49th Legislative District Town Hall Meeting

0:00 The 29th Legislative District Town Hall, focus on our post legislative session time. I'd like to start first by welcoming all of you for showing up and start with the flag salute. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I'd also like to start with a land acknowledgement.

0:56 We'd like to acknowledge and recognize the land on which we gather today is the traditional territory of the Cowlitz people and other people of the Columbia River. We honor and recognize that the original people are the past, the present, and the future residents and stewards of the land that we occupy. We bear respects to elders past, present, and future. Thank you. We are going to follow our usual process where we go through as many of the question cards that we can after we have some opening remarks. We have staff here who will be introduced and will come and collect cards and get them to us if we think of something during the session.

1:52 And with that, I would like to have all of us say a few words. I want to start with our Senator Cleveland. Thank you, Representative Wiley. Good morning, everybody. It's good to be here with you. It's great to be home. Can everybody hear? Not particularly. Okay. Is that better? Yes. I think it's not -- all right. There we are. Good morning, everybody. I'm your State Senator, Annette Cleveland, pleased to be here with you this morning. It's wonderful to be home from Olympia. It was a fast and furious short session this year. And by way of summary, I'll share that we had three very, very large challenges before us as the three of us headed to Olympia and as we worked with our colleagues in the legislature to determine what it was that we needed to most focus on this year.

2:51 And first and foremost, it's no shock to any of you that we were again facing as a state some pretty challenging budget shortfalls. And we had to look to work together to address a roughly $2.3 billion budget shortfall. In addition to that, we also knew that we had to address many of the federal policy changes as well as funding cuts that continue to come our way from Washington, D.C. and the Trump administration. In addition to that, we knew that we wanted to continue to work to address our regressive tax system here in the state of Washington. We have the second most regressive tax system here -- or in the country.

3:49 And so while we have these challenges in front of us, we wanted to ensure that we were also focused on continuing to make progress and move forward on that really important goal of making our tax system more fair, more equitable. As Democrats, as we headed House and Senate Democrats to Olympia in January, we were very focused on a number of things, addressing affordability. We know that it is becoming more and more and more difficult each and every day for individuals' families to meet their basic needs. We, as I've already mentioned, continued to recognize that we were going to need to talk about policies that could help mitigate some of the impacts of the changes that we continue to see in federal policy and federal direction. We stayed very focused on the fact that we have to continue to protect people's health care

4:44 in the state of Washington and continue to work to support the healthiest Washington we possibly can. We did a lot of work around housing. We went to Olympia, committed to continuing the hard work that we have engaged in over the last several years. I am pleased with some of the work that we accomplished in that realm. And then finally, also, as Democrats agreed that we wanted to continue to do work around ensuring that our communities are safe. And so those were the broad challenges and then focuses for us as we went to Olympia. I'm very much looking forward to talking with you a little bit more about what it was that we accomplished in the short 60 days that we were together in Olympia. So, again, thank you for being here and looking forward to a good discussion this morning. Thank you, Senator Cleveland. Monica Stone, your representative in the 49th Legislative District.

5:42 Senator Cleveland covered our approach to this session quite well, so I won't reiterate any of that. Just thankful that you all are here to engage with us this morning. It was a very fast session, yes, but not -- and not uneventful. So we, I think, have plenty of time this morning to get to your questions. I'd rather spend time on that. So looking forward to hearing from you. I just mentioned that we have County Councilor Will Fuentes here and Port Commissioner Dawn Orange. So good to see you both. Thank you for being here this morning. Thank you. And City Council Member Kim Harless is here as well. And I'm Sharon Wiley, the third member of our team. I have been on the Finance Committee, which looks at all the taxes and fees that anybody thinks of that make it into legislation.

6:35 And I've been doing that for about ten years now and have always tried to make our tax system work better. Over the years, we've done a lot of asking of business people and individuals about what could work, what changes would they like to see. And frankly, there has never been a consensus. When I came into the legislature, we had over 700 tax preferences or loopholes, depending on your point of view. We still do. And that's because our system doesn't work very well and we make exceptions for the businesses that either have strong lobbies or that we want to encourage because it's for the good of the state. So my focus was on long-term tax policy changes, and that's probably where our major work was.

7:33 My favorite bill was another property tax bill that makes things a little bit easier for people aging in place in their homes. That bill had a Senate version. The Senate version was the one that was passed, but I've worked on that policy for a long time. And I was really happy that that provides some relief for people who are staying in their homes. It's good for them and it's good for all of us as well. But we'll get into the details. I'm sure there's going to be lots of questions. I did want to mention that my legislative assistant, Megan Walsh, and the other legislative assistants have worked hard to put this together and to make sure that people can get their questions answered. And I've got a pile here to distribute. And we can accept more if we finish with all of these. We will let people ask questions without filling out a card.

8:29 But for now, let people know that you need to fill out a card and they'll get it up to us here. And would you like to introduce your staff people while we're talking about it? I want to recognize Kevin Gordon. Kevin, where are you? Is he in the other room? He's helping folks, but I want to recognize and thank Kevin for all of his hard work throughout the year to help ensure that I stay on track and know that when one of you reaches out that I am able to get back to you. So thank you. Megan Filippello is my legislative assistant. So when you call or stop by the office, that's who you will talk to. Often I'm busy during the day in the school year at my day job, so she manages my schedule around that. So when you call, that's who you'll talk to. I think we're going to go right into the questions.

9:26 We usually get a lot, and sometimes it takes a while to answer them all. And I'm going to ask Monica to start off with the first question on this list because you sit on the appropriations committee. This question is what is a budget in your way of thinking? It's a great question. We have three budgets. The one folks often ask about is the operating budget. But before we get to that, we also have a transportation budget that funds our roads and maintenance of our transportation packages. The capital budget is one that you might appeal to us on when you're looking for a community project. This year we got funding for the YWCA on Main Street and I believe the academy. So even though it was a tough budget year, we were able to use some of our state bonding to get some capital projects for the state.

10:24 And our operating budget, of course, is where our tax revenues go to pay for the operations of our state. We in the House Democrats often talk about our operating budget as a contract with the people of the state and wish to do our best to show our values in that. Even in this last budget, difficult budget year, we were still able to increase funding for special education in K-12. It was the only area that the state budget increased funding. There were plenty of other cuts that were made in areas to try and make sure that that penciled. But we have historically invested in a number of things that people have supported us in doing, including the Climate Commitment Act, which supports the work we do to try and keep our water clean and our air breathable and long-term investments there.

11:20 And then in addition to that, we have invested in the Long-Term Care Trust Act, which was upheld again by the voters, asking us to continue investing and caring for our aging population and planning long-term for that. And then finally, the Fair Start for Kids Act is another major investment we've made in the past that provides funding for early learning and child care in our state. So there's a number of other items in the budget, but my, I think, standing position on what is a budget is generally what is the contract we wish to have with the people of our state and how we'll invest. And what we think they need us to invest in. And thanks to town halls like this, we get to find out how you feel about it. So thank you. I would add Representative Stone, you did a great job of describing how we perceive our budgets. I absolutely agree with her that our budgets are an expression of our values.

12:14 And I have always looked at our priorities as being relative to ensuring that we're funding access to education for everyone, that we are funding access to economic opportunity, to a living wage job, that we're funding access to health care and to housing. One of the most important ways that that's reflected down to a community level and some of the things that I'm most proud of that we work together as a team on is ensuring that there's funding reflected in each of our three budgets that comes home here to this community. That's our job. I'm really, really proud, as Representative Stoner mentioned, to know that in the capital budget we were able to bring home funding for the YWCA empowerment housing project this year. Such an important project to move forward.

13:13 And as Representative Stoner mentioned, continued funding for our historic academy to ensure that it is ADA accessible, that it's accessible to everyone, that we can get a new elevator put in that allows people, everyone, to be able to access that historic building. We also worked hard to include funding to continue the work around Vancouver Lake and the development of a strategic lake management plan so that we can be more proactive in managing that really important resource in our community that I think that people look to for recreation and other things in a way that makes sense, that we're not managing from crisis to crisis. And I think one other thing I'll mention that was a particularly heavy lift that the three of us worked on was a need to identify funding

14:09 to keep the channel in the Columbia River dredged to a depth that will allow the ships that bring us the goods and services, not just to our community but to our entire state and region, and also to ensure that those really important exports that we send out to the rest of the world, including grain from our grain elevator at the Port of Vancouver, can move freely. And so we were able to secure $15 million in order to gain significant matching federal funds to ensure that we can get that work done so that we don't have any interruption in the movement of freight and goods in and out of our ports, both up and down the river. It was a bit of a challenge because of the fact that we had to find funding in not just the capital budget but the transportation budget for that project.

15:05 But really pleased that we were able to make progress on those really important priorities for our community. That question and the good answers are a great lead-in to these questions, which I'm going to tackle but I'm sure my colleagues will have information to add. How much federal dollars have we lost and in what areas? And any discussion of a temporary hold on gas tax during this high price time? Two big questions. We have always been a donor state in terms of contributing to the needs of the rest of the country. We give more than we get back. And that gap widened with the changes in the federal contribution to Medicaid, SNAP, and other grant programs that were cut,

16:01 whether it was in the arts or environment, a lot of other areas. And so that exacerbated a very serious budget shortfall that was complex. It was from a number of different areas. There was a discussion of a temporary hold on the gas tax, but our gas tax is our main way of funding transportation projects, not just maintenance and operation every year, but those dollars are bonded. And so stopping a project in midstream, particularly if it's related to safety or economic development, people's ability to get to work, isn't very practical. And the fluctuating gas tax is more related to the decisions of the oil companies and the world market than it is to any one state's change

16:59 or reduction in the gas tax. So there would be no guarantee that a reduction in that tax would result in less payment of the pump. So that's why it didn't go forward because it would have interfered with our projects in process, but it also wouldn't be guaranteed to help people. And as far as the areas that the federal dollars, the ones that are known to everybody have to do with the medicine and food that a whole lot of people depend on. All of us may be aware of somebody in our neighborhood who -- a grandma or grandpa who's raising little ones because of fentanyl or other family problems, and those people are living on Social Security and SNAP. And, you know, as a community, I think we need to pay more attention

17:59 and help the people in our community get through what is going to be a really challenging time. Yeah, I'll just add a little bit to answer the question directly. There's a report from the Office of Financial Management that shows our state negatively impacted by federal action by $2.2 billion over the next three years. And as long as we're talking about gas and vehicles, the increase at the pump is obviously directly impacted by federal action. And then in addition to that, used car prices, according to OFM, are projected to increase 20 to 25% over the next two years and new cars from 6 to 8%. So when we think about the cost of moving around the state and realizing that our tax base is on a fuel product that many of our vehicles are not using consistently, there are a number of ideas on how to try and balance that out

18:58 floating around the legislature, whether that involves something like a use tax in some way that's not based on fuel, but a road usage strategy, your input on that is welcome because there are a number of ideas floating around the legislature and we haven't been able to come to agreement on how to approach paying for, in a more fair manner, the roads and maintenance that need to be funded in a way that's not heavily dependent on just fuel tax. So welcome your feedback on that. >> And Annette, would you like to talk about housing or do you have another one? >> She's got a question. >> Go for it. >> I'll take this question here first that I have, and thank you for the question. The question is, are these times you are able to work well with your Republican colleagues? And I appreciate that question very, very much, and I am going to answer from my Senate perspective. And we'll share that first and foremost, I make it a priority to ensure

19:58 that I'm always talking with my Republicans on the other side of the aisle and my members. I feel it's so important that all perspectives be listened to and heard when we're working on policy and really tough issues. I feel so strongly about it that I sit as a member of the lieutenant governors. It's a joint legislative commission on civility and civil discourse and spend time in the interim when we're not in session doing work to continue to shore up the framework that we have. To help encourage respectful discussion and civil discourse. I'll mention that from the Senate perspective this year in the legislature, well over 95% of every, all of the bills that we passed in the Senate were passed with bipartisan support with votes from both sides of the aisle.

20:56 And I'll mention, as chair of the Senate Health and Long Term Care Committee, I work very, very closely with my Republican ranking member. We work collaboratively to identify topics and issues that the committee needs to work on together. We work collaboratively on determining what the committee is going to focus on in the interim. That's work that I'm doing right now, now that the legislature's adjourned. That's the work that we engage in in the interim. We plan a tour. We plan numerous interim meetings throughout the course of the year. I will say that I also meet individually with each of the Republican members as well as the Democratic members of the Senate Health and Long Term Care Committee throughout the year to ensure I'm aware of what their priorities are relative to healthcare. And we can work together to plan work sessions and gather information that then helps us chart the course for

21:55 the policy that we're going to work on together in the legislative session in the year ahead. So I believe that we continue in this state to do a very good job of listening to one another and reaching out for different perspectives. I will say that we don't always agree. I will say that sometimes the discussions are really hard and sometimes really, really difficult and contentious at times. But it's important that we continue to respect one another and one another's points of view. And it gives me really great comfort that all of you are here today to engage in discussion and talk about issues that all of us may not see necessarily 100 percent eye to eye on. So thank you.

22:49 I'll just add Southwest Washington is a delegation that's actually quite well known around the state for working together across the aisle. It may not always appear that way, especially heading into an election year. But I would I would just tout that our delegation here is one that is known for delivering for the community in a bipartisan fashion. Very many of our bills that pass in a bipartisan way are co-sponsored by a Republican and a Democrat from Southwest Washington. So there's there's a lot of work that happens. I took a plant over to Senator Harris's new office when he got a new office and that plant is thriving. I go to check on it frequently and he stops by to bring me some gum. So I think we we have so we continue to have strong relationships in a bipartisan manner in Southwest Washington. I think he brings candy to the committees, too. I I would always also point out that the media will naturally focus on the negative.

23:49 We are not the other Washington and campaigns can be there are competition that can be a grudge skate at the roller derby or a chess match. And governing is collaborative problem solving with people that you don't know very well and you may not agree with on very much. And if it was easy, it'd be done at the local level in your neighborhood. So that's my two cents worth. Do you want me to do housing? I'm going to move along. I have two questions here on the destruction of the Forest Service and is Attorney General Brown planning to sue to protect our lands and what's being done at the state level to fill in the gap? And I think that all three of us probably have bits and pieces to fill in on that.

24:40 I do know that our governor, when he was attorney general and our current attorney general, are pushing back on federal actions legally. That can damage us or undo our values and the hard work we've done in policies, not just in forest land and agriculture and other other environmental areas, but in other areas. And so far, our courts are hearing those cases and responding mostly in a good way. Our current governor and our current AG have had good track records of winning those cases. And so I think depending on and supporting the rule of law is what we can do. If there's more specifics, please chime in, colleagues.

25:36 But we are paying attention to all of those impacts and doing everything we can to make sure our attorney general has the resources to do the pushing back that needs to be done. I think I'll just add that I appreciate our current attorney general's approach to the legislature. We have regular access to staff to weigh in from different parts of the state, and his office has been not only welcoming but proactive about reaching out to us as legislators who represent you all so that we can weigh in at the AGO's office. So that has been an approach that I've appreciated. I'll just add one thought. Obviously, the U.S. Forest Service is a federal agency, but I just read a most interesting book prior to session this year by Timothy Egan called The Big Burn.

26:27 And it talked about the genesis of the Forest Service and the fact that the Forest Service came about as a result of really hard work by Republican president, President Theodore Roosevelt, and Chief Forester at the time, Gifford Pinchot, a name that we all recognize and know. I share that potential book for you to look into reading because it was such hard work to establish the Forest Service, such important work to help protect our lands, and something that I think we all must continue to join together to continue to fight for. Protection of those forest lands are too important to ever let them slip away. I think Annette Cleveland and Denny Heck always have a good title for you all, so you can count on that. Housing? Next?

27:24 Yeah, we've been asked to talk about housing, so I took a little time to pull up the bills that we passed this last legislative session. One that we passed was 2266, which is a step housing bill that allows for step housing to be treated like general housing, so that we have the full array of housing options in our communities in some places around the state. There's regulatory challenges in planning for all various types of housing, so we took a crack at that this past session. Another example is middle housing in unincorporated areas. We passed the middle housing bill several years ago, but in unincorporated parts of the counties, we were unable to implement that policy, so we took a little time to get the policy around that refined, and we passed that this past year. Social housing authorities, this is a Julia Reed bill, 1687, is another. I don't think I have the Senate bills on my list, Senator Cleveland, I'm sorry if I don't have.

28:20 Oh, actually I do, I do. I'm a liar, I do. They're just further down. So we did a little bit of work on ADUs, accessory dwelling units. The Senate bills that we passed had to do with rental property, flood disclosure, some policies around elevators and stairs that are regulated by the state, but do make it hard for us to expand housing options, so some regulatory pieces there. And then there's a bill that I don't remember, but apparently we passed it, having to do with common interest community wildfire home hardening practices. So for those communities where you might have a CIC having rules that make it harder for your home to be hardened against wildfires, we softened that a little bit so that those communities could better protect their homes.

29:14 We also have done a number of policy fixes to help improve the supply side of our housing market. Those take a little longer to come into play, but I think we'll start to see an impact from those in the next couple of years here. It takes time for those to actually show up in the market. That's what I have for housing. Can we define step housing? The question was can we define step housing. So shelters, transitional housing, emergency housing, and permanent supportive housing, those are all different forms of step housing. So I think when I mentioned kind of the wide array, we're not just talking about single family owned housing, but all of the other ways that people can move toward home ownership of a single property if they want to through the other steps. Thanks for asking.

30:12 I'm just going to add that we also, going into session, looked hard at ensuring that we continue to make progress even in this really challenging budget time on those important priorities that I talked about earlier this morning in regard to work that we've done previously. And so in terms of housing, even in this difficult budget time, we were able to continue to devote additional funding in the budget toward new housing. And so we were able to put forward 200 million this year in our budgets to continue to move that work forward. And that's in addition to well over a billion dollars that we've put in over the last couple of years. So we're going to continue to make that one of our primary focuses. I'm going to start the ball rolling.

31:09 We've had a lot of questions about the millionaire's tax, and we all have dealt with it. We struggled with it for a long time before it was finally passed. The first question is, do I think it's going to survive constitutional scrutiny? A lot of attorneys who are actually attorneys, and I'm not, believe that it will, that the original decision was incorrect. But part of the reason that we didn't book the money is that we knew there were going to be some challenges, both possibly from the voters as well as in the court system. And we have been very clear about why we need it.

32:03 I think I shared earlier that we have several taxes that are very, very unpopular. The sales tax comes down very heavily on lower income people and not so much on higher income people. But our B&O tax is very harsh and very unfair on businesses. One of the reasons that I was so supportive of this tax, and we've been wrestling with this question for a lot of years, was that it raised the threshold so that more businesses, startups, people that are struggling to get a business off the ground or have a side business, don't have to pay the B&O tax until when they make much more money. There are a lot of things being said about the millionaire's tax that aren't true. One is that it's going to affect everybody. It won't.

33:03 And as long as I've been dealing with tax policy, the threshold goes up, it doesn't go down and spread out. It doesn't mean that it hasn't happened somewhere else. But in our state, the tax threshold usually goes up, and that millionaire's tax is 9.9 percent of your yearly income after you take out your federal deductions and a bunch of charitable deductions. If what's left is a million dollars plus $10, you pay 9.9 percent on the $10. And so it will affect relatively few people, and we hear a lot from people who were against it. I sat and listened to all the testimony that came through the House, and sure, we had Tim Eyman and other people that were against it, but we also had other people that would pay it, and their testimony was, this isn't very much money.

34:03 I would pay more in another state. I want to raise my family and live in a state where people are educated, where we're not in a school crisis all the time, and we take care of our environment and have clean water and are fair. And this was seen by some people who would pay the tax as a fair tax. Most of the people that have written in and that are talking about it will never pay that tax, and none of the things that the tax will pay for can be paid for until it clears all of the hurdles that we expect. And so it won't go into effect for several years. There's a lot of time to sort out the truth and the impact.

34:56 One of the things that we did do this time was change what we had done before on the inheritance tax. That tax put us as an outlier, and when we do that, we pull back. What people don't realize is that the license tab tax years ago that people hated and that was overthrown by an initiative, that initiative was unconstitutional, and the Democrats in the governor's office, the House, and the Senate instituted it anyway because it was so popular. And there were a lot of local government and other impacts from that, and we'll talk about that later if we get to it. But in our state, we raised the threshold so that people at the lower end pay less, and that's what we've done. And we have two taxes, the sales tax and the B&O tax.

35:53 The B&O tax affects small businesses very disproportionately. The big ones hire a lobbyist and get an exemption. The sales tax affects poor people. So that's what was behind my choices. This was carefully crafted over a ten-year period, and we'll have to see how it comes out and talk about it in great depth for the next several years. Why do big businesses not get an exemption? The question was why do big businesses get an exemption. So a lot of our taxes are not necessarily just at the state level. Some of them are going to be big federal-level tax exemptions. This is a tax on the income of people. There are other corporate taxes that are not contemplated in this bill that could have an impact down the road, and they were in this bill in particular.

36:51 The bill that we passed that taxes after your first million of income is one that will affect fewer than 1,000 families or households here in Southwest Washington, about 20,000 households in the state. The top 1% of income earners in the state are the people who will be paying the tax. In addition to that, the bill provides an expansion of the working families tax credit to include another 460,000 people in the state. We're talking about college students, aging population, people living on fixed incomes who maybe did not qualify for the tax credit in the first place but now will under this bill. So when we talk about balancing the tax code, we're talking about taxing the top 1% of earners, wage earners. This isn't property. This isn't capital gains. This is just income.

37:48 And using that to better support the poorest people in the state who are most heavily impacted by our tax structure. In addition to that, the bill more than doubles the tax credit for small businesses, more than doubles the tax credit for small businesses. So I think folks in this room can take us seriously when we say we were working to balance the tax code. The people who will be paying this tax are the richest people in the state who have not been paying their fair share. And by the way, we're getting tax breaks from the federal government at this very same time. So you can count on us to continue to do that. I have the whole document up here. I can answer more specific questions. But I just want to kind of lay the groundwork for the purpose, the reason I voted for it, and the watchful eye that I and my colleagues had to make sure that it actually delivered on what we said.

38:42 Representative Wiley is right. There's a lot of criticism around whether or not the bill, the tax will go on to include other people. Here's the deal. You'd have to have the votes for that. I wasn't going to vote for that. I was not going to vote for a flat income tax. I've been on the record for that for the last 12 years. So that was not something that we were contemplating. So I think it's important to remember that the legislature would have to vote to change that threshold if we were to do that in the future. And in no time in my tenure in the legislature past or coming up do I think we will have the votes for that. I'll share that, as I shared with you earlier this morning, it was one of our top priorities to work to continue to try to address our most regressive tax system here in the state of Washington. And I'll share, in addition to what's already been shared by my colleagues, that 41 other states do this same thing.

39:42 And they do tax individual earnings over a million dollars per year. The reason I felt this was so imperative that we take this step this year is because also as a reminder, Congress passed H.R. 1 in July of last year. And contained within that bill were tax cuts for the most wealthy in our country. And when I was looking at some of the data around this for those individuals who are going to be receiving those tax cuts as a result of H.R. 1, the average tax cut was a little over $90,000. That's more than most of us in this room make a year. We have to address fairness and equity in our tax system. And as Representative Stonier shared, the number of individuals that are going to be impacted by this. When I looked at the 49th legislative district,

40:37 it was 192 individuals who will be impacted by this particular new policy. And as Representative Wiley shared, many of those individuals contacted us, told us. They're ready to pay their fair share. They supported this policy moving forward. And I'm proud that we were able to get it done. I would invite Representative Stonier or Representative Wiley because you're in the House. You were in the thick of the really difficult debate. I would love to help you share a little bit about that experience because from the Senate side, we adjourned at a little more reasonable time that evening that the debate was going on on the millionaire's tax in the House. And we literally were texting our colleagues, communicating with them, saying, what do you need? Do you need food? Do you need coffee? Do you need a pillow? What do you need? Because it was such a long and difficult debate.

41:36 And I'd like to start by giving a shout out to Monica. Monica is our floor leader and had to juggle all of the things that had to go on, who would speak, how to balance the speaking on both sides of the aisle. And in addition, she took on an additional task, which was to create a schedule of napping at the right times and getting people to take their little naps when they weren't required to be there to vote and keeping track of all that and making sure you got on the rotation. After 30 hours, I didn't have the brainpower to keep track of my naps, but Monica kept track of everybody's naps. And in 30 hours, I got a 20-minute nap, 30 minutes, I think.

42:34 Anyway, it was how we survived and thrived, and most of us didn't even get sick this year. Yeah, so the debate was his longest debate in the legislative history. And as the majority floor leader, it did take various forms of coaching. I did run up and down the aisles a couple of times and ask who needed to sleep. I mean, I think when you debate a bill for 25 hours, and that's when you start. So before that, we had to brief all the amendments and get ready for the debate. So the debate itself was 25 hours. Once it was clear to me that that was the goal that the Republicans had was to keep us on the floor for 24 hours, that's when I got to work on making some schedules for folks. The care, feeding, and attention to people's health when we are on the floor for a debate like that is really important. So I checked in with the Republicans to find out who had medication they had to take at a certain time.

43:30 The Republicans insisted on oral roll calls for all 83 amendments, which means that every member has to say their vote. You can't just have somebody push your button for a proxy. So I was able to negotiate with the Republican floor leader and the minority leader to say, if we can do 10 amendments with proxy voting so people can just push the button, then your people can nap and my people can nap, and we can come back in an hour and go back to the oral roll call for a while. So I think when you appeal to the nature of humanity and your Republican friends across the aisle agree that something like that is necessary in order to make sure that they get to say what they want to on the floor and we do what we're going to do, which is pass the bill, then we were able to manage that. But we had 83 amendments, nothing went wrong, everything went as planned most of the time, and the outcome was our desired outcome. And it was more respectful than it has been in the past, I would say.

44:30 And I will say that the very large transportation committee had an early morning meeting before all this started. Our friends in the Senate were quite kind. We had tacos brought over, a friend brought sandwiches because I was concerned about the 2 a.m. window between when dinner would be served and when breakfast would come and people would still be tired and maybe didn't have a chance to get something to eat. So we had sandwiches delivered. I think at one point in time when I needed to lay down, I kicked the Seattle Times reporter off of the back couch so I could still hear what was going on on the floor in case I needed to jump up and take care of something. But it was wild. It was wild. Yeah. And it went fine. It did. And I just claim when people ask me about it, I just say I learned to sleep with my eyes open. Do you want me to get to a couple of these other questions? So do you each have some unanswered ones?

45:29 I have some K-12 ones, too. Oh, good. Okay. We're getting through a lot of these. I'll get through these really quickly. So this question is about the fact that we're the only state in the union that doesn't require enrollment by age six for students. So in Washington State, our compulsory age is eight. And, yes, it is wild to me as a schoolteacher that we are responsible for the outcomes of students and their learning, but we don't require them to come to school until eight. Most of our kids come to school before that, but there's not a legal obligation to engage parents before that. So in order to change that, we've tried changing that in the past, and it just -- because it didn't seem like it was going to affect a lot because most kids were already in school, we were unable to pass the bill, but I'm happy to revisit that again. We have had some requests to lower that to even four and five so that we can capture students even earlier in the early learning setting. I can tell you we do not have the budget to fund that yet, but we are working on it,

46:27 and hopefully by balancing our tax code we'll be able to make progress. But I don't see why we shouldn't have the same accountability for kids when they come in in kindergarten. I think we should take a look at that. And then a bill that I spent a lot of time on the last couple years, why no action and instead only a study on banning and controlling cell phones in schools? And so there's been a bill circulating that would require districts to adopt a cell phone policy, and that's just like adopt a policy. And then the other extreme is to statewide mandate schools being turned off or put away during school time. We know that student time on social media and on their phones is negatively impacting their mental health and their ability to study and their ability to connect with one another in school. In the district that I work in, Evergreen School District, half of those schools have adopted a no cell phone policy,

47:26 often driven by students who are very pleased to be connecting with one another again. And the district did not do it district-wide because the schools built a relationship with the parents so that the front -- if you think about it, like the front office person who wants to get -- who's receiving a phone call from a parent who wants to get in touch with their kid and can't because their cell phone is off, that -- all of that conversation has to happen and that agreement has to happen at a local level. By doing it from the state down, I think it has a -- I think it can have a negative impact on those relationships, but I do think that we should be encouraging school districts to move in that direction. I don't believe a study is going to tell us anything we don't already know. I was not very pleased about passing the bill. But I do think that it's worthy of the conversation because when school boards start having those conversations locally, action is taken up and I have seen very -- I've seen positive impacts from kids putting their phones away

48:26 and not having access to them during school time. I will also say that teachers do a phenomenal job of using those phones as a formative assessment tool or as a research tool, and when they don't have access to some of those other things, we can't take away an option that educators are using to also have good research tools. So it's a tough balance, but I do think that we need to address mental health impacts from social media, and there are bills that we are contemplating and have not yet passed that will do that, that would put some tools and regulations on how social media platforms are operating for young people. Those were the two I had. Yes, I have three questions in one, so I will take them one by one. So the first question on the card here is asking,

49:24 is there any pressure that you can put on Governor Ferguson to fill seats on Washington's campaign watchdog panel? Is this just a red herring straw man? And so I will share that currently two of the five seats on the Washington campaign watchdog panel are vacant. They were briefly all filled in 2024, as I understand it, and then two individuals stepped down. Our government only works when there are those of us willing to step up and serve, and it's awfully tough to fill seats when no one is stepping forward to want to serve in the role. So while I'm aware that there has been a petition circulating to recall the governor because these seats have not been filled yet,

50:21 I certainly am committed to doing all I can to talk about the need for folks to serve and encourage people to take a look at those open positions and think about submitting their name and nomination. But, again, awfully difficult to fill seats when there's no one willing to serve. There's a second question here. This one's going to take a little more explanation, but I'll try to give a simple answer to a very complicated question and love to talk more later as well. But the question is, are we prepared to fully fund what Medicaid currently funds when Medicaid is likely to drop? So, as we all know, Medicaid is a jointly funded federal and state program. Currently, the federal government funds approximately 69% of our Medicaid program. The answer to this question simply is no.

51:20 The state does not have the resources to backfill that 69% of the federal Medicaid funding that we currently receive. That said, know that that is one of the questions and issues that's been before us since HR 1 passed that contained Medicaid cuts and Medicaid changes to the program. Last year, we've been -- I've been working closely with the governor's office, with our health care agencies, our Department of Health, health care authority, others, to develop plans for, yes, implementing these egregious Medicaid cuts, but also looking for ways that we can mitigate those cuts, that we can ensure that we can somehow provide options to those individuals on Medicaid

52:11 who rely on Medicaid for their health care coverage, try to help provide some additional options, including our state public option program that we offer. But know that this is a continuing challenge that we're working to try to address, and we'll welcome your thoughts and ideas as well. What's coming up in terms of implementation of some of those changes that were called for in HR 1, the state is having to put in place an administrative structure to impose work requirements on all those who are Medicaid recipients. We know from the past when this policy has been talked about that it doesn't work and that a majority of those on our Medicaid program here in the state of Washington do work. These are the working poor. That said, our state is going to have to invest in administrative structure and staff to put those new requirements in place.

53:10 In addition to that, those who rely on Medicaid here in our state and across the country are now also going to have to recertify or re-enroll every six months as opposed to our current system of recertification every year annually. Again, that takes an immense amount of staff and new administrative processes to accomplish that. So those are just a couple examples of what we're working as a state to try to address. But then also know that we are looking at other possible ways that we can identify revenue here in the state that could help better support our Medicaid program and help try to somewhat backfill the loss of those federal funds due to these cuts.

54:03 So HR 1 will impact Washington because it will cause 300,000 Washingtonians to see a spike in their premiums and over 180,000 Washingtonians to lose their Medicaid coverage. So when we're talking about how do we address this at the state level, that's the problem statement that we're trying to address just from federal action. And so while we work to stabilize our tax base so we can cover the gap to the best of our ability in the future, there are some things we can work on to try and stabilize access to health care. And I want to give credit to Senator Cleveland for her work on a bill that nobody knew was coming, 340B. Nobody even knew what that was a year ago unless you worked in federal health care. But basically Senator Cleveland's bill captures the savings that drugs are sold at at a discount for participating entities, hospitals.

55:02 And that money was supposed to go back into making sure that community-based health care services and outreach are provided. The savings are there, but nobody knows where the money is going until Senator Cleveland passed a bill that demands that information in Washington state. So thank you for doing that. And then we also have a bill, I think you had the sponsor of the OIC bill, the stabilizing the marketplace. We didn't pass it this year, but we will get back to it next year. I had the House version, Senator Cleveland I think had the, or Slatter. >> Slatter. >> Slatter had the Senate bill. And this is intended to make sure that places where there are not enough options for people, like in San Juan County for example, have more than one health care option. And in other places where there are gazillions of options, the people in those communities are really having a hard time understanding the difference between the plans. So it defines what a meaningfully different plan is.

56:01 So that when you're shopping for health care in the market, you can see what is going to cover and what is going to benefit your health if you have pre-existing conditions or things like that, rather than being overwhelmed. So we're not just talking about the funding, we're also talking about ways to access that health care if we're able to fund it. >> Thank you for that. There is one final question on my card, on the same card. The question is, are we going to be able to fund the new interstate bridge? And thank you for that question. >> As many of you know and have heard me say over and over, the reason that I stepped up to run for office and represent the 49th Legislative District was because of the immense need for us to replace the 107 year old interstate bridge. That is the major backbone of our interstate system here in the region. And it's horrifying to me that this 107 year old drawbridge

57:00 is the way that we move goods and services and health care personnel and families back and forth between our two states of Oregon and Washington. So to answer the question, yes. I'm so pleased to say that Washington stepped up and committed funding for that project. Oregon stepped up and committed funding for the project. The federal government has committed funding as well through grants that we're expecting. Federal government by far is providing the majority of funding, as it should be, for that very important regional and national project. Just recently, within the last three weeks, Governor Ferguson was here in our community. He pulled community members and leaders together who have been long working on that project. I know my colleagues were there to talk about the need for the bridge and

58:00 to reconfirm our commitment to getting it done and he put forward a way that we're going to accomplish that. So rather than attempting to try to gather all of the funds for the full project that includes replacing the bridge and then all of the interchange improvements that need to be made to help better connect to that bridge, we're going to take an incremental approach. We're going to use the funding we have now. We're going to build that bridge. We then will continue as we apply for and gain additional funding, continue then to invest in the interchanges and the work that needs to be done to help better connect to that new bridge. So the answer is yes. We do have some federal decisions that are pending that we're very much looking forward to. The supplemental environmental impact statement decision is expected shortly, as well as a federal decision or record of decision that allows the project to then begin to design and build.

58:57 So while I'm hopeful that we get those decisions in a timely manner, if that is the case, we are looking to actually dig dirt and we'll start to see some construction beginning in 2028. I would just add that as we get closer and closer to key moments in this process, more people will pay attention and more people will ask questions and more people will be critical. So you will be hearing a lot about this where people who weren't there are going to say, "Why didn't you do this? Why didn't you do that?" And so there will be a lot to hear. Be careful what you believe because there's a lot of latecomers saying things about the bridge.

59:52 And there are still decisions to be made on tolling amounts and design and there's a lot of back and forth still to happen. But a lot of the key hurdles have already been accomplished. And I have to say that Annette and I and two female Republicans were the ones who resurrected this process after it failed the first time. And we all know that if it had not failed, it would be built at a lot lower cost than what we're facing today. And we'd be driving on it right now. We're traveling across it however we choose to whether we're going to motor on it. I prefer to stay over here actually. I'm going to address something that I'm not prepared to go into. Someone here put a lot of effort into asking questions about the Department of Ecology

1:00:51 and a ranch dispute that involves water rights and taxation in eastern Washington. And I acknowledge that because a lot of effort went into asking the questions. Water rights are an area that strong, smart attorneys run away from sometimes because they're so complicated. I am not in a position, and I don't think any of us are, to second guess legal and regulatory issues with one particular case on the other side of the state. And I apologize for that, but it's a lot of work that went into it, but we probably can't do very much with it in this forum. And with that-- Is there an email on that? Can we make sure we have contact?

1:01:51 We can get help from staff and then get back to the constituents' question. I don't see an email. Whoever has this, if you will come see me afterwards, we'll make sure we-- If you want us to do a little more work on it and put an email address on the paper, we'd like to do that. Yeah, absolutely, and certainly I'd want to talk to our colleagues who represent those districts on the eastern side of the state. And we have had issues with particular growers on water rights here in Clark County, and we've tackled them in a bipartisan way, complicated, difficult, not always successful, but it has been something that we periodically pay attention to when the issue comes up. It's reminding me of a saying-- I'm sure it didn't originate in the Washington state legislature, but I have heard it often in my time there that whiskey's for drinking and water's for fighting.

1:02:50 So water rights are very, very, very contentious issues, and they will be for foreseeable future as well. I do have a question here. So this question has to do with privacy and voter data, and it says what action are you, the legislature, going to take to protect voter information from the federal government? The executive and legislative branches are trying to get all voter records. And as an example, let's see if I can read this. I'm not sure I can read this, but I can read this part. Will not hand over date of birth, driver's license, last four digits to your social. The Trump administration wants to receive all of that information and clear and remove ineligible voters based on that information. So thank you for the question. It's an important question, and know that our secretary of state, Steve Hobbs,

1:03:48 has taken a very, very aggressive stance against these federal actions and against these requests that have been coming down from the Trump administration. He has refused on numerous occasions. He's been working with our attorney general to file lawsuits to try to block any release of information. And know that as a legislature, we're also very, very committed to protecting people's information and protecting our fair and our free elections. And we did pass a bill this year that blocks counties from turning over voter data by the federal government. That was Senate Bill 5892, if anyone wants to take a look at that bill. But know that this will be continuing work, and it will be a continuing effort for us to look at policies that have been put forward and passed that will hopefully help us to continue to ensure that information

1:04:45 for at least the voters in the state of Washington will never be released to the federal government. There are a number of ways that we're working to protect people's personal information from the federal government and for misuse by the federal government to find people for their own interests in our communities. So first thing I just want to say is that there's not documented evidence that voter fraud is a problem in this state. So we need to be really careful about when we ask that question whether or not we're reinforcing something that's just simply not true. There was a case, I think, in Yakima Valley where there was, I think, you know, there was some concern about this. The system works. There was an investigation, and there were four voters whose ballots were double checked.

1:05:40 There was no change to the outcome to the election, and it was a very kind of common error that is made in all types of documentation having nothing to do with voter fraud. And so I'm proud that we live in a state where people can vote by mail, and it is not questioned whether or not those votes are tallied and appropriately counted for the outcomes of our elections. And then just specifically about protecting information, you know, we're doing that in licensing. We're doing that in health care. We're doing that in school enrollment. We're doing that in a number of places to make sure that when there's a data sharing agreement with the federal government, we are only sharing what we are contracted to for the purposes of that governmental relationship and not oversharing information that puts our community members at risk. And, you know, I'm a little surprised we got this far into the morning without talking about the immigration impacts from ICE and that we've seen in our community here.

1:06:36 But that's a reality that we're living with now, and the legislature has, I think, addressed to the extent that we can any issues that we learn about as they are coming up. Unfortunately, we were given an opportunity to get started on this work years ago under the last Trump administration, so we're not going to go further along this time, but we still keep finding areas where we need to improve. I'd just like to add that data privacy has been a long-time concern in our state, and oftentimes we're the model for other states. A few years -- a couple of years ago, I helped sponsor and pass a bill that we came up with because we found out that the tech companies can put a whole lot of different information together,

1:07:27 as we are well aware, and get very specific and reveal people's health care privacy and then sell it. For instance, young women who might be seeking medical care, their data could be sold to somebody who wants to find out if they had an abortion in another state. We did pass the first law in the country to prevent these companies from putting together private information that if your massage therapist released it, they would be in violation of HIPAA. But it could be inferred from everything online and packaged with your name and everything else on it and then sold to somebody who might be buying it for nefarious purposes in another state. I was shocked when I found that out.

1:08:23 I was also shocked when I found out that no other state had taken action, but we did. And so we try to be proactive. It's very hard to keep up with the bad actors and the changes in technology, but our state does better than most, and I'm proud of that. This year we passed Senate Bill 5892 by Senator Riccielli, which protected sensitive voter information, including with driver's license and Social Security and birthday information. We passed Senate Bill 6035, which is expanding access to the ballot for tribal communities. We passed 1916, which protects accurate voter rolls and prevents unfair voter challenges. And we passed 1750, that strengthens enforcement for voting rights protections. We passed 1710, which is a bill that protects voting rights by preventing discrimination before it happens in the voter rolls and the voting environment. So we're on top of it.

1:09:22 [Applause] With that, I think I've gotten through all the questions that I know about. Are you through with your packets? Oh, we have more. Okay. Let's see. Concern about the apparent lack of funds for state roads. We have a cleanup budget approved for efforts to clean up 500 and Interstate 5 and 205 in the Vancouver area. Need for working together for cities, counties, nonprofits, perhaps even for-profits, and voluntary for cleanup, education, signage, and enforcement. [Inaudible]

1:10:20 I think we can all -- I'm going to start with the last question. Our state is somewhat unique in that our gas taxes can only be used for things that are defined as freeways, and that's by constitution, and that means public transit -- ferries have gotten into being part of our highway system, so our ferries can be covered under that. Gas tax is a diminishing resource. In some states early on, the state would say, okay, gas tax may not be enough. Let's take the sales tax for a sales tax state on anything related to cars or trucks and put that in the bucket. We didn't do that in our state, and so periodically we talk about it, but usually the demands of our primary obligation, which is education,

1:11:14 prevents us from siphoning money out of our sales tax bucket to put into our gas tax bucket. So part of the reason we have a myriad of sometimes annoying taxes and fees and charges related to transportation is to fill in the other parts of transportation that need to be funded, a growing need for public transit, replacement of bridges. I will point out that during the '50s when most of our highway system was built, the income inequality wasn't as bad. Corporations and people of very high incomes paid a lot higher percentage, very much higher percentage of their income into the federal tax system that went into the federal government, and most of the things that we would cut a ribbon for now were mostly paid for with federal dollars, not state dollars.

1:12:14 And our gas taxes were used to maintain those roads that were built with federal dollars. Those roads and bridges are wearing out right now, and cars are more efficient. Some of them weigh more, trucks weigh more. The infrastructure is wearing out, and we've got a gas tax that isn't keeping up. It really isn't keeping up. And so we are looking and studying and testing other mechanisms like miles traveled. And again, we come into data privacy concerns with some folks. All of that is being considered and worked on. When people were home for the pandemic, they bought a lot of things. They upgraded an office. They bought a new flat screen TV. They replaced their washer and dryer. Those big ticket items boosted our sales tax. And so the first year after the pandemic, there was so much sales tax,

1:13:13 plus the federal dollars we had that the transportation budget could be backfilled, even with the diminishing value of the gas tax. That's not true anymore. So we are really slowing down projects, not starting things, trying to finish what we started, and trying to put more money into maintenance and operation. Because every year of delay of taking care of what we have makes it more expensive in the long run. So transportation budget is going to be an ongoing problem, and we're going to have to take some big steps in order to address it. Yeah, very well said. I'll just share from the Senate perspective that I know that our chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, Senator Leas, while this was a supplemental budget year, it was a top, top priority that the budget, transportation budget this year,

1:14:10 reflect the need to put resources toward preservation and maintenance. And so while this supplemental transportation budget that we passed this year does that, it doesn't increase. There are no new revenues involved. It's funded primarily through new bonds and existing resources that are there, and with the exception of a couple of additional new fees. But I can share that with a focus toward preservation and maintenance, within that budget there was 1.3 billion that was designated for road and bridge preservation, 200 million for maintenance work, 28 million for ferry preservation projects, and additional 100 million for safety focused prevention. I'll also mention that we have experienced some pretty challenging flooding,

1:15:08 as we all know, in various areas of the state recently, and oftentimes those floods have impacted and damaged roadways as well. And we just had a recent, as you know, mudslide on I-5 up north of us in the Woodland area. And a larger one that I think they've only just gotten cleared up and reopened in Bellingham. There was flooding in Woodland very recently. So know that more and more of our resources within the transportation budget are also having to go toward addressing those disasters that have been occurring. >> I'm glad our state is helping. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Thank you. We do have a few minutes before our closing remarks. If you'd like to ask a question. Okay.

1:16:08 I'll repeat it back to make sure it gets recorded and heard. >> [INAUDIBLE] >> The primary one is income tax. So the second one is, so as far as transportation, so to me, and I don't know if we already do it, but do we base taxes on vehicles based on the number of wheels and the weight?

1:16:53 >> [INAUDIBLE] >> Sharon, can I have the mic for a moment? >> Do. >> Thank you. I want to just take a moment to acknowledge Megan Walsh, who's retiring. We brought a little treat for you, Megan. We brought a treat for you. And then acknowledge that this is Representative Wiley's last town hall as your state representative. And so I want to thank you for your service. I want to make sure we got that done before we concluded.

1:17:51 >> Thank you. Yes, you have a question, sir? >> So it's along the same lines of the taxing of vehicles, the gas tax is going down, I've been driving an electric vehicle now for two years or something. I don't have a problem with paying to keep the roads going. Somehow we need to figure out how to charge us electric vehicles. I see more and more, thank God. More and more of the electric vehicles out there and hopefully we'll get some cleaner air out of it that we get. We need to fund the roads and- >> I'm going to share a little bit about the complex balancing act that happens with different points of view. A lot of people with electric vehicles don't like the front end fees to register those vehicles.

1:18:50 And the balance was try to keep the fees low enough that there's an incentive for people to invest in that transportation. But high enough that there's some fairness in the fact that they're using the roads also. And there's no scientific way of deciding that and satisfying everybody. So there is always a push pull of how much do we charge to register those vehicles since we won't be getting gas tax, but they will be causing wear and tear on the road versus we want people to invest in cleaner energy and it saves them money in the long run. And how do you balance that? And those are the questions that get pondered at great length. Not everybody has the same point of view as you do about wanting to pay fair share for the roads. >> I do.

1:19:47 >> Also, thank you for your service. >> I have to say that it has been an enormous source of pride for me to do this work. I'm so proud to be chosen for these years by a community that votes to tax themselves to take care of the homeless, that always supports libraries, that has a record second to none in supporting the schools, that is known for volunteering, that honors their past history and makes it part of the present. And it has been incredible. It's been the best job I could imagine having.

1:20:38 And I really appreciate it. >> Adrienne has every month had a Saturday in the morning where anybody can come and share anything that they want to talk about and we talk about it. And so I just don't see that happening normally. And I just want to thank you for that. There has been no you can't do this. It's just always over to her. >> Well, and I started because people were contacting me because they're tired of dealing with heavy duty stuff on a small screen. They want -- people want this. And I have to say that being an emotional support politician is a two-way street.

1:21:36 With that, I'd like my colleagues to do some closing remarks because I think our stopping point is 1230. Go for it. >> Thank you. I'll just close by saying that I continue to very much stay focused on delivering to the extent possible stability and some certainty in the midst of all of this uncertainty that many of us face. I know that as I indicated earlier, I'm so grateful for each and every one of you and for members of this community who lend their voices and help us to shape the work of the legislature and help to take priorities of this community forward to Olympia.

1:22:25 I really appreciate your trust, your partnership, your continued engagement as we work to address what seems to feel like bigger and bigger challenges each and every year. So thank you for being here with us today and thank you again for trusting us with this work. And I want to also personally offer my thanks to Representative Wiley for her support and her partnership throughout all of these years. I've known her many more years than just the years we've served together as 49th legislative district teammates. But your contributions to this community, Sharon, are going to be very long lasting and I thank you. >> I think my closing remarks are simple.

1:23:19 Thank you for being here for those of you who have reached out and I have meetings on my calendar coming up to talk about things that I'm curious about or that you've asked to discuss most recently having to do with funding of schools and health care access. When I'm not at work full time in our schools, I'm making time in the afternoons and evenings to visit with folks. So keep those requests coming. Megan does a great job of organizing all of that and getting back to you if it doesn't require a meeting so that you get the information that you need. So the participation on your part is greatly appreciated and I know that my job is to learn what I can from the people who vote to send me to Olympia so that I can do the best I can on your behalf. And recognize that we are a team and not just as a team of Democrats up here for the 49th legislative district but for our community.

1:24:13 So I'm proud to also work with my Republican friends across the aisle when we can on things that they care about and will continue to do that work moving forward. So thank you all for being here. >> And I get to close because it's my last time. I just want to say that I'm not retiring but I do want to be part of my community. I want to continue to have the last Saturday of the month drop in sessions to talk about real stuff that's important to all of us. And I've heard from friends in other communities that being prepared for anything is part of being a resilient community and it lifts your spirits. I mean there's a lot of dark stuff that people are worried about right now.

1:25:05 And helping each other, being prepared, knowing who each other is in a personal way is the way we get through that and the way we build our community and the way we're prepared for what comes, whatever it is. And it means that we can step up and help each other and raise the next generation and show people who we are in our best selves. And so I'm looking forward to continuing that and doing that here in the community instead of during a 30 hour debate, 25 hour debate, but I'm not retiring, now is not a time to step back for any of us. And you're the folks that are here rather than doing something else. You're here to be engaged. You're paying attention to what your community needs. You're holding us accountable. You're asking us hard questions.

1:26:05 As you know we couldn't answer all of them. But all of that is important. It's worth doing and it's worth keeping at it. Don't give up. Don't give up at all. Thank you for being here. That's a wrap.