TALKING THE VALLEY with District 4 Representative Suzanne Schmidt

The 4th District encompasses much of the Spokane Valley, Liberty Lake, Millwood and some of the surrounding areas such as the popular Green Bluff farm area. There is a crowded race for the district’s Position 2 Representative Seat and the Senate Seat with Senator Mike Padden stepping down. However, Position 1 is held firmly by the incumbent Republican Representative Suzanne Schmidt who is just finishing her first term and is also a former Spokane Valley City Councilmember. She has a long history in the Spokane region, having lived in the valley since the late 1990s and her family has continued to live in the area with her children, who are now grown, and grandchildren. She has served time as the President and CEO of Associated Builders and Contractors Inland Pacific Chapter and in that capacity worked with local and state legislators to fight against tax increases. Schmidt was a big player in getting builders and contractors back to work during the mandated COVID shutdown of construction projects before her time in the legislature.

“My phone was ringing fourteen or sixteen hours a day. I would be on the phone with one person, and I could see my voicemail just filling up because everybody was just panicked like what are we going to do? How are we going to make it through this?” Schmidt worked with many local and statewide organizations to stakeholders with the governor’s office and the legislature to allow contractors to get back to work safely. “A lot of them have second mortgages on their homes to start their business and the Governor with the stroke of a pen shut their business down. With another stroke of the pen, he was able to let them come back to work.”

Schmidt was a single mom of two earlier in her life so affordable and accessible childcare is a very top-of-mind issue for her as the Ranking Member on the Labor and Workforce Standards Committee.

“Before I moved to Spokane, I was a single mom. So, I know how hard it is to make a living and pay for daycare. Back then it was not as expensive as it is now and that’s what I’m hearing from people that it's anywhere from $1,500 to $2,000 a month,”

Schmidt also elaborated on how she worked to get a proviso for a study on childcare into the state budget.

“Looking at not only what’s available, but also how do we promote that as a career and to get people started in childcare. Because we’ve really regulated it so harshly that a lot of the in-home daycares went away.”

She has advocated for money to the Boys and Girls Clubs and various other organizations to help her constituents find reliable organizations for their childcare.

Representative Schmidt was very excited to share some of the infrastructure work happening in the valley including a new performing arts and convention center currently being constructed as well as money she helped acquire to work on regrading railroad lines along some major transit corridors. She is continuously advocating for transportation issues as a member of the House Transportation Committee.

We talked about housing issues and especially the shortage of single-family homes and how Spokane County is working towards solutions in their growth management planning.

“We do need to address the housing in the valley. At least from what I’m hearing when I was door-belling is that people would rather see condominiums, town houses and duplexes rather than the multi-family apartments. Have something that they could buy, that they could own and then move up into another home. So, I think that’s something we need to look at as we look at the GME.”

Representative Schmidt hopes to accomplish a lot when it comes to the state's homelessness issues as well as address her constituents’ safety in their neighborhoods by not just increasing funding for law enforcement but helping to pass legislation to allow first responders to do their jobs more effectively.

Because she is a a newer elected official, I asked her who some of her mentors have been in the legislature and she was very quick to mention District 2 Representative Andrew Barkis as a huge help as well as Representative Jake Fey from District 27, and Representative April Connors from District 8.

As I said at the start of this article, District 4 will be a very crowded race for the other representative seat with six candidates. Schmidt’s current seatmate is running for the vacated senate seat in a field with several other candidates. No endorsements from Schmidt, but she will not be supporting her seatmate in his campaign. Although District 4 is a safe district for Republicans there will be two new faces heading to Olympia in January with Schmidt.