Sharon Shewmake - An Economist Walks into the Legislature
Opening Welcome:
President Paul rang in the meeting at 12:30PM. In his opening comments, he cited a poem about happiness, focusing on being happy in the moment. He also noted that there will be no meeting next Monday because of the boat excursion to Sucia Island.
Rick Kaiser provided the music, a stirring piece composed for the Rotary Club of Sebu, Philippines.
Paula McCandlis gave the invocation. She noted that this is the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Loving vs. Virginia, which overturned restrictions on interracial marriage. She compared this with the current struggle for LGBTQ+ rights.
Guests:
Steve Ban introduced our speaker, State Senator Sharon Shewmake
Mark Knittel introduced Jessica Wolf.
John Moffat brought Bob Kunzel.
Mike Plenkovich introduced David Korb and Paul Pelot.
Shauna Naf brought her mother, Sue Parsons.
Jan Marchbanks introduced former member and her nephew, Aaron Booker and his son Augustus Booker.
Members on Zoom: Steve Hager, Loch Trimingham and Monty McAllister
Shauna Naf announced that she needs help from Club members with her many Club responsibilities, including staffing the Ski-to-Sea booth at the finish area, Student of the Month program, Members Recognition, and putting on a RCOB public event each month.
Roland Trenouth announced that the Meal Packing project had achieved its goal of raising enough money to fund 30,000 meals! However, 14 more people are needed to help pack those meals on April 22. Also, 7-9 people are needed to set up the evening before. See Roland or Marty Haines for details.
John Moffat, our Program Director starting July 1, asked members to contact him with ideas for speakers for the coming Rotary year, including considering giving talks themselves.
Steve Ban introduced today’s speaker, state senator Sharon Shewmake, who titled her talk An Economist Goes to the Legislature. Sharon was educated at Duke University, UC Davis and Vanderbilt University. She has been an economics professor at WWU since 2013. She served in the Washington state House of Representatives from 2019 - 2023 and then was elected to the state senate. Her four plus years in the legislature have been quite an education, but also quite rewarding, developing new relationships with people all over Whatcom County.
She described economics as the study of choice and her focus at Western has been to explore how economic research can help to guide public policy. In her presentation, she initially focused on abortion policy, a clearly controversial topic. She talked about efforts to reduce abortions, by providing easy access to birth control and sex education vs. policies that restrict or ban access to abortion. There are multiple problems in assessing outcomes, since the communities and populations may not be comparable. However, researchers were able to develop strategies for comparing outcomes for women in different comparable communities before and after the Supreme court’s decision in Roe v. Wade. These comparisons clearly showed that allowing abortion had increased women’s financial health, while later partial or complete bans caused greater financial hardship for women.
Of all the issues facing the legislature, she has focused on the shortage of housing and the rise in homelessness. She was able to show an inverse exponential relationship between the shortage of housing and the rise in homelessness. She discussed various ways the legislature could change policy to promote construction of more housing and reduce the cost of building. Her talk was so packed with information that there was no time for Q&A. President Paul suggested that perhaps we could invite her back for questions.
Closing:
President Paul thanked the many members who helped with the meeting and asked that everyone help with the cleanup. He rang us to adjournment at 1:35PM.
RCOB apparel, including polo shirts, dress shirts, vests and hats is now available. These are items that every Club member simply must have in his/her wardrobe! Besides looking great, Club members will be contributing to branding for the RCOB as well as supporting our Club's Foundation, which will receive part of the proceeds.
Click on the button below for the the clothing catalogue, with the Order Form on the last page. Fill out the order form, turn it into Vinson Latimore at a meeting or email a scanned copy to embroidery@choicesscrubs.com.
