See why the campaign for WA lands commissioner is the most passionate state race
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He says she’ll hand “the keys over to the timber industry.” She says his harvesting “math” doesn’t add up and would hurt schools.
That’s just some of what Democrat Dave Upthegrove and Republican Jaime Herrera Beutler had to say in a heated debate Wednesday that brought the state’s wildlife policies to the forefront.
Their race for Washington lands commissioner has quickly become one of the most talked about — thanks in large part to a closely watched recount — in a year where nine state executive offices are up for election.
The debate at WSU’s Tri-Cities campus was an opportunity for Upthegrove and Herrera Beutler to show voters where they differed on forest conservation, timber harvest funding, wildfire prevention and supporting green energy.
Washington’s current lands commissioner, Hilary Franz, is bowing out after eight years in the office. She ran for Washington’s 6th Congressional District this year but failed to make it past the state’s top-two, primary system.
The public lands commissioner heads the Washington State Department of Natural Resources.
The agency manages the state’s tidelands, grazing lands and forests — about 6 million acres of publicly owned land, as well as 3 million acres of trust lands that produce revenue, largely from logging.
Revenue from the trust supports local schools, roads, libraries, hospitals and fire districts.
The agency also champions preservation for the state’s public resources and overseeing the state’s wild land firefighters.
The hour-long debate was hosted by the League of Women Voters Benton-Franklin Counties and broadcast by Northwest Public Broadcasting. A playback of the event can be found on YouTube.
Rural vs. urban
Herrera Beutler is the former Southwest Washington congresswoman who served between 2011 and 2023, and before that was in the state House.
She’s raising her kids in the path of the historic 1902 Yacolt burn, which scorched more than 240,000 acres, and says current forest practices haven’t decreased the severity of wildfires.
Herrera Beutler says she doesn’t want to gift their kids generations of wildfire smoke, and believes Upthegrove is too cozy with climate activists. She says as the stae’s lands commissioner she would rely on the DNR’s leading scientists to guide decision making.
“Too many of our forests are under-managed or outright neglected, and they have turned into crowded, diseased tinder boxes just waiting for a spark,” she said.
“Fires run rampant every summer, they ruin our days with smoke and they emit tons of carbon into the air — and they’re driving up the costs of home insurance here, making housing in Washington even more unaffordable.”
She’s endorsed by both of Washington’s Republican House delegates, as well as the Mainstream Republicans of Washington, Washington Farm Bureau and the Association of Western Paper Workers Union.
Upthegrove is the current Metropolitan King County Council chairman. He’s served on the council for a decade, and before that was in the Legislature for 12 years, where he chaired the House Environment Committee.
He said he’s running to improve the management of public lands, to address the impacts of climate change, to protect clean air and water, and wildlife habitat. He believes Herrera Beutler’s policies would be bad for conservation efforts, especially for protecting some of the state’s oldest forests.
He also wants to conduct more controlled burns and forest thinning, and bring some management practices in Eastern Washington over to the west side.
Upthegrove says he’s also running to expand recreational opportunities, and says he would advocate for more resources for firefighters.
“Voters of this state have strong conservation values, and I’m going to bring those values with me into this job. And voters deserve a lands commission who is independent minded, balanced and inclusive, and I’ll be that leader,” he said.
Upthegrove is endorsed by five of Washington’s eight Democratic lawmakers in the U.S. House, as well as Washington Conservation Action, Washington State Council of Firefighters and the Sierra Club.
The commissioner of public lands earns an annual salary of $166,762.
This race is also a focal point this election season for Washington Republicans, who have been shut out of statewide office since Kim Wyman left her post as Secretary of State to join the Biden Administration in 2021.
Forest land preservation
One of Upthegrove’s signature plans is to defer the harvest of nearly 77,000 acres of mature, lush forests within the lands trust in lieu of harvesting younger parcels in the short term and buying, over the long term, private timber lands at risk of conversion.
The amount Upthegrove wants to save represents 3% of the state’s nearly 1.2 million acres of harvestable land.
That would help satisfy part of the state’s mission of restoring 10-15% of its old-growth forests over the next 50 years, he says.
“People often call them the salmon forests. These are those lush rain forests with old-growth light conditions in Western Washington that have ferns and lichen,” he said. ““Recent studies have shown they are 30% more resistant to wildfires.”
Herrera Beutler argues Upthegrove’s plan doesn’t square right with the multi-year process of conducting timber sales and would place funding for public schools and governments in jeopardy.
“You cannot keep us at the same levels (of harvest) if you’re pulling almost 80,000 acres out of the land that’s scheduled to be harvest on Day 1. The math does not work,” she argued.
“He keeps saying he’s going to find other land to harvest elsewhere — well, I’d really like to know where, because there are schools... that are waiting on that timber money this year to make sure that they are not in an overcrowded classroom.”
Climate, education funding
“With my opponent, we’re essentially handing the keys over to the timber industry,” Upthegrove argued, “and we’re going to end up with the destruction of some of these last special places at a time when our plans call for restoring those.”
If elected, Upthegrove says he would champion a new clean energy trust that would see DNR buy new lands and lease them to clean energy producers with the backing of communities and tribes. Revenues from those leases would benefit local economic development.
Upthegrove says he’s “committed to our climate future,” including the state’s goal to commit to an electricity grid free of greenhouse gases by 2045.
“My opponent talks about climate, but when she was in Congress.... she voted over and over again in support of the fossil fuel industry, pushing the Keystone Pipeline, voting to exempt them from capping their liability even when there’s damages,” he said. “She opposes our state’s Climate Commitment Act, wants to pull us out of the Paris Climate Accords. This goes in the wrong direction.”
Herrera Beutler characterizes herself as a collaborator who “gets results” on climate policies and will work with anyone, regardless of political ideology.
“I worked with my Democrat colleague, Kurt Schrader in Oregon to get legislation passed that protected our wild salmon runs on the Columbia River. That sounds super easy, right? But when we started, the legislation we had, nobody wanted to touch with a 10-foot pole,” she said.
But Herrera Beutler says they were able to get the 2018 Endangered Salmon and Fisheries Predator Prevention Act passed in bipartisan fashion, and with robust support of tribes and unions that were initially put off by the legislation.
Herrera Beutler says her big push to fight climate change is to sustainably manage forests and use more carbon-friendly products.
Eastern WA wind farm and focus on recreation
The former congresswoman also took aim at Gov. Jay Inslee’s recommendation to max out a 24-mile wind farm project near the Tri-Cities that has drawn sharp criticism.
Earlier this year, the state’s energy facility siting council recommended to Inslee a plan that would eliminate about half the turbines proposed, unless some could be relocated within the project’s boundaries.
But Inslee declined, asking for a change “that appropriately prioritizes the state’s pressing clean energy needs.” The board reconsidered, and earlier this month approved the recommendation in a split 4-3 vote.
“I think that’s actually the wrong approach. That is trying to fit a round peg into a square hole,” Herrera Beutler said, adding that they need community backing when approving large energy projects.
Upthegrove also spoke frequently about expanding recreational opportunities. He believes it’s just one effort that could help curb illegal activity on state lands, such as dumping and shooting.
“For example, if you’re frustrated with people target shooting in areas that are unsafe, why don’t we develop a safe target shooting location. If people are ripping around in their ORVs in spots where it hurts the environment, let’s build another ORV park,” he said.
“Our public lands belong to all the people of the state of Washington, and I want to try to unlock more gates, open up more trails and make sure people can get out and enjoy the outdoors in a healthy, sustainable, natural environment for generations to come,” he later added.
This story was originally published September 26, 2024 at 12:53 PM with the headline "See why the campaign for WA lands commissioner is the most passionate state race."
