Editor,

I recently saw some negative mail smearing Washington Senate candidate Angie Homola, photoshopped picture, you know the genre. Curious about the nasty-sounding “record” it portrayed, I did some digging.

One typical example: “Before she was removed as an Island County commissioner, Homola voted 13 times to raise taxes, including property taxes.” Wow, was she a “tax and spend” liberal run out of town on a rail?

Her record, I found, paints an opposite picture. She indeed voted, with her colleagues, for the meager, below-inflation 1 percent annual tax increases permitted statewide by the strangling Tim Eyeman initiative. Governments use it to try to keep up with rising costs for asphalt, vaccines, deputy cars, courts, etc.

The “property tax?” The popular Conservation Futures Fund, a tiny percent securing farm and ag land, aquifer recharge, etc. for generations.

Angie’s fiscal work: carefully cutting 20 percent from the county’s expense ledger to fix a budgeting train wreck from former commissioners’ intense reliance on building new houses for taxes. Yet, she preserved services, saving public safety also.

She lost reelection by a handful of votes — there were nasty attacks like this one. Hardly a “removal.”

“Who tars and distorts like this?” I asked. A little byline says: “Government Leadership Council,” sounds uplifting, but alas, no. It is a PAC-like fund, bulging with cash from the Koch brothers, oil companies, big banks, payday lenders and other high rollers.

This smear benefits Barbara Bailey, so I looked at Barbara’s personal political war chest and it has, surprise, surprise, many of the same supporters.

A signal from her could have stopped this tarring approach, yet nothing but “plausible denial.” Angie would refuse money from a smearing supporter like that.

I’ll vote for Angie who will work hard for, and be truthful with, us real people.

Laurie Riley

Freeland