Honorable __________,
Thanks for your hard work serving our area. I'm sure you get a lot of letters with all kinds of different attitudes and I want to tell you first and foremost that I am grateful for your service to our community. I recognize that in your legislative work you have to regularly make difficult decisions and I appreciate the effort you take to consider the tradeoffs in each case. I especially want to thank you for your much-needed increase in funding this year for education.
As you know, we've witnessed a significant amount of pain and division in our local community as a result of the legislature's insufficient funding of education. It's really been difficult to watch and experience.
But, in many ways, it's opened our community's eyes. We have learned a lot about how education funding works and we've become knowledgeable about the McCleary Decision, where our state Supreme justices ruled that the legislature is not meeting its paramount constitutional duty and that "ample funding for basic education must be accomplished by means of dependable and regular tax sources."
I'd like you to know that education is very important to me and to our community. Of the many things that our tax dollars go towards, education is at the top of the list of things that I am very pleased to be paying taxes in order to fund.
I understand that in order to create the best education system possible for Washington state, it may be likely that additional taxes are necessary. I'm writing you to tell you that if a slight increase in taxes makes it more possible to fund high quality education in our state, I'm all in favor.
My hope is that this note of support in some small way helps provides you with the courage necessary to make these difficult decisions, knowing that we as your community are behind you.
Thank you very sincerely.