A Lakewood police officer will vie this year for the position currently held by state Rep. Tami Green.

Brian Wurts, president of the Lakewood Police Independent Guild, made the announcement today.

“I am running because the common citizen needs a common sense voice in Olympia,” said Wurts, a Republican from Lakewood, in a prepared statement. “Each session we hear the same thing about our budget which is proven to be unsustainable. Laws and administrative policies that hurt the taxpayers and businesses are passed with no regard for the negative outcomes.”

Wurts has been a police officer some 14 years. As president of the police guild, he’s also been outspoken on various issues, particularly after Maurice Clemmons gunned down four Lakewood police officers at a coffee shop Nov. 29.

He will face Green, a Lakewood Democrat who first won the seat in 2004.

Another Republican, University Place School Board member Kent Keel, announced he was also running for Green’s seat last month.

Here is Wurts’s full statement:

I am announcing my candidacy for the House of Representatives in position #2 in the 28th district as the Republican I am. I am running because the common citizen needs a common sense voice in Olympia. Each session we hear the same thing about our budget which is proven to be unsustainable. Laws and administrative policies that hurt the taxpayers and businesses are passed with no regard for the negative outcomes.

I will be running as a candidate that has hit his head against the wall too long in Olympia and bring real reform. I will be running as a candidate who understands the State must stop stepping on the oxygen tube that feeds our small businesses which feed our State economy. We must be a State importer of jobs that create revenue, not the other way around. The State cannot take anymore from us; our government must become much smaller and focus on the priorities of State government. We cannot allow people who have every ability to work to sit at home and collect a check from the State which is pulled right out of our pockets. We cannot afford it and we should not pay for it. Our venerable population who cannot work must be protected and the dollars saved should make sure we have a real safety net for those who truly need it.

I will also focus on the funding of our education system. We must follow the dollars to the children sitting in the classroom and make sure they get there before another administrator gets a raise, creates more positions that have nothing to do with teaching fundamental reading, writing, math, and the real world problem solving that our job market must have in the future. I will be an advocate of teacher and administrator evaluations. Those who want to teach and have the ability to do so should be praised; those who do not should find a new line of work. Our children are far too valuable to allow any more bickering on this issue.

As a Lakewood Police Officer I have served the community I was born and raised in and still live here today. When I entered this career fourteen years ago I would have never thought we could be sitting down for coffee doing reports and be assassinated on a Sunday morning. I will fight until I take my last breath to hold the violent people in society accountable and kept where they belong, serving the sentences the judge imposed after a jury found them guilty. Five percent of the people commit the majority of all crime, I see it every day. The victims of these crimes must have a real advocate for them, the cost to the criminal justice system acting as a revolving door is remarkable and completely unnecessary. We must focus on this small percent that prey on the population and keep them off our streets.

I will probably be outspent by my opponent but I will not be outworked. I will knock on every door I possibly can to get my common sense message out from now to November and I look forward to meeting more of my community in the 28th District.