Candidate Profile: Vic Bishop For District 48

SEATTLE — The 2020 election is heating up in Washington and there are plenty of races with candidates eager to serve in elected office. Eyes are primarily focused on the presidential election, but voters will also decide the occupants of several state representative and senate seats.

Patch asked candidates to answer questions about their campaigns and will be publishing candidate profiles as election day draws near.

Vic Bishop, a Bellevue resident is running for State Representative District 48 Position 1.

Age: 79
Party affiliation: Republican Party
Family:Married, three adult children (one by marriage), seven grandchildren, 16-28 years
Occupation:Professional Civil Engineer with specialty in Traffic Engineering. BSCE, 1962; California Division of Highways, 1962-1964; MSCE, 1966; Professional license, 1967; The Boeing Co., 1966-1968 (Facilities Planning - traffic planning for the 747 production site in Everett); Owner and Principal of Transportation Planning & Engineering, Inc., 1969-2005; Retired, 2007; active in transportation policy, 1990's through current; Appointed to the Bellevue Transportation Commission, 2012-2020.
Previous elected experience:City of Bellevue Transportation Commission, 2012 - May, 2020.
Family members in government:No.
Campaign website: www.bishopforhouse.com

The single most pressing issue facing our state is _______, and this is what I intend to do about it.

The single most pressing issue (after the pandemic impacts are addressed) is traffic congestion. The entire Puget Sound Region plus multiple areas in other parts of the State of Washington including Spokane, Vancouver, Yakima and many others are suffering from daily traffic congestion on their streets and highways.
Daily traffic congestion wastes 10-60 minutes per day every weekday of the year in most voters lives. This is the most significant Quality of Life issue that we face. Our legislature, and my opponent, believes that transit will solve this issue. Building roads can and will resolve the traffic congestion issue. Transit will not, can not and historically never has relieved congestion anywhere in our country
About 70% of all transportation taxes and fees collected in the Puget Sound Region and District 48 are currently spent on transit capital and operations/maintenance. The combined current and projected ridership of the transit systems in the region carry about 5.5% of the daily trips of the region. Sound Transit projects that it will collect and spend nearly $100,000,000,000.00 ($100 billion - that is 100,000 million dollars) by 2040 and after all of that, the light rail system will carry less than 0.4% of the regions' daily trips.
The over-spending of public resources on the light rail transit system has restricted the appropriate expenditure of funds on road building.
I will bring a voice to the construction of the I-405 Master Plan that was approved by over 30 agencies in 2002, including all cities, counties, transit agencies, the Port of Seattle, and the US DOT, with a construction completion date of this year, 2020. That plan is still the official plan for roads on I-405 in East King County. The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) estimates that the plan is 35% complete in 2020 with an additional 10% funded and under construction for completion in 2024.
I will work within the legislative process to adequately fund the infrastructure needs of the citizens of our state.

What are the critical differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post?

I will actively support road funding with the gas tax (protected by the 18th Amendment to the Washington Constitution to be spent "...for highway purposes...".) and other resources. I will actively work toward completing the fully Approved I-405 Master Plan by 2030 and other critical road projects around the state.
My opponent, Rep. V. Slatter, was appointed to the legislature in 2017, elected in a 2017 Special Election with no Republican opponent and re-elected in 2018 with no opponent at all. Rep. Slatter was assigned to the House Transportation Committee and is the 2nd Vice-Chair of the Transportation Committee. As such, she has recommended and supported extensive funding to support Seattle's transit system and has not supported road funding for the I-405 corridor nor other critical road projects around the state.
I will advocate for solutions that serve the voters of the 48th District (Bellevue, Kirkland and Redmond).

What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job?

I was appointed 3 times to the Bellevue Transportation Commission (first to fill a short completion of a prior commissioners term, and to two full 4 year terms, which I completed before being term limited out) and was elected by my peers to Chair the Commission. I have been a member of the Eastside Transportation Association (ETA) for 30 years, elected Chair for a two year term and am the current Legislative Chair for ETA. I am a member of and Treasurer of the Washington State Good Roads & Transportation Association. I have testified at the legislative Transportation Committees multiple times on transportation related issues (see my testimony at www.bishopforhouse.com on the 'Articles' page).
I have spent my entire professional life, since graduating from high school in 1958, preparing for my service to the people of Washington on the transportation issue.

What steps should state government take to bolster economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic for local businesses?

The state should scrub the budget to delete marginal or obsolete programs, prevent new taxes, delay state employee pay raises, and adopt a budget within our means that will help our local business to get back to full employment as soon as possible. We are in a serious crisis. We cannot 'tax our way out of it'. I am a small businessman that had to operate my business and pay taxes every year with fiscal responsibility. I will bring that experience to the legislature. We will follow the science on the pandemic and open our society as soon as the science allows.

How will you address the calls for racial justice and police reform?

I will call for racial justice in the state and local agencies and fully fund police departments. I will review agency policies and union contracts for issues that prevent rogue police officers from being terminated for racial bigotry.

How do you think Washington should address the threat posed by climate change?

I think that climate change is inevitable and is a long term issue that is scarcely impacted by humans. The geologists have shown that there was 5,000 vertical feet of ice as a glacier right here in the Puget Sound area 10,000 years ago. I believe that the globe has warmed in those 10,000 years, and has not stopped warming. Nevertheless, I have owned a cabin on Hood Canal that has had extreme high tides reach my post and pier footings since the first year of ownership in 1972. I keep track of NOAA data on sea level. It shows that the sea has risen about 1 inch in the nearly fifty years I have had that vulnerable property. I cannot physically discern the difference from year to year or decade to decade.
If carbon dioxide is changing the global temperature, then I support improvement of our forest management to store more carbon in the trees, change the propulsion of our vehicle fleet to electric and other alternatives, increase our production of hydroelectric and nuclear power and remove the last vintages of coal produced power in and around our state. I am strongly in favor of a solution to climate change that works.
In the interim, the gas tax is by far the best carbon tax that there is. Its merits include: 1.) It allows the consumer to decide how much gas (carbon dioxide) they choose to use; 2.) It is used to reduce congestion on the roads thereby significantly increasing the efficiency of the vehicle by operating at an optimum speed for safety and reduction of carbon dioxide; 3.) It is extremely low cost to collect, as it is collected at the refinery, not the gas pump, and 4.) It is a well known and established method of raising revenues for roads.

List other issues that define your campaign platform:

The legislative process is messy and agonizing. It gets out of normal order when there are not contrary opinions expressed during the process. The current political distribution in Washington is clearly one-sided, with a Democratic Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Democratic majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. I believe it is prudent to have some balance in the political structure in East King County. Every single Representative and Senator in each legislative district that touches the I-405 corridor is a Democrat. I believe that is directly related to why we are 'stuck in traffic'. It is a direct political decision to 'make it so'.

What else would you like voters to know about yourself and your positions?

I am a life-long moderate Republican who has an analytical mind that sees political decisions that are negative to our Quality of Life. I am an advocate for the improvement of the single most significant Quality of Life issue I see in the the 48th District.
The City of Bellevue has for several recent budget cycles identified 'traffic' as the highest identified issue in the City by a professional scientific survey conducted for creation of the next budget. One of the traffic issues is flow through neighborhoods. I declare that improving I-405 is what I call the "Neighborhood Protection Act". Clearly, we all have our 'back door' way of avoiding known congestion areas. That inevitably creates traffic flow and safety issues in our local neighborhood streets as drivers use their back door through our neighborhood. Fixing I-405 per the approved plan will not only reduce congestion on I-405 itself, but also on all of the parallel arterial streets and consequentially, adjacent collector and neighborhood streets.

This article originally appeared on the Redmond Patch