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Chris Mulick has worked for the Herald since 1998 and has served as the statehouse correspondent covering state government and politics since 2000. He works year-round out of the Herald's Olympia bureau on the state Capitol campus. Have a question? Send Chris an e-mail and he'll answer the best questions regularly. |
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A trio of Washington State University alums is leading an awareness campaign to fight the University of Washington’s request for $150 million in public funding to bolster a $300 million renovation of Husky Stadium.
On Thursday WSU alum Mike Bernard, a Bellevue tax consultant, sent out an e-mail to roughly 60 Cougar contacts explaining why they should oppose the request and how to let their governor and legislators know about it.
“College athletics, particularly in the Pac-10, is incredibly competitive. Great facilities are necessary to stay in the game,” Bernard wrote. “We can’t let the UW gain an unfair advantage by pilfering millions of our state tax dollars to build an even grander monument to athletic ineptitude on Lake Washington. The State has better things to do with our money.”
He asked his contacts to pass it on to spread the word.
“That actually works pretty well,” Bernard, who also happens to sit on the Association of Washington Business Board of Directors, said this week of the Cougar e-mail network.
Cougfan.com picked up the story. And Bernard, whose effort is in no way affiliated with the university, says he’s gotten somewhere near 60 e-mails as of Tuesday.
He’s had a little push-back from some UW backers (and some support, too) but “it’s overwhelmingly positive,” Bernard said.
He and a couple fellow alums, Arne Heeden and Glenn Osterhout, came up with the idea. Ideally, Bernard hopes UW’s request is rejected by the Legislature.
But if it isn’t, then he believes WSU should be cut in to the deal for its $70 million renovation of Martin Stadium, which otherwise is being built with private funds.
“Yeah, we should be cut in because then it becomes a competitiveness issue,” he said.
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