Primary endorsements
for the Tacoma council

David Curry, Marilyn Strickland, Julie Anderson and Lauren Walker stand out among a crowd of candidates.

It's turnover time again at the Tacoma City Council.
Four of the council's nine seats are up for grabs; three have drawn more than two candidates, creating contests for the August primary. The candidates endorsed by The News Tribune's editorial board appear in boldface below:

Tacoma Position 8, at large

This is, far and away, the liveliest and most interesting race in Tacoma this summer. Four strong candidates have stepped forward to replace outgoing Councilman Bill Evans in this seat that represents the entire city.
It's a tough call, and we're opting to endorse two out of this impressive field.

David Curry, executive director of Tacoma Rescue Mission and chairman of the Tacoma Public Utility Board, stands out for his executive experience, analytical ability and independent judgment.
Curry thoroughly understands budgets – and dealing with the growing gap between Tacoma's revenues and the services citizens expect is going to be the overriding challenge for the City Council in the foreseeable future. He appears capable of standing up for the public interest in the face of spending pressure from unions and other interests.

Marilyn Strickland, development officer for Tacoma Public Library, is an intelligent and promising newcomer to public life.
She's had broad involvement in community affairs, serving – among other ways – as a past board member of the Tacoma Public Library and currently the Grand Cinema, the Black Collective and the KBTC Public Television Assocation. A nearly lifelong resident of Tacoma, she is well-acquainted with the city's communities. With black and Korean ancestry, she would also bring needed ethnic diversity to the City Council

The two other fine candidates in this race:
Marty Campbell, the owner of Stadium Video and Buzzard's Discs, who has a strong business background and has worked on broad variety of civic betterment projects.
Jonathan Phillips, a real estate broker and chairman of the North End Neighborhood Council. Phillips has already spent five months on the City Council in 2005 when he was temporarily appointed to a seat vacated by Kevin Phelps.
Any of these candidates would likely serve the city well if elected.

Tacoma Council District 7, at large

This seat also represents the entire city. Only one serious candidate is in the race: incumbent Councilwoman Julie Anderson.
Anderson brings an invaluable set of assets to the council. She is formidably intelligent, forceful, well-versed in city issues and a penetrating analyst of city finances. A constructive skeptic, she does not shy away from challenging assumptions or established practices. She is precisely the kind of council member who will be needed to make the tough budgeting decisions the city faces in coming years.

One of her challengers, Will Baker, almost made a career out of disrupting Pierce County Council and Tacoma City Council meetings until he was convicted of this crime and sent to jail three years ago. Another challenger, Robert Hill, styles himself "The Traveler." He is not a credible candidate for the City Council.

Tacoma Council District 3

District 3 chiefly represents the Hilltop and Central Tacoma. The race to replace incumbent Tom Stenger features two good candidates.
Lauren Walker is executive director of the Fair Housing Center of Washington. Affordable housing has been a major concern of hers: She also serves on the board of the National Fair Housing Alliance, the Home Ownership Center of Tacoma and the Tacoma Pierce County Affordable Housing Consortium.
Her community credentials include leadership of the Hilltop Action Coalition. She would be a strong advocate for redeveloping the Hilltop and other historically distressed neighborhoods.

Another credible contender is Donald Powell, an attorney who has been active in legal circles. He has served as a pro-tem judge and commissioner with the Pierce County Superior Court, and has held positions of leadership in the local and state bar associations. Walker's neighborhood ties give her the edge, but Powell would be an excellent choice for city boards and commissions.

Also running are Jack Pleasant, a helicopter mechanic, and Ronnie Allen Warren, a former boxer who is now a street minister in the Hilltop.

Tacoma Council District 1
The contest for this seat has drawn only two candidates, incumbent Spiro Manthou and challenger Harold Moss. Because it will be decided in the November election, it is not on the primary ballot.

UPDATE (AND CORRECTION)

David Curry, endorsed above, is no longer chairman of the Tacoma Public Utility Board. His stint ended two weeks ago.

Former Tacoma City Councilman Kevin Phelps is leaving his post as general manager of the Landmark Convention Center to seek "a life of significance."

Phelps informed his staff today that he sold his interest in the former Masonic Temple (later the Temple Theater) to his business partner. While the Landmark is doing well, he said, he's ready for a change after 16 years of running the business.

I asked Phelps why he decided on the move:

After 16 years, I think I have taken the company about as far as I can. The business is as healthy as it has ever been year. In fact, in 2006 the Landmark did more food & beverage sales (catering) than both the $120m Convention Center and the Tacoma Dome combined. And sales are up 10.6% thus far for 2007. But there is still more upside to the business and new management may be able to grow the company even further.

=> Read more!

Pierce County voters will face three voting-related charter amendments in November, the County Council decided today. Here's a scorecard from council staffer Brad Chatfield:

2007-63s3 (Farrell) — Allowing all choices to be ranked, but if the software can't accomodate it, that choices may be limited to three - and amended on the floor to include the implementation language from 2007-68s (PASSED 5-1, Gelman nay)

2007-64 (Farrell/Muri, at the request of executive and auditor) — Governing authorities of minor parties must approve who uses their party label (PASSED 6-0)

2007-65s (Muri) — Changes RCV implementation to 2010, and amended on the floor to include the implementation language from 2007-68s (PASSED 5-1, Gelman nay)

2007-68s (Lee, at the request of the auditor) — Allowing candidates shall be eliminated until one candidate receives a majority (50 percent plus one) of the votes of the continuing ballots (PASSED 6-0)

We publish our endorsements in Tacoma City Council primary races. Preview will be published in editorial page blog at 11 p.m.

Emotions are running high and lawmakers are calling for a special sessioin following the murder of Zina Linnick, but that’s not the best atmosphere for producing effective sex-offender legislation. The governor is right: Take the time for a review of sex-offender sentencing and notifications, and consider recommendations, if any, in regular session.

UPDATE: The sex offender editorial is on hold. The Tacoma City Council endorsement editorial is running longer than expected, leaving room for only a short editorial. We'll run our endorsement in the single Bethel School Board race that will be on the Aug. 21 primary ballot.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

I had a hard time figuring this one out, so I e-mailed resident sports guru Dale Phelps (listed in the masthead as deputy managing editor) for help. He forwarded this URL to explain it.

Word from the Roads & Transit campaign is that King County's Eastside business groups are coalescing behind the massive transportation proposal on the November ballot.

That is significant because developer Kemper Freeman Jr., whose family practically built Bellevue, is a staunch ideological foe of Sound Transit in general and the Roads & Transit proposal in particular.

The Bellevue Chamber of Commerce and the Bellevue Downtown Association recently endorsed the ballot package. The measure has also picked up backing from the Washington Roundtable, a statewide business group representing large companies, and chambers of commerce in Seattle, Tacoma-Pierce County, Everett, Redmond, Renton and Issaquah.

My friend Mike Madden is known to many here for his work with Tacoma-Pierce County Habitat for Humanity and as an avid cyclist.

Mike, a former Nalley's executive who retired as Habitat director last year, is recovering at home after being badly injured in a cycling accident earlier this month.

Mike was training for the annual RAMROD (Ride Around Mount Rainier in One Day) event when his bike hit a rock on the road and jolted out of control.
His helmet saved his life, but he suffered a severely damaged hip and other injuries. At least a couple of surgeries were required.

Mike's wife, Marcia, also known as an active community volunteer, says he will likely be bedridden at least 11 weeks but is using a passive exercise machine to facilitate recovery. The couple would prefer to have no visitors for a while.

Mike and Marcia celebrated his retirement by biking on a tandem last summer from Tacoma to Atlanta by way of Denver and the Northeast – 5,000 miles without incident.

"His ears have gotten bigger and bigger"
. . . "tortoise mouth, beady eyes" . . .

Those are some comments about President Bush by two of the political cartoonists who draw him on a regular basis, Matt Davies and Steve Kelley. An article posted on the McClatchy Newspapers' D.C. Web site talks with cartoonists about the challenges of drawing the president and other high-profile politicians.

Who are they looking forward to among the current crop of candidates? The Miami Herald's Jim Morin says: "Hillary will be fun, Obama will be fun, Giuliani will be a blast. The only time it'll be difficult to draw somebody is if they're flawless."

Is he talking about Mitt Romney and John Edwards? As the person who handles the political cartoons here at the TNT, I've noticed that those two guys don't show up in very many.

The News Tribune has access to the work of about 15 cartoonists. Probably the funniest depiction of the president is by Mike Peters, whose color cartoons regularly appear on this blog. His take on Bush kind of makes him look like a manic basset hound.

I've got a lawyer version of "City Slickers" here.

An Auburn couple just sent me a copy of a letter they received last week from a Tacoma law firm seeking information about a December 2005 car vs. cow collision on Military Road near Algona. The cow evidently had wandered on the road in front of a car; the impact damaged the car and injured the driver.

The driver wants to sue, but he and his lawyers in Tacoma don't know who owned the cow. But the lawyers have a description of the suspects:

There were three (3) cows. All of which had brown bodies and white faces, considered to be "herfers." One large, one medium (approximately 6 months old). It is believed that the two smaller cows were sisters and the large cow was the mother.

Eyewitnesses saw the large cow propped against a tree on a nearby premise, but the landowner of said premise is denying any claim to the injured cow. Therefore, we are attempting to obtain information about anyone in the general area who has livestock (particularly cows that are brown with white faces) and has or had an injured cow on the date of incident.

Unfortunately, if we are unable to obtain the landowner of the cow in question, we will be forced to take legal action against the landowners within a 5-mile radius of the (accident scene) in order to preserve our client's rights. Any assistance you may have pertaining to livestock in the area would be appreciated.

The couple who got the letter tell me they were in bed at the time of the accident and didn't hear a thing. They don't own any livestock. And they are highly annoyed.

When is it legal for an attorney's office to threaten or intimidate people? . . . From the sounds of this letter we received (they) want us to turn in anyone we may know that might have livestock or else expect legal action taken against us and our neighbors . . .

We would like to have this letter posted in your column to let others know that is not legal or moral to threaten or intimidate people just because they think they have the legal power to do so.

I'm on the case, folks. Stay tuned. Anybody know what a "herfer" is? Imagine a cow "propped" against a tree. Rigor mortis?

News flash from a Pierce County Council staffer:
,
The Rules & Operations Committee just voted 2-0 (Councilmember Lee excused) to postpone indefinitely the executive's requested ordinance (2007-73) that would have eliminated instant runooff voting and restored the primary election.

The Pierce County Council will put off a decision on going to all-mail voting until next year, council people tell me.

Auditor Pat McCarthy asked the council to approve all-mail voting mainly to ease the burden on poll workers in the November 2008 election, the first to use ranked choice voting for most countywide offices. That decision can be made by council ordinance.

But the council has its hands right now wrestling with proposed RCV-related charter amendments for this November's ballot. There will be plenty of time to deal with it next year; apparently the question won't be referred to the voters at the ballot.

Tuesday, we'll have an oped piece from Secretary of State Sam Reed urging the council to switch to all-mail voting. Excerpt:

Washingtonians preference to vote by mail is undeniable. Washington's all-mail election in 1997 proposing a new stadium in Seattle shows, without question, the overwhelming popularity of vote by mail. In Pacific County, which used polling stations only, 39 percent of registered voters turned out; adjacent Wahkiakum County, which used vote-by-mail, had a 62 percent turnout. When Oregon implemented all-mail voting in the 2000 State Primary turnout jumped more than 15 percent. That November, 80 percent of registered voters participated compared with a 51-percent national average for that state.

When only three candidates filed applied for a vacancy on the Tacoma Utility Board last month, the City Council's appointments committee decided to extend the application deadline.

Good move. The council now has a strong field of eight applicants for the post, vacant since Bill LaBorde's departure at the end of June. He's moving to Seattle. Mayor Bill Baarsman says the appointments committee will interview candidates tonight; council action might follow in another week or two.

The appointment is particularly important because the Utility Board will be hiring a successor to longtime Tacoma Public Utilities director Mark Crisson, who leaves this fall for a national public-utility industry post in Washington, D.C.

The hopefuls:

Peter Thein, Executive Director, Washington State Transit Association (he will be interviewed by phone from Sweden). Recommended by LaBorde.
Jack Carlson, a retired utilities employee who served on the board from 1987 to 1992, known as critic of TPU management. Update: Carlson withdrew his application today.
Vicky L. McLaurin, a manager for Venture Bank and board member of the Tacoma Rescue Mission.
Joy Keniston-Longrie, director for major interagency projects, Seattle Public Utilities.
Joseph Gilligan, retired TPU worker who worked at now-defunct Steam Plant 2 on Tideflats.

The following have been already interviewed:

Becky Fontaine, director of the Pierce County Reading Foundation, former director of First Place for Children.
Michael Price, Tacoma sewer utility worker, unsuccessfully sued city over compensation issues.
Angela Zurcher, who has been a bookstore manager at PLU.

Kelly Haughton, a leader in the drive to bring instant runoff voting to Pierce County, insists that no RCV-related charter amendment is needed this fall.

The County Council will consider several election-related charter amendments Tuesday, including one that would repeal the ranked choice voting amendment voters approved only last November. The others would either delay the implementation to 2010 or make other "tweaks" thought necessary for legal reasons.

No tweaks needed, Haughton argues:

In writing the charter amendment for IRV/RCV, we were advised to not write into the charter too much administrative detail. We were aware that some election software and hardware vendors were in the process of designing/improving their products in the area of counting IRV ballots. We did not want to handicap our elections officials by being too specific about implementation in the charter as the best technology is a moving target.

Hence Section 4.10 Elections Procedures reads

(1) The ballot shall give voters the option of ranking candidates in order of preference.

This sentence consciously left out the word "all" so that our Elections Department would not be limited in implementing the amendment by 2008. We thought it might be easier and less costly to implement in 2008 with software that only allows voters to rank 3 candidates.

Later in Section 4.10,

(3) The County Council may adopt additional regulations consistent with this subsection....to implement these standards.

This sentence was consciously put in place to allow the Council and the Auditor to codify elections procedures that are not covered in the charter. Using ordinances to codify processes is more efficient than amending the charter each time the technology improves.

The County Council should codify the implementation of RCV using 3 rankings for 2008. The Auditor's office should then go about implementing this for 2008. The voters need not be asked about implementing this administrative detail. The experts reside in the Elections Department. They are recommending this specific implementation in 2008. Their recommendation may well change over time as technology changes.

Haughton was a member of the charter review committee that met last year. A switch to RCV was one of the amendments it recommended and the voters adopted.

Part of my job as an editor is saying "no" to people. We reject letters to the editor if they're not fit for print or lacking in some other way. We turn down articles submitted for our opinion pages if they don't meet our test of what's appropriate for that forum. We're paid to exercise that judgment.

Of course, that means we hear back from some unhappy readers and writers.
For example, here's the riposte I received after nixing an overlong, overwrought and overly academic opinon piece from local college professor:

You represent another reward and protection for all the liars.

Sweet, huh? All in a day's work. After i chided the professor for poor manners, we ended up agreeing he could submit a shorter and calmer rewrite. We'll see how it goes.

Pierce County Council Chairman Terry Lee called today to answer a few questions I had about the controversial ranked choice voting charter amendments the council plans to consider Tuesday. (News story.)
We'll have an editorial on the subject Sunday.

Lee said he favors putting just one amendment on the ballot in November – the one offered by Councilman Tim Farrell. That one would allow voters to rank their top three choices in each race in 2008; by 2010, voters would get to rank all the candidates in each race, provided suitable ballot tabulation software is available by then.

Lee said he's sure County Executive John Ladenburg's proposal to repeal RCV voting outright will not make the ballot. But he couldn't predict whether two other amendments would share the same fate.

Here's a look at San Francisco's experience with RCV from a pro-RCV point of view.

Today we have a a guest editorial from Alicia Lawver, one of a plucky band of good citizens with a great cause. Over to you, Alicia:

Please pardon the mass mail, and the clumsy request for donations, but many of you likely know that I've been working with the First Night Tacoma-Pierce County board to coordinate the return of this fabulous arts-centric, fun-for-everyone, non-alcohol, fabulous New Year's Eve bash, which used to be a Pierce County mainstay, and I'm excited to be a part of working to bring it back again.

First Night currently has a generous offer for up to $4,000 in dollar for dollar matching funds, an offer which expires July 31. If you are able to donate even just a few dollars, or can afford a Friends of First Night membership (memberships start at $100 and include All-Access Credentials that include access to the VIP reception area) -- please go to www.firstnighttacoma.org to donate online or find out where to mail a check. Every dollar will be matched. And anything you can do to support the effort is greatly appreciated. This year's event is being organized by volunteers, so all funds will be going to pay for performers, activities, facilities, licenses, insurances, tents, heaters and other nitty-gritty that need to be paid for in order for a celebration of this size to take place.

With that, I'll not write my normal novel. I've also posted a plea on my blog , and you can of course go to www.firstnighttacoma.org to find out more. If you know anyone else who might be interested in becoming a Friend of First Night, or who might be interested in performing or otherwise participating in this fabulous new year's event, please point them to the website or have them contact me and I'll make sure they get ahold of the right folks.

And please mark your calendar and join thousands of other South South folks for a fantabulous New Year's Eve in Downtown Tacoma as we kick off the "Year of the Pirate!"

It's not every day we interview a political candidate with a business card like this one. It belongs to Ronnie Allen Warren, who is running for the Tacoma City Council's Position 3 seat now held by Tom Stenger.

Warren, a Wilson High School grad who now operates a one-man street ministry in the Hilltop, was an accomplished amateur boxer – says he was a junior national champion – and tried his hand a while as a pro fighter.

Warren says he is "a man of faith, a man of principles, a man of love." "I'm running because God told me to represent him," he told us.

Warren is up against Lauren Walker, head of the Affordable Housing Coalition; lawyer Donald N. Powell; and helicopter technician Jack Pleasant.

Fighting wackos on the other side of the planet has been getting old. How about a little scrap with the reasonable people up in Canada?

It's not entirely out of the question. Canada has announced plans to build up its military in the far north to stake a stronger claim to the Northwest Passage, the navigable waters between it and the polar icecap. Apparently there's a lot of petroleum under the seabed. All the melting up there is bad for polar bears but may be good for oil revenues.

The United States says those are international waters. And Canada is quarreling with Denmark again over a tiny piece of rock called Hans Island, at the eastern entrance of the Northwest Passage.

If this were Russia or China, we'd call it saber-rattling. But isn't "Canadian saber-rattling" an oxymoron? Maybe a better question is, does Canada even have any sabers?

The King County Board of Health banned trans fats in the county's eateries (and required menu disclosure) last week, and the Washington Restaurant Association doesn't like it one little bit.

To be fair, the association isn't big on trans fats; it's just down on "mandates and unworkable timelines." (Pierce County, by the way, is opting for a voluntary approach.) Here's some excerpts from the statement the association sent us today:

... the King County Board of Health's actions to ban artificial trans fats and force menu labeling for chain restaurants does nothing to address the root causes of obesity, heart disease or lack of consumer health education. The process by which these policies were adopted was flawed and represents nothing more than bureaucrats trying to micro-manage consumer choice. The focus of better consumer health should be to work with our industry and create programs that provide consumers with the education necessary to make informed healthy choices. ...

=> Read more!

Pierce County Councilman Tim Farrell (D-Tacoma) paints a nightmare scenario if none of the RCV voting options the council puts on the ballot in November are approved by voters.

The RCV ballots would have to be counted by hand, he says.

The council is set to vote Tuesday on proposals to put as many as four charter amendments on the ballot, giving the voters the option of revising, delaying or even repealing ranked choice voting (same thing as instant runoff voting). Farrell says the option receiving the most votes would take effect, providing it gets a simple majority.

If none of the amendments gets a simple majority, there would be no choice but to count the votes by hand, he thinks. That's because the 2006 charter amendment dictating an RCV system for most countywide races would remain in effect. That one requires allowing voters to rank all the candidates in each race. With no software available to do that, the auditor would have to do the ranking-and-elimination procedure by hand.

Lord, let's not go there!

Exxon is the target of the latest flurry of so-called "turf" letters to the editor. As best as I can tell from a quick Google search, the campaign was launched by Greenpeace. The letters we have received are almost identical.

The first tipoff: unusual language that pops up in all the letters, including the phrase "global warming denier groups." We don't run these form letters in our print edition.

Here's the form letter that's going around:

=> Read more!

The $300 million, 168-acre terminal the Port of Tacoma plans to build for the NYK line is a huge boost for the port, an economic boost for Pierce County, and the culmination of forward-thinking efforts that began with the landmark Puyallup Indian land claims settlement. Superlatives justified.

Now that FBI director Robert Mueller has flatly contradicted AG Alberto Gonzales’ sworn account of his visit to John Ashcroft’s hospital room, Gonzales should do the president, the Justice Department and the nation a big favor by resigning and slinking quietly away to obscurity. The president should tell him to go.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Pierce County voters could be asked in November to choose among several options that would revise, delay or or repeal the instant runoff voting system they approved last fall.

Council members tell me the council is considering putting four options on the ballot. I'm not going to go into detail here because I don't want to totally scoop the TNT news article scheduled for this weekend. The council will be discussing potential IRV-related charter amendments on Tuesday.

I will, however, relay Councilman Calvin Goings' rationale for giving voters so many choices:

Voters will be given the ultimate decision. This keeps with the clear intent of last years Charter amendment giving voters as many options as possible.

We'll have to wait awhile for the "Tower of Power." But Harold LeMay's famed car collection could be on display near the Tacoma Dome by 2009, if all goes well.

David Madeira, president and CEO of the Harold LeMay Car Museum, offered that forecast during a visit to update the TNT editorial board today.

The board invited Madeira after the museum announced this month it would exercise its option on part of the Tacoma Dome parking lot near Interstate 5.

Last month the museum board approved a revised plan that calls for "staging" construction of the museum, leaving the most expensive part, a showcase pavilion featuring interactive exhibits and other attractions, for last.

Madeira pointedly sought to rebut the suggestion that museum backers are delivering less than the vision promised the city five years ago. "This is cause for celebration," he contended. "This (taking the option) means the museum is going to be built here. It means we're going to go."

There is still unfinished business. Museum officials need to brief the City Council on their plans, probably in September. Then the city and the museum need to amend the original option agreement. The city, for its part, has to determine how it will meet its promise to provide parking for the museum.

"What you're going to get is better than any car museum in the world," Madeira insisted. He said the planned "showfield" will attract car clubs and auto buffs from around the nation. A revenue-producing garage for private car collectors will feature glass-fronted storage spaces allowing visitors to admire classic cars.

Madeira was accompanied by Bill Weyerhaeuser, a museum board member, and Paul Miller, a former Tacoma City Council member and vice president of the board's building committee.

Looks like Tacoma City Manager Eric Anderson, staring down the barrel of a threatened lawsuit, is backing off moves to enforce a 10-year-old ban on billboards in Tacoma.

The city today released copies of documents exchanged by Anderson and a lawyer for Clear Channel Outdoor Inc., which owns most of the large billboards in the city. Two are drafts of legal action Clear Channel is prepared to file. The other is a letter from Anderson asking Clear Channel to avoid litigation and work with the city on a solution.

I don't know what that solution might be. As we noted in a post last month, Clear Channel seems to have the upper hand. A Federal Way billboard ban much like Tacoma's was overturned by an appeals court. The Tacoma City Council banned large billboards in 1997 but gave owners 10 years to remove non-conforming signs.

Except for those owned by the Puyallup Tribe, Clear Channel owns all 155 non-conforming signs in the city. Here's a copy of Clear Channel's threatened lawsuit.. And here's Anderson's conciliatory letter.

Pierce County voters approved instant runoff voting last fall. Now County Executive John Ladenburg wants to ask voters this fall to repeal it – before the county has even used it.

(Cut to commercial) The newsroom plans a story this weekend about this and other IRV-RCV-related developments. Please patronize our news pages. (We now return to our regular programming).

Strange but true. County spokesman Ron Klein confirms that Ladenburg is drafting a proposed county charter amendment that would repeal the IRV charter amendment voters OKd last fall. Says Klein:

It appears Pierce County won't able to conduct Instant Runoff Voting. Because of our software limitations, we can only do Ranked Choice Voting for the top three candidates. If we wanted to spend millions on hardware, software and training, we could have IRV for an unlimited number of candidates in each race, just like San Francisco. However, wouldn't that money be better spent on staffing the jail?

=> Read more!

In the past two days, we've received two letters from readers upset that Seattle Mariner
Ichiro Suzuki still uses a translator. Here's one, from a Federal Way reader; the other, from Sumner, is very similar.

Now that Ichiro is destined to be a very rich Mariner for what may be the rest of his baseball career, wouldn't it be fitting if he spent a few dollars of that considerable wealth on a tutor to learn English? Not to take anything away from his
marvelous athletic ability, but I find it just a tad insulting that after a few years here, and now with a commitment to stay here, he apparently hasn't made much effort to learn to speak without an interpreter. I want to hear HIS voice for a change, expressing his views.

The Mariners currently pay for his ever present interpreter, but it's time he really joined the team. That goes for any of the players from other countries who intend to stay here for any length of time, but especially for Ichiro, who is the brightest star of the Mariners. We could enjoy him even more.

Can't we just be glad that we have this phenomenon in our midst? I've read that Ichiro actually does speak fairly good English, but prefers to use a translator when speaking to the media and public lest he make a mistake. The guy's a perfectionist on the field; why are some people upset when that spills out into other aspects of his life?

It’s way too soon for Pierce County officials to be talking seriously about building another jail. That should be absolutely the last resort. For now, it’s much smarter to focus on maximizing use of the county’s as-yet unfilled new jail and on alternative sentencing initiatives that reserve jail space for the worst crooks.

Missing records in the Adhahn case demonstrate why it would be a good idea to scan old criminal records before routinely destroying them, as is the case now.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Wednesday’s newspapers will have headlines about the threat of a rising Puget Sound caused by global warming. We'll have skeptical questions.

The National Wildlife Federation is announcing a study on the potential rise in Puget Sound at a press conference today in Seattle. The same folks will discuss the study with the ed board Wednesday.

The study, available here, studies scenarios ranging from a three-inch rise in global average sea level to as much as six feet by 2100. It contends new research indicates sea-level rise will likely be greater than the two-foot rise that was the upper end of the prediction by an international climate-change panel. From NWF's press release today:

According to the new report, the impacts will be dramatic:
Beaches where rivers meet open water will be inundated and eroded for a 65 percent loss.
As much as 44 percent of tidal flat will disappear.
13 percent of inland fresh marsh and 25 percent of tidal fresh marsh will be lost.

There’s no doubt about the potential for a rising sea level due to climate change. We believe action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is vital. But many scientists caution that is difficult to make predictions about seal-level rise with scientific accuracy. This, from a recent Washington Post story:

But while computer models now yield an increasingly sophisticated understanding of how a warming atmosphere would behave, such models have yet to fully encapsulate the complex processes that regulate ice sheet behavior.
“The question is: Can we predict sea level? And the answer is no,” said David Holland, who directs New York University’s Center for Atmosphere Ocean Science. Holland, an oceanographer, added that this may mean researchers will just have to watch the oceans to see what happens: “We may observe the change much more than we ever predict it.”

For info on the work of our state's climate-change task force, go here.

Does Washington have a death penalty?

When Pierce County Prosecutor Gerry Horne explained his deal with the suspected killer of Zina Linnik – show us where you left her and we won't try to kill you – he mentioned the fact that capital punishment is rarely carried out in Washington. Read tomorrow's editorial for our take on the case.

Only one condemned man, Charles Rodman Campbell, has actually been executed here against his will since 1963. Three others – Westley Allen Dodd, Jeremy Sgastegui and James H. Elledge – have also been put to death, but those were basically cases of assisted suicide: They refused to appeal their sentences.

The Washington Supreme Court has been the graveyard of death sentences; it never meets one it likes.

Here is the Department of Corrections' informative page on capital punishment in Washington – including a link to a list of every last criminal put to death here since 1904.

The newsroom's reader representative forwarded this complaint today; our response follows. (Incidentally, the Wikipedia entry on "comfort women" is locked down due to intense disagreements on the subject.)

Hal Peterson, a WWII vet, called twice to talk about our Friday editorial about the United States government request for apology from Japan for their use of “comfort women,” or Japanese sex slaves, during WWII. The editorial calls the United State’s request “rank hypocrisy” on account of U.S. soldiers making use of comfort women after the war. His beef is he believes the article is saying the government endorsed/supported this practice, which would make the leaders of that time war criminals. He’s not trying to say no solider never slept with a Japanese sex slave, but to say the government supported it is unfounded. Especially when you consider the United States setup a Japanese constitution that gave suffrage and civil rights to women, he says. Hal thinks the article was sloppily written and researched. He says we can expect more outcry from vets.

From chief editorial writer Patrick O'Callahan:

The editorial didn’t say that American use of prostitutes in Japan was U.S. policy. I don’t think there was anything vague about it. It just said that it happened with the knowledge of some U.S. authorities. The source was an Associated Press story we ran:

=> Read more!

Adhahn would seem to be a perfect candidate for the death penalty, but Pierce County Prosecutor Gerry Horne had good reasons for making the deal that takes the death penalty off the table when Adhahn is prosecuted for the murder of Zina Linnik. His overriding reason was the slim chance the girl might still be alive if she could be found.

The state auditor is not supposed to be an expert on the seaworthiness of state ferries. But it still seems wrong that state ferry officials can the the auditor to stay off one of their boats. This oddity turned up in the Everett Herald’s story on safety questions surrounding the state’s 80-year-old ferries.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Ryan Dicks, who used to represent the Cascade Land Conservancy in Pierce County, is leaving the organization’s Seattle office to become a private consultant.

Dicks became CLC’s vice president for conservation transactions last year. He plans to run own environmental and public interest consulting firm, AirWaterLand.Com. Now a Ballard resident, Dicks is the son of U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks. The younger Dicks will still serve CLC in a part-time consulting role for a while.

Kevin Duffy, former Alaska fish and game commissioner and former executive director of a trade group representing the fishing and fish-processing industry, will succeed Dicks in the CLC post.

Pierce County's first ranked-choice voting election, scheduled for November 2008, may be pushed back to 2010.

The County Council is considering putting four charter amendments on this November's ballot, one of which would delay implementation of RCV by two years. RCV is another term for instant runoff voting, which voters approved last fall for most county offices.

Two other proposed charter amendments would make minor adjustments requested by county Auditor Pat McCarthy. The fourth would set a filing fee for any referendum filed by county residents.

So far the council appears to be balking at McCarthy's recommendation that the county switch to all-mail voting in 2008. McCarthy said the switch is needed to reduce the burden on poll workers in a year when when presidential, statewide and legislative races would coincide with the first RCV, which would require a separate ballot. If Pierce County doesn't switch, it will be the last county in the state using polling places.

Moving the RCV start back might address McCarthy's concern about dual ballots and defer, if not block permanently, a switch to all-mail voting.
County Executive John Ladenburg has also objected to the cost paying postage for all county mail ballots in 2008 – something McCarthy also recommended.

Update: McCarthy said today she will continue to prepare for implementing RCV in 2008, noting "that was the will of the people."

A hearing on the four charter amendments is set for 3 p.m. July 31 in council chambers at the County-City Building.

We reported here earlier that Tacoma Port Commission candidate Dave Hyres favors reducting the regular countywide property tax levy the port collects every year without a public vote.

A look at his campaign blog adds more specifics:

I'm proposing a cut of 50% on the Tacoma Port Tax Levy over a 5 year phase-out period. The port has seen explosive growth and I feel that the Pierce County homeowners deserve a tax break. Port revenues generated by business activities should pay the costs of supporting the port. Currently, Pierce County homeowners pay a tax of 19.6 cents per $1,000. of assessed value of a home. As the value of home rises so do your taxes that you pay each year. One homeowner complained to me that a number of taxes keep going up without regard for the taxpayers.

Hyres is seeking the Position 3 seat now held by Jack Fabulich, who is retiring. Others in the race are Don Johnson, general manager of Simpson Tacoma Kraft Co.; David Lovell, a retired union leader; Bill Casper, a Tideflats business owner, and Jerry Thorpe, former port and Metro Parks commissioner.

Bob Chamberlain, chair of the 2nd Legislative District Democrats, informs us that the Pierce County Democratic Central Committee has endorsed the Roads & Transit package that will be on the November ballot.

The move is notable because the 2nd District includes the route of the controversial cross-base highway, and some of the 2nd District Democratic leaders are ardent proponents of the project.

Environmental opposition to the highway nearly derailed the roads portion of the package at a crucial point last month. The environ won a deal that leaves funding for cross-base related interchange improvements at I-5 in Lakewood in the package, but funding for the highway itself is not included. Future funding to complete the highway is far from assured.

Nonetheless, county Democrats voted June 14 to endorse the November package, citing the overall benefits of more highways and transit. One part of the party’s resolution might be misinformed:

WHEREAS, the plan to be presented to the voters also addresses environmental concerns through such measures as planting large groves of oak trees, cleaning up of chemically contaminated existing forests, and increasing quality of squirrel habitat, while promising to decrease carbon emissions from standing traffic . . .

I don’t think any of those things are part of the Roads & Transit plan. The drafters were probably thinking of the four “green” initiatives County Executive John Ladenburg announced during the tense negotiations with cross-base opponents.

See what Ladenburg promised here.

Whatever the merits of his arguments, Tacoma architect David Boe’s lament about the planned commuter rail at-grade crossings at South C and East D streets, near Freighthouse Square, is probably futile. (See today's Insight cover articles.)

The costs of constructing above-grade or below-grade rail crossings for Sound Transit’s Sounder trains would be prohibitive, and route changes sought by the city are already adding months of delay and tens of millions of dollars to the cost of the 1.2-mile D-to-M street segment, as it is known.

This segment, cutting across the south end of downtown Tacoma, is the critical "missing link" in Sound Transit's plans to extend commuter rail to South Tacoma and Lakewood.

Conversations with Sound Transit engineers last week indicate that an alternative called Modified Alternative 3 is gathering both practical and political momentum. This is the route shown in the illustrations on the cover of the Insight section today. Click HERE to see another graphic that shows the full route from East D to South M streets in this alternative. South M is where the route would pick up existing tracks Sounder already owns to reach South Tacoma and Lakewood.

=> Read more!

Are you an education booster who thinks a simple majority vote should be enough to pass school levy requests? The campaign for HJR 4204 is looking for volunteers.

Called Simply Better Schools, the drive is led by the League of Education Voters, a statewide group that was behind two successful earlier initiatives to boost public-school funding. HJR 4202, on the November ballot, would lower the current 60 percent requirement to 50 percent.

That has long been the Holy Grail for the state's K-12 education establishment, but not until this year could it win enough votes to put the proposal on the ballot.

We're still trying to digest that fact that the Tacoma School District couldn't summarily fire middle school principal Harold Wright Jr. after his recent rape conviction. I mean, if you can't unceremoniously dump a principal for a crime like that, for heaven's sake, what can you unceremoniously dump him for?

Well, it turns out there are some dumpworthy crimes. See our editorial Sunday.

I ran down the state law that requires a district to jump through the various hoops of due process before it can get rid of a felonious principal or teacher. It doesn't merely allow, but mandates, that educators be immediately terminated for major crimes against children: "the physical injury or death of a child" ... "sexual exploitation of a child" and "the sale or purchse of a minor child" and similar outrages.

What's missing from that list? Murder, for starters. Assault with a deadly weapon. Rape (see above). Armed robbery.

So long as the victims are adults.

As I write this, people are standing in line to pay for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the last in the J.K. Rowling series. It goes on sale at midnight.

Thanks to a little foresight, I should have the book Saturday morning – free – thanks to the Pierce County Library. As we speak, library staffers at central administration are preparing 222 copies of the book to truck out to the branches tonight. Patrons who have put holds on the book will be able to start picking them up as soon as the branches open Saturday morning.

Last time I checked, Pierce County Library had 545 holds on the book (plus another 148 for the large-print version), and I was 42nd in line. That's because I put the hold on it many months ago, before Rowling even released the title.

I'm working on an editorial on the Potter phenomenon to run Saturday. I was the obvious one to write it as I've read all the books. I have my nieces, Julia and Olivia, to blame. I started reading the first book 9 years ago because they were reading it with their mom, my sister. They were excited about it, and I wanted to be able to talk to them about it.

They're turning 21 and 18 this summer, and I think they're not as wild about Harry as they used to be. But I'm still hooked. And I'm not one of those readers who will cover my ears to avoid hearing any spoilers. First thing I'll probably do is peek at the last pages to see who's still alive at the end.

Here's a sneak peek at the editorial:

Muggles mourning
the end of ‘Harry Potter’

=> Read more!

Saturday: The end of Harry Potter, the most successful series of books for young readers in history.

Sunday:
It is astounding, annoying, aggravating and every other A word that the Tacoma School District is being forced to keep paying a principal, who’s already been convicted of rape, his $8,245-a-month salary because the state’s "due process" requirement hasn’t been satisfied. (Pat)
The huge settlement in the Roman Catholic Los Angeles diocese again spotlights the shameful practice of covertly moving priests around after they've been accused of abuse.

Monday: Lakewood is right to hold off on development of Tillicum before that development is properly planned and infrastructure is in place.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

It may be only a coincidence – which I doubt – but only hours after the Sierra Club’s local chapter announced its opposition today to November’s Roads & Transit ballot plan (see earlier post), six other environmental groups announced their support for it.

With the passage of the joint ballot this fall, voters will give regional transit the biggest boost in state history bringing new light rail, improved service and more transit to Snohomish, King and Pierce counties. "This is a groundbreaking expansion of transit - the largest ever in the state. It is a once in a generation opportunity to change the way we move people and goods," said Jessyn Farrell, Executive Director, Transportation Choices Coalition.

In addition to her group, Farrell spoke for Washington Conservation Voters, Futurewise, Environment Washington, Tahoma Audubon and the Washington Environmental Council. Tahoma Audubon is a Pierce County group.

Update: From Bill LaBorde...

This press release is not in any way intended to be a response to the Sierra Club’s release. The timing is truly coincidental. I think it’s fair to say that we all respect where the Club is coming from. We are actively working with them on a variety of climate issues, including issues related to climate and transportation. We simply disagree with the application of these common principles to the specifics of the ballot measure and the political realities that surround it.

Click on Read More for full statement.

=> Read more!

Blackberry news flash from special TNT ed-page correspondent Pat Spakes, otherwise known as chancellor of the University of Washington Tacoma:

Enthusiastcally moved by regent Proctor with unanimous support.
Pat

Not that there was any doubt, but the University of Washington board of regents has just voted unanimously to name the UWT's new assembly hall the "William W. Philip Hall." The move recognizes Tacoma banker and civic leader Bill Philip for his contributions to UWT. More about this in Monday's news story and Tuesday's editorial.

Tacoma City Council candidate Marty Campbell came in for his endorsement interview today and had a correction for us. Due to a campaign reporting error, his PDC contribution and spending report overstated his spending by about $8,000. The corrected record will show that he's raised $22,117 and spent closer to $17,000.

Campbell, owner of Stadium Video and Buzzard CDs, told us he grew up on a farm in Nebraska. Came out here 14 years ago with $50 and started selling used CDs at swap meets. That's where he met the flower seller who became his wife.

The editorial board will wrap up its candidate interviews for the Aug. 21 primary today. The absentee ballots go out around Aug. 3. We'll start publishing our endorsements no later than July 30, perhaps a little earlier.

Opponents of a planned 840-home development on the Northshore Golf Course lost a round last week, but they're not giving up the fight. They plan a a barbecue block party at 2 p.m. Aug. 4 at Meeker Middle School. Details here at the opposition Web site.

Tacoma city officials are appealing a city hearing examiner's decision that the development application is "substantially complete," in effect allowing the application to move forward despite a moratorium on planned residential developments imposed by the City Council.

To clarify a point I may have muddled in an earlier posting: The city planning department is appealing to Superior Court, not to the council. I guess that's why council members Jake Fey and Julie Anderson can be announced as guests at the Aug.4 block party.

"Reichert lauds"
"Reichert applauds"
"Reichert secures"

You know the 2008 Eighth District congressional campaign is underway when your email fills up with press release headlines like these - on just one day.

Republican U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert is longer in the House majority, so it's a little tougher for the second-termer to claim credit for bringing home the bacon. Here's his little strategem: Note the press release below. Notice it says he "secured over $68 million" for his district and the state. Now notice the little truth-in-labeling disclaimer that appears at the end of the press release.

Reichert Lauds Funding for Public Safety and Emergency Response
Local programs will keep communities safer
 
Washington, DC - Congressman Dave Reichert (WA-08) announced today he had secured over $68 million in funding for the Eighth District and the State of Washington in the Commerce, Justice and Science (CJS) Fiscal Year 2008 appropriations legislation passed out of full committee . . .

Procedurally, this is the first step. These funds have been included in the U.S. House of Representatives FY 2008 CJS appropriations, with expected passage next week in the House. The Senate must pass a similar bill, and a final House and Senate conference report must pass both Chambers. Reichert will continue to fight for the funding for these projects.

Sounds secure, doesn't it?

The Sierra Club’s Seattle-based Cascade Chapter today ratified its opposition to the “Roads & Transit” package on the November ballot.

The move, approved by the chapter board, was not unexpected, but the question for R&T backers is how much the club will put into any opposition campaign. A larger coalition of Seattle-based environmental groups agreed to back the ballot measure after forcing cutbacks in funding for Pierce County’s crossbase highway.

“Knowing what we know about climate change, it’s irresponsible to continue digging the hole deeper,” said Michael O’Brien, the Cascade Chapter Chair. “Transportation is the biggest contributor of greenhouse gas pollution in the central Puget Sound area. There are better, cheaper solutions to congestion than using our tax dollars to fund highway expansion. This package will increase cars on the road, raise greenhouse gas pollution, and it won’t help congestion, in the long run.”

Find a more detailed account of the club’s objections here. For info on the club’s “Cool State” climate-change efforts, go here.

An impertinent House Republican staffer spotted Tuesday's blog item on the TNT "bragging" headline that so upset the governor's office and couldn't help himself:

Welfare rolls have of course declined for all states since TANF enactment in 1996, and our performance is mediocre in relation to other states'. Through December 2006 we ranked 40th among the 50 states in percentage reductions of TANF recipients and TANF families.

Nothing to brag about. But of course no one was bragging at the governor's press availability. So beg pardon there.

That stats are here.

The Seattle Sonics' selection of No. 2 draft pick Kevin Durant (pictured) evidently got state Auditor Brian Sonntag's fan juices going. He sent a letter earlier this month to Gov. Christine Gregoire calling the Durant choice "a potential franchise-altering move that could help bring Seattle another championship."

Urging the governor to pursue options that might keep the Sonics here in a new arena, the Tacoman and former Pierce County auditor observed:

Certainly, some people do not care if the Seattle SuperSonics leave town. They believe that the life of a city will go on. They are right to some degree. But what do we lose beyond a sports team? And what is next? We must be careful not to lose cultural and economic pieces that cost the community its soul . . .

. . . In my responsibilities as state auditor, I obviously have no role to play. But as a public official and lifetime resident of this area, I care deeply about my community and this state. I would be more than willing to play a part in this effort.

Both of Washington’s Democratic U.S. senators spoke on the Senate floor during the all-night debate on a Democratic amendment that would force troop withdrawals from Iraq. Their efforts to break a Republican filibuster against it failed.

Their extended statements provide a good glimpse of their currrent positions on the war. Patty Murray’s remarks are online here; Cantwell emailed the news media her speech but did not post them on her website. Click on “Read More” for the text of her speech.

In a rambling speech, Cantwell backed the recommendations of the Iraq study commission for an international effort to settle the conflict. She spent quite a bit of time on Iraq oil and said the U.S. has to make it clear that it is not in Iraq for the oil.

Murray, for her part, said “Democrats want to do four things -- redeploy our troops from Iraq, refocus our fight on Al Qaeda, rebuild our military
and respect our veterans.”

=> Read more!

The battle over the future of Lake Tapps won’t be settled when the state issues its long-awaited water-rights decision. A long fight in the courts is certain.

State Department of Ecology Director Jay Mannng offered that resigned assessment during a TNT ed board visit Tuesday.

Efforts to negotiate an agreement between Lake Tapps homeowners, a consortium of King County cities, the City of Auburn, Pierce County, Puget Sound Energy and the Muckleshoot and Puyallup tribes seem to be going nowhere. The agency, which had promised a decision in May or June, is running out of patience, Manning said.

The main sticking point is how much water should be left in the White River for fish. DOE has proposed 500 cubic feet per second; the tribes want it higher. The City of Auburn wants a share of the water, too. “If there’s no progress by the end of the year, we’re going to go,” Manning said. The decision could come sooner. But he expects court appeals of the decision no matter what is.

County exec John Ladenburg is callling the state’s bluff, declining to sign a new contract to provide mental health services (which, by the way, is a state responsibility that it contracts with the counties to deliver). The county has a legitimate grievance about the Legislature failing to provide enough funding for Pierce County’s needs, but Ladenburg’s gambit is a risky one. Many mental-health patients could fall through the cracks.

The House resolution calling on Japan to apologize for using non-Japanese “comfort women” in World War II is a silly and illogical business. For one thing, U.S. troops availed themselves of comfort women, too.

Update: We had to pull the second topic. Instead, we'll comment on Patty Murray's effort to establish a national meth-fighting center in Pierce County.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Officials like Pierce County Auditor Pat McCarthy should quit trying to boost voter turnout. All the wrong people vote. We'd be better off if fewer, not more, citizens voted, and they should first qualify by demonstrating economic literacy.

Sorta provocative, huh? Check out the July 9-16 issue of The New Yorker,
which features Louis Menand's review of "The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Politics."

Author and economist Bryan Caplan contends that democracy fails precisely "because it does what the voters want." Voters often don't understand what's really in their best interests; they vote on the basis of prejudices. Among other things, Caplan recommends giving extra votes to economically literate people and reducing or eliminating efforts to increase voter turnout.

Menand concedes the great mass of voters understand very little about politics, economics and government. But the fact they do get to vote is why they accept the will of the majority – and why American democracy is so stable. A good read for political junkies.

Only one property owner holding about five acres still remains in the Port of Tacoma's eminent-domain crosshairs, according to port director Tim Farrell.

Farrell tells me that three other property owners who had received condemnation notices from the port last month have agreed to negotiate, leaving property owner Al Powers as the only holdout. Powers leases spaces to other companies and has a marine construction business.

Originally port commissioners authorized the use of eminent domain, if necessary, to acquire 140 acres near the Blair Waterway for future port expansion. Now Powers is the only case in which the port is moving forward with condemnation proceedings.

ferry

That classic-looking ferry docked at the old Asarco smelter site near Point Defiance is there for a reason: it’s going to be the landmark symbol of the massive Point Ruston development.

Developer Mike Cohen of MC Construction mentioned the ferry during an exchange of emails today. What ferry, I said. You have a ferry down there at the site? The story:

The beautiful and historic ferry we just brought to our waterfront to remodel into our sales center will also contribute to the local residents realizing we are for real, want to be fun and different, and genuine.

It was the Pierce County ferry that did the Steilacoom to Anderson Island run. Built in 1936. It is in excellent condition with gorgeous lines.
We hope to moor it permanently in some in water property we own on the east end of the site. The profile will show towards the restaurants along the waterfront with lighting at night, and we hope the ferry will become an Icon and symbol of our project. Eventually it might make a great restaurant.

Elly Claus-McGahan, a Tacoma school board candidate with a Ph.D in mathematics, takes exception to a News Tribune story that reporting progress among grade-schoolers using the Saxon math curriculum.
I'll let her speak for herself. Here's the relevant part of an email she just sent us:

Upon returning from vacation, I read with interest the claim that Dr. Milligan may have had success with raising math scores. I would say it's way too soon to make that call. The district tests were designed to show improvement under a program like Saxon. It's the pre and post test concept – you initially show students don't know very much, then teach them and test them at the end with the expectation they will show growth. These tests were written in house and were not tested for correlation to the WASL. In fact, the standards they were based on were not a subset of the state standards if looked at by grade level. Until we see a change in WASL scores, all we have is evidence that the students learned something, which is to be expected.

Those newsroom columnists can be so fussy. Kathleen Merryman, Queen of B-1, sends this corrrection for my Sunday post about riding across the new Narrows Bridge behind WSDOTSEC Doug MacDonald.

David, you are soooooo not up on your celeb amours.
That’s a good thing. A compliment. A bow to your greater discipline.
But I must tell you that Sheryl Crowe never married Eric Clapton or Lance Armstrong. Dated them. Dallied with them. But never married them.
The pink bike doesn’t need Lane or Sheryl or Eric. It’s cool enough all by itself.

For the record, I at least got Sheryl Crow's name right. And that's Lance, not Lane, Armstrong. Truce?

Mike Cohen, the guy planning to develop the old Asarco site near Point Defiance, finally got the Ruston Town Council out of his hair Monday night.

He reports that the council, after months of stalling, finally approved his plans to build homes on Stack Hill, where the smelter smokestack once stood. See Dan Voelpel's column blasting three council members for blocking the project without publicly giving their reasons.

Tim Eyman is his own press agent. If his name gets in the papers, he wants everyone to know about it. So we've all been alerted that Eyman told The Everett Herald this week that the massive November "Roads & Transit" tax package is a goner.

"I'm just looking at this dead thing going to the ballot box, saying, 'Do I want to shoot this dead thing?' I say, 'No, it's already dead,' " Eyman said.

Campaign manager Kelly Evans disagrees:

Those issues will resonate with voters in the Puget Sound area because, in poll after poll, untangling gridlock tops the list of concerns, Roads and Transit supporters say.
"The voters are really smart. They get that we are behind the times - that we're paying for decisions that were made three decades ago," Evans said.
The "victory through conversation" strategy worked last fall, when area voters got to decide the fate of a big transit tax. Initiative 912 would have rolled back a 9.5-cent-per-gallon tax hike.

Update: A campaign spokesman notes that an independent Elway Poll taken in late June showed 57 percent favoring the Roads & Transit measure, 37 percent opposed, after being told the costs of the work and the taxes involved.

Support was strongest in East King County, where 65 percent favored the measure, weakest in Pierce County, where 51 percent favored it.

Only 38 percent of the respondents said they had previously heard of the ballot measure. After details were given, however, the level of support dropped only 1 percent from 58 percent.

Retired Tacoma banker Bill Philip richly deserves the honor of having his name on the University of Washington Tacoma’s new assembly hall when it opens in 2008. Thanks to philanthropist Jim Milgard for making it happen by pledging $5 million for UWT and making the naming request.

That’s some accounting mistake Sound Transit admitted the other day. The agency said someone outside Sound Transit noticed that it had double-counted some constructions costs and thus made a $7 billion budget error — in its favor. This doesn’t exactly inspire a whole lot of confidence.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

The governor's office was very unhappy about this page one headline – "State triumphs all Gregoire's, aides brag" – in today's TNT. Enough, in fact, to send the editorial page editor a couple complaints.

I was only too happy to point out that we don't write headlines and news stories for the newsroom but promised to pass the gripes on to the right people on the news side. The article was written by veteran AP Olympia reporter David Ammons.

Update: TNT Public life editor Hunter George agreed today that the headline "overstates" the story and will prepare a correction.

From Holly Armstrong, the governor's press secretary:

I was a little taken aback by the headline today. Whose work was that? I think anyone at the press avail yesterday would attest to the fact that, while we definitely were celebrating and highlighting good news in the state, it was hardly an exercise in taking credit. Governor Gregoire (and others in the administration) are always very careful to thank and involve others who have worked hard to move the state forward - the many business and community leaders and others. But there is also a realization and an expectation that we must do all we can to change the way we do things to continue our success (early learning, rainy day fund, regional job growth, evidence-based health care, to name a few). This Governor has absolutely committed to do what it takes to continue our success.

I realize you likely didn't write the headline but please pass along my frustration. I rarely have a cause to complain about this stuff but, in this case, I think it is absolutely warranted due to the egregiousness of the headline. I think the TNT really missed the mark on this one.

From Anne Martens, communications director for the state Office of Financial Management:

Just a week ago Peter Callaghan wrote, "But why not? Why shouldn’t a public accomplishment like a bridge be celebrated?"

Indeed. And why shouldn't a public accomplishment like being ranked good for business, like historically low unemployment rates and historically low welfare rolls, like a strong economy and investments in trade, why shouldn't all that be celebrated as well.

We should all be able to celebrate what makes Washington great for the people of Washington, without being accused of bragging or being viewed negatively for the very things that are positive about our state.

I asked Betsy Sawyers, Pierce County's HR director, for an update on the county's plan to extend health benefits to both same-sex and opposite-sex domestic partners. County Executive John Ladenburg announced the proposal last month. Sawyers responds:

Dave, we are working on the ordinance that has to go before the council. we also have to put it into our contracts with our health benefit
providers, and make some changes in our payroll system since this will be a taxable benefit to Domestic partners. They will have to pay income tax on the portion of the cost of the premium for their partner. As you see there are some pieces to this inroder to put into place. Our plan is to have it ready to go for our normal open enrollment in October-November and then the benefits would go into effect January 1st.
Betsy

On Monday I blogged an item about the Sunday public celebration on the new Narrows Bridge. I mentioned the forgotten green camera case that required the bomb squad to come in and take it away.

Today I got this email from the "perpetrator."

Hello Cheryl Tucker,
Thank you for posting to the blog and describing the mess I created by forgetting my green camera case while shooting the 1923 car as it passed. I have added the text of the message I sent to Paul Sand, who authored the online article. It describes how it all went down from my end. Sadly, I caused a mess and missed all of it. I do not have any photos of the scene as it transpired.
Sincerely, Mathew D. Hargreaves, Kent, WA

>
>>

=> Read more!

Last month Pierce County Councilman Calvin Goings promised to propose creating a salary commission to take the council out of the business of voting on pay raises for elected county officials.

He cited Thurston County as an example of a county that takes this approach. Here’s an explanation of Thurston County’s system I finally found in my email:

The Thurston County Citizens' Commission on Salaries for elected Officials (Salary Commission) was formed in 2001 in accordance with Chapter 36.17 RCW. The Salary Commission sets the salaries for the County Commissioners, and recommends to the County Commissioners the salaries of the elected Assessor, Auditor, Clerk, Coroner, Prosecuting Attorney, Sheriff, and Treasurer.

The Salary Commission is composed of ten members. Six of the members
are chosen by lot by the County Auditor, with two members from each of
the three county commissioner's districts. The remaining four numbers
are selected by the Board of County Commissioners to represent the
following sectors of the community: business, professional personnel
management, organized labor, and the legal profession. Members of the
commission may not include any officer, official or employee of Thurston
County or any of their immediate family members. For the purpose of
this section the phrase “immediate family member” means the parents,
spouse, siblings, children, or dependent relative of an officer,
official or employee whether or not living in the household of the
officer, official or employee.

The Salary Commission meets at least once annually to carry out its duties. The Salary Commission is scheduled to convene again in November 2007 to consider the elected officials' salaries for 2009.

Sincerely,
Ruth Elder, Clerk
Thurston County Citizens' Commission on Salaries for Elected Officials

Three more bad markers for America’s poor: 2 million more without health insurance; 817 mmore poor families spenind more than half their income on rent; Americans now shorter, on average, than Europeans. America can do better than this.

Screwy decision at Sea-Tac Airport: Decorated trees can be put up in the airport this December, as long as they don’t look like Christmas trees. Give us a break. By now it’s a settled matter that religious decorations can be included in a government-sponsored Christmas display as long as non-Christian and secular holiday symbols are included. Besides, traditional Christmas trees are NOT a religious symbol.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

What a great day Sunday on the new Narrows Bridge. I probably could have done without the evangelists haranguing people as they went by, criticizing them for being out on the bridge instead of inside a church praying. (Of course, I wanted to ask why THEY weren't in church.) But other than that, it couldn't have been more perfect. The weather totally cooperated by staying cool but not windy.

I got down to the starting point right at 10 when it opened up for walkers. Everyone was in good spirits, taking photos, pointing out workers way up at the top of the old bridge, cutting their own piece of the yellow ribbon (yes, I had to get mine, too). Even Darth Vader and some henchmen were there (pictured, by TNT's Lui Kit Wong). And even though the organizers had clearly said NO DOGS, lots of people brought their pooches (hope they also thought to bring cleanup supplies).

I had a closeup view of the bomb squad taking away a green camera case someone had left by the side of the bridge near the Tacoma side. Foot traffic came to a crashing halt for several minutes while it was cleared away. I hope whoever left it had taken the camera out.

So far, the morning news is reporting that traffic is moving smoothly. That's great to hear. And I made it all the way through this without using a bad good to go pun!

Dave Hyres, the Tacoma Port Commission candidate we interviewed last week, saved the eyebrow-raiser for last: He favors reducing the port's regular property tax levy.

As far as we know, he's the only port candidate who's taken that stance. In port circles, keeping the port's countywide tax rate the same has been Holy Writ. For years it has been far lower than the legal maximum and below what the Port of Seattle levies.

However, the countywide runup in property values means that the fixed rate the port collects brings in much more revenue than it used to. But port officials contend the revenue is need to fund port expansion and maintain a good credit rating for borrowing.

Hyres, a retired Army major and expert on port security, contends the port's bond rating wouldn't suffer if the port lowered its tax rate. He says port director Tim Farrell is doing a great job, but he's worried that the port is not doing enough to face growing competitive threats from Prince Rupert, B.C. and San Diego.

Stadium Video owner Marty Campbell has the largest campaign warchest among the Tacoma City Council hopefuls as the Aug. 21 primary approaches.

Campbell's latest Public Disclosure Commission report shows he's raised $22,117 and spent $24,912.
Campbell says he contributed $700 cash and $4,300 in loans to his campaign, plus some in-kind contributions such as office space from his company.

Not far behind is Marilyn Strickland, one of Campbell's rivals in a four-person primary contest for the at-large seat now held by Bill Evans. Strickland reports raising $20,516 and spending $7,950. Next in that race are Jonathan Phillips – $14,348 raised, $4,796 spent – and David Curry – $12,135 raised, $7,258 spent.

Incumbent Julie Anderson, facing nominal opposition, has raised $15,789, spent $12,819. Lauren Walker, a heavy favorite for Tom Stenger's seat, has raised $15,604, spent $9,426. No reports from her opponents; same is true in Anderson's race.

Incumbent Spiro Manthou, who almost got a free ride until former mayor Harold Moss jumped in at the last minute, reported only $1,650 in contributions. The two will automatically advance to the November general election. Prediction: Later PDC reports from Moss will show significant labor contributions. Manthou's won't.

Maybe Pierce County Councilman Tim Farrell just felt left out because councilmate Calvin Goings has already declared for the 2008 county exec race and three candidates, including the incumbent, have filed for Roger Bush's county council seat.

Whatever. Farrell has joined the earlybirds, filing his own official declaration of candidacy with the state Public Disclosure Commission.

I checked, but no one's filed for the 2009 Tacoma mayor's race.

A successful son of Tacoma – Leo J. Hindery Jr. – popped up in a fascinating New York Times page one story today profiling “The Richest of the Rich, Proud of a New Gilded Age.”

Hindery is the 1965 Bellarmine Prep graduate who rose to become chairman of cable TV giant TCI, later headed AT&T’s cable and Internet Division and became a prolific fundraiser for the national Democratic Party. He made hometown headlines when he unsuccessfully lobbied the City Council against launching the city-owned Click! Network, and later when he donated $3.75 million to Bellarmine, the largest gift the school has ever received.

It seemed odd to me that Hindery, now a New Yorker worth a mere $150 million, was cast in the same mold as Citigroup’s Sandy Weill, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. But the tasty nugget about Hindery in the Times article is the brass he shows when he justifies stratospheric salaries for today’s CEOs. He compares himself to baseball superstar Derek Jeter.

"I think there are people, including myself at certain times in my career," Mr. Hindery said, "who because of their uniqueness warrant whatever the market will bear."

”

See a tart reaction at this left-leaning website.

Man, what a splendid bridge party that was today on the new Narrows Bridge. Couldn't have been better. As a member of the Tacoma Wheelmen's Bicycle Club, I was privileged to join first party of cyclists to cross the bridge at 4 p.m.

We followed state Transportation Secretary Doug MacDonald, who wore a screaming neon orange and yellow jersey recalling the safety jackets highway workers wear. Definitely the WSDOT Look. We Spandex-clad bikers writhed with fashion envy.

MacDonald started off the festivities with a story about his classic pink English Condor road bike, which he hoisted over his head to demonstrate its lightness. Bought the bike in 1978 in London, he said. He found out later that only two pink copies of that bike were made; Eric Clapton owned the other one.

Eric Clapton's wife for a while was singer Sheryl Crow. Crow later moved on to wed Lance Armstrong. The point, which all cyclists present acknowledged with proper awe, was that "only three degrees of separation" lie between Doug MacDonald and Lance Armstrong.

In the presence of such an aura, how could we do anything but fall docilely in line behind WSDOTSEC and follow him on the special bike lane cleared for the occasion? No one dared pass him.

=> Read more!

This breaking news reached my email inbox today. I share it for your entertainment. The media mogul involved is one Charles K. Creso, former unsuccessful Tacoma City Council candidate, owner of a Sixth Avenue art gallery, famed for posting a photo of graffiti painted on the side of his business and failing to disclose he had painted it himself.

BOMB SCARE ON TACOMA’S
NEW NARROWS BRIDGE !
(See photo attached) (not here)

Foot traffic leaving Tacoma’s new Narrows Bridge on the Tacoma side was brought to a complete standstill Sunday morning after a suspicious package was found.

The crowd on the new Narrows Bridge backed up until people were packed in like sardines. If the weight load limit on the bridge were ever to be tested, this was the day.

People lined up behind stretched up on tiptoes trying to find out what was causing the delay. Slowly, the word was passed back. “The State Patrol has a section of the bridge cordoned off. They’ve found a package. They're concerned it may be a bomb.”

Hoisting his wife up onto his shoulders, reporter Charles Creso handed her his camera. She then snapped the photo attached.

“Team work. No, this isn’t the first time we’ve used this technique. After all, the right shot is worth a thousand words. Besides, Bold Media is establishing reputation of out-scooping the News Tribune on a regular basis and that’s not an easy thing to do. We plan to send this story and photo to one of Tacoma’s top news services, The New Takhoman. They’ve done an outstanding job of breaking local news stories in the past.”

After further investigation and removal of the package, the crowd was finally allowed to continue on. Unfortunately, the crowd had backed up so far, that pedestrian gridlock ensued as those leaving the bridge and those entering the span met head on.

More information to come as this story develops.

BOLD MEDIA CORPORATION of WASHINGTON STATE.

The fearless John Hathaway, he of the fedora, instantly forwarded Creso's scoop to his email subscribers (many of whom are involuntary subscribers).

Let us note that the Bold Media dispatch was dated 1:48 p.m. We were promised further info, none of which has shown up at this hour, nearly eight hours later. You want the news? Go to the the old-fashioned MSM (mainstream media), The News Tribune, whose website reports that the bridge foot traffic was held up about five minutes because the cops were suspicious of a green purse. Scoop!

The Lakewood screening of "Music Within," advertised in a posting here last week, has been postponed. This word form the state Department of Veterans Affairs:

We just received word from the organizers of the Pre-Screening that the studio has postponed the Pre-Screening scheduled for July 17.  They are looking at a time in September, more details will follow on the new date as they become available.
 My sincere apologies to you for any inconvenience, and my thanks for your kindness in forwarding this message out for us.
Heidi

We get thank-you notes (and brickbats) for editorials all the time. But this one was especially nice and thoughtful.

I was taken aback when I saw the editorial (Friday). Thanks so much once again for the public affirmation and endorsement. It means so much and further affirms the accomplishment of these remarkable young leaders that represent great hope for our city.

In the midst of mourning a tragic week for our Hilltop neighborhood and entire city this week, I am reminded how often mourning and hope share a common bed. I think of the following poem by Denice Levertov that Act Six scholars discussed in the course of their selection process:

City Psalm

The killings continue, each second
pain and misfortune extend themselves
in the genetic chain, injustice is done knowingly, and the air
bears the dust of decayed hopes,
yet breathing those fumes, walking the thronged
pavements among crippled lives, jackhammers
raging, a parking lot painfully agleam
in the May sun, I have seen
not behind but within, within the
dull grief, blown grit, hideous
concrete facades, another grief, a gleam
as of dew, an abode of mercy,
have heard not behind but within noise
a humming that drifted into a quiet smile.
Nothing was changed, all was revealed otherwise;
not that horror was not, not that the killings did not continue,
not that I thought there was to be no more despair,
but that as if transparent all disclosed
an otherness that was blessed, that was bliss.
I saw Paradise in the dust of the street.

Thank you again, for telling the stories of this city.

Tim Herron
Act Six National Director
Northwest Leadership Foundation

Jason Mercier at the Washington Policy Center, whose staffers read state audits over their breakfast cereal, tipped us to this "finding" against the Annapolis (Kitsap County) Water District:

In October 2006, the three District Commissioners went to Europe to gather information regarding sewage treatment systems. The trip cost $3,823.89. Because all of the Commissioners went on this trip, the decision to make the trip, with at least some travel planning, should have occurred in an open public meeting. However, we could find no mention in meeting minutes of any discussion on the decision to make the trip . . .

While gathering information on water and sewage treatment systems in Europe, the Commissioners were conducting District business. Since a quorum was present, the District should have notified the public that special meetings were going to be held in Germany, Austria, Hungary and France.

Have a hunch the next Annapolis Water District commissioners election will be interesting.

The Pierce County Democratic Party announced these election endorsements today.

Dave Lovell, Port of Tacoma Position 3
Clare Petrich, Port of Tacoma Position 5

Lauren Walker, Tacoma City Position 3
Julie Anderson, Tacoma City Position 7
Rose Ehart, City of University Place, Position

Debbie Winskill, Tacoma School District 10, Pos. 1
Cindy Poysnick, Puyallup School Board

The party ducked the Spiro Manthou-Harold Moss Tacoma City Council contest or the at-large council race featuring four strong candidates in Marty Campbell, Marilyn Strickland, Jonathan Phillips and David Curry. Too hard to choose, I suppose.

I still keep up with Steve Klein, the former Tacoma Power superintendent who left last year to run the Snohomish County PUD, a large utility that, unlike Tacoma, has almost no power generation of its own.

Klein was ecstatic today because SnoCo settled a five-year legal battle with Enron on highly favorable terms. SnoCo will pay $18 million to settle a $180 million claim by Enron for power the utility purchased during the regional energy crisis of 2000-2001.

The PUD cancelled a nine-year power contract with Enron, asserting Enron had committed fraud. Federal regulators, under pressure from Washington's U.S. Sen Maria Cantwell for failing to act, finally concluded Enron did commit fraud. But a bankruptcy judge ordered the PUD and Enron into binding arbitration – which was to have begun Monday.

Klein says the settlement lifts "a dark cloud" from the PUD and won't force it to raise power rates. This is a case where the good guys finally won.

My wife, Anne, is back in her native Iowa to visit relatives. The state is infested with presidential candidates, she reports.

The Des Moines Register publishes a daily calendar listing the candidates' scheduled appearances. If you want to shake hands with a presidential wannabe, you don't have far to drive.

I've complained before about the disproportionate influence Iowans seem to have on our choice of presidential candidates. "Who better?" Anne sweetly replies.

Seattle Times political blogger David Postman notes that CQPolitics.com lists 8th Disrict U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert as having the 13th lowest “party unity” score among House Republicans.

In other words, Reichert, who narrowly survived a tough challenge by Democrat Darcy Burner last fall, has voted against the GOP leadership more often that all but 13 other fellow Republicans in the House.

Postman also reports that state Sen. Rodney Tom, D-Medina, is expected to announce he will seek Reichert’s seat next year – even though Burner is gearing up for another challenge.

The environmentally-minded city of Portland, also known as The Other Seattle, boasts an expanding light-rail system and strong land-use planning. It prides itself as "a city that works."

But a critic at the free-market Cato Institute dumps on Portland big-time in an article headlined "Debunking Portland: The City That Doesn't Work."

Cato senior fellow Randal O'Toole, who lives in Bandon, Ore., writes that Portland is run by a "light-rail mafia" fixated on increasing urban density. Despite fawning praise from the national media and planning associations, Portland is really an unhappy place.

Recent elections reveal that most citizens are upset by the unaffordable housing, traffic congestion, increasing taxes, declining urban services and disappearing jobs that have resulted from the plans.

The Portland "ideal" is very much like the philosophy behind Washington's Growth Management Act. But O'Toole contends that "cities that want to maintain their livability would do well to study Portland as an example of how not to plan."

Tough hit. I'll watch for responses.

Tacoman Steve Kubiszewski, an ardent champion for veterans with physical and mental wounds, wants to get the word out to military veterans about an inspirational film that will be shown in Lakewood Tuesday.

The flick is “Music Within,” a biopic about Richard Pimentel, a disabled Vietnam vet who became a leading advocate for the rights of people with disabilities. He was a driving force behind the Americans With Disabilities Act.

The free showing is at 7 p.m. at the Lowes Lakewood Town Center, 5721 Main Street S.W.. Email heida@dva.wa.gov to reserve tickets, or call 1-800-562-0132, press Option 1 and leave your name, telephone number and the number of tickets requested.

The folks at the conservative Evergreen Freedom Foundation are nothing if not Web-savvy. Here's an EFF web video interview with the Federal Way woman who signed up her dog as a registered voter.

The woman still faces a charge of filing a false voter registration, although she claims she did it to expose flaws in the King County voter registration process.

The City of Tacoma will appeal a hearing examiner's ruling today that a developer's permit application to convert Northeast Tacoma's North Shore golf course into housing is "substantially complete."

If the ruling stands, any zoning changes the city makes during a six-month "moratorium" will not apply to the massive residential project.
Residents opposed to the project and Councilman Jake Fey, who represents Northeast Tacoma, sought the moratorium. They had hoped to make change land-use rules for "planned residential developments" in order to block or at least downsize the project and leave more open space.

Note: The city just issued a press release confirming the ruling and announcing it will appeal. Click on Read More to see the full release.

Derek Young over at exit133 has some observations. He was the first blogger with the unconfirmed news.

=> Read more!

The new U.S. intelligence assessment that al-Qaida has strongly rebuilt in Pakistan is frightening – and undercuts the Bush administration rationale that Iraq is the pivotal focus of our fight against global terrorism.

Tacoma is lucky to have a program like Act Six steering local disadvantaged youths to college, providing support to see them through to graduation, and bringing them back to become young community leaders.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Rob Richie, executive director of Fair Vote, a national voting-reform organization, responds to yesterday's posting about a scandal the San Francisco Chronicle blames at least partly on ranked choice voting.

Interesting to see your editorial page blog post. The fact is, Diaz makes a very weak argument. Indeed ight now there's a challenge to a recently elected candidate to the Denver city council based on whether he had proper residency - with the winner having won in a runoff in which this very issue was a big issue raised by his opponent, to no avail. You can see coverage of that election here:

It's highly unlikely that a runoff would have produced any different result in San Francisco last year. Ed Jew in the November election was the clear choice of Asian American voters in an Asian American majority district, and the first choice candidate overall. He ran a very impressive campaign, based on grassroots connections and door-knocking, and beat three candidates with a lot more money. That angers the establishment and all the political consultants who love the second election and all the game-playing they can be paid to play, to be sure, but it's silly and sour grapes to blame Jew's victory on RCV.

More broadly,nearly all our primary elections are held with plurality voting rule that don't have runoffs -- and typically those primaries are in districts where winning the majority party's primary is basically a guarantee of winning the general election. There's no meaningful "second look" in all those races -- but there is a real chance of unrepresentative outcomes based on candidates winning contested primaries with far less than 50% of votes in a low-turnout elections. RCV as a majority system in a high-turnout elections certainly can be argued to be far more likely to generate strong winners than these plurality systems also held in one round.

One more thing about primaries. Next year yourswill be in August. (Actually, our first August primary is next month--D.S.) Expect a slumbering turnout that I predict will hit historic lows and could lead to all kinds of distorted results. With RCV Pierce County voters will have their choice for county executive among all viable candidates at a November election when far more of them are at the polls. interesting that your county executive prefers some of the voters' biggest decisions being made when the great majority of voters won't be part of making them!

During the heat wave (or what passes for one in the weather weenie capital of the United States), Tacoma's Click! cable TV network did its part to keep viewers cool by airing a series of winter wonderland photos by Kevin Freitas. See The News Tribune story here.

That reminded me of a hilarious TV channel I stumbled on one cold New Year's Eve in a hotel room in Victoria, B.C.

I don't know if it was called the Fireplace Channel, but all that it aired was a nice roaring fire, complete with wood crackling noises. It was on a loop, and about every 10 minutes or so a mysterious, hirsute forearm would poke at the fire and reach in to add another log.

It was mesmerizing. And it did seem to warm up the room a bit. Maybe Click! should consider something like that this winter. At the very least, it makes nice background noise for folks who don't have real fireplaces (or if a burn ban is on).

Here’s an exchange I had Wednesday with a reader who seems rather disenchanted with Tacoma. I took out her name to prevent harassment. Anybody else want to chime in?

I am a homeowner; a single woman and a neglected demographic, barely under the radar except when it comes time to pay my taxes. I live in Tacoma and work in Seattle.

Not of my choice. I mean, who in their right mind likes to commute 3 hours a day? I am forced to commute because I am not a nurse or a contractor and I can’t live on 30,000 a year. That’s the high end in Pierce County. I often wonder how they justify this. Gas prices are the same as King County, rents are as high, food costs as much and services such as restaurants and movies are exactly the same. My mortgage payment isn’t any cheaper, even if my house cost half as much as one in Seattle and now with the crunch I don’t dare try to sell.

So why? Why are there no jobs that pay a living wage in Tacoma? Why are all the biotechs and software companies sprouting up in Seattle and why does the city of Tacoma keep building condos when there is nothing to sustain the population living here already? Most of all, with city officials in King county wringing their hands over the worst congestion in the country, why have they not suggested sharing the wealth and diverting these companies to North and South? Good questions and nobody has an answer except Uncle Sam with his hand out.
Grumpy in Tacoma

Dear Grumpy
I sympathize with everything you said except for one thing: While they may seem awful high to you, housing prices and mortgages are far higher in Seattle than they are in Tacoma. That’s why we’re seeing Seattle people moving down here and commuting to work in Seattle. That, of course, helps drive up the housing market here.
Dave Seago, TNT

Hi David,
Unfortunately, Tacoma wants to be a suburb of Seattle and it’s just too far for that. I pay $1,800 per month on my mortgage. I paid $785 rent on an apartment in Seattle. My sister pays $1400 per month for her apartment in Tacoma, which is just a little bigger than the one I had in Seattle so I’m not really getting it.

Tacoma needs to stop thinking like a suburb, get rid of its gang problem and old Vietnam vets with dilapidated houses (one is next to me) and be a real city. I don’t even go downtown because it’s not really a downtown and the parking is worse than Seattle, if you can believe that. I know this is going off another tangent but I went down there for a hair apt and the whole street (Pacific) is one big loading zone.

Honestly, on a Saturday? Otherwise, it’s an hour limit in front of restaurants. Who eats at a restaurant in an hour? I do like Tacoma for it’s quieter parks, services and bike lanes but not much else to like about it. I actually did ask the city why they don’t try and get some companies to put down roots but I didn’t get a very intelligent response.
Thanks for your feedback,

The death today of Lady Bird Johnson brought back a rush of memories – so many that I was inspired to write a short editorial about her that appears Thursday.

My family had only been living in Central Texas about three months when President John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. I remember some kids in my sixth-grade class cheering when the news of his death was announced on the schoolroom loudspeaker.

That was shocking to me, as my family – which was Catholic – had been Kennedy fans. In retrospect, I think there was a lot of animosity in the South toward Kennedy's civil rights positions – and that carried over to Lyndon Johnson's presidency, when landmark civil rights legislation was enacted.

What I remember of Lady Bird as a kid living in Texas is that she was a big promoter of wildflowers. Of course, we had nice ones there – wine cups and Indian paintbrushes were favorites. I wasn't really aware of her contribution to highway beautification and Head Start until I read up on her for the editorial.

Here's an early look at it:

=> Read more!

The City of Tacoma’s move to make anti-graffiti enforcement more effective is welcome. The key is being reasonable with property owners victimized by graffiti artists and offering help in cleaning up.

Testimony by former U.S. surgeon general adds another chapter to long volume of stories about the Bush administration’s attempts to muzzle federal science and health officials who won’t sing from the White House hymn book.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Opponents of ranked choice voting in Pierce County are circulating a column about a city hall scandal in San Francisco blamed, in part, on RCV.

Pierce County Executive John Ladenburg sent the article to County Council members. One passed it on to me.

The gist is that a city supervisor, San Francisco's equivalent of a council member, was recently elected even though he won only 26 percent of the votes in his district. It turns out that the supervisor, Ed Jew, does not even live in that district and is under investigation for taking large payments from business owners who wanted help with city permits.

San Francisco Chronicle Editorial Page Editor John Diaz blames the combination of district elections – the city has 11 supervisor districts – and RCV for Jew's ability to win. If Jew had been forced into a runoff election, the funny business surrounding his campaign would probably have surfaced as scrutiny focused on the top two candidates in the general election, Diaz argues.

The TNT endorsed the RCV county charter amendment voters approved in November. The Chron opposed it when voters blessed it in San Francisco, Diaz told me today:

As you saw in the column, I think some of our concerns have already been realized ... and we've yet to go through a major election with the system. We will this November, with the mayor's race

.

The argument that state tax and regulatory policies stifle business growth in Washington is one state Republicans regularly hurl at the Democratic governor and the Legislature.

So Gov. Christine Gregoire was happy today to trumpet a Forbes magazine survey ranking Washington as the fifth best state for business. Washington ranked 12th last year. The magazine said:

“Washington is also the only state to finish in the top five in three main categories (labor, regulatory environment and growth). And Washington's numbers are up across the board when you look both backward and at projections into the future.”

Sayeth the gov:

Our top five ranking in the Forbes survey confirms that Washington is moving in the right direction and that our state is a great place to do business, work and raise a family.

Forbes ranked Virginia, Utah, North Carolina and Texas ahead of Washington. Louisiana and West Virginia ranked last. California, widely condemned in business circles for its regulatory environment, ranked 34th.

A reader writes:

Just wanted to thank you for running Tim Egan's commentary (subscription required) on Alex Rodriguez today. I'm a big fan of Tim's writing and was pleased to find his work in today's News Tribune. I think he understands how people in this state think--what we care about and what makes us tick. And his points on A-Rod, Pay-Rod, Stray-Rod were right on target. No wonder the former Seattle Mariner is booed each time he steps up to the plate in Safeco Field.

So thanks. And I'd love to see more of Tim's writing in our local newspaper.

P.S. This is not an official letter to the editor for publication; I simply wanted you to know that I think you made a good decision to run Tim's commentary.

We like Egan's work, too. He's a former Seattle P-I reporter now based in Seattle for The News York Times. We'll watch for pieces that speak to us here in the Northwest.

Our candidate endorsement interviews for the Aug. 21 primary election continued today with two excellent candidates, Tacoma Port Commission candidate Don Johnson and Tacoma City Councilwoman Julie Anderson.

Johnson is well-known in the community as vice president and general manager of the Simpson Tacoma Kraft Co. and for a long record of civic service. He plans to retire later this year after 36 years at the Tacoma operation.

What struck us most about Johnson's interview was his empathy for employees. He was particularly proud that Simpson down-sized from 650 workers to 400 without layoffs, although it was more costly to do it that way.
Although he started out as a technical assistant at the mill and worked his way up, "The higher you go, the less important you become," he said, summing up his approach to management.

Anderson was also impressive, but then she doesn't have much competition in seeking a second term against Will Baker and Robert "The Traveler" Hill.

=> Read more!

A reader emailed today ask about a rumor that Tacoma City officials are considering raising building height limits in the North End's Proctor District.

City planner Peter Huff provided this update:

The Proctor business area is one of fourteen designated mixed use centers in the City’s Comprehensive Plan. Proctor is designated a neighborhood center and currently has maximum allowable height 45 feet.

The City is going through a process this year of reviewing all the mixed use centers and as part of this review an increase in the maximum allowable height is being reviewed the City’s Planning Commission. Attached is a summary of potential revisions that are going to be discussed with the Planning Commission at their July 11 meeting.

Click below to see the summary. See commission agenda here.

The current 45-foot limit in the mixed-use centers was a problem in two instances last year. Tacoma City Councilman Bill Evans' proposal to build a boutique hotel on the lot across Proctor Street from Knapps' restaurant was stymied by the limit; he would have needed a variance for the top of an elevator shaft needed for a rooftop court.

The 45-foot limit also blocked proposals by developers who wanted to do wanted to do mixed-use projects on MLK Jr. Way where the now-closed Browne's Star Grill stands.

=> Read more!

Tacoma’s Lincoln High School has been one of the state’s most innovative and committed adherents of the Gates small-schools initiative. But the six-year Gates grant is about to run out. Extending the school’s transformation depends on getting a multi-year federal grant. We believe Lincoln and the students it serves deserve a chance to continue. We’re checking to see if Clover Park and Foss high schools are in a similar situation.

The abduction of Zina Linnik from the alley behind her home is the sort of thing that strikes fear into the hearts of parents everywhere. This happened in the Hilltop and reinforces old stereotypes about an unsafe neighborhood, but in truth it could have happened anywhere in Tacoma. The heartening thing is the way the Hilltop community has rallied around Zina’s family.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Calvin Goings’ early-bird campaign for Pierce County executive in 2008 is hitting second gear.

The Democratic County Council member is holding a campaign picnic at his Vickery Road home July 21. And he’ll probably hold forth about his vow to refuse the 21 percent pay raise the council recently voted for the county executive.

That promise turns up on Goings’ recently spiffed-up campaign Web site, where you can see the likely tone of his campaign once the serious slugging starts next year. Try these samples:

There is no clearer sign that change is needed than the recent decision by the Republican-led County Council to raise their salaries and that of the executive by over 21 percent as well as to increase sewer rates to fund a luxury golf course. Calvin Goings voted against these frivolous measures. It is clear that Pierce County government has lost touch with the values and issues that truly matter to working families.

And...

Calvin Goings' first step in restoring taxpayers' faith in county government will be to reject the pay raise as executive and return the 21 percent increase to taxpayers. Goings has issued a challenge to all candidates for executive to join him in his pledge to not accept the pay raise.

If elected, Goings will have to get by on a $131,784 salary. Last fall the council voted to hike the executive’s pay to $159,338 – which had the effect of also raising council salaries 21 percent. Goings, who voted against the move, is not one of three council members eligible for the increase to $95,603.

Goings also voted last month against smaller raises for the sheriff, assessor-treasurer and auditor.

On my lunchtime break with today's Wall Street Journal, I spotted a headline that hit me like a well-aimed rock. It read:

Character Counts: Too often, we hire the person with the lowest price, or the most charisma. Then we get hustled.

Seems to capture in a nutshell the Tacoma School District's experience with departing Superintendent Charlie Milligan. Consider this excerpt from the article by WSJ's George Anders:

It's far better to deal with people who are good listeners and calm, candid explainers. They don't try to dominate the conversation. Instead, they give us time to explain our priorities, even if we aren't very good at articulating them at first. they build trust by answering questions we aren't shrewd enough to ask. they explain the flaws as well as the allure of whatever we're considering. And they care about how they're regarded in the community (emphasis mine).

This ought to be required reading for Tacoma School Board members.

The hoopla over the public unveiling of Boeing’s Dreamliner could make Washingtonians giddy over the rosy prospects for both the company and the state. But let’s keep our fingers crossed and hope the plane lives up to its hype.

Charlie Milligan is deservedly on his way out as Tacoma school chief, but his initiative on math seems to be getting results. High school is still a problem. WASL scores aren’t in yet, though.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Much of Tacoma's Democratic establishment turned out for Sunday's memorial service for the late Tacoma attorney David Minikel, who was active in local Democratic politics. There was some irony in tributes offered by former mayor Harold Moss and current Mayor Bill Baarsma.

Both Moss and Baarsma recalled Minikel's role in suing the city in a case that went to the state Supreme Court in the late 1990s. The suit involved a vote the City Council had illegally taken in private on an appointment to the city Planning Commission.

Minikel won the case on an 8-1 ruling by the Supremes – and collected hefty legal fees from the city. Both Moss and Baarsma were among the council members who participated in the illegal vote.

Moss, who is running for the council again this year, told the audience that whenever he saw Minikel for years after the case was resolved, Minikel would cheerfully thank Moss and the city for enabling him to make enough money "to buy a house down the street from you."

It's too late to have his name removed from the Aug. 21 primary ballot, but Jim Schmidt wants to get the word out that he's not an active candidate for the Metro Parks Commission Position 2 seat.

There are still two challengers in the race – Gizella Miller and Angie Eichholtz – running against incumbent Tim Reid, who is seeking his third term. The two top vote-getters will go on to the Nov. 6 general election ballot.

I don't want to sound like Pollyanna here, but the Children's Administration of the Department of Social and Health Services shouldn't be judged solely by its blunders – even inexcusable ones like missing the torture a girl suffered for years at the hands of her foster mother. See Sean Robinson's horrifying story.

The Children's Administration appears to be making some progress. Its chief, Cheryl Stephani, visited us last week. She said that Child Protective Services – on orders from the governor – has begun responding to nearly all emergency child-abuse calls within 24 hours. (The old standard, amazingly, was 10 days – a truly complacent schedule.)

Stephani also said that the hiring of more social workers is allowing also allow the Children's Administration make consistent monthly visits to check on children in foster homes.

And caseloads – the number of children assigned to a given social worker – are coming down. Ten years ago, the average caseload was 35. A couple years ago, it was 24. Now it's 21.

One state that's been notably successful in dealing with abuse is Utah. Its caseloads now run from 12 to 15. Caseloads in Washington, D.C., are similar: 11 to 15 per social worker.

The Utah model is what the Children's Administration is shooting for. It's got a way to go. But horror stories aside, Stephani does seem to be trying to get there.

What would happen to the Port of Tacoma if sea level rose a meter or two due to global warming? Whoever’s port director in 50 years might have to get to work by kayak.

I’m just guessing at the sort of dire consequences that will be outlined July 24 in Seattle when the National Wildlife Federation unveils a study of the potential impacts of several scenarios for rising sea levels on Puget Sound.

NWF representatives will visit the TNT ed board on July 25 to discuss the study, which won’t paint a pretty picture, I’m sure. According to a NWF expert who spoke to the University of Washington’s Climate Impacts Group in May, researchers were using a computer model to simulate sea-level rises ranging from 3 inches to 2 meters, or more than 6 feet, by 2100.

A whole bunch of homes in Puyallup could be waterfront property. Buy now.

Tim Eyman confidently declared victory this morning in his bid to qualify a “Taxpayer Protection Initiative” for the November ballot.

In his customary intimate note “to all media outlets,” Washington’s prolific professional initiative promoter said he and supporters turned in 313,000 petition signatures to the secretary of state.

That’s nearly 100,000 more than Initative 960 needs to qualify. Eyman’s initiative to reduce car tab fees failed to qualify last year because too many signatures were invalid. But his cushion then was only 42,000 votes above the qualifying requirement; the much bigger cushion this time makes it likely I-960 will qualify.

Whether I-960 makes the ballot may depend, however, on the outcome of a lawsuit challenging the measure’s constitutionality. Here’s a prediction: Eyman will still collect his “commission” even if the court case goes against him.

Saturday:

He may not rank up there with Jim Thorpe or Lance Armstrong in the annals of American athletes, but Joey Chestnut is a true competitor. Accomplishing a feat both amazing and repulsive, Chestnut dethroned six-time world hot-dog eating champion Takeru Kobayashi by downing 66 hot dogs in 12 minutes. Don’t try this at home.

Sunday:

Well, duh. State Department of Corrections study finds Pierce County has “low need” for more work-release centers. That’s because the state has already been using the county as a dumping ground for released cons. At least the study strengthens the case for locating new work-release facilities in “underserved’ places like Snohomish County.

The proposal to extend the term-limits for Pierce County auditor and assessor-treasurer has enough merit to be put on the ballot as a county charter amendment. Those two jobs require some technical expertise and professional training, so experience is valuable. And it might reduce opportunities for term-limited county council members to hop over to either of those offices — which would be a good thing.

Monday:

We hail the the settlement between commercial shellfish growers and Puget Sound tribes that ends a long and bitter legal battle over lucrative shellfish harvests. U.S. Norm Dicks performed admirably in midwifing the deal, which involves, of course, some federal funding.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Boy, those folks already cranky about the imminent prospect of paying tolls on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge – starting July 16 – are really gonna hate this.

An MIT economist has found that electronic tolling makes it easier for authorities to raise tolls – so says this column in The New York Times. MIT econ prof Amy Finkelstein researched tolling records and concluded that installing electronic toll systems results in higher toll increases than would otherwise be the case.

The basic logic is that people spend more with credit cards than they would if they had to use cash. Same with electronic tolling, which results in the motorist getting a statement every month.

Of course, the difference with the Narrows Bridge(s) is that electronic tolling will be there from the start, and state officials have already mapped out a likely schedule of gradual toll increases until the new bridge is paid off.
Also, back east, tolls on highways and bridges generally last forever; in Washington, bridge tolls must by law end when the construction bonds are paid off.

Thanks to Al Gore III (mug shot), I now know that if I ever need to drive 100 mph, my Toyota Prius is up to the task.

Al the Younger, 24, was allegedly driving his blue Prius that fast in Southern California Wednesday. The deputy who pulled him over smelled marijuana and found a stash of prescription drugs (including Vicodin, Valium and the amphetamine Adderall). Unfortunately Al doesn't have a prescription for those drugs, and he was booked on speeding and drug charges.

He was bailed out ($20,000 cash) by an unidentified man and woman. No word on whether the man was portly and wearing an "I invented the Internet" button.

It's not unusual for scions of famous folks to have run-ins with the law. No, what caught people by surprise was that the vehicle in question was a Prius. Everyone seems taken aback by the notion that a fuel-efficient vehicle can also tear up the road.

I'm not. I know how peppy my little fuel-sipper is. The thing is, though, it doesn't have a traditional speedometer, which theoretically indicates how fast the car can go. It has a digital readout that tells how fast the car is going.

The fastest I've driven in my Prius is the low-80s out on a lonely, straight stretch of I-90. Thanks to Gore III, I don't feel tempted to push it a little further to see just how much pep it has.

Tacoma School Board veteran Debbie Winskill, running for re-election, ended her endorsement interview this morning with some observations about the school district's recent turmoil.

She and Kurt Miller were original board opponents of now-departing Superintendent Charlie Milligan, but she admits being impressed by him at first: "His interview was one of the best I've ever seen. He said all the right things."

When did she start to have doubts about him? "About the first week." Milligan arrived the middle of last June, while his predecessor, Jim Shoemake, was still – as planned – wrapping things up. When Milligan arrived, "He was mad that Jim was still in his office."

Winskill continues to praise Milligan's initiatives in math instruction and thinks it's making a difference in the classroom.

Although the board will hire an interim superintendent while it searches for a permanent one, Winskill doesn't want the interim to be a caretaker: "We don't want to drift."

We continue Wednesday with our First Amendment series at the top of the editorial page; tomorrow's article focuses on freedom
of the press.

Below, we criticize President Bush’s decision to commute Lewis Libby’s prison sentence. Perjury is a serious crime and should be treated as such. The president has denied more than 4,000 commutation requests from strangers; this is very much a favor to a friend.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Today's e-mail from Tim Eyman: an appeal to his supporters to turn in their signatures for Initiative 960 – his latest anti-tax measure – to the secretary of state's office.

"Make sure to send in all partially-filled and fully-filled petitions right away. Even ONE voter signature on a petition is worth the stamp to send it in."

This is high-stakes stuff for Eyman. His success rate has been trailing off noticeably in recent years. If I-960 flops – at the secretary of state's office in July, or at the polls in November – he'll be looking even more like a has-been.

So the question is, did Eyman secretly bribe the Service Employees International Union and Futurewise (an environmental group) to file that lawsuit to keep I-960 off the ballot?

Citizens like to make the decisions on initiatives themselves – not have King County judges make those decisions for them. The lawsuit gave Eyman a perfect platform to play the public champion. By inviting a backlash, the SEIU and Futurewise could put I-960 over the top all by themselves.

It's no secret the editorial board thinks the Tacoma School Board's performance this year has been mediocre (see Sunday's editorial). If all board seats were up for election this fall, the three members who approved that whopping settlement with Superintendent Charlie Milligan would be vulnerable.

As it is, only two-termer Debbie Winskill is up for election, and she, along with Kurt Miller, were the only two board members who voted against the deal. The most senior members of the board, the two were the first to become disenchanted with Milligan.

So it's more than a little ironic that one of the candidates opposing her in the August primary is a former math professor and one of the best candidates we've seen Tacoma school board races.

Elly Claus-McGahan, we learned in interviewing her, earned her Ph.D. in math at the University of Texas and taught six years as an assistant professor at UPS. Now working as a math education consultant, she and her husband have two kids in Tacoma schools.

Milligan wasn't wrong to install the basics-oriented Saxon math program, she said, but it has been poorly implemented. Calling herself a middle-of-the-roader on math curriculum,Claus-McGahan believes the best approach involves a blend of the basics and the so-called new math. Her business web site is www.sound-decisions.org.

As near as Google and I can tell, Tacoma City Council candidate Marilyn Strickland (pictured) doesn't have a campaign Web site yet. But she ought to take a look at the Google search link that reads, "Marilyn Strickland for City Council Position 8."

Click on it, and you get what looks like part of a Strickland campaign site. But the photo at the top shows a white lady; Tacoma's Marilyn Strickland is black.

The page seems to be a template for campaign sites designed by a Web developer who bills himself as "The World Famous Traveling Web Guy." Beats me why the wrong photo would be up there. Stay tuned. We'll hear from Marilyn, I'm sure.

Update::It didn't take long to find out my supposition was correct. The Traveling Web Guy had left online a proposed campaign website for Strickland long after it had been turned down. As the comments below note, the real campaign web site is strickland4tacoma.org. The odd thing is that it's really difficult, if not impossible, to find this web site with a Google search. Beats me.

I ran into the Golfing Politican, John Ladenburg, at a party Saturday. As you might expect, the Pierce County exec was glowing over the debut of the Chambers Bay Golf Course. It's going great guns, drawing rave reviews, strong bookings and gratitude from non-golfing citizens enjoying the strenuous three-mile trail around the course.

The biggest surprise, Ladenburg said, is the popularity of the course bar and grill. The patio offers a million-dollar view of the Sound and the Olympics. The place is doing $5,000 a day in business, he said, and he's going to ask the council for another budget amendment – to buy more food and supplies to serve the unanticipated customers.

=> Read more!

Editorial writers are targets for a lot of think tank material; it fills our email inboxes day after day. Some of it I actually look at.

The other day, for example, the free-market Reason Foundation promoted a new study ranking the cost-effectiveness of state highway systems. I looked to see how Washington fared.

In 2005, Washington ranks 32nd in overall cost-effectiveness, which Reason says is a general measure of traffic congestion. But our ranking seems to swing wildly. In 1998, we ranked 24th; in 2000, 18th; in 2004, 38th.

The top states were North Dakota, South Carolina and Kansas. The worst were California, Minnesota, New Jersey and North Carolina. Washington ranked 12th for fatalities -- a good rating.

Reason says traffic congestion is “a dire threat” that will lead to “the death of major cities” in the U.S. by mid-century unless dramatic changes are made.
For an idea of Reason’s approach to solutions, go here. Hint: They’re really big on tolling and privately owned and built highways.