Fact Check

Rossi Attacks Governor Gregoire on Foster Care to Conceal his Terrible Record
Republican Dino Rossi and his designated attack squad – the BIAW – continue do demonstrate their willingness to say, do, or spend anything to buy Rossi’s way into the Governor’s mansion in November. For weeks, Olympia’s most powerful special interest lobbying group – and the Rossi campaign’s biggest special interest backers – have continued their history of spending millions on misleading attack ads distorting the record of Gov. Gregoire on foster care.

And just yesterday, Rossi himself decided to shamelessly politicize a recent court decision to wade into the discussion over this very serious matter. After attacking the Gov. Gregoire, Rossi said:

Those individual case workers within DSHS carry out what is often a tiring and thankless job, and as governor I’ll be there to support them.  These children who are in state care have nowhere else to go.  We can’t let them down. But Rossi’s empty political rhetoric can’t overcome the dismal record he racked up in his 7 years in Olympia on these issues. In failing to support efforts to improve the system, Republican Dino Rossi was part of the problem. As a state senator, Rossi voted against more than $40 million dollars in funding to improve Washington state’s foster care system, including funding to:

Reduce caseloads
Improve training for foster parents
Provide healthcare for foster parents
Increase the capacity of child placement agencies

The fact is that Gov. Gregoire inherited a broken system – one that Rossi never lifted a finger to fix, and actually voted against improving – and she’s gotten real results to improve the lives of children in foster care. Gov. Gregoire has added $50 million to child welfare funding, hired hundreds of new case workers, and reduced investigation times for serious cases to 24 hours, instead of as many as 10 days when she took office.

Gov. Gregoire has reduced the average caseload ratio from 1:26 down to 1:21, and continues to fight to make it even lower. And while Rossi is quick to applaud a court decision that requires a 1:18 caseload ratio, he refused to support funding that would have brought it down to 1:24 – a level that Gov. Gregoire has already surpassed.
Rossi and the BIAW’s shameless politicization of this very serious issue is just the latest of their relentlessly negative, misleading attacks – designed to obscure Rossi’s terrible record on yet another critical issue.

Rossis Fantasy Transportation Plan = More Traffic, Higher Taxes: Fantasy vs. Reality
Dino Rossi’s transportation “plan” is rooted in fantasy, not in reality.  Full of incomplete information, inaccurate costs, and lack of detail, Rossi’s fantasy “plan” would result in more traffic and higher taxes.  Rossi’s numbers and assumptions are incomplete and in many cases just plain wrong.  Below is a summary of the major errors and false assumptions in Dino Rossi’s transportation “plan.”
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Dino Rossi’s Myths and Lies
Rossi claims: “My first priority as governor will be to restore fiscal responsibility in Olympia.” 

  • Dino Rossi left the state with a multi-billion dollar projected budget deficit when he left the state senate in 2003.  
  • As Chair of the Senate Ways and Means committee, Rossi balanced the budget on the backs of Washington’s children.  Rossi cut funding for teacher pay and class size reduction and referred to children’s healthcare as a “bargaining chip” while he wrote a budget to eliminate healthcare for 40,000 children.

 Rossi claims:  “Recently Gregoire admitted that she supported an income tax.”

  • Already, early in his campaign Rossi is distorting the truth because he knows his own record doesn’t represent the values shared by Washington voters.
  • Rossi’s assertion is patently false. For more information on Governor Gregoire’s fiscal record go to www.chrisgregoire.com.

Rossi claims:  “We can restore fiscal confidence to state government.  I have done it before and I will do it again.”

  • Rossi budget kicked kids off of healthcare and put them into crowded classrooms. He cut funding to reduce class size and cut funding for increasing teacher pay. 
  • There is never a good time to shortchange our investments in education or in healthcare coverage for our children, but that is exactly what Dino Rossi did as chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee.
  • We can’t trust Dino Rossi to prioritize education or healthcare for our children. 

Rossi claims:  “In just three years, Christine Gregoire has burned through a $2.1 billion budget surplus and turned it into a budget deficit of $2.4 billion.”

  • Rossi’s playing with numbers because he doesn’t want to face the facts.
  • As chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee Rossi left a multi-billion dollar projected budget deficit in the lap of incoming Governor Chris Gregoire.   Rossi’s 2003 budget projected a deficit of $5.5 billion by 2009, sinking the state further and further into the red.
  • Governor Gregoire has eliminated Rossi’s deficit, balanced the budget and set aside over $800 million in reserves.

Rossi claims: “My third priority is to fix our deteriorating transportation system.”

  • In March, Dino Rossi released a fantasy transportation plan that was referred to as “complete silliness” by independent experts.
  • As a state senator, Dino Rossi stood in the way of responsible investments to reduce congestion and replace failing, unsafe bridges.  He was a major roadblock to transportation improvements as a state senator from 1997-2003. 
  • Rossi has a long record of hostility toward the expansion of public transit in the Puget Sound region, going so far as to sponsor a bill to eliminate Sound Transit and its light rail project.
  • Rossi refused to take a stand on initiative 912, which would have cancelled hundreds of critical highway projects across the state in 2005 if it had passed.
  • Rossi also refused to take a stand on Proposition One, the Roads and Transit measure that appeared on the 2007 ballot in King, Pierce and Snohomish Counties.

Rossi claims:  “State government isn’t accountable or competent.  We need to treat citizens like customers for a change.”

In February, the independent Pew Center on the States gave Washington an A- for management and performance, putting the state first (with Utah and Virginia) on its ranking. 

“Washington has been well managed during challenging economic circumstances, delivering strong services to the public and effectively managing the state’s dollars,” said Susan Urahn, managing director of the Pew Center on the States.

Within the overall A- grade, Washington earned:

  • A- in how it manages money;
  • A- for recruiting and retaining high-qualified employees;
  • A- for how it manages and provides information to the people.