public exposure i'm standing right this is part two of our discussion with paul guppy the vice president of the washington policy center they made some recommendations to the new governor back at a time when they did not know who the new governor was going to be and so they were nonpartizan weren't paul that's right a good idea is a good idea regardless there briefly before we dive into the rest of this in part to the washing policy center would you describe it again please sure so we're an independent nonprofit state based think tank so we have offices in seattle and around the state but basically what we do is you know solid public policy research to develop ideas for the leaders in our state at the local level and at the state level to you know make a better state for us to live in speaking of diving in let's just do that right now you made in eight different areas and we've covered balanced the budget help small businesses and promote job creation so now let's go to reform education ok i mean every single simple yeah every single day i hear reform education this reform education that and you know i don't know that it can ever get done but let's just let's see what your recommendations are number one allow local principals to be true education leaders by putting them in charge of the budget teacher hiring in the curriculum at their own schools let princip award merit pay to the best performing classroom teachers can you define that for me what what is the best performing classroom teacher mean well this is exactly the point ok so the principal knows who the best performing teacher is you know i don't know you don't know some distant commission or school board doesn't know necessarily the way i think this is just a straight forward management technique and it's used in private schools where the principal is in charge of what goes on in the building but it also is the way that public schools used to run  thirty or forty years ago a typical public school principal was in charge of assembling the teaching team controlling the budget maybe i should have brought the common schools manual which is about four inches thick it's like a phone book and it includes all the rules and regulations that principals have to follow so what we're saying is that private education public principal should be more like private educators in which there are real community leaders and they're able to put together the best principals and of course that are teachers rather but that also means that they have to be able to tell a teacher who is not performing that you know they need to seek opportunities elsewhere but we found from looking at private education that this is key to getting the best teachers possible in the classroom so does that mean that each school  principal would be negotiating a collective bargaining agreement with the teachers at that school it could be if that's how the teachers want to organize but usually what we found is that the principal just hires teachers one on one generally there is a best practices standard as to what the salary is and what the benefits are so that would be fairly standard and of course the incentive for the principal would be just like any organization is to get the best people and you know over time they would know which teachers are most effective but if if i am if i in charge and i am the one who is the principal i am setting the curriculum my curriculum might be different harder tougher writing easier then the one at the school five miles away right so you would need two things one is to maintain state standards which is what we have now and so there would be you know what is the definition of graduating from high school so there is a credential aspect which the government still needs to do and the second thing that we think we should have is more choice or options for parents so they can select the school that's appropriate for their children so if they don't like the curriculum at one school they can choose a different school and of course parents we believe will want to choose what's best for their own kids so they get a solid education with with different incentives coming into the schools for certain aspects of performance are we in danger of getting education funding similar to just the tax code itself where we're splitting it off i mean average daily attendance is the main way that schools are funded right right and that just kind of is like being in a movie theater you know butts in seats exactly and i don't think the educators like that either right and so this an example of a kind of arbitrary formula which has been imposed from above and this is what we're trying to get away from so there are what are called staffing ratios you know per student funding that kind of thing so what we think is that each student should be entitled to a certain amount of funding that that student receives every year and th it goes with the student to whatever school they happen to enroll in and that's why parental choice is so important so if this if a school has five hundred spaces instead of them being automatically assigned by the central authority the principal and the  be trying to draw families in order to fill the building and for each student that enrolls there would be a dollar amount that comes with the student it's very interesting because sitting right here on this show and the mid to late one nine hundred ninety s the seattle school board member said the eggs jack same thing right this was after he had done an exhaustive study of what what makes a good school across the united states so so seattle i've experienced it both ways because i have kids in seattle public schools so they used to have limited choice among public schools and they gradually took that away and just last fall my wife and i received a letter that said your daughter will be attending such and such school so there were  no more options she was simply assigned and that's where she goes and your second recommendation in reforming public education or reforming education is allow pay raises and year end bonuses for classroom teachers based on how well they educate children and allow principals to fire ineffective teachers so again it kind of comes back to what's the definition of how well they educate children right and again this is what professional educators know so right now all teachers are paid the same no matter what kind of work that they do seniority determines their assignments and we notice that the us has become de linked from actually educating eager young minds in the classroom whose whose interest does that serve well it is the union that is promoted this because they're it's the in their interest that all of the union members are treated or treated the same so they actually don't like systems that make distinctions among different performers in the school district when one teacher excels another teacher is not so good and so the uniform system has been created through collective bargaining where unions want all their members to be treated the same whether children are learning or not that's what we're trying to focus on is the academics well also as the parent of a school age child  i'm looking for the room for the parental involvement and where is the room for parental involvement in in your your recommendations or does that play a role it does play a role and that's where pitt we think parents should be able to choose the school so right now believe me i've experienced this ok parents are the last people who are asked to make any important decisions of course will be invited to come to parent meetings to school board meetings to rallies at the school the school likes the system i should say likes parental involvement but only on their terms you know won't be tied the parent that shows up with his own ideas about where the child should be educated and you can it's very hard to make progress in tailoring and education program for your own child that's also something else that the that school board member talked about years ago about how the grade system going first grade second grade third grade doesn't make a whole lot of sense in today's world exactly but i think that schools should be liberated to make exactly those kinds of experiments and if parents and families like it they'll stay involved and if they don't they'll drift away and that part is important because the drifting away is what tells the administration that they're not on the right track know i'm not sure that drifting is the word i would use i would run then the third part is a sign a letter grade to schools based on the state's annual public school accountability index so that parents are informed about the quality of education their children receive who would be assigning the letter grade to this well we actually just did this believe it or not and so so in two thousand and nine the legislature instructed the state board of education to create a ranking system which they did and it's a pretty good quality system we've looked at it it has five levels for all the schools in the state and they just announced in january for this year what we did as an example was put a b c d ath next to the five levels so they have exemplary schools good schools they are poor struggling are there different ratings and we just put letter grades next to them now we're an independent organization and we were just expressing our opinion about what we think that the radius and everybody agreed with you  so in a way we're sort of exercising our first amendment rights by saying this is our opinion of what such a system would look like but what should happen and there is a bill to do this is to have the state use the ranking system that already exists but a signed letter grades to the school so that parents know where the local school stand and it's a very popular idea with parents but it's controversial inside the system see and so we would know what the results would be if a school got a d right then parents are likely to do whatever they can to get their child out of that school correct so when the show short term if they received a d sometimes parents are assigned they can't do anything about it but at least they're aware that there's a problem so that would lead to messages to the school to improve it and of course the best thing would be as a parents could transfer their kids in and again it sends a signal to the to the people who are in the system that they need to change in order to improve well let's go to an easy one where we've been taking on a tough one it's an easy one improving health care yeah piece of legislation for the first time in history there will be an individual mandate on every american to have health coverage with some exceptions but we are still promoting the idea of you know putting the consumer back in charge of his own his or her own health care and to the extent that we can move in the direction of patients and doctors making decisions together we're going to support that but we'll see how the national affordable care act plays out well i don't i'm not certain that that and i  used to feel that way but i'm not certain that that i feel like i am in charge of my health care now because i think i've got my insurance company kind of dictating you know what doctor i'm going to have absolutely which is part of the problem so the system we the system which obamacare is replacing it first of all is not a system it's just a myth hodgepodge which has grown up over the decades and so that the consumer wasn't in charge there either because as you point out it's who makes your health care decisions your employer your insurance company the h o not the individual and so we're trying to create a system where people are smart consumers and can direct their own health care or choose their own provider now you know if you need cancer treatment you're not going to direct that yourself but what the patient can do is select you know what are the best resources that i have to treat my condition you know i'm going to disagree on that if i have cancer i'm going to ask so many questions that they may throw me out but if i if if actually in order for consumers to take  charge of their health care they need to ask puns of questions well that's a great point and that's actually where the internet comes in really well and so patients can get educated to the extent that they want to so again we're we're talking about personal empowerment so some people like to go to the doctor and say you know tell me what to do other people do have lots of questions and can do this research have them they dot com this is not nothing that is the greatest thing in the world but there are great questions that you can get from women d and lots of other and you can learn a lot and again a person who you don't have to be a doctor to understand your own situation so i get this pushback as well as like well everybody supposed to be an expert no you just need to be an expert on diabetes if that is what you have and people do get educated so your first recommendation is to reform medicaid easy thing for the state of washington to do ask congress to let states receive medicaid funding in the form of flexible block grants to allow medicaid recipients to choose vouchers to give them control so basically that is what you're asking you're asking for it come a different system for washington state that congress is not going to do that sure very unlikely although the florida has done this under a waiver in the past so we have an experiment where it has is coming into place the states are being instructed to expand their medicaid program every state has to make a decision about that what we're trying to do is for people who are enrolled in medicaid which by the way is going to become mandatory for a lot of people who are under the individual mandate medicaid will be their only choice and the law requires that they have health care so if that's the case we think people in the program should have more control over their health care dollars sometimes this is called cash and counseling which is you control your in small groups and maintain access to association health plans is that not permitted under the new system no in fact it moves in the other direction so obamacare has more mandates and restrictions sometimes are called benefit standards but no matter what you call it it means that the government or a board or bureaucrats or someone is making the definition of what your health care is going to cover is going to be covered not yourself so that's what we're trying to move away from is there is there anything out there in the health care debate where that is not about insurance and instead it's about healthier human being absolutely and in fact there are lifestyle changes so that's a very positive thing that's happened in our society where you know people are aware that what i put in my body what my you know how much exercise and movement i get every day is going to affect my health now a lot of people ignore that so we have an eye obesity crisis because of that but we have the information  the resources they are to live a healthier lifestyle and then the other thing i like is i've talked to people who have h s a and because their day ses are living hell you save as a cancer you get it so those are not encouraged under obamacare but about six million people have them and that's an individual account where the person is responsible for their own daily routine health expenses so there's an incentive to stay healthy to avoid trips to the doctor if you don't need it again to ask questions about is there a less expensive way to get treatment and that's in certainly the state and the national interest because there is less of a less so a percentage of your gross domestic product goes to paying or your gross expenses go to paying health care exactly and again i've talked to people who have you know one woman had an she injured her foot so her option was you can do you know therapy rast with some painkillers or i can do surgery and she actually asked the doctor which one cost more all the surgery is much more expensive so she said well i'll try the i'll try the other one and so she she not only saved money but she had a better health outcome because she avoided going into the operating room funny talk about an acting common sense tort reforms that lower health care costs such as capping on economic jury awards i mean the public generally is in favor of things like this but it never really gets passed right and the interests involved are tremendous so usually it's the trial lawyers who are very nervous they do not want to see any restrictions on lawsuits or suing people or jury awards and but states like california and texas and some others have put recent book caps on non economic awards so it's like pain and suffering payments and again attorneys fees are usually one third of what the whatever the court awards so if a person receives three million dollars the lawyers get one million so it's in their interest to keep that as open as possible and they they usually fight these restrictions and in so far they've won they have absolutely let's go to another topic and that is promoting open government i love this section because because it truly is something that am shocked that it doesn't it's not already in existence one is give the public seventy two hours advance notice before any committee holds a public hearing on a bill banning blank title only bills and make the final version of a bill available on the internet at least twenty four hours before a vote of the final passage first i want to there are such things as blank title only bill's right so those those folks in libya are clever so so they have all the rules on the books which were create open government they just don't follow them so jason who's our analysts in olympia has noticed that a bill will be announced at eleven o'clock and there's a hearing at three o'clock the same day so nobody can get a copy of it there are cut off dates when bills are not supposed to be introduced after a certain date and that's to give the legislature time to work on them and so what a member does is introduce a blank piece of paper and it gets a build number and the clerk registers that there's no text ok but he can say i introduced the bill before the deadline and then after the deadline he can add the text in you know some people might say that's scamming the system well sure it's following the letter of the rules but not really what the open this is meant to create which is to allow the average citizen to look up a bill we run a website called washington votes dot org so we put the text of every bill every amendment on line and anybody can look it out you know sometimes the page is blank though when you look at how i got to tell you this actually this makes me angry because what it sounds to me like legislators don't trust the public they're trying to do things fast towards the end so from there maybe i'll defend them a little bit in the sense that they get crunched towards the end of the session and they are trying to do things very fast and so they'll waive the seventy two hour rule you know they'll have a hearing the same afternoon that a bill is introduced how can they how can they know what the bill says how can they understand the ramifications of the bill yeah they can't and i've worked in legislatures myself and they go a lot on word of mouth of what the staff tells them and what other members on the committee say you know this bill is good for farmers you should vote for it the members usually don't have time to hedge that they had pretty much you know the hill rats run the asylum and in a way created an independent open government o to enforce the provisions of the public records act on the open public meetings act come on if it's the law isn't the attorney that's what the attorney general should do or the sheriff's office should do come in and say  state patrol yeah there you are so this again is an effort to create a connection with the public where there would be a state official who doesn't work for any of the agencies he doesn't work for the legislature and he can basically blow the whistle when they're not following the rules about again just announcing what the bills are and putting them on line that that's really the basic thing required taping of executive committee sessions i mean those things are really kind of private and they are but they it gets abused to so a committee will meet i mean we've been in situations where the committee room is filled there are sixty people there the committee comes in and meets they they convene and then the chair immediately offers a motion to go into executive session and they clear the room the room out and so every public has been there for three minutes and they're asked to go out into the hallway and the reason is because the chair wants to discuss private business with the committee members we understand that that's necessary but we think there should be a record so that if later on there's a scandal or a deal comes uses science and economics not politics to set priorities for protecting the environment we're pretty good here in washington state on protecting the environment absolutely and so the problem becomes since we are using so many public resources to protect clean air clean water clean soil is to make sure that those funds are used for top priority items so there's no ranking process everything in the environmental program is treated as if it's equally important but some things are much more effective than others and in fact governor in slate just picked up this idea  just a few days ago he introduced an act which would establish exactly this priority ranking clean up projects or in wind america action based on how the science says you're getting the most bang for the buck in terms of protecting clean water and clean air so that by creating environmental priorities council that's another agency isn't it so you're promoting big government well maybe the governor did us one better because he implied he put he's proposing the idea without creating the council and we're ok with that so he would have it as a policy that agencies would follow when they're doing environmental projects something else is let utilities count all carbon free energy sources like clean hydroelectric power towards meeting the quotas required by emission one thirty seven law and again not in the united states but in other countries carbon credits are routinely traded they are and in this case we're just trying to get out a commonsense ban right now that utilities are not allowed to include hydro as part of their clean energy portfolio so what we're trying to do is to say they should be allowed to count it in meeting any carbon credit standard or clean up standard that is the science port that absolutely because hydro is you know one of the cleanest sources there is they just can include it when they're accounting for their clean projects your final part of protecting the environment is in the failed green schools mandate that reduces education funding by forcing school districts to spend millions on unnecessary construction and maintenance projects every year so again todd myers on our staff he did a very simple exercise he contacted the facilities managers at different schools in the school districts like tacoma for example and he found that a school that had been built with the green standards used more energy than a school that had been built without the green standards really and the reason for that was that in the non green school the facilities manager had the flexibility to set the air control system or the heating in a way that lowered the utility bill for the school so he was trying to save money and it up being much more efficient the green standard school was required to do things that are energy wasteful like big windows that let in lots of natural light but also increase the heating costs or using materials that cost more than regular building materials so so actually the green school's mandate could be good if it was just better implemented it could be good if it were cost effective so what we're saying is the rule should be which building saves the most energy and without imposing the mandate we were finding that school districts because they just want to stretch their dollars we're using strategies that work better than the so called green school the final one the final topic highway purposes i get all kind of nervous when i hear somebody throwing the constitution that's a great point in fact and i respect that point if you question we should not be changing the constitution but what's happening with poll revenue today is what happened with gas tax revenue back in the one nine hundred forty s so what the public began to notice is that actually it was i think triple a that noticed drivers that gas tax revenue was being siphoned off by the lead states for and used for other things so in the late hundred forty s the public passed a constitutional amendment so now gas tax revenue can only go for roads it's constitutionally protected as they say the same effect is happening with tolls so we're getting with the good to go pass and the proposal on i ninety we're getting more proposals for toll revenue and yet there's no rule that says that the department of transportation has to use that money for roads they can use it for anything so we're trying to get that narrowed down well from a transportation policy i mean transportation is not just roads and cars isn't it other things to do i mean isn't it mass transit that is trains sure and so there are other revenue sources for that and so one thing we feel is that mass transit should be funded at the local level at the county level and through general taxes like sales taxes and that's the way metro and sound transit are funded now so we want to maintain that dedicated revenue that again comes from the general community which would vote for an increase in the sales tax to pay for busses that makes sense we just don't want tolling to begin to slip into a way of taking what is essentially a user fee and then using that for other things speaking of sound transit make sound transit more accountable to the public by making its body a directly elected board will it make it more accountable if it will and again where we're operating from what we see today so those areas of government that are working great you notice there are no proposals about the fire department or you know nine one one service ok so when the government is doing a good job you know we don't have any suggestions but in areas where we see that the current situation is creating abuse or problems that's where we propose a reform so with sound transit the board is made up of other elected officials so people who come from county councils there's no direct accountability and sound transit is not delivering the passenger hours in the system that they promised and so we think having a direct conversation the board and the public is what's needed through direct the light and we had those discussions before sound transit came in we knew that there that there was no way they knew that there was no way that they could deliver but that's a whole different show but there's and there's no accountability because they don't have to run for office and we have thirty seconds for this show we're respect people's right to mobility by making traffic congestion reduction and official policy goal you know it's not right surprisingly so it was a goal again for decades in state government that improving mobility for drivers was the state goal and just about five years ago they removed that so what we're saying wise i think to put more emphasis on mass transit and to so called get people out of their cars so there's this idea of making it harder to get around by automobile and since ninety six percent of daily trips are in cars we think that public officials should respond to that paul we got to go thank you very much it's been paul guppy from the washington policy center and have already shaken his hand we'll see you next week right here on public exposure take it