Sueann Davis: My name is Sueann Davis. I'm born and raised in Spokane County. Still live on the family farm. I've been married for 43 years. Have four kids, four grandkids.
This interview lightly edited for length and clarity.
DN: What do you grow on the family farm?
SD: Right now? We're grass, hay.
We used to be a dairy farm sold the cows back in the 90s. Tried beef cows for a while. We have a wedding venue now.
DN: What's involved in running a wedding venue?
SD: My son runs the business side of it, so I just get to play most of the time, but we renovated a barn and started it when our daughter wanted to get married in the barn, the only girl out of the four kids, and so it was all hands on deck to help make her dream reality. Then it just kind of evolved from there. It takes a lot of work to be ready for one event on the weekend.
DN: Are more people wanting to get married in venues such as barns and that sort of thing?
SD: Yes, all the venues. It’s just exploding, the wedding venue business, all of them. They have their different little unique traits that make them who they are and what they are. It's a booming business.
DN: What makes yours unique?
SD: We are truly an old barn. It's I believe it's first barn that my dad built when he moved up to the dairy farm. He built it in about ’67-’68 and so it's not a brand new building that was built for a venue and we have a little bit of authenticity in that. Then, of course, we have a beautiful view of Mount Spokane so that just adds to it.
DN: Are you a newcomer to politics?
SD: Yes, I am. I was on the school board years ago up in Deer Park, but that's not really political, although you have to be elected, but yeah, I've always followed it.
DN: So why did you decide to get into it? I mean getting into a race like this is not a spur-of-the-moment decision.
SD: No, it's not. I did check back when I used to be District 7 and so when they did the redistricting, they moved us to District 6 and so the first thing I did was check on who the representatives were because I liked my District 7 ones and I really liked my District 6 ones (Mike Volz and Jenny Graham, both leaving the legislature). I was willing to do something if I felt the need back then, but I just I pay attention to it and get frustrated like most citizens.
But what made me want to do it this time is Washington state is broken right now. We have way too big of a spending problem. They're sending us the bill, raise our taxes over and over and over again and I mean, if it's affecting me, then it's affecting everybody else too. I'm not unique.
DN: So I've been asking people what they think about the state's tax system and should the state's tax system be studied again for the chance of maybe revamping it a little bit. What do you think about the state's tax system?
SD: That's putting it in a really nice perspective to say to let's study it and see if it should be revamped. I think a lot of things need to be cut dramatically. Our gas taxes, I mean that affects everybody regardless of what your income level is and It's awful and it's worse over on the west side of the state.
So that's not something that should be studied. That's something that should be reduced. Our payroll taxes are, that's right off the top for everybody and I was just reading about the WA Cares…
DN: The state's long-term care program.
SD: Yes. They've now generated in their three years, $3.3 billion and they're just now starting to pay some of that out, which I thought you had to be 10 years before you were eligible to even get anything. That's a whole nother...Why are they doing what they're doing with it? The CCA money…
DN: Climate Commitment Act.
SD: …went into the general fund. What do they do with the money? Well, it went in the general fund. We don't know exactly where that money went. It just got spent.
It's that kind of stuff. Give me a concrete, this tax does this and then I may or may not like it. This pay all these taxes and you don't get to really know where the money goes. That's not okay.
DN: You mentioned the gas tax, which is routed toward street and highway funding and maintenance and that sort of thing.
SD: Yes, but we also know that the Climate Commitment Act hit the refineries and they're passing that on to us and higher. That's not a tax for us, but it is for them, so they're passing it on to us and we're just paying it ,which makes Washington state still some of the highest.
DN: What kind of influence do you want to have on Olympia if you're elected and you go over there? What are the things you would work on the most?
SD: The common sense and logic approach to things, because I don't think we have that right now. It's very chaotic. Very definitively party line.
There's a lot of things that I don't think meet the letter of the law and the response is, well then, take us to court. Challenge it in court and then we'll let the judge decide, even when they get rolled back, and well, we'll just come at it from a different approach then.
But I'm very common sense, logical. Let's look at what the law says and work within the guidelines of the law. Let's save a lot of money in the long run of not going to court all the time, which again would be saving us taxpayers money.
DN: I'm assuming you were referring to the millionaires tax or an income tax for folks who are making a million dollars or more.
SD: Not just that, but yes, that one, because if they really wanted it to be the millionaires tax that codified the million dollar deduction, but since they don't want to put that into law either, then it's a state income tax with a million dollar threshold today, but what's going to be tomorrow?
We already know the state's going to be in another shortfall. We've heard the promise of no new taxes and that didn't go anywhere So to say we're not going to raise taxes again, which is what the governor has said, can't trust that. We'll see what happens come January.
DN: So you're a former Deer Park School Board member. Do you feel like the state schools are in good shape? Are they are they well funded enough from the from a school board perspective? Do you feel like the state could do a better job of funding local school districts?
SD: I think they could do a better job, yes. I'm several years out from having served on it. But even back then it was the unfunded mandates, The state, I don't know what the percentages are today, but they only fund a certain percentage of special ed dollars, but that doesn't even cover the district's needs and so, there's those kind of things that, yes, we could do a better job of how we allocate the money to the schools and how we even funded at a little bit higher level than we're currently doing .
But I like the idea of charter schools. If we took that same FTE money and said parents can take it to charter schools, I think we'd get a much bigger bang for our buck by doing that.
DN: The state of Idaho has routed about $50 million a year to parents with kids in private schools as a way to help subsidize their private school education. Is that something that you would support in Washington?
SD: I would definitely support that. I would support drastically reducing, if not completely eliminating, the OSPI offices, superintendent of public instruction. II think that's a lot of dollar waste for almost no value and so, the logic and common sense again, if you're not getting bang for your buck, stop doing it.
DN: I've been asking folks to tell me about an elected official that they admire and why.
SD: Oh my goodness. Well, you know if I stick very local, there's a city councilman in Deer Park that likes to share the information on Facebook. I don't live inside the city limits, so I never go to city council meetings and It's I really appreciate that. He gives us the information of what's happening and not necessarily, hey, this is great thing, everybody get behind this, or this is bad, we need to stop that, but just the general information and I appreciate the effort that that takes to do something that isn't necessary or required.
DN: What did you learn from being a school board member in terms of dealing with the public, in terms of leadership?
SD: I think for me, I felt that I was it was more about representing the parents in the community than it was about me and my personal opinion on everything.
There's one meeting where a whole bunch of parents came and they were all saying the same thing on a issue that we're going to vote on and, when it came time to vote, I voted with the parents and it was a four-to-one vote.
DN: And were you on the one side or the four?
SD: I usually was the one on a one to four vote, but I was asked, why would you do that? I said because, if they took the time out of their day to come to our meeting and share that much information, they had a right to a be heard and to be represented, so I was representing the parents who showed up. That's kind of I would say in a nutshell that, what I learned is to represent the people and I wasn't on a one-person crusade so much and I'd like to carry that idea forward that you know I'm just a Washington State citizen and If I get the opportunity to represent people in Olympia that's what I want to do is represent what my community wants, what my community feels and might not always agree with me personally, but as long as it doesn't compromise my moral values, then I'm okay with representing the people.
