Meet Your Very First Recreation Advisor to the Governor, Fresh from Spokane

Jon Snyder left Spokane during his second term on the city council to become the first ever Outdoor Recreation and Economic Development Policy Advisor to Governor Jay Inslee.

The position was created as part of a recreation package that passed, with WTA and hiker support, in the state’s capital budget in 2015. The package also funded the No Child Left Inside program for the first time in recent years.

Focus on jobs and outdoor recreation

In an interview with the Spokesman Review, Snyder said he will focus on two questions in his term: “How can we make more jobs in our state out of outdoor recreation? And how can we get more people to participate in outdoor recreation?”

Currently, the outdoor recreation economy directly supports more than 200,000 jobs in Washington state alone.

A history of working for, and reporting on the outdoors

Snyder is no stranger to the outdoors. He was the founder and publisher of the magazine Out There Monthly, a free resource covering outdoor recreation in the Inland Northwest. During his time on the council, Snyder emphasized the importance of urban trails by encouraging expansion of Spokane’s network of biking and walking paths.

“At Out There, I wasn’t running an outdoor organization, I was just covering it. But I had to be generalist. It was great training,” Snyder told the Spokesman Review. “I really saw how public policy affected outdoor policy. That’s one of the things that got me to run for council.”