Governor Christine Gregoire (in the picture with E-board members Zeek Green and Holly Hulscher) signed our pledge in 2004.
Governor Christine Gregoire grew up on a small farm in Auburn, at the time a rural community, helping care for the crops and livestock and working as a cook in town. She attended the University of Washington, graduating in 1969 with a teaching certificate and a bachelor's degree in speech and sociology.
Governor Gregoire attended law school at Gonzaga University in Spokane, graduating in 1977, and went to work as an assistant attorney general in the office of state Attorney General Slade Gorton, a Republican. As an assistant attorney general, Gregoire concentrated on child-abuse cases, coordinating with social workers to get children removed from abusive family situations and placed with relatives or foster homes.
She served as the director of the Washington Department of Ecology from 1988 until 1992, when she was first elected attorney general, a post to which she was twice re-elected. While Ecology director she negotiated a triparty agreement in 1989 with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy to clean up waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
Chris Gregoire was elected to three terms as attorney general and was the first woman to be elected to the position in Washington. During her time in office, she worked on children's issues, reformed the state's juvenile system, led an effort to strengthen identity theft victims' rights, worked to pass a new ethics
law for state government and to find alternatives to litigation in resolving legal disputes. Her office, in conjunction with other state attorneys general, investigated and sued drug companies for allegedly violating antitrust laws concerning manipulation of the price and availability of prescription drugs.
Gregoire's first legislative session, running 105 days from January 9, 2005 to April 24, 2005, produced nearly 500 pieces of legislation.
Bills passed in this session signed by Gregoire include:
the creation of a billion-dollar life sciences discovery fund;
requiring new public buildings meet environmental standards for energy efficiency and water conservation (also known as green buildings);
providing cost of living pay raises for teachers;
reinstating the estate tax;
funding voter Initiative 728 to reduce class sizes;
adding more seats at Washington state colleges and universities;
requiring health insurers to give equal treatment to mental disorders.
Christine Gregoire has been a consistent defender of workers' rights and continues to fight to improve the lives of Washingtons' working families.