My Priorities
for the 47th.

This session, Olympia passed the largest tax increase in state history in a single legislative session: B&O increases, a new gas tax, expanded estate taxes, long-term care payroll withholding, and now an income tax layered on top of all of it.

Washington has always had a sales tax and no income tax. That distinction matters. Layering a new income tax on top of an existing sales tax — rather than actually restructuring the system — is a deliberate choice, and it is the wrong one. It does not simplify anything. It just adds another burden on families who are already stretched thin.

Washington voters have rejected an income tax ten times. They deserve the opportunity to weigh in on this one, too.

South King County families are being squeezed from every direction at once. Grocery bills are up. A new gas tax hits commuters in a district where the average drive to work is 31 minutes and transit alternatives are limited. Property assessments keep climbing. These costs are not landing in isolation — they are landing simultaneously on families who are already stretched thin.

Olympia does not have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem. The state budget has more than doubled in the last decade, and it is still not enough. That trajectory is unsustainable — and the people paying for it are 47th District families.

Kristina has fought for spending discipline at the Covington council table for six years. She will bring that same fight to Olympia.

For Kristina, public safety is personal.

On the Covington City Council, she backed her commitment with action. She fought for fully funded law enforcement and increased officer staffing, taking on rising property crime, retail theft, and officer staffing shortages head-on — and backed the resources that helped generate real crime reduction results for Covington families.

Real public safety requires two things working together: visible, well-funded law enforcement and the mental health and addiction treatment resources that address the conditions driving crime in the first place. Both matter. Both will have Kristina's full support in Olympia.

The 47th District is home to the second-largest industrial park on the West Coast — Boeing, Blue Origin, Amazon, and thousands of other employers that provide the family-wage jobs South King County is built on. But it is the small businesses in every neighborhood that form the true economic backbone of this community.

And right now, many of them are telling Kristina the same thing: it costs too much to hire, too much to grow, and too much to navigate a state tax system built against them.

Washington's Business and Occupation tax is one of the most burdensome in the country — taxing gross revenue rather than profit, which means businesses pay even when they are losing money. Recent B&O rate increases and new surcharges have only made it harder. That structure discourages hiring, discourages expansion, and pushes employers to look elsewhere.

A median home price near $650,000 puts homeownership out of reach for too many working families in South King County — including grown children of longtime residents who cannot afford to stay in the communities where they were raised.

The path forward is more housing supply, built in the right places with the infrastructure to support it. Getting there requires permitting reform that cuts red tape and eliminates the duplicative review steps that add cost without improving outcomes. Housing gets built faster and more affordably through market-based incentives — not one-size-fits-all mandates handed down from Olympia that ignore local infrastructure, local needs, and the character of individual communities.

Local communities know their neighborhoods. State government should empower them to solve their own housing challenges, not override their decisions with mandates that treat Covington the same as Seattle.

The average commute in the 47th Legislative District is 31 minutes each way — 20% above the state average. That is not a statistic. That is 31 minutes away from your family, your dinner table, your kids. Every single day.

WSDOT completed a full study of SR-516 with a clear plan to improve safety and traffic flow through five roundabout improvements. State funding to act on it: zero. Meanwhile, transportation dollars keep getting diverted away from the roads our families actually drive — while commutes get longer and infrastructure deteriorates.

South King County sends its tax dollars to Olympia. It is past time Olympia sent real infrastructure investment back.