Letters for Sunday, Feb. 15

Don’t balance the budget on people with disabilities

As a parent of a young adult with developmental disabilities in Spokane, I am deeply concerned about proposed changes to Developmental Disabilities Community Services in the governor’s budget.

These changes would narrow eligibility for Medicaid waivers and personal care services, cutting support for thousands of people across Washington – including families right here in our community.

For families like mine, these services are not extras. They are what allow our loved ones to live at home, participate in school, employment and community life, and avoid crisis. They help prevent emergency room visits, hospitalizations, and institutional placements. When support disappears, needs don’t. They just show up later – in more expensive and more traumatic ways.

Cutting eligibility does not save money. It shifts costs to hospitals, crisis responders, and exhausted families. It also risks losing federal Medicaid matching dollars that help bring funding into our state.

Parents in Spokane are already stretched thin. Many of us are aging. We are caregivers, advocates, and often case managers navigating complex systems. Reducing supports increases burnout and isolation – and puts our children’s stability at risk.

Washington says people with disabilities belong in the community. That value must be reflected in budget decisions.

I urge our legislators to reject changes to DDCS eligibility and protect the services that keep families stable and people with disabilities safe and included in Spokane.

Darci J. Ladwig

Spokane

Faux arguments against wealth tax

It’s hard to know where to begin refuting the deception by Republicans. In the Feb. 8 Spokesman-Review, state Reps. Mike Volz and Suzanne Schmidt, both Republicans, would have you believe a tax on millionaires and billionaires is going to be paid by average Washingtonians.

In their desperate attempt to bootstrap their argument Volz and Schmidt complain about Washington’s tax on capital gains and estates.

The capital gains tax only applies to those who receive more than $278,000 in capital gains in a year. Capital gains are the difference between what you paid for shares of stock and the sales price. The tax is paid only if the shares are sold. How many Washingtonians had capital gains of at least $278,000 in 2025? Fewer than 4,500! That’s one out of every 1,777 Washingtonians.

The Washington estate tax only applies when a person has assets worth more than $3,076,000 when they die. Only 1,600 deceased Washingtonians had estates this large in 2025.

Volz and Schmidt go on to claim that taxing the income of millionaires and billionaires “… ignores the real cost of raising children, supporting aging parents and maintaining a home.” I doubt anyone earning a million or more a year is struggling to afford child care, support aging parents or maintain a home. More likely they own a second home.

If you earn a million dollars a year, have capital gains of $278,000 and an estate of $3,076,000 you are indeed fortunate. But that’s not the vast majority of Washingtonians.

Roger Chase

Spokane

Democrat’s new income tax

The Democrats in Olympia have proposed an income tax like many expected they would. Their argument for this tax has always centered around the unfairness of our tax structure, and the idea that the rich need to pay their fair share. This has been argued by showing the tax burden on the rich, as a percentage of their income, is not as great as those of us in lower tax brackets.

I am disappointed that the “fairness” the state is trying to achieve through this proposal is more about how we make the wealthy hurt as much as we in the poor and middle class do, and not so much how they can reduce our burden. I’m disappointed because, at the end of the day, what do I care if the rich hurt more when I’m still hurting just the same.

Taxing the rich will not make my dollar go any further. Taxing the rich won’t open up any more higher paying job opportunities for me. Taxing the rich doesn’t give us any greater an opportunity to own a home. Taxing the rich will do nothing but make them feel more of the pain the rest of us have already felt. That’s not good policy, that’s just petty, and it will do nothing to lift the poor and middle class above where we are or make us feel any less of the burden we’ve been enduring.

Collin Tracy

Spokane

County helped kill the EV bond

The county sure helped defeat the East Valley construction bond.

Days before the election my tax bills arrived via text on two vacant lots and my house. My property taxes went up another $507 over my 2025 tax bills because our assessor person raised my EV assessed values $42,000. Dirt road properties, one with a self-maintained shared driveway 0.8 of a mile long. Why didn’t four other elsewhere tax bills go up?

That $507 is pretty much what the EV construction bond would have raised my taxes each year, had it passed.

We see these school bonds failing repeatedly in Deer Park, Riverside, Newport and now here in East Valley. I believe it’s a reaction to Olympia’s legislative mandates: Transgender athletes in girls sports. Comprehensive sex education. Schools teaching our kids we live on stolen land. College degree needed to live urban and avoid physical labor.

And to add insult to injury some EV school teachers sue the EVSD over sexual misconduct and a hostile work environment in 2022? Settled in 2024?

Needless to say, I don’t support this school district anymore. Evidently, I’m not alone.

Mike Reno

Newman Lake

Get to know Baumgartner

I want people to know what I know about Congressman Michael Baumgartner.

I know that he supports the hearings being held by the Homeland Security Committee to give everyone a clear understanding about what has happened recently in Minnesota. He has stated that he will never abolish ICE but there must be accountability. When has it been wrong to do an investigation before determining guilt?

He supports enforcement of border laws because a nation without borders is no longer a nation. He supports securing the safety of our hemisphere from foreign intruders because allowing them on our back door is a threat to our security. He supports young women only in women’s sports because trans women do not allow for fair competition. He supports reduced levels of federal spending because the federal debt is a threat to our future. He supports our local businesses, our industries, our farmers, our schools, our veterans and Fairchild and he makes this clear every month when he makes endless visits in the 5th District to meet his constituents.

I want a congressman who welcomes immigrants who have become new U.S. citizens because he knows the importance of legal immigration. I want a congressman who asks for my opinion on the issues and who listens because he cares.

Congressman Baumgartner represents the 5th District just as he said he would and that’s why we voted for him and that’s why we will vote for him again.

Marvel Travis

Spokane Valley

Time for Democrats to rally behind Conroy

The time is now for Democrats to unify behind Carmela Conroy, the candidate with the strongest chance of winning and effectively representing Eastern Washington. The complex challenges facing our community require leaders who can work across political divides and deliver real solutions. We have seen what rigid partisanship and indecision bring – and it is not progress.

I had the privilege of working with Carmela in the diplomatic corps and with former U.S. House Speaker Thomas S. Foley, and I know firsthand the expertise required to serve in such roles. Those experiences shaped Carmela’s commitment to public service, to protecting U.S. interests, to managing complicated relationships with integrity and to maintaining an unwavering respect for taxpayers. These are the qualities the 5th District needs in Congress.

Speaker Foley embodied those same attributes, and I see them clearly in Carmela Conroy today. That is why it is perplexing to hear some local Democrats suggest looking elsewhere simply because she fell short last time. That reasoning defies common sense. We have a proven, highly qualified candidate who reaches beyond party lines and values civil discourse at a moment when it is in desperately short supply. Turning to an untested candidate with fewer credentials would not serve our community.

Eastern Washington deserves leadership grounded in experience, steadiness, and a genuine desire to bring people together. Carmela Conroy offers exactly that. Democrats should stand with her now and give our district the principled, capable representation it needs.

Melinda Rae Manning

Spokane

We must do better for the next child

It was horrific to read the details of the cruel torture-to-death of 8-year-old Meela Miller. It’s awful to realize that for this child, death was deliverance from months of nonstop physical and emotional torment.

Then one of the most chilling and shocking sentences in the tragic story: “Neighbors, social workers and school counselors contacted police repeatedly during this time over their concerns.” How, how, HOW then was this torture allowed to continue?

Judge Michelle Szambelan said that it wasn’t anyone’s fault but the two perpetrators. So it will apparently happen again because grown-ups somewhere in the system totally failed in their job to protect this child, who long showed physical signs of her ordeal.

Apparently we are going to accept that. I for one, absolutely do not. It appears that the buck stopped with the Airway Heights Police Department. If there is something in the law that doesn’t allow forced intervention by police in a case like this, we better make some serious changes, and quickly.

This letter will appear and we will get no answers. Move along; nothing to see here. I hope someone knowledgeable will respond and tell us how to fix this. Then little Meela’s suffering and death will at least prevent this from happening to some other innocent child.

Paul Unger

Spokane