LETTER OF THE WEEK
State health care funding cuts imperil Skagit hospital, services — write your legislator!
Editor,
As Chair of the Board of Commissioners for Public Hospital District #1, I want to bring to the community’s attention the significant impact that major cuts to health care funding will have on Skagit Regional Health. Washington state lawmakers are grappling with a substantial budget gap and we appreciate their challenges. However, their proposal to impose further cuts and new taxes on hospitals will have serious consequences for patient care and community access to essential health services.
Over the past several years, Skagit Regional Health has made great strides in improving health care access while enhancing efficiency and reducing costs. These efforts have allowed us to navigate the financial challenges of the post-pandemic landscape, but we are operating on razor-thin margins. Despite our best efforts, continued reductions in reimbursement rates threaten our ability to sustain these advancements.
As wages, benefits and supply chain costs continue to rise, the current financial model becomes increasingly unsustainable. The proposed additional cuts and taxes on hospitals would have devastating effects — not just on our organization but, more importantly, on patients and families. If enacted, these measures could force us to reduce or even eliminate critical services. Such reductions could also affect our more than 3,300 employees, and as the largest employer in Skagit County, the economic impact on our region could be substantial.
Many hospitals in Washington are already in financial distress and further cuts could push some over the edge to closure. Ultimately, these proposals will harm the very people they intend to serve. We urge our community to raise their voices and contact lawmakers to protect access to local health care services. Your voice can make a difference.
Frie Burton, chair, Board of Commissioners
Public Hospital District 1
Editor,
America, you have made a huge mistake!
Trump’s campaign promises vs. reality:
Immigration
Promises: “I will deport millions of illegal alien violent criminals.”
Reality: Trump does not have the resources to carry this out. Deportations of the unlucky few are publicized, foreign prisons utilized, due process and individual rights ignored.
The economy
Promises: “I will lower the cost of eggs on day one. Tariffs will make us rich. The economy and stock market will soar.”
Reality: Egg prices remain high. Tariffs will be paid by U.S. consumers, causing more inflation. Stock prices and retirement savings have shrunk.
World peace
Promises: “I will stop the war in Ukraine on day one.”
Reality: Trump conceded territory and membership in NATO to Putin before negotiations even began. There is no cease-fire, nor current peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. Trump now threatens to invade Greenland, Panama, Gaza and annex Canada. He has not ruled out the use of force.
Government reform
Promises: “I will eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in government.”
Reality: Elon Musk, an unelected private citizen, has been handed the keys to your private information. “DOGE” has fired millions of civil servants without cause. Musk’s contracts in billions with the U.S. remain untouched and he seeks to secure even more contracts paid by U.S. taxpayers.
Medicaid, Social Security
Promises: “I won’t touch Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid”
Reality: Offices have been closed and civil servants fired. Services are severely cut back.
Wake up, America! You have been duped!
Nancy K. Sheng
Bellingham
Editor,
As Congress debates the federal budget, proposed Medicaid cuts threaten the health and stability of thousands in Whatcom County — especially those living with mental illness.
More than 58,000 local residents rely on Medicaid. Over 11,000 depend on it for mental health services such as therapy, medications and crisis care. Without it, many would lose access to the support they need to stay housed, employed and connected.
At the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Whatcom, we see this need every day. We provide free peer-led support groups, education classes, school outreach, and crisis navigation for individuals and families affected by mental illness. But we can’t replace the vital role Medicaid plays. It is the foundation of our public mental health system.
Cutting Medicaid will only worsen Washington’s mental health crisis. More people will end up in emergency rooms, hospitals or jails. These outcomes are more expensive and far less humane.
We urge readers to contact U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen and Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell today. Tell them to protect Medicaid in the federal budget and reject harmful cuts that would devastate our community’s health and safety.
Mental health is health care. Medicaid makes recovery possible for thousands in Whatcom County. Let’s protect it.
Brian Estes
Treasurer and past president, Board of Directors, NAMI Whatcom
Editor,
A preventable disaster is quietly unfolding near Fairhaven Park, where a city-created floodplain now threatens over 60 homes. This isn’t an act of nature — it’s the result of poor planning and the silencing of resident voices.
For years, concerned neighbors have documented the filling of wetlands and the resulting stormwater surge funneled into undersized infrastructure — particularly the culvert at 221 Chuckanut Drive N. This culvert now acts as a dam during heavy rain, pushing water into homes along Larrabee Creek. What was once safe, natural floodplain has been erased by development approved without adequate drainage protections.
It is unacceptable that the city’s own actions — issuing permits, ignoring upstream impacts and failing to address aging culverts — are now placing elders, working families and fixed-income residents in harm’s way.
We are calling on the City of Bellingham and the Department of Ecology to investigate this situation, not just as a planning failure, but as a matter of public safety and environmental justice. These homes and the creek ecosystem deserve protection — not bureaucratic shrugs.
This is not just about our neighborhood. It is about whether we value our urban watersheds, whether we protect vulnerable populations, and whether we learn from past mistakes before the next storm washes more than mud into our lives.
Please help amplify our call for action before it’s too late.
Susan Deblasio
Fairhaven
Editor,
When disasters occur anywhere in the world, American aid and rescue workers are usually first on the scene to render assistance. Sadly, we were missing in the Myanmar and Thailand earthquake zone, because the Trump administration was at the same time busy firing the remaining staff of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the lead American disaster response agency. Termination notices went out just hours after the earthquake.
Normally, USAID would send what’s called a DART team, a disaster assistance response team, as well as search and rescue teams from Los Angeles County and Fairfax, Virginia. This time we didn’t. In addition, USAID has for decades used regional hubs worldwide stocked with rescue equipment and supplies for quick-response activities. In this instance, they sat unused during the 72-hour critical response window.
Teams from Russia, China, India, Vietnam and other countries were immediately deployed, placing Beijing in the forefront of international rescue efforts, from which, for the first time, the United States was absent. China announced $14 million in assistance for Myanmar, including 1,200 tents, 8,000 blankets and 40,000 first aid kits. A team of 118 Chinese rescuers arrived in the country two days after the earthquake, with six rescue dogs and vehicles. Russia sent 20 rescuers, including dog handlers and drone operators, as well as three planes, including an airmobile hospital.
We were painfully and embarrassingly absent, although the U.S. Embassy, in a post on X, promised $2 million in aid through American non-government humanitarian assistance organizations.
Curt Wolters
Bellingham
Editor,
I just read in CDN about a local renter and her problems with her landlord, who happened to be Bellingham City Council member Dan Hammill (CDN, March 25, 2025). The health problems caused by mold in Hammill’s rental property to a local RN were well documented by her, and Hammill was notified of the issue well before she was forced to move out for her physical well-being.
I was outraged to read in your article Hammill’s statement that there was a difference between his role as a landlord in Bellingham and his role as a city council member, especially as he seemed to support tenants’ rights to safe housing through our local rental inspection program.
How could he rationalize ignoring such a dangerous situation, which he had responsibility as a property owner to remedy? Why is the city council not condemning such behavior from one of their members? As is too often the case in today’s politics, there is hypocrisy: feigning concern for the health and well-being of members of our community while refusing to deal with a dangerous situation for which one is legally and morally responsible. Hammill should be removed from city council.
Courtenay Chadwell-Gatz
Bellingham
Editor,
Once again, the CDN has read my mind. With concerns over funding for libraries recently in my thoughts, this morning I awoke to Julia Tellman’s excellent article (CDN, April 3, 2025) regarding Trump’s cuts to libraries. Given the fact that our own dear Whatcom County Library System is requesting a long-overdue levy lid lift this coming August, it seems time to publicly call attention to the plight of this vital public service.
Residents of our county might understandably take our own library system for granted since our library services touch nearly every part of our lives: in addition to books, magazines, CDs and other circulation materials they offer digital services for folks unable to leave the house, bookmobiles for remote locations, public programs on timely topics, sponsor book groups and knitting groups, internet and computer access, and a host of other services that bring people together.
Our county libraries have cultural liaison staff positions filled by highly talented individuals responsible for reaching out to historically underserved members of our library community. In our own Deming Library, this position develops programs for our neighbors, the Nooksack Indian Tribe; the focus varies across areas. These positions are important because diversity and inclusion are important.
So here is the point: Support our libraries, support the levy lid lift in August with your vote, volunteer at your library, donate time and/or money to Friends groups. There is no better time than the present to show support for this vital public service. And, for the sake of our children, remember that books are the best furniture.
Leaf Schumann
Alger
Editor,
The DOGE chainsaw has severely damaged the work of specialist scientists few of us are even aware of.
Chaos exists for these plant scientists. Three hundred scientists were terminated; a court order has reinstated them, but they are uncertain whether or not they can resume work at the Department of Agriculture’s National Plant Germplasm System. (Germplasm is more commonly known as the genetic resources of a plant).
These seed banks have been in existence since 1898, and we now have 22 seed bank stations nationwide. The scientists are collectively responsible for 60,000 genetically unique lines of wheat and 200 crop species. Even when stored appropriately for that species, they are not viable forever, and the stock has to be rejuvenated. Amazingly, the genetic composition of a seed can be changed to overcome disease.
Of interest to Washingtonians, apple species are maintained as trees, because apples cannot be started from seed. East of the Cascades, our commercial orchards produce apples eaten nationwide, but here on the west side, efforts have been made to maintain specialty heritage apples.
Seed banks provide protection and security for both the farmer and the consumer (you). If our wheat crops fail due to dysfunctional seed banks, we can neither eat bread or cake. Tell that to Marie Antoinette!
Carole Jacobson
Bellingham
Editor,
I was married to a Border Patrol agent for almost 30 years. Never in that time when he was doing his job did he wear a mask. While arresting undocumented people and processing them, never sending them to our new prisons, did he or his fellow agents wear masks. I have a few questions: Why are the ICE agents covering their faces? Are they afraid? Are they ashamed? And; my biggest question is: Are they all ICE agents?
We need to be able to ask these questions and we need to have answers.
J. Butler
Bellingham
Editor,
While the large gathering of anti-Trump folks down at City Hall on Saturday was a nice show of community disagreement with the Trump administration, I didn’t see much gut-level outrage at the frightening departure from the rule of law, or the irreverence for the Constitution and long-held American principles of integrity.
The group Indivisible, and the mostly white crowd, seemed to think protesting, writing weak-kneed, ineffective representatives is going to make this horror show go away from the comfort of home.
The Emancipation of slaves and the defeat of Nazi Germany were not solved by protest.
The fear is that a different response would only give MAGA what they want, but as long as the new fascists are not made to fear for their own well-being, or that of their storm troopers, they will not be moved by protest signs, no matter how prolific or clever.
Michael Waite
Sedro-Woolley
Letters to the Editor are published online Wednesdays; a selection is published in print Fridays. Send to letters@cascadiadaily.com by 10 a.m. Tuesdays. Rules: Maximum 250 words, be civil, have a point and make it clearly. Preference is given to letters about local subjects. CDN reserves the right to reject letters or edit for length, clarity, grammar and style, or removal of personal attacks or offensive content. Letters must include an address/phone number to verify the writer's identity (not for publication).
Guest writer: Meridian School District has always stepped up; time to do it again