Business as usual for the politicians- Will there be payback at the polls in November? Or maybe just a deluge of new initiatives?

Erosion of trust: Some voters who passed I-695 suspect cuts in services are political payback

Ketura Flanigan feeds chickens in the back yard of her Withrow home. She is not alone in thinking that waste is prevalent in government spending. World photo/Don Seabrook

By Dan Wheat, Michelle Partridge and Robert Marshall Wells, World Staff writers

It's just politics, not what the public needs, says Ketura Flanigan, a 66-year-old retired apple packer who lives in the small Douglas County town of Withrow.

A widow and the mother of nine grown children, Flanigan can cite example after example of what she calls wasteful spending and poor leadership at all levels of government in Washington.

Her hot list includes a $5 million highway outhouse, salmon, water and sending too much money to the west side of the state.

"They are just throwing money away, and then when the people rebel" by passing Initiative 695, she said, "they are trying to get even with us by coming up with" cuts to needed programs and services.

Public officials say they are just trying to handle a difficult situation thrust on them by I-695, which made car tabs cheaper and slashed government budgets. But Flanigan has much company in her distrust of government and how it is responding to the voter mandate.

It's showing up in comments from worried politicians, letters to the editor, and in a statewide poll where most residents said they expect government to deal political payback. But some say the strongest citizen message will come in the next elections when voters pass judgment at city halls, county courthouses and in Olympia.

"It's now time to keep score," wrote Jim Weitzel of Ephrata in a letter to The Wenatchee World. "The elected officials that can't change, don't care or don't understand need to find other employment."

In the survey, conducted in December by Seattle's Elway Research, more than half of those responding said they believed government officials were out to punish voters for the passage of I-695.

"The cities and the state did not get the message," Weitzel, a former Grant County commissioner, said in an interview. "The tendency among most of them is to extract every penny they can get from every citizen to fund bigger and better programs.

"We hear little about (government) being more responsible and prudent with our tax money," he said. "They just can't grasp the reasons for I-695."

"Now we are being punished," he added.

Susan Rumble, a Monitor homemaker, said she at first thought politicians would do what voters wanted them to -- cut government spending while preserving necessary programs.

"Now I don't think that's true," Rumble said. Talk in the state Legislature about closing half of the state's 41 highway rest stops has destroyed her faith that lawmakers got the message.

"The wheels of government are trying to roll the same ways they always have," she said.

To a degree, the I-695 vote and continuing distrust are Washington-state examples of an American tradition of believing the worst of government, said Jim Brown, a professor of political science at Central Washington University in Ellensburg.

Brown said the current brand of national distrust and cynicism about public officials began during the Vietnam War, grew during the Watergate era of the early '70s, and has been further exacerbated by scandals in the Clinton administration.

"We're talking about perceptions," Brown said. "Neither (political) party is considered as being principled. It's a perception of hypocrisy. And it's a culmination effect of all sorts of complex factors."

Brown said these include a perceived lack of U.S. influence around the world, an emphasis on material goods and socio-economic status, and a general feeling that the country isn't what it used to be.

Voters, he said, extend those feelings generally to all politicians, national and local. "It's just another manifestation of the mistrust and alienation. It's almost like borderline paranoia," he said.

Stan Finkelstein, executive director of the Association of Washington Cities in Olympia, said the public's opinion of elected officials is not helped by a state municipal financing system that's in need of an overhaul.

"Some cities are well off," Finkelstein said. "Others are scrambling about trying to find other sources of revenue. There are major problems that need to be fixed. People are concerned about the capacity of local governments to provide solutions."

-- Mark Stilson (mark842@hotmail.com), March 06, 2000