Voters have a difficult choice in the WA state lands commissioner race | Editorial
The race for state commissioner of public lands might be one of the toughest to decide on the November ballot. Both Jaime Herrera Beutler and Dave Upthegrove have strong credentials.
Their joint conversation with the Tri-Cities editorial board was one of the best we've had in a long time. Forced to choose, we give Upthegrove the edge.
The lands commissioner leads the Department of Natural Resources (DNR). The department manages state lands and waterways. It is in charge of wildfire mitigation and firefighting.
And it has nearly 2,000 permanent and temporary fire season employees. We believe either candidate would perform well on these core administrative duties.
Both candidates want to bolster efforts to reduce wildfire risk and support firefighters. They both want to preserve lands for the future.
How Herrera Beutler and Upthegrove view the state trust lands , however, is illustrative of their divergent philosophies and is at the heart of the race.
When Washington became a state in 1889, Congress gave the state millions of acres to use for revenue. The money is a critical source of funding for K-12 schools .
For example, DNR's Southeast Region, which stretches from Yakima to Idaho and includes the Tri-Cities, contains 880,000 acres of state trust lands . That includes most of the trust's statewide agricultural lands, which DNR leases to farmers and ranchers.
Upthegrove , a former Democratic legislator who chaired the natural resources committee and is a current King County commissioner from the Seattle suburbs, views those lands through a conservation lens.
He quickly and frequently points out that the trust lands belong to the people, not to industry. And the people want to preserve and protect the land, allow trees to grow as carbon sinks, and foster clean waterways and habitat.
He suggests setting aside more of the trust lands for those ends and insists he can make up the lost revenue for schools, though he's vague on how.
Herrera Beutler is a former Republican state lawmaker and congresswoman from Southwest Washington who notably voted to impeach Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 riots. She prioritizes fulfilling the obligation to generate revenue for schools from the trust lands.
That doesn't mean clearcutting, she says, but it does mean cutting down plenty of trees and leasing grasslands to ranchers for cattle grazing. She says she would do it sustainably.
Upthegrove's conservation values align more closely with what a majority of Washingtonians want from their public lands. He also will have the inside track in Olympia, where his fellow Democrats run the show.
We therefore recommend him, but we hope that whoever loses in November will pursue other opportunities to serve the people of Washington.
