Inslee’s Edicts Are Not Saving Lives — They’re Killing Businesses

Ashley Varner
August 25, 2020

This week, your Freedom Foundation is taking to cable television in Eastern Washington to expose the damage Gov. Jay Inslee’s shutdown order is doing to businesses and livelihoods by highlighting cousins Robert and Burke Bordner, owners of Slidewaters, the popular Lake Chelan water park.

Gov. Inslee’s Department of Labor and Industries pursued Slidewaters to make an example of the owners, fined them $9,000 and forced them to close for the season on July 20 — resulting in the layoff of 150 employees, aged 16 to 24.

“How is it possible that in a nine-acre park, I cannot have anyone here in a safe manner?” asks Slidewaters owner Robert Bordner. “The only thing unhealthy about this situation is Gov. Jay Inslee’s overreaching arm to shut us down.

“And that is what we are fighting for,” Bordner said. “To overrule a government that is trying to take over the lives of American citizens for their own benefit and for their own plans.”

Please watch this video, share it with your friends, and on your social media.

- COVID-19, Washington
, COVID-19, Jay Inslee, Slidewaters

Ashley Varner

Vice President of Communication and Federal Affairs

Ashley Varner brings a variety of public affairs experience and a tough skin to the Freedom Foundation team. Prior to joining the Freedom Foundation, Ashley spent many exciting, turbulent and wonderful years as a media spokesperson and state government liaison at the National Rifle Association. Following her tenure at the NRA, Ashley joined the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), where she worked with state and local lawmakers across the country on a diverse set of policy and communications issues. A grassroots activist from a young age, Ashley joined her first of many political campaigns before graduating high school and organized protests across the street from her own professors at the University of Missouri. When not rabble-rousing against Big Government, Ashley enjoys cooking, mafia movies, and has seen most of the 1970s and 80s classic rock bands still on tour. She loves the Chiefs, hopes someday she can love her Mizzou Tigers again, and she was a Kansas City Royals fan and Patriot Act opponent before either was cool.