WEATHER
State Rep. Pat Lantz says 12 years is enough.
The 26th District Democrat from Raft Island announced this week that she would not seek a seventh term in the state Legislature.
“For more than a decade, I’ve been part of the solution,” she said Sunday. “Now I want to spend some time with my husband (John, who retired last year.)”
Lantz said she still has lots of energy for public life and many projects to finish before leaving office next January.
“I just have the opportunity now to do good things without having to campaign,” she said. “I’m overjoyed with not having to campaign this year.”
The former private practice lawyer, who focused on land use and immigration law, made her decision to step down in December. She delayed an announcement to avoid lame-duck status during the 2008 session, which concludes this week.
She said she’s stepping down for strictly personal reasons.
“Last Saturday, John took our grand-daughters up skiing, and I was toiling away in the dark hole of the state Legislature in Olympia,” she said. “I would have rather been skiing.”
Lantz recently turned 70, and Gov. Christine Gregoire attended her surprise birthday party in the capitol city.
Lantz said she toyed with the idea of waiting until she had completed several public projects, but she realized that issues go on — and often never have clear conclusions.
“You can’t wait until you’ve finished things,” she said. “Things are never finished.”
Lantz’s 26th District colleagues, Rep. Larry Seaquist and Sen. Derek Kilmer, both Gig Harbor democrats, both said Lantz has been an advocate for the people she represents.
“Pat is a one-woman Legislature,” Seaquist said wrote in an e-mail Monday. “When we are working bills on the floor, we can expect that every couple of hours Pat will stand up to introduce yet another improvement to Washington’s laws.
“Invariably, she has solved some long-standing inequity in the law, usually by gathering together the disputing parties, finding common ground, and writing a new statute that further enshrines justice and fair play.”
Seaquist added that Lantz has a gift for explaining complex bills simply to those without legal training.
Kilmer said Lantz served perhaps her most important role as the chair of the House Judiciary Committee.
“More than any legislator in Olympia, Pat has embraced the concept of liberty and justice for all and has been steadfast in ensuring that our state has a judicial system that respects that notion,” Kilmer wrote in an e-mail.
Seaquist added that while bills usually involved complex legal matters, Lantz has “a unique gift for explaining the matter in a way that we non-lawyers can understand.”
Lantz, born in Auburn, received a bachelor of arts degree in International Relations from Stanford University and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Puget Sound School of Law.
Since her election to the House in 1997, she has served as the chair of the Judiciary Committee and on the subcommittee on Appropriations, General Government and Audit Review. She has served on more than a dozen select committees dealing with legal and educational issues.
Lantz counts the redirecting of the new Narrows bridge project from a private to a public project as one of the highlights of her career.
“It saved us over $400 million in the cost of bonds and established the standards for collecting and using the tolls,” she said.
It also created the Citizen Advisory Committee, which makes recommendations to the state Transportation Commission on proposed changes in toll rates.
Lantz entered the Legislature when the bridge project was just beginning and saw it from start to finish. She said she’s particularly proud of several significant changes she made in the project, including the movement to maintain trees and greenbelt on the Gig Harbor side.
“I’ve been out there in the front all along,” she said. “The bridge has defined the last decade of my public office.”
Lantz sees her legacy as a “steady, solid, consistent” support for improvements in the justice system. While many of her efforts aren’t readily apparent to the general public, the legal community acknowledges her contribution as greater than the previous 30-40 years.
She’s also received several awards from law-related associations over the years.
“Every year, I’ve had four to five significant bills and attached funding to ensure we have equal justice for all,” she said.
Her personal satisfaction, however, has come in the areas of arts and culture, as well as education.
Lantz has always maintained there is more to education than reading and computation, and she’s pushed hard for arts education.
She was the prime initiator of classroom-based assessments.
Lantz led the fight to keep the state library and to fund KPLU, the popular FM radio station at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma.
She was instrumental in creating the state Poet Laureate position last year, which she notes was a five-year battle. The first poet laureate, Sam Green, is coming to the Gig Harbor library on May 1.
Some major issues emerged during each of her 12 years in the House that absorbed her, and which she kept nurturing until the next one appeared. She said as a legislator acquires more seniority and becomes more skilled at moving legislation, more of those issues come their way.
“How do you trace your influence over that period of time?” she asked. “Public office presents the opportunity to do things you never dreamed you’d be able to do.”
And with that comes the heavy burden of responsibility.
“I never met a colleague who didn’t have the intent to do right,” she said.
During her six terms, Lantz had hoped to pass a bill that would have funded the restoration and preservation of historic vessels, such as the Gig Harbor fishing boat, Shenandoah, and has done more to change the “dreadful, regressive” state tax system.
But she said almost all issues — for example, taxes and the health care system — need to be driven by grassroots movements.
“We need people to move us (the legislature) forward,” she said. “Legislators can’t do anything significant until the public is willing to embrace new paradigms.”
While she thinks it will be difficult to leave public life, she already has plans to spend a month kayaking in the Queen Charlottes Island and travel in Turkey.
Lantz is also planning to take up writing poetry.
“I’ve been inspired by the form over the last few years as a good way to express myself,” she said.
Community activities
State Rep. Pat Lantz, D-Raft Island, announced this week that she will not seek a seventh term.Here is a list of the community leadership positions she’s held:
• Member, Kitsap County Law and Justice Advisory Council
• Member, Pierce County Law and Justice Council
• Member, Board of Directors, Communities in Schools of Peninsula
• Co-founder and past president, City Club of Tacoma
• Founder, Peninsula Heritage Land Trust
• Former trustee, Pierce County Library District
• Member, Advisory Board, Women of Vision of Tacoma
• Co-Chair, Heritage Caucus, 2003
• Board member, Washington Wildlife and Recreation Coalition, 2003
• Other elected office: Director, Peninsula Light Co., 1991-1997.
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