researchers and other people with STEM degrees. Instead of effectively subsidizing the hiring of engineers from out of state, let’s use those dollars to create engineers from in-state. A perfect nexus, in my view, for an intelligent approach to modifying and updating a tax credit.

4. Open Educational Resources: Educational materials created with public tax dollars should be publicly licensed and openly available to all. Our state’s default public policy should be that anything created with public dollars should be licensed for use and access by the public from K-12 through higher education similar to the U.S. Department of Labor, Gates Foundation and many other leading organizations worldwide.

5. Open K-12 Textbooks: The community and technical college program to virtually eliminate proprietary, expensive textbooks has been wildly successful in its launch. I hope to make it easy, simple and transparent how to use the best open educational resources in the world for openly licensed, free digital and low cost hard copy textbooks for our 295 school districts.

6. Surprise.

7. Surprise.

Your partner in service,

Reuven.

Today in our state many of the world’s premier companies struggle to find skilled workers at a time when hundreds of thousands of people are unemployed, underemployed or poorly trained. The disconnect between ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ of an undereducated workforce and high skill jobs is a market failure, a public policy failure, an economic failure, a moral failure.

Riding along with the national failure to prioritize public access to public education, we are crushing the middle class in our state with an insouciant lack of investment in access to the opportunity of advanced learning. Companies and government have become so comfortable with importing skilled and educated employees from other states and nations that we lazily ignore our own childrens’ access to the dream of an education. We are now close to the bottom in the nation in the production of post secondary graduates.

We are blindly and imprudently commoditizing our human capital and, in effect, our integrity.

Without capitulating to Washington, D.C.’s vacuous policy facade, Washington state must act on our own with a sense of purpose and resolve.

Every serious economic development task force, commission, study and report of the past decade issued a clarion call for an investment in higher education.

While the Occupy Wall Street movement has struggled to galvanize around a core agenda, the centerpiece of a previous generation’s path to prosperity stealthy and humbly provides a potent pathway forward. It speaks to us from the non virtual shelves of our history books. It provides the answer the Occupy movement seeks.

Without exception every major political, social and economic reflection of our nation’s greatness since World War II credits the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the GI Bill, as a defining public policy initiative. By sending 7.8 million G.I.’s to college and helping them purchase homes the bill almost single handily created the middle class, the expectation of economic opportunity for regular people living real lives, a justified belief that if you work hard and play by the rules you will have a chance to better your life for you and your children through higher education.

A G.I. Bill for access to higher education for the 500,000 Washingtonians who started a degree but have not finished, or those who merely seek to improve their professional skills, to receive training and more, is a strategy that can work in today’s world. The idea is both offense and defense public policy, meaning that it allows underemployed people to lift up their skills during a downturn in the economy while also protecting against further buying power erosion.

Most of all, it is not dependent upon macro economic forces or players or factors outside of our control. We have the power within us. It is within our political power to implement from Olympia in partnership with the business community, the Washington State Labor Council, colleges, universities, workforce programs and other stakeholders.

On January 9 the Legislature will reconvene in Olympia. The political dialogue will immediately be consumed by the short term budget deficit, a topic we have no choice but to address. And yet, understandably, the political pressure in an election year to take action for ‘jobs’ will dominate every speech, every bill and press conference. The broader operating assumption–heavily influenced by New York Times columnist and economist Paul Krugman–is that Keynesian economics of public investment works effectively at the state government level, a theory that I question during a time of federal disinvestment and private sector economic lethargy.

My instinct is that even the fiercest Keynesian economists would argue that state dollars are unlikely to make material and substantial short-term progress in rejuvenating our state’s economy by transportation, capital and operating budget investments from Olympia. It’s not solely a philosophical issue but a statistical and quantitative one. To be clear: I am not arguing that public investment is unwise, merely that our state’s generic belief in construction and infrastructure capital investment as the highest return on investment for our (borrowed) dollar is to be questioned.

In my view, we are much more likely to bring about a long-term systemic transformation in our state’s economy by making a substantial incremental investment in access to workforce development, community and technical colleges, four-year universities and other specialized and advanced ‘upskills’ for citizens.

We must, simply, value investment in human capital as well as dollars for creating jobs in steel and concrete.

We should, I dare say, reach out to the business community and courageously ask them to engage in a different level of dialogue about our state’s future. We should look closely at real options for increasing revenues–in a highly specialized and targeted fashion–to institute a radical, state-level G.I. Bill to educate our state’s population dramatically beyond today’s levels.

The temporary tax plan on the table calls for approximately $500 million per year in short term revenues to ‘buy back’ critical services. While I genuinely appreciate the effort, I question the scale, scope and purpose. The money would, in effect, help mitigate the negative effects of further operating budget cuts for three years. Due to severe short term budget pressure, it is understandably a status quo approach to maintain existing models and programs and services.

My hope is that we will follow a different path. We have an opportunity for long-term thinking, for a ‘systems approach’ to our structural imbalance in our economy.

Three years from today we face an unknown future. But this we do know almost regardless of national conditions: If Olympia makes a massive new investment in new higher education positions, slots and programs we will exit this Great Recession with a more educated, more skilled, more capable workforce that is more adaptable to the needs of tomorrow’s jobs. While the national economy may be better or worse, our ‘opportunity cost’ is tremendously positive if we invest dollars during this downturn to improve the skills of the people of our state.

I would rather spend more of the precious $500 million per year to double, triple, quadruple the number of our citizens receiving access to the opportunity of higher education at the University of Washington, Washington State University, Western/Central/Eastern Washington universities, our 34 community and technical colleges and our workforce programs. Expanding access–not just stopping the reductions– from radiology technical assistants to dental hygienists, aerospace manufacturing workers to nurses, science technicians to PhD’s in molecular biology, software/electrical/mechanical engineers and so much more is both an economic and a moral strategy.

A temporary, three-year sales tax increase to fund a stop-gap measure of existing programs is not the only approach. We can choose to shift how we spend our current dollars and how we elect to prioritize the use of new resources.

Like any family or business or organization, we can choose during lean times to invest more resources–not fewer or even the same–in those areas that will help generate a solution to our current troubles.

For example, the cost of constructing one building on one campus of one college among our 40–or one small section of one small highway–is more than it would cost to provide hundreds of world-class hybrid and on-line courses in science, math, engineering, English as a Second language, basic education and much more to 100,000 additional students using open educational resources and current content and programs. It’s a choice.

Now is the time to invest in changing the paradigm of higher education, doubling down on our investment and opening the doors of opportunity for millions of our citizens who hunger for access, opportunity and quality higher education.

I am convinced it is virtually the same political battle to achieve short-term tactical win for today’s budget crisis as it is to secure a long-term structural improvement in our state’s tax, spending and priorities.

We will never regret making a giant leap forward in the investment of an educated workforce. The GI Bill altered our nation’s course and can do so again. Today’s middle class is struggling not only because of Wall Street excess but because we as a state and nation have lost our conviction that an educated society is a righteous and moral good as well as an economic policy.

Your partner in service,

Reuven.

Have you ever wondered how the ‘inside game’ of a bill becoming a law is played?

Join me for an ‘open’ process, complete with uncensored policy assessments and candid political discussions, and together we will experience the journey in the 2012 session of the Washington State Legislature.

On January 9, 2012 I plan to introduce two bills in the Washington State House of Representatives that continue the march toward radical openness of our state’s educational materials.

This legislation builds on our state’s widely-recognized open course library initiative that is allowing us to greatly reduce or eliminate expensive textbooks for hundreds of thousands of students in our state’s 34 community and technical colleges. By 2013 it’s possible for community college students to save $41 million in out-of-pocket costs per year.

Prior to my election to the Legislature I was honored to serve as a member of the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, where I explored the intersection of technology and education as co-chair of the board’s Technology Committee. With the bold support of the full Board, we set this innovative open course library in motion. Once elected to the Legislature I was able to secure the funding to move the vision forward. The project’s success is reflected in this Seattle Times editorial.

There is an unstoppable movement underway from taxpayers, students, professors, foundations and government about open educational resources, open textbooks, open science and open data — all moving toward a fundamental policy of ‘openness.’ Sharing resources that are paid for by tax dollars is a simple exercise in fairness.

It is tremendously rewarding as a legislator in one state to see this effort rapidly grow around the country and world as evidenced by the courageous leadership of state Sen. Darrelle Steinberg who is building upon the general ideas behind our program to implement a similar project in California.

That is, at its philosophical core, the idea of open educational resources: Together we can build a new model by which taxpayers, students and others receive the legitimate value of their tax/tuition/fee dollar. Like Sen. Steinberg, I do not pretend for a moment that successfully reducing the cost of textbooks is in any way a rationalization or justification for the state’s painful and unwise disinvestment in higher education. Still, it is, at the very least, an exercise in sound education and fiscal policy.

No one politician, bureaucracy, university, foundation, non profit or company should capture the financial, political or educational interests of open educational resources in a proprietary framework–and all current and future students should receive access to the public taxpayers’ generosity through collaboration, sharing and accessibility.

With families nationwide feeling the crush of skyrocketing tuition in higher education, and our K-12 systems struggling to improve quality and save money, we simply must have the courage to acknowledge that commercial textbook interests have consumed our decision-making criteria.

To learn more about the larger effort, please watch this video and visit Creative Commons and other sites here, here, here and here. Other valuable sites include saylor.org, the Khan Academy, iTunes U and, of course, MIT OCW.

Leading the global charge is UNESCO that is striving to convince 172 nations, including the United States, to embrace the open policies of open educational resources.

With the success of Phase I (community college highest enrolled open courses), we are now turning our attention to Phase II of our state’s plan (open policy and K-12 open textbooks).

The first bill in Phase II is to change the default educational policy of our state from ‘closed’ to ‘open’ so that the expectation is that any educational material–K-12, higher education and related–that is created with public tax dollars shall be freely and openly available to the public. This only makes sense: publicly funded resources should be openly licensed resources. The public should get what it pays for. This policy is based upon the proven model of the State Board for Community & Technical Colleges’ open course library and open policy.

We are, simply, striving to expand this important philosophically consistent open policy both to the K-12 world and to institutions of higher education at the four-year level.

The second bill in this year’s strategy is to bring free, high quality open textbooks and open course material to our state’s 295 school districts serving one million+ students in our K-12 system. Since Washington has embraced common core standards along with 43 other states, sharing materials makes even more sense. 44 states now share common K-12 curricular standards in math and language arts. 44 states will need new textbooks and new curriculum. Does it make sense to work together to build new and adopt existing open textbooks and open courses that align with those common core standards? I think it does. The amazing aspect of the project is that we do not need to fund the creation of new K-12 textbooks. It’s already being done here and shared under a Creative Commons license. Digital copies of the books are, of course, free and are available in multiple formats – for the web, your Kindle and your iPad. Don’t have a computer or tablet? No problem. Hard copy prints cost a mere $4.25 per book.

Today I am posting working drafts of the two bills to challenge the open community in the U.S. and indeed worldwide to comment, edit, improve, criticize and otherwise tackle the range of public policy issues raised by these bills.

How will this work? Both bills are posted as google docs and can be viewed and downloaded by anyone. Here are the links for both bills:

bill 1 link / bill 1 summary
bill 2 link / bill 2 summary

Please post your suggestions, in the open, as comments to this blog post. I will review your comments and will reply to many. Mostly, I hope you all read and reply to each others’ comments. I will then take the best suggestions and modify the bills to ensure Washington State makes the best use of its citizens’ public tax dollars to maximize access to high quality, affordable, up-to-date educational resources.

Now, it’s your turn. I challenge the OER community–and other stakeholders–and those who believe in the broader vision of saving students money, increasing access to education, and improving our overall quality of educational materials through collaboration to help legislators, educators, superintendents, professors and others who believe in openness. It is not enough simply to advocate for change to public policies at the local, state, federal and international level. We must support initiatives from Utah to California to Brazil and Poland by working together.

Student groups in Washington and nationally also have an opportunity in these initiatives to give voice to a tangible method of reducing costs for students by close to $1,300 a year for virtually every college student in the country.

Specifically, it would be very helpful if you could share FAQs, white papers, case studies and other materials to improve upon these bills and ultimately ensure we send this legislation to our Governors’ desk for a signature.

And, if you are from the publishing industry and may not see the short term financial value of your interests in this exercise, I particularly welcome your engagement, views, insight, data and arguments.

Instead of flippantly instructing legislators to ‘take the sales tax off of textbooks’ as the best way to reduce costs–while textbook costs have grown at more than three times the rate of inflation–you could join with me for a more sophisticated and substantive public policy dialogue. Given our state’s highly successful pilot project and embrace of this policy at the community college level–a policy that will save students a minimum of $1.2 million in out-of-pocket costs in 2012 alone–if you simply arrive in Olympia with a contract lobbyist without experience or policy insight, I suspect you will find an unsympathetic voice from my colleagues.

Instead, I ask you to go deeper, to engage more thoughtfully, to participate in our state’s public policy arena more substantively. If you are unwilling to even post your comments, concerns and views for a public dialogue here, how will you be able to convince 146 of my colleagues that you made every effort to engage in a meaningful public policy dialogue?

Join me in a healthy, engaged, thoughtful public policy discussion so that together we can build a more affordable, high quality path forward in our education system.

Publicly funded educational materials should be open, accessible and available to the public.

You gain power by giving it away.

Your partner in service,

Reuven.

Vaclav Havel died today at the age of 75.

It’s striking that on the day that both Vaclav Havel and Kim Jung Il died, there are few mentions of Havel relative to the 7×24 cable coverage of the predicted chaos of North Korea.

I have long found Havel to be almost a purified symbol of political courage. He was one of only 242 people to sign the Charter 77, a document that set the foundation for the Velvet Revolution itself and, in turn, the collapse of the Soviet Union. He served five years in prison for that signature.

But it was something besides his moral grounding, something less related to any one position or campaign or battle.

Interestingly like Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, he grew up with wealth and because of it felt a courageous sense of responsibility to demand fairness. It is almost as if–being part of the 1 percent–these leaders could not stomach the moral inconsistency of economic and political inequity for the 99%.

Above all, it was his mistress of words that elevated art and politics into an affair of quiet but fervent action. People found meaning not only in dissent but in cooperation and non violence.

I have long been captivated by Havel’s stories, his journey, his moral grounding and words.

“Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

“I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions.”

“Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.”

“Despite all the political misery I am confronted with every day, it still is my profound conviction that the very essence of politics is not dirty; dirt is brought in only by wicked people. I admit that this is an area of human activity where the temptation to advance through unfair actions may be stronger than elsewhere, and which thus makes higher demands on human integrity. But it is not true at all that a politician cannot do without lying or intriguing. That is sheer nonsense, often spread by those who want to discourage people from taking an interest in public affairs. Of course, in politics, just as anywhere else in life, it is impossible and it would not be sensible always to say everything bluntly. Yet that does not mean one has to lie. What is needed here are tact, instinct and good taste.”

It’s hard not to feel in our day that the political discourse of our time, our nation, our state has been brought low not because we don’t know how to elevate our dialogue but because we are afraid to challenge ourselves to think, act, reflect and stand outside of today’s narrow comfort zone.

Havel stood outside of the comfort zone of complicity. He did not pander to the lowest common denominator: He spoke up to everyone because he treasured their dignity, their intelligence, their dreams and it unleashed a nation to find its own voice.

We are so much more than what we’ve become.

Your partner in service,

Reuven.

It’s an honor to announce that between January 2009 and today this blog has received 100,000 visits. (No, my own visits don’t count!) As I’ve mused as a husband, father, entrepreneur and citizen legislator I have attempted to promote a meaningful public dialogue about issues facing real people living real lives in the 36th District, Seattle, our state and nation.

One of my goals has been to challenge the institutional infrastructure of state government to raise its game, to acknowledge the importance of humility in government, the teachable moments that are possible through failure, the dignity and honor of public service, the need for respect, the hunger in our nation for systems change.

For citizens in the 36th District–among the most educated citizens in the state– and across Washington I have attempted to challenge the pathology of political pandering.

All power remains with the public under our Constitution, but that does not absolve a moral and public obligation of elected officials to educate fellow citizens–to challenge you when stale ideas warrant prodding–and not merely to retreat to the lowest common denominator. We elect leaders to think, act, study, assess complex public policies and to educate fellow citizens–not merely to parrot rhetorical slogans that turn a phrase.

The role that I prefer in this forum is to push, prod and agitate for new ideas and change. To question the grip of the status quo inside and outside of government. I attempt to raise authentic issues, to engage with citizens, to ponder ‘systems’ issues that can help us think outside the proverbial box.

I’ve grown and changed a lot since starting this being sworn in as a legislator and beginning this blog. My idealism remains intact and my sense of urgency for change has only grown. My resentment about the power of the bureaucracy and monopolies has grown as well. My concern for our nation’s future has grown exponentially as I consider–and confront– the true implications of the dominance of money in the political arena.

The 99% movement is touching something deep in our country’s hunger for a fair deal. The issue today is not merely whether taxes are too high or low but whether we have so eviscerated our democracy with pandering to voters–a message that everyone can have everything at no cost and a campaign contribution system that undermines us all–without regard to the implications.

The relationship between direct and representative democracy is also a victim of today’s system. Initiatives are seen as pure democratic messages when, in fact, they are highly sophisticated financial and political operations that make The Candidate look sincere.

My views are, obviously, both unedited and unpolished. I write frequently late at night, early in the morning or even scribble notes while walking to my downtown business office.

There are some members of the Legislature who find direct public dialogue of a personal blog distasteful. I’ve been ribbed by some as a media hound, something I find interesting because the only thing stopping other members from blogging is $24 a year and a willingness to engage with words by producing original content.

I have had a few conversations in the corners of the House and Senate chambers where colleagues told me they found a particular post inappropriate either because I revealed too much of the inside game or came too close to some political line written in a different era. I accept that criticism to a point. In the early days some said with a hint of both concern and intimidation, “now don’t go blogging about this but…” But I also know that if some of those legislators were more engaged in the power of social media–the activism of yesterday fueled with today’s technology–they would be closer to Goldy or The Shark than they might imagine.

With so few reporters left covering Olympia, isn’t there today a higher obligation of legislators than in the past to engage in a courageously honest public conversation about real issues? To expose inefficiency? To challenge old ideas? To question authority? To ponder issues and ideas more openly?

An extensive search of blogs by state legislators around the nation suggests, informally and without hard data, that this is one of the most widely read blogs by a state legislator. The daily hit rate now ranges from 100-700 visits. I post once, twice or more a week.

I try and honor your visit by saying something real.

In the time that I’ve attempted to bring a sense of ‘courageous honesty’ to our public dialogue, I have also learned a great deal from you. Readers have made numerous comments and sent untold emails to me privately. I remain proud that my blog also has been granted an elevated status by the state House administration to maintain a direct link from my official legislative site because I have religiously avoided any campaign-related statements. I have also made disclosures of any financial or other interests that are material to readers’ knowledge and perspective.

I particularly appreciate the hundreds of public employees who contribute ideas, thoughts, criticisms and comments about how to make the opportunity and challenge of public service more effective and engaged.

In the coming days and weeks I will repost some of my favorite muses. Let me know if you have any you think are worth a second look.

Thank you so very much for 100,000 visits!

Your partner in service,

Reuven.

There is a constant drumbeat in Olympia–one that I admit I’ve occasionally pandered to myself–that government should attempt to operate more like a well-run business. The refrain is driven by an occasional frustration of the monopolistic lethargy of government. At a systems level where there is no competition, I would argue, we see a propensity for the institutional infrastructure of the status quo to grind change to a crawl. This is so for any large institution and not only the public sector.

Monopoly thinking is the real enemy.

Too often innovation, creativity and a willinessness to risk the failure of new approaches are left to task force reports that collect generous layers of dust. Of course government is not like any traditional business but the point is oriented around the idea that while the private sector generally faces constant pressure to improve, streamline and evolve market pressure on government is less pronounced. Business pressure is not inherently healthy, of course, as evidenced by so many of the excesses in housing, finance, investment bubbles and more but it does maintain an element of pressure for efficiency.

Reflecting upon countless hours of Ways & Means Committee hearings on the recent budget crisis, I find myself considering an element of this dialogue that is totally and completely inconsistent with the central philosophical idea of efficiency: Many of those who argue for efficiencies, reform and streamlining of government’s operational work are joltingly uninterested in exploring those same efficiencies on the other side of the balance sheet: Revenues.

Revenues and expenditures are the two sides of the ledger in every business, government and institution in the world.

Real private sector businesspeople in our state–from early stage entrepreneurs to senior executives at Boeing, Microsoft, Starbucks, Costco, Paccar, Weyerhauser, Real Networks, Virginia Mason, Amazon, Phillips Electronics and more–know that you cannot focus exclusively on finding efficiencies in spending in order to survive. Companies that are ‘built to last‘ have no option but explore constantly and strategically ways to increase revenues, profit margins and sales.

In Olympia today we require task force studies, reports and commissions in order to assess the efficacy of tiny $2 million programs. We demand staff reports as to whether a program returns value to taxpayers. We write the state budget every two years and, by its very nature, spending must be reauthorized for renewal.

On the revenue side, however, we often find deafening silence as to whether a tax exemption, preferential rate or other revenue policy is producing results. I don’t mean this from a ‘raise taxes’ perspective or to join the clarion call for lower taxes. I mean it from a business perspective. Does the damn thing work? “Figuring out if a tax break is working is not a partisan question, it’s an analyitical one,” is how I phrased it to Publicola.

Still, I am attempting to make a modest point: There is a lack of intellectual and political interest in determining whether our current tax policy is actually working for taxpayers.

Why, simply, don’t we have a group of legislators who are as equally passionate about using objective financial and policy metrics and measurements to determine the return on investment, financial efficacy and value of our tax policies as they are about spending? Why is it that the legislators who are often most vocal about spending oversight are least vocal about the question of whether tax policy is financially efficient and effective?

Many on the right are particularly focused on reforming government spending and calling for new efficiencies regardless of a program’s scale. A large social program like Medicaid might receive the same degree of analysis as a small scholarship program for foster youth. Yet many–who fancy themselves friends of business– are distressingly silent in asking difficult, objective financial questions–as a business leader would– about whether our 567 tax exemptions are achieving the policy goals intended. I truly don’t mean the politics of this, I mean the purely financial ROI and effectiveness of whether a policy is actually working. Candidly, many are often silent on the question of whether our tax system is economically well designed and supporting market-oriented efficiency–from a purely objective business and financial perspective– and instead focus simply on the level of taxation.

As a business person, I would like to respectfully suggest that no ‘real’ business person would consider this thorough analysis or assessment of the full ledger. “Real” business people demand proof that things work. They demand the facts.

Many on the left are speaking out about the inefficiencies and inequities in our tax policies. At the same time some occasionally display a distressing lack of intellectual interest and pressure to improve the operational efficiency of governmental functions. There is on occasion a certain willingness to bypass rigorous, objective financial oversight of some programs in the desire to maintain the peace of current funding levels. The lack of desire to place a red dot target on a program’s back by rigorously examining the financial efficacy of a treasured social program seems to surface in Olympia more frequently than many might admit.

I am, as you might tell, philosophically distressed as a business person by the too frequent lack of intellectual vigor in analyzing the effectiveness, efficiency and financial ROI of both sides of the ledger.

We are 29th in the nation in the ‘burden’ of state and local taxes. The right seems frozen in time by the aging battle of how to lower that number regardless of efficacy, quality of life it enables, efficiency or investments. I don’t know quantitatively if that is ‘too high’ or ‘too low’ but I do know qualitatively that we are near the bottom in the nation in the production of baccalaureate and post-baccalaureate degrees. That is by any stretch an unacceptable part of our reality.

We are so much more than what we’ve become.

Your partner in service,

Reuven.

(Disclosure: I have received campaign donations from some of the companies mentioned in this post).