When she walked out of a half-hour meeting with Governor Jay Inslee earlier this month, Washington commissioner of public lands Hilary Franz turned to her staff and whispered: “Am I threatening? Am I intimidating to you?”
Then Franz, ever the happy warrior, burst into laughter for the 400th time that day.
Lately she’s been lobbying intensely for a bill that implements a 20-year forest health plan and a 10-year wildland fire protection plan recently released by her Department of Natural Resources (DNR). The plans are the first of their kind from the agency, and together they provide a long-awaited blueprint for how to tackle increasingly damaging wildfires ravaging the state.
If the governor signs the bill, it will be a huge victory for the trees, for a lot of stressed out firefighters, and for all of our lungs. It also won’t hurt Franz’s campaign for a second term.
