After I noted here Friday that the Dallas Morning News had panned Texas' early learning initiative, John Barnes of the conservative Washington Policy Center e-mailed me with more of the same.

Liv Finne, an adjunct scholar at the center, has been reviewing universal preschool programs and similar initiatives and doesn't like what she sees.

Here's her take on universal preschool and all-day kindergarten. Here's her lengthier assessment of the prospects of Washington's early learning efforts.

The Washington Policy Center can be counted on to oppose any spendy new government program, but Finne's concerns about public preschool programs displacing competent parental care – to the extent that they actually do that – are well-placed.

The best research available indicates there's no institutional substitute for mom and dad or their equivalents – providing mom and dad are around, and aren't addicts or dysfunctional in other ways. That doesn't mean schooling won't help little children, so long as it's not cutting out their parents in the bargain.

Both opinion pages on Tuesday will be devoted to our annual “explainer,” a special layout that identifies the various functions of the opinion section and profiles the newspaper’s editorial board.

Thursday:

Pierce County fared well in its game of brinksmanship with the state over funding for mental-health services, emerging with more funding than it had originally requested through the usual channels. That’s good news for county residents who depend on those services, but the Legislature is going to have to address the underlying issue of inadequate funding.

Local law enforcement officials are just waking up to the fact that Craigslist and other online sites have become a way for prostitutes to “book” clients. Fife city officials have responded with an ordinance banning such online solicitation, but other Pierce County cities don’t seem too concerned. The situation bears watching.

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.

Our Saturday editorial described one way that public agencies are using (or abusing) a provision of the public records act.

In Soter v. Cowles (the records case the state Supreme Court ruled on last week), the Spokane School District used the provision to sue The Spokesman-Review before the newspaper could sue the district. As we said in the editorial, the approach smacks of a strategic lawsuit against public participation.

But that's not the only way public agencies are twisting RCW 42.56.540 to foil records requests. Toby Nixon, a former state legislator and president of the Washington Coalition for Open Government, explains:

=> Read more!

In his column today, The New York Times’ David Brooks has Part II of his Sidney Awards for best magazine essays of 2007. Part I appeared Thursday. Those essays gave slices of American life; Part II celebrates “more polemical” essays of 2007.

Here are links to essays mentioned in today’s column.

• Christopher Hitchens’ “The War” in Vanity Fair.

• Ross Douthat’s “Lord Have Mercy” in The Claremont Review of Books

• Jeffrey Goldberg’s “The Usual Suspect” in The New Republic

• Christopher Jencks’ “The Immigration Charade” in The New York Review of Books

• Jonathan Haidt’s “Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion” in Edge

• J. Bradford DeLong’s “Creative Destruction’s Reconstruction” in the Chronicle of Higher Education

• Heather MacDonald’s “The Abduction of Opera” in The City Journal

And here again are the links to the essays Brooks cited Thursday:

=> Read more!

The state Supreme Court's ruling on a Spokane public records case — the subject of our editorial today — had an interesting nuance.

Justice Barbara Madsen sided with the majority in upholding lower court rulings allowing the Spokane School District to keep documents about a student's death under wraps. But during oral arguments last March, Madsen seemed to foresee the dangers inherent in keeping the records secret.

A Friday story in the Spokesman-Review (the newspaper which was seeking the documents) quoted Madsen's questioning of the school district's attorney:

"Some of the most serious incidents that occur in the school district are going to be the very ones that the public won’t know anything about. … Isn’t that the upshot of your argument?” Justice Barbara A. Madsen asked school district attorney John Manix. “… (T)he (incidents) where you kill a child – inadvertently, negligently or whatever … those will never be known under this rule so we will never hold our school districts accountable for the policies they have in place."

“I read the facts in this case. I almost fell off my chair,” Madsen said at the time. “Is this what we want?”

Madsen wrote a concurring opinion, saying the dissenters made strong policy arguments in favor of public disclosure. But, she argued, the job of changing state law to address those arguments belongs to the Legislature, not the court.

I was tempted to cringe on behalf of Mitt Romney over the new AP report that "the Romney administration" let Daniel Tavares Jr. out of prison prematurely.

What happened: Someone in the Massachusetts Department of Correction failed to take away 300 days of "good time" Tavares should have forfeited by being a nasty boy in prison. Another 300 days would have saved the life of the Graham couple he killed last month.

People make stupid mistakes in every bureaucracy. Doesn't mean it's the governor's fault.

But then there's Romney's own campaign-trail demand for the resignation of Kathe Tuttman, the judge who set Tavares free in a bail bond hearing. As it later turned out, Tuttman had been told little about Tavares' violent history – not even the fact that he'd stabbed his mother to death.

If Tuttman can be blamed for not knowing something no one had told her, why not Romney for not knowing everything his prison functionaries were up to? Or for summarily calling for Tuttman's head without having a clue about what happened in that bail hearing?

Editorials for the holiday weekend:

Saturday:
The state Supreme Court’s ruling against disclosure in a case involving the Spokesman Review in Spokane not only expanded the attorney-client privilege but also endorsed a new tactic government agencies can use to fend off disclosure requests: They can force record seekers into court before taking action on the requests. This makes disclosure harder, not easier, to obtain.

Sunday:
We look back at the year’s hits and misses on our 2007 civic agenda scorecard. The failure of Proposition 1 was a big setback in solving transportation problems, but there were notable gains in protecting the environment and preserving valuable farmland in Pierce County.

There, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Tacoma port commissioners grudgingly agree to join their counterparts in Seattle and Olympia in providing streaming video and taped telecasts of commission meetings.

Monday:
Indulging in whimsy and wishful thinking, we offer headlines we’d like to see in 2008.

Tuesday:
Both pages will be devoted to our annual “editorial page explainer,” a special package profiling editorial board members and identifying the various voices and functions offered in our daily opinion pages.

Wednesday:
Pierce County won its high-stakes showdown with the state over providing mental health services for county residents, but there’s no reason to gloat. The Legislature is going to have face up to its obligation to adequately fund such services in the long run.

Clearing prostitutes from city streets is no longer good enough. Fife police operation shows that cops need to monitor Craig’s List, too, to curb an open market in sex.

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.

Texas got the jump on Washington by a couple years in launching an ambitious early learning initiative. As we ramp up the state Department of Early Learning, Thrive by Five and other programs, we ought to be learning from Texas' early mistakes.

According to the Dallas Morning News, their program hasn't been faring well:

A groundbreaking effort to prepare Texas preschoolers for kindergarten has eaten up millions of taxpayer dollars but has yet to deliver on the investment, according to a new report released by the Texas Education Agency.

The findings spotlight a lack of budget transparency, little accountability and a lot of administrative overhead in the Texas Early Education Model, or TEEM, a state program run out of the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. ...

State officials have pumped more than $45 million into the program since 2003. Yet the report found no proof that most children fared better in TEEM than in conventional preschool programs.

Is or is not the state still using Pierce County as a dumping ground for ex-cons?

We applauded the Department of Corrections for changing its evil ways in an editorial Sunday. See my Dec. 23 post below.

I looked at the last few months of data. But our sharp-eyed reporter Joseph Turner looked back through August, the first full month a new policy required the DOC to document where its inmates had come from and where it had released them.

See his e-mail below, and state Sen. Mike Carrell's response below it. Bottom line: It depends when you start counting.

Turner:

Just for the record, Pierce County still is a net importer of ex-convicts since July 22, 2007, the date the Department of Corrections was supposed to begin sending ex-convicts back to the county of their first conviction (with exceptions, of course).

=> Read more!

1. Benazir Bhutto's assassination threatens to set loose the devils in Pakistan, a country that has both nukes and the Taliban.

2. Orting City officials should reconsider their rebuff of a resident who missed the deadline for challenging a utility tax rate hike by two days.

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.

Hillary Clinton, battling for votes in Iowa, would dearly love to project the family-friendly image Tacoma's Democratic U.S. Rep. Adam Smith so easily – and naturally – conveys in the annual Christmas card sent by his office.

I suspect Smith, now in his ninth term representing the Ninth District, is the only member of the state's congressional delegation with two young children. Daughter Kendall, 7, and Jack, 4. Kendall attends a Tacoma elementary school where her mother, Sara, is PTA president.

Kendall no longer needs training wheels on her bicycle, and Jack is mad about soccer, the card reports. Only one sentence mentions the congressman's day job: He likes chairing the House Armed Services terrorism committee.

Speaking of which, Smith made news last week by calling on U.S. military leaders to shift more resources from Iraq to fighting the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan.

In his column today, The New York Times’ David Brooks lists his choices for best magazine essays of 2007 that captured different slices of American life.

Here are links to those essays.

• Nick Paumgarten’s “There and Back Again” in The New Yorker

• Vanessa Grigoriadis’ “Everybody Sucks” in New York Magazine

• Matt Labach’s “Roger Stone, Political Animal” in The Weekly Standard

• Michael Lewis’ “The Evolution of an Investor” in Portfolio

• Jeremy Kahn’s “The Story of a Snitch” in The Atlantic

• “Crime, Drugs, Welfare – and other Good News” by Peter Wehner and Yuval Levin in Commentary

Pierce County Prosecutor Gerry Horne said our editorial earlier this week about an apparent decline in inmate "dumping" here failed to credit one key legislator.

State Rep. Steve Conway, D-Tacoma, should have been recognized for his role in passing "Fair Share" legislation earlier this year. Says Horne:

=> Read more!

The draft version of a potentially far-reaching state plan for addressing climate change was released almost unnoticed in the pre-Christmas bustle.

I haven’t had a chance to study it yet, but the work of the govenor’s climate advisory team is online at this state Department of Ecology website. And here is DOE’s announcement about the report.

The advisory team is accepting public comments on the draft recommendations until Jan. 10. The final report is due to the governor Feb. 7.

Among other things, the team recommends adding “global warming pollution” as one of the factors cities and counties must consider to comply with the state’s Growth Management Act. Cities would be encouraged, if not required, to develop as compact, transit-oriented communities. The panel also recommends establishing a firm schedule for adopting a "cap and trade" system for reducing carbon emissions.

When we spoke with DOE Director Jay Manning earlier this year about the panel’s work, he acknowledged that changing transportation patterns is “where the rubber really meets the road” in reducing CO2 emissions. More than 70 percent of the CO2 emissions in Washington come from motor vehicles.

We’ll have to see how the advisory team proposes to deal with that problem. Presumably it is counting on the Western states being able to impose tougher emissions standards for vehicles – something the EPA blocked just last week.
(See our editorial about that.)

The Class of 2008 is destined to become the most poked and prodded group of students ever to make its way though the state's public schools. Not only is this the class for which the WASL actually means something, but it also is the first class to have been assigned Secure Student Identification numbers.

Those numbers will allow state school officials to get a better picture of what happens to students. Kids who get their diplomas on time are easy to count — it's those students who don't graduate with their class who are harder to track.

For too long, the state posted dropout rates that were greatly understated because it didn't count students whose whereabouts were listed as "unknown." The new identification numbers, given to the members of the Class of 2008 when they entered high school as freshmen, should all but eliminate that category.

The numbers, due out in a few days, will allow state officials to determine who transferred, who left the public system to go a private school, who moved out of state and who just plain dropped out.

If you haven't already seen it, check out today's Christmas editorial. Every year it's a struggle for editorial writers to find a fresh take on Christmas. Get too secular, and some devout Christians will complain. Get too religious, and a few overbearing secularists will complain.

It's a mighty temptation to just drag out the classic "Yes, Virginia" editorial, or perhaps the famous passage from Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," but that seems too much like taking the easy way out.

So this year we sent chief editorial writer Patrick O'Callahan to the Northwest Room at the Tacoma Public Library. We asked him to collect passages from Christmas editorials The News Tribune published during World War II.

We think Pat's selection will remind all of us no one wishes more fervently for "Peace on Earth, goodwill to men" than those whose loved ones are serving their nation in harm's way.

On behalf of all of us who work at The News Tribune, we wish our readers a most joyous Christmas and a Happy New Year.

An unexplained detail – make that an unexplained skeleton – has added yet another mysterious twist to the case of the Massachusetts Maniac.

The night before he gunned down a young Graham couple last month, Daniel T. Tavares Jr. was bragging to the locals about killing three people in Massachusetts.

He'd been convicted of only one – stabbing his mother to death in 1991. Nine years later, in prison, he told police to look in his old back yard for another body, that of a 32-year woman killed by two other guys in "some wild party."

The bones showed she'd stabbed to death, like Tavares' mom, but the then-district attorney concluded that Tavares wasn't responsible.

That might be a credible conclusion – except for the fact that Massachusetts prosecutors seemed to have this thing for Tavares. They charged him with manslaughter, not murder, for stabbing his mother 16 times. They gave him a get-out-of-jail-free card by failing to charge him with two prison assaults. Then – when he skipped the state with his Washington girlfriend's name tattooed on his neck – they issued an arrest warrant good only in New England.

So, we're wondering, where's the third skeleton? We suggest the cops dig up the rest of that back yard.

State Sen. Mike Carrell says Pierce County residents should be scared — really, really scared — of what's brewing in Olympia. The Lakewood Republican sent out an e-mail over the weekend, warning that regional transportation governance is just a way for liberals to take money out of our pockets — and spend it elsewhere.

As evidence, Carrell points to Senate Bill 5803, legislation that would establish a new structure for regional transportation planning. It would authorize a new Regional Transportation Commission to levy tolls without a public vote.

Carrell says that when the bill came up for a vote in the Senate this year, he tried but failed to get it amended. The legislation passed the Senate and is still in play in the House.

Carrell's e-mail keyed off an Inside the Editorial Page post last week after an editorial board visit from the governor. As Dave Seago explained, Chris Gregoire told us she wants to do away with sub-area equity, the principle that the money raised in a county should be spent in that county. Carrell warns:

This bill should scare the daylights out of you... The money could be spent anywhere the RTG wanted to spend it. Furthermore, a mileage "fee" tax would be only one of the ways they plan on crawling deeper into your pocket to spend more money on mass transit, not on roads, and apparently now not even in Pierce County.

If you like the "Good to Go" stickers now needed to cross the Narrows Bridge, you will love the "fees" you will have to pay to drive on highways and local roads in Pierce County. That same Good to Go sticker needed for the bridge could now be used to charge you for driving from your home to any place in Pierce, King, and Snohomish counties.

Christmas Eve seems an appropriate day to mention a charity that does a lot of good in this community. Tacoma Goodwill helps about 4,200 people a year get the education, training and job placement they need to become self-supporting.

You might hear a lot more about Goodwill in the new year when the organization begins its public fundraising campaign for the new $20 million Work Opportunity Center it is building at its current location on South 27th Street and Tacoma Avenue. The expansion will help Goodwill meet its goal of tripling services in Pierce County in the next five years.

So far, Goodwill officials have about half of the money they need to build the center. Earlier this month, the governor took a quick break from surveying flood damage to help Goodwill officials unveil their plans. The state is chipping in $1.5 million for the 63,000-square-foot building, which will be located where Goodwill now does auto detailing.

Credit is due Goodwill officials, who choose to stay put on the Hilltop rather than relocate. They are planning a handsome building that will be a great asset to the neighborhood.

Christmas:
A retrospective of our Christmas Day editorials in another era of conflict: World War II

Wednesday:
Tacoma can’t afford to lose the Russell Investment Group headquarters: The stakes are too big.

Washington students’ 85 percent success on the (pared down) WASL ought to be applauded: 100 percent success would mean the test isn’t a test. That’s why there are alternatives.

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.

Two local state senators, Debbie Regala of Tacoma and Mike Carrell of Lakewood, were not amused by a headline on Thursday's front page:

HOUSING PROGRAM TO PUT MORE EX-CONS IN COUNTY

They (and other Pierce County lawmakers) have done Herculean work in the Legislature to stop the state from dumping grossly disproportionate numbers of released felons, sex offenders, etc., in Tacoma and Lakewood.

Regala and Carrell collaborated on a bill this year that did create a supervised housing experiment for ex-cons. But another part of the law requires the Department of Corrections to send offenders back to their "county of origin" – i.e., the place they were first convicted of a felony.

There can be exceptions. The department sometimes releases inmates to a county they didn't come from. Family support is the most common reason.

But so far, Corrections isn't using these exceptions against Pierce County. Some offenders who came from elsewhere are released here; but some who came from here are released elsewhere.

I checked the department's reports. In October, for example, four ex-cons originally from another county were sent to Pierce – but six of our ex-cons were sent somewhere else.

Since the legislation took effect, Pierce County has come out ahead by about six felons. Not a lot, but a damned sight better than getting dozens of felons who shouldn't be here – a pattern we've seen in the past.

Mike Carrell e-mailed: "I think the headline on the story SHOULD have read, 'At last, Pierce County is only housing felons from Pierce County,' or 'Pierce County is now a felon-donor county.'"

See today's editorial.

"When we say I saw the Patriots win the World Series, it doesn't necessarily mean you were there."

--Presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, trying to explain why he had said he saw his father march with Martin Luther King Jr. -- something that never happened.

Environmentalist and former Tacoma Utility Board member Bill LaBorde wants us all to make noise about the EPA's blow to California car emissions rules this week.

LaBorde, who now heads Environment Washington, called on citizens to "raise a stink" about the ruling by logging protests at this website.

Coming just a week after the meeting on climate change in Bali and Al Gore's acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize, this latest decision is more evidence, as if we needed it, of the Bush administration's head-in-the-sand approach to global warming. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised by it, but we don't have to stand for it.

We editorial writers won't be adding our names to the list, but our editorial today made it clear we, too, think the EPA ruling was a stinker. But the Detroit News, natch, has a different view.

This just in: FEMA has added two counties – King and Snohomish – to the seven where flood victims qualify for personal grants and other help from the federal and state governments.

Here's the whole list: King, Snohomish, Grays Harbor, Lewis, Mason, Pacific, Thurston, Clallam and Kitsap.

Notice the strange absence of Pierce County? Every Western Washington in its immediate vicinity, including neighbors King, Thurston and Mason, got hit hard enough by the floods to be declared disaster areas.

Somehow the catastrophe passed Pierce County by while clobbering watersheds all around it. Did Pat Robertson remember the Puyallup Valley in his prayers?

Washington's U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell announced good news today for people seeking Social Security disability benefits.

Turns out that the Northwest states rank second in the nation in the average length of time it takes applicants to get hearings on their disability claims. On Tuesday, Senate joined the House in approving an additional $336 million to help the Social Security Administration reduce a huge national backlog of disability claims.

The senator proclaims:

Delays mean that disabled residents in our region wait longer than almost everyone else to receive a decision on their benefits.   In the meantime, most disabled applicants go without work and health insurance coverage as they attempt to navigate a rigorous application process. This program needs support, and I will continue working to ensure the disability backlog is reduced."

In Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Alaska, disabled applicants wait an average of 584 days to get a decision on their eligibility.

Citizens can and do make a difference. Friends of the Port, a small "port policy" group founded just a few months ago, has persuaded the Tacoma Port Commission to start televising its meetings.

The Friends' Ronnie Bush reports that the commission voted 4-1 Thursday to put its meetings on the Web with streaming video. Rainier Communications, the county's public cable TV commission, will also broadcast taped video of the meetings. Both operations will start in March.

The dissenter was former legislator Ted Bottiger, who groused about the costs and urged the broadcasts be tried on a trial basis first to gauge viewership. Although she voted for them, Commissioner Connie Bacon said she was convinced few citizens would watch, according to Bush.

As we noted in our most recent editorial about this, the size of the viewing audience is not the point. The point is making the commission's deliberations as open and accessible as possible to the public.

The ports of Olympia and Seattle already provide telecasts and-or webcasts of their meetings, as do the Tacoma City Council and the Pierce County Council. Tacoma's port commission, accustomed to operating largely out of the public eye, has been way behind the curve in promoting transparency.

It would be a good idea for the commissioners to get used to making decisions before the cameras. This will help remind them that they are in fact working in public, and that the audience, however small, is entitled to see and hear the commissioners discuss the public's business.

Friends of the Port, by the way, prefers not to be called a "watchdog group." "Policy group" is its preferred descriptor. Whatever.

If Tacoma's port commissioners seem somewhat annoyed by the Friends, they can be thankful they're not overseeing the Port of Seattle. A new state performance audit hammers the Port of Seatle for wasting nearly $100 million on sloppy and improper management of contracting and construction.

A spokesman for the state auditor's office says it currently has no plans for a performance audit of the Port of Tacoma.

Here's another do-it-yourself test to find out how your political philosophy lines up with those of the presidential candidates.

These tests may work well for people who pretty much subscribe to either the Republican or Democratic platform in its entirety. They don't seem to pick up the fine shadings of issues and positions that may not be stereotypically conservative or liberal.

The last one on of these I took told me my guys were Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, in that order. This one tells me I should vote for John McCain, Mitt Romney or Duncan Hunter, in that order. (I confess, I don't know who Duncan Hunter is; does he play for the White Sox?)

I guess if you want universal health insurance in some form, you're a flaming liberal, but if you think the country should be able to control its borders, you must be a Republican. Isn't this kind of thinking an insult to people in both parties?

You'd look like this, too, if you'd been married to Bill Clinton for the last 32 years.

Look for Ellen Goodman's take on sexism and Hillary's wrinkles, on the ed page Friday.

The opinion factory here gets a lot of holiday greeting cards from politicians, local institutions and businesses. This one, from the Foss Waterway Seaport, was my favorite this season.

It shows the historic Balfour Dock on the west side of the Foss, north of the Murray Morgan Bridge. The reminded me that work is underway on rebuilding the dock structure and rehabbing the cavernous building, which will ultimately house a museum celebrating the history of Tacoma's working waterfront.

Here's an update from Seaport Director Tom Cashman.

=> Read more!

Not surprisingly, some Republicans in Olympia think we gave the governor too much credit in today's editorial on her supplemental budget proposal for 2008.
Here's a dissenting view from the Senate Republican Caucus:

As an alternative perspective to what the Governor shared with you, I thought you might find this three-pager informative.

One, with regard to the $144 M operating budget figure, that -- with all due respect -- is the Governor's office being less than upfront about the true costs. Legislative Budget Notes and all other documents for awhile now have been conveying the budget in "near general fund" terms. The $144 million figure the Governor's office provided is just general fund. When you add in the "near general fund" accounts (health services account, education legacy trust account, student achievement fund, etc.), the figure is $234 million.

=> Read more!

Pierce County’s Chambers Bay Golf Course has turned in a great scorecard for its first season. Key numbers from course general manager Joe Wisocki:

Tee-time reservations are running about 16 percent ahead of projections. Before December’s stormy weather, they were running 25 percent ahead. Pro shop revenue is 50 percent over projections, and restaurant revenue is more than 210 percent over projections.

The number I really like, though, is the additional $1.4 million the governor’s proposed capital budget includes for a pedestrian bridge over the railroad tracks below the golf course.

The Legislature has already approved $1 million for the bridge. The county has earmarked $1 for the project. If the 2008 Legislature approves the governor’s request, construction could begin next summer.

That would open up more than 2 miles of undeveloped Puget Sound shoreline for beach walkers and picnickers.

Finally, county public works officials estimate that an average of 200 to 300 people a day use the 3.1-mile recreational path that snakes around and through the course; the number doubles or triples on weekends. As many as 1,500 were counted on the trail during a four-hour period on a sunny day last summer.

Call it Ladenburg Links if you want, but it’s hard to argue that the course hasn’t been a hit with the public – golfers and non-golfers alike.

It shouldn’t have taken a class-action lawsuit for state corrections officials to discover widespread problems with prison workers abusing women inmates at Purdy and other state penal facilities. Consequences are due not only for the workers who victimized inmates but also for administrators who failed properly investigate the inmates’ claims. This is a major disgrace for the corrections system.

EPA has delivered a devastating blow to efforts by California, Washington and 16 other states seeking to curb auto emissions. The administration is putting the interests of the automotive industries ahead legitimate environmental concerns.

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.

This time of year, everyone comes out with their Top 10 list. But one list you hate to see is from Doctors Without Borders, the international humanitarian organization that received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999: the Top 10 Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories of 2007.

Unfortunately, only one entry on the list is good news: The Expanded Use of Nutrient Dense Ready-to-Use Foods Crucial for Reducing Childhood Malnutrition. The others are essentially a litany of woes around the world – mostly in Third World countries – that have received little news coverage.

To see the full list, click here.

Here's Tacoma Mayor Bill Baarsma's take on two of the issues the City Council took up Tuesday night:

On the Urban Waters issue: Here is some of what was told to us last night at the council meeting. When you net out the lease payments for the facility it will cost the rate payer about $1.50 a month to pay for the building. Secondly, the Leeds certification represents about 10% of the costs involved. To drop down to gold or silver would be a small incremental saving—if any. Thirdly, shooting for the highest certification was a factor in the Puget Sound Partnership selecting Urban Waters as its site—and receiving the lease commitment.

This is what was told to us by the city manager. This led Karen Larkin to recommend the highest rating. It was Karen by the way that claimed that a platinum rating would make the building one of a kind—not yours truly. Also, Jim Parvey the engineer in charge from public works has assured the council that there will be careful value engineering in the construction of the building. Finally, the council through the Environment and Public Works Committee will be following the project every step of the way. Jake Fey chairs that committee.

Regarding health benefits for council members (see previous post):

=> Read more!

We're glad the Tacoma City Council punted last night instead of voting to give council members the same health benefits as full time city employees.

We found out about Councilman Bill Evans' proposal too late to prepare an editorial on the issue. We probably would have been against it. But the council ended up voting 5-4 to put the proposal off until March 18, giving a citizen committee time to study it and make recommendations. So we'll get another crack at it.

We'll see what the committee says. Apparently the council also wants the committee to consider whether council members should be considered full-time officials. This is news to us, so we'll see what more we can learn about this.

But most of our ed board – like most citizens, I suspect – regards only the mayor position as a full-time job. The intent of the city charter is to have a citizen council rather than one comprised of people who would be making a living at it.

While state law may not regard health benefits as additional compensation, providing full health coverage to council members for only $40 a month would certainly provide a financial incentive for some people to become candidates.

In fact, that's part of Evans' justification for it. But I'd rather see citizens running for the council because they want to serve.

Lonergan moved to continue the health benefits until March 18. This would give the Citizen Committee time to study and make a recommendation. It was a 5-4 vote to hold it over (4 against - Evans, Stenger, Fey and Baarsma)

* Who Would Jesus Endorse?

On an 8-1 vote, with Councilman Mike Lonergan the lone dissenter, the Tacoma City Council approved plans to build a "platinum" $32.5 million Urban Waters facility on the Thea Foss Waterway.

Platinum is the highest standard of "green building" certification. Our editorial position was that the plan is too costly, at a whopping $580 per square foot.

Mayor Bill Baarsma in particular championed the project as an "environmental statement" by the city. Supporters also argued the savings in energy costs would eventually pay for themselves.

The city's sewer, stormwater and solid waste customers will cover the tab. At least the east side of the Foss (north of the Murray Morgan Bridge) will get an aesthetic lift from an attractive building. But city officials will have to figure out what to do with 100-plus workers and only 35 parking spaces.

For a perceptive and stylish take on state Rep. Fred Jarrett's defection to the Democrats, check out this column by Richard Davis in today's Everett Herald.

Davis, a former oped columnist for the TNT, cleverly dissects Jarrett's "It's not me, it's you" dig at the GOP, which is losing ground in the suburbs east of Seattle.

After Davis joined the Association of Washington Business last year as communications veep, we discontinued his regular column but still pick up one of his columns now and then. Davis' columns have been appearing in several other Washington newspapers, but he tells me he plans to take a break from columnizing for a while.

The portents abound: Regional Transportation Governance is barreling down on us Pierce County folks whether we like it or not.

The latest: During her visit with the TNT ed board today, Gov. Chris Gregoire declared, "It's time we had a heavy-duty conversation about governance" in the wake of Proposition 1's drubbing at the polls.

The governor said she was prepared to introduce her own RTG legislation for the 2008 session, but she agreed to let state Sens. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, and Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, take the lead in crafting a proposal.

Gregoire reminded us that a blue-ribbon panel led by former Seattle Mayor Norm Rice and businessman John Stanton in 2006 had recommended putting regional road and transit authority in the hands of one body consisting mostly of directly elected members.

RTG means no more Sound Transit, no more Regional Transportation Improvement District - bodies comprised of elected city and county officials from Pierce, King and Snohomish counties.

And the notion of "sub-area equity," Gregoire said emphatically, has got to go. That gave us a little shudder, because the principle that the money raised in each county should be spent each county is pretty much Holy Writ in Pierce and Snohomish counties.

The problem with sub-area equity, Gregoire contended, is that local goodies get piled atop the most serious regional priorities, for reasons of local politics, that the total cost of any package balloons and it topples of its own weight.

A pretty good description, I admit, of what happened with Proposition 1 on both the transit and road sides. But, as I told the governor, "we little people in the sticks" have a legitimate fear of getting little more than table scraps while the Seattle-centric mega-projects get taken care first.

Another RTG portent: This article from the online news site Crosscut. Commentator Ted Van Dyke lauds the gathering momentum for RTG. The vision:

In all of this, a new consensus is emerging about a post-Prop 1 agenda. It centers on moving aside turf-oriented, self-serving agencies such as Sound Transit and transferring power to a more objective, more responsive regional body. It would stress immediate priorities such as addressing the urgent Alaskan Way Viaduct and Evergreen Point Bridge, which are aging and structurally vulnerable.

It would not stop light rail construction in place, but it would limit construction to a line running from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to either Convention Place, Husky Stadium, or Northgate. Future funding would be focused more greatly on express bus, bus rapid transit, and normal bus service; dedicated transit lanes; HOV lanes; tolling; and selective repair and expansion of long neglected local roads and lifeline highways. Citywide trolleys (touted by Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels) definitely would not be part of the scheme.

I've already predicted that the future of light rail in this region, post-Prop.1, will lie entirely within King County. Heck, except for the line to the airport, it may lie entirely with the City of Seattle. Tacoma's short LINK light-rail line could remain an curious anomaly for another half-century - or longer.

Local officialdom, including Pierce County Executive John Ladenburg, his counterparts in King and Pierce Counties,and transit supporters could still put up a formidable fight against RTG in Olympia.

But Proposition 1's ignominious defeat means the prevailing winds now favor creating regional authority governing both roads and transit.

And the local-government electeds might come around. After all, that regional transportation authority would probably mean the creation of a whole new slate of highly visible, well-paying elective offices that would be mighty tempting for the likes of, say, the capable Mr. Ladenburg.

The governor was in today to talk up her budget and other things. Some highlights:

• She's bound and determined to end the session with a $1.2 billion surplus. She figures if the rest of the country sees an economic downturn, Washington's going to need some money in the bank.

• She's good with FEMA, after a few initial complaints about its response to the Lewis County floods. They moved fast when they figured out how big the problem was, she said. "They're a partner."

• I asked about rebuilding houses that in some cases had water up to the rooflines. She didn't seem too worried: The Army Corps of Engineers told her the disaster resulted from a "150-year flood" aggravated by a "500-year weather pattern." Let's hope it doesn't happen again for another 500 years.

• The state's Health Care Authority has cut the increase in the state government's medical spending from a ruinous 11 percent in 2005 to 3 percent. That's a big deal if it's not a fluke.

• Since Roads & Transit went down in flames last month, she's been focusing on "regional governance" for transportation projects. Those are two loaded words; we tend to view them as Seattlespeak for siphoning Pierce and Snohomish county dollars into King County.

She thinks the problem is solveable. "To me, that's all about who's on the governance board."

Reader Bill Anderson of Auburn sent this letter to Tacoma Mayor Bill Baarsma warning against the special deal that software giant SAP is offering the city. Because the council is scheduled to vote on the proposal tonight, we're publishing Anderson's letter here for the sake of timeliness.

Mr. Baarsma,
A word of advice concerning the SAP contract offer being considered tonight: REJECT IT! I have been in the IT business for many years and know from experience that SAP is simply trying to run up its 2007 financial numbers by making you this offer. This is a common practice in the large scale software and hardware business. Don't fall for it.

If you accept the offer, you will be faced with the task of preparing for and implementing changes that will cost significantly more than base software. If you don't have money or time budgeted for the implementation you'll have to change priorities for other projects to get the time or the software will become shelf-ware. Plus the user community will be faced with yet another long drawn out change process, one they only now are getting over.

I mean no disrespect to the City of Tacoma or its employees, but it is you that has suffered damage to your reputation and making the proposed purchase will only worsen it. SAP products are powerful systems that require very large investments in time and talent to properly implement and manage. But, I don't have to tell you that, you now know it. And so does the rest of the IT industry. So don't stumble into that trap again.

Gov. Chris Gregoire is visiting the ed board this afternoon to discuss her 2008 supplemental budget proposal, which was released today.

But the Washington Education Association has already criticized her budget for for failing to restore pay cuts for teachers. What caught our eye, though, is the way the WEA managed to get in a dig at Dino Rossi, the gov's formidable Republican opponent for re-election next year.

The WEA press release begins thusly:

Educators urge Gregoire to restore Dino Rossi cuts

Gov. Chris Gregoire’s budget proposal fails to restore the salary cuts school employees suffered when Dino Rossi wrote the 2003-05 state budget.

I thought this may be the WEA's way of signaling to its members and allies that they consider Rossi no friend of education. My colleague Kim Bradford thinks it might be a way of reminding the governor that she's going to need the WEA's support for what is expected to be a tight rematch with Rossi in November.

In any event, the WEA said it is "disappointed" with the education funding in the governor's proposal.

Read on for the full WEA statement:

=> Read more!

A veteran County Council-watcher tells me he doesn't blame the council for being thoroughly confused at its Dec. 11 meeting – so confused it took a recess to sort things out. Just about everybody was confused on that occasion, he says.

We had a news story Sunday describing how the council twice – on Nov. 20 and on Dec. 11, voted one way on an issue, recessed, then returned to reverse the first vote. As we noted in today's editorial, this makes the council look like it's doing business out of sight of the public, even if its collective heart is pure.

Here's another view of the comedy in the chambers on Dec. 11 (see the video here).

If you think that CM Gelman (Councilwoman Barbara Gelman) was confused, listen to the tape of the hearing. Patty Face was sitting in as clerk and announced after the first roll call vote on the amendment (to postpone the (ethics) ordinance until January) that it had passed 5-3.

Problems:
a) There are 7 Council members, not 8.
b) It failed 4-3.

Do you know that oft quoted law ... Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence (or stupidity or neglect)? Sometimes referred to as Hanlon's Razor.

I like Goethe's way of saying it:
Misunderstanding and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than even malice and wickedness.

I'm not convinced that a recess is the best way to straighten this stuff out, but man was it confusing.

Wouldn't you like to know who down at the County-City Building quotes Goethe?
Hint: It wasn't Sheriff Paul Pastor, Ph.D. He only quotes the Greeks and Romans.

Tacoma City Manager Eric Anderson often sends the City Council a Monday note about things he's working on. Sometimes they give a pretty good sense of his priorities. Here's the one that went out today:

Murray Morgan Bridge meeting focused on ways to move forward
Community members, officials from the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT), City Council members and City staff joined Washington State Representative Dennis Flannigan for the Dec. 12 public meeting about the Murray Morgan Bridge.

Discussion focused on ways to move forward, with WSDOT and the City agreeing that the 11th Street corridor should remain open over the Thea Foss Waterway with a bridge, and if possible with a rehabilitation of the current bridge. WSDOT Secretary Paula Hammond, former City Council member Dawn Lucien and I have been asked to coordinate on ways to move forward.

Downtown issues highlight last week’s visit to Washington, D.C.
Last Thursday I visited with U.S. Congressman Norm Dicks and the staff of Congressman Adam Smith and U.S. Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell to discuss two projects. Issues discussed related to downtown development, including parking, transportation, and the effort to retain the Russell Investment Group’s offices downtown.

I reinforced the funding request for construction of a 3,000-stall park-and-ride garage in the Dome District. We also discussed the ongoing issues with the Murray Morgan Bridge and the hope to use state and federal monies to help reconnect the 11th Street corridor and preserve the bridge.

"We'll believe it when we see it" was our reaction when we heard late last month that the state and Pierce County had struck a preliminary deal on providing mental health services.

Now we almost see it.

County spokesman Ron Klein said today the county and state DSHS officials have agreed on terms allowing the county to continue services that otherwise would have ended Dec. 31. Here's word from Klein:

DSHS and Pierce County have come to terms on the mental health contracts. At 11:00 this morning, the state sent spreadsheets with numbers to the county. We're reconciling them with Pierce County's mental health budget.

If everything is OK, the County Executive has until Thursday, December 27th to sign the contract and send it back. The service will then be in place on January 1, 2008.

This was not an easy task but we're pleased the state worked cooperatively with us to maintain a system of mental health care for the citizens of Pierce County.

The longrunning dispute over mental-health funding has been the subject of brinksmanship for months. More than one announced deal has fallen through.

I don't know about the long term, but it's a big short-term win for the county. Officials in other counties have been watching the dispute, too. The issue will end up in the Legislature's lap one way or another.

We opinionaters here at The News Tribune have to admit we're a little envious of our counterparts at The Des Moines Register, Iowa's largest newspaper.

This New York Times story describes how the presidential campaigns have ardently wooed the Register's editorial board in hopes of winning its endorsements for the state's Jan. 3 presidential primary.

On Sunday, the Register endorsed Republican John McCain and Democrat Hillary Clinton. (McCain endorsement here. Clinton endorsement here.)

The only presidential campaign any of us can recall meeting at the TNT is Paul Tsongas, the Massachusetts Democrat who unsuccessfully sought the nomination in 1992.

Tsongas, decidedly an underdog, had a nice sense of humor. He autographed and passed out copies of a new book he had just published. "These might be worth something some day,"
he joked.

If only Washington had a presidential primary that really mattered. Maybe if we moved it up to Jan. 2 . . .

Pierce County Councilman Terry Lee, R-Gig Harbor, will not run for county assessor next year after all.

Lee, who had previously announced his intent to run, said today he wants to finish out his second council term, which ends in 2010. His statement:

I have decided not to seek the Assessor's office in 2008. Time seems to be rushing by and there is still much to accomplish in my Council District and that is a higher priority than another public office.

Ongoing improvements on the Chambers Creek properties, the possible acquisition of Tacoma Narrows Airport by Pierce County, the need for additional funds to complete Cushman Trail in 2009, and most importantly, the update to the Shoreline Master Plan which will be heard by the public in 2009, all are important issues that I don't feel right abandoning.

My second term will expire at the end of 2010 and I will look for ways to continue to serve my community at that time.

Lee had been a longtime chairman of the county planning commission before he won election to the council. A moderate Republican, Lee has often been the swing vote on a council dominated by a 4-3 Republican majority.

It would be a hoot to publish the oped submission we received from the Ayn Rand Institute today, just because it seems so outrageous. But it's not worth going out of our way to offend so many readers.

Headline: "Why Christmas Should Be More Commercial. Christmas should celebrate reason, selfishness and capitalism."

The true Christmas spirit, right? The bottom line:

Life requires reason, selfishness, capitalism; that is what Christmas should celebrate – and really, underneath all the pretense, that is what it does celebrate. It is time to take the Christ out of Christmas, and turn the holiday into a guiltlessly egoistic, pro-reason, this-worldly, commercial celebration.

Ayn Rand authored the influential novels "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged," which embodied her philosophy of objectivism – the celebration of the individual above all else.

For the entire column from the institute, read on.

=> Read more!

My wife and I bought an artificial Christmas tree a few years ago, figuring, correctly, that we would save money over the long run.

But is it really the right thing to do for the environment? The fake tree is made of plastics that are made from oil, so we're not doing anything to reduce our dependence on imported oil.

But we use less gasoline because I'm not driving out to the woods to cut my own tree or driving around the city in search of the perfect tree at a price that won't break the bank. And we don't have to sweep up the needles after the holidays.

According to this Wall Street Journal article, real Christmas trees are Greener.

Name-calling aside, the real-tree industry's main tactic is to tap into consumers' concern for the environment. Environmental experts generally agree that real trees are the more earth-friendly choice since wood is a renewable resource, and trees provide oxygen and help reduce carbon dioxide – a contributor to global warming. Artificial trees are usually made with petroleum.

Now I'm feeling guilty. The Arctic ice cap is melting. The polar bears are in trouble. What should we do?

The best line in this weekend's newspaper commentary:
Adam Freedman, a legal journalist writing in the Sunday New York Times' Week in Review section, details why the three commas in the Second Amendment are such tricky little devils for judicial interpreters.

Freedman:

The best way to makes sense of the Second Amendment is to take away all the commas (which, I know, means that only outlaws will have commas.

The Tacoma City Council is poised to approve a very expensive new environmental services building on the Foss Waterway (it will also house the University of Washington's Urban Waters lab).

We're still perplexed that the 47,500 square feet of office space in the structure is estimated to cost $506 per foot, on average. The lab space is $1,007 a square foot, which doesn't sound all that out of line for clean rooms and the like.

Part of the reason this 56,000-square-foot building will run $32.5 million is that the city wants it to win a rare "platinum" rating from the U.S. Green Building Council. (As opposed to, say, a gold or silver rating.)

Check out the council's site to learning what these ratings are all about. The key question here, as we say in today's editorial, is "How green is green enough?"

The public, mostly utility ratepayers, are footing the bill for the project. There's a saying about this sort of thing: "Nothing's more fun than spending other people's money."

Former Tacoma City Councilman Kevin Phelps, now working on performance audits for the state auditor, still keeps in touch.

He's one of the founders of the Global Neighbors Project, started last year to marshal local efforts to aid the people of Lesotho, a small, impoverished African nation with one world's highest AIDS rates.

What the project has accomplished in its first year is impressive. Phelps passed on some highlights from the project's first annual meeting.

1. Our goal was to raise $50k per year for 3 years. We currently have raised $42,600 (the official year doesn't start until Feb 2008 and we just received a pledge for $15,000 from one church for 2008).

2. Our goal was to sponsor 1,000 orphans in our project area. On World Aids Day (Dec 1) we exceeded our goal and now have 1003 children being sponsored.

3. We had a goal to purchase 900 desks for children so they wouldn't have to sit on the ground all day during class. Thanks to one anonymous donor and a nice check from the Car Pros Foundation (which I am a member of), we met the goal of 900 desks.

4. We have assembled a little over 550 caregiver kits to ship to Lesotho. These kits include the necessary medical supplies to care for family members who have HIV.

5. We partnered with World Vision to have an African Aids Exhibit at the Puyallup Fair and was voted the best new exhibit that had significant impact for 2007.

All totaled, our first year contributions have reached almost $450,000. Not too bad (if I say so myself) for our first year.

Tacoma Mayor Bill Baarsma and his wife, Carol, Tacoma Water Superintendent John Kirner, Life Center senior pastor Dean Curry and University Place City Councilman Ken Grassi were also members of the founding group. Jenny Printz and Tracy Donahue of Federal Way-based World Vision play key roles as well.

A check for the Global Neighbors Project would make a nice stocking stuffer, wouldn't it?

Not many city dwellers actually get to see spawning salmon in the act without leaving town. But Tacomans can.

It is truly an amazing thing to see. I took these photos at Swan Creek Park on Tacoma's East Side on Dec. 8, when the Friends of Swan Creek hosted a Salmon Celebration. Years of effort by volunteers and the Puyallup Tribe have established a successful chum salmon run on the creek.

In places where the creek is only three or four inches deep, fish exhausted by their long journey from the Pacific rest briefly, then fight furiously to make their way upstream, their bodies half out of the water.

At a small footbridge up the trail, visitors can see fishing pooling below a two-foot waterfall. Patience will sometimes be rewarded with the sight of a fish successfully making the leap. Both below and above the falls, visitors can study pairs of fish acting out the spawning ritual, the female digging gravel with her tail, the male waiting to fertilize the eggs.

I was sorry my daughters, now in their twenties, were not along. When they were kids, we used to take nature walks up the Swan Creek canyon. It was beautiful, but there were no fish.

Swan Creek is still beautiful, especially on a cold, clear day. But now in December, it becomes positively magical, a stage for one of nature's most inspiring natural dramas. We are privileged to have this show so close to home.

City politics are heating up in Federal Way. Battle lines are forming over a Feb. 19 vote on whether to switch to a strong-mayor form of government.

The issue hadn’t been on my radar screen until we received an oped submission from Barbara Reid, chairperson for Federal Way Works, a group opposed to the change. Her article appeared in today’s Insight section on the letters page. (I'm sure we'll soon have a response from the strong-mayor group.)

Prominent city figures aligning with FWW include former City Council member and mayor Ron Gintz, former City Council member Bill Gates, Federal Way School Board member Dave Larson, state Rep. Mark Miloscia, D-Federal Way and businessman Jeff Stock. Former Boeing manager Barbara Reid heads the group.

The pro-strong mayor push is led by a group called Accountability Comes to Town, or ACT. Roy Parke is president. ACT’s most prominent backer is City Councilman and Deputy Mayor Jim Ferrell.

ACT’s website doesn’t list any specific grievances with city government but contends that having an elected mayor who also serves as city CEO would increase accountability and responsiveness to the citizens. Currently the mayor and the deputy mayor are elected by the council. An appointed city manager runs the operations of city government.

After Tacoma police chief David Brame killed himself and his wife in 2003, a group called Time for a Change mounted an effort to get a strong-mayor proposition on the ballot. The effort suffered from petition snafus and legal fights and eventually petered out last year.

The TNT ed board has historically favored the council-manager form of government.

In researching today's editorial about free and low-cost spay-neuter clinics, I came across this Top 10 list from the ASPCA on why it's a good idea to get your pet spayed or neutered.

1. Your female dog or cat will live a longer, healthier life.
Spaying—the removal of the ovaries and uterus—is a veterinary procedure performed under general anesthesia that usually requires minimal hospitalization. Spaying a female cat or dog helps prevent pyometra (pus-filled uterus) and breast cancer. Treatment of pyometra requires hospitalization, intravenous fluids and antibiotics. Breast cancer can be fatal in about 50 percent of female dogs and in 90 percent of female cats. Spaying your pet before her first heat offers the best protection from these diseases.

2. There are major health benefits for your male animal companion, too.
Besides preventing unwanted litters, neutering your male dog or cat—the surgical removal of the testicles—prevents testicular cancer, if done before six months of age.

=> Read more!

Patty Murray is beginning to sound like a Farm Belt senator.

The Washington Democrat crowed about a new farm bill the Senate passed Friday, calling it "the best farm bill in years” and a “windfall” for Washington’s farmers.

But the bill would do little to reform subsidies to wealthy farmers and corporations and faces the threat of a presidential veto.

State farmers would surely welcome the $2.2 billion the bill includes to help producers of “specialty crops” – fruits and vegetables. Murray noted that Washington ranks third in the nation in overall specialty crop production. We’re first in apples, red raspberies, sweet cherries, pears and Concord grapes.

(U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell merely declared herself "pleased" with the bill.)

But still, the U.S. has needed agricultural-subsidy reform for years, and this bill expands subsidies instead of reducing them. The U.S. is already in trouble with the World Trade Organization for unfair ag subsidies that hurt Third World farmers.

The bill does finally eliminate subsidy payments to dead people. Duh. But efforts in the Senate to cap subsidies at $250,000 per farm and end all payments to farmers earning more than $750,000 a year failed.

On four amendments sought by reformers, Murray and Cantwell did vote for two that would have capped commodity payments and imposed a means test for farmers receiving subsidy payments.

The House earlier passed a similar farm bill, but it taps different funding sources to pay for it. Reconciling the differences between the House, Senate and White House will be difficult.

Saturday:

Long lines for mobile spay-neuter clinic in Parkland demonstrate the demand for free or low-cost spay-neuter services in Pierce County. But funding for the clinic will run out soon. If at all possible, the project’s backers, including the City of Tacoma and the county, should keep the mobile clinic going. Reducing the number of unwanted animals saves money in the long run.

Sunday:

A lot of readers probably got sticker shock when they saw our story reporting that tolls on the experimental HOT lanes on SR 167 in South King County could go as high $9 at peak times. Get used to it: congestion pricing and tolls are going to be an increasing part of life in the Puget Sound region.

Tacoma Public Works’ new Urban Waters building doesn’t need to be platinum; ratepayers would probably settle for silver or bronze. The city’s quest for a “Platinum” green-building rating is too costly.

Monday:

The Interior Department’s plans to require permits and fees for commercial and news photography in natiional parks and on other federal lands is another example of the Bush administration’s efforts to control news. Unless it’s for “breaking news,” even newspaper photographers shooting routine photos or for investigative work would have to obtain permits. Scrap this absurdity.

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 Executive John Ladenburg's term as Sound Transit board chairman ended Thursday as Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels was elected to succeed him.

This Stranger's Slog blog also reports the results of a voter survey conducted to analyze the November defeat of Proposition 1, the massive roads-and-transit package. The highlights:

Asked when a transportation measure should be presented to voters— 2008 was the huge winner. 64% said a transit only measure should go before voters in 2008. (43% said a roads only measure should go before voters in ‘08.)

Asked what made Prop. 1 lose—47% of those surveyed said roads and transit should have been separate measures. (The largest block, 48% said it cost too much.)

I should add: 31% said a joint measure should go before voters in 2008. However, 27%—the second biggest percentage on that idea—said no joint measure.

The theme from staff: Prop 1’s loss was not a rejection of transit, but rejection of the package.

Pat McCarthy, Calvin Goings will both be on the RCV ballot in November as Democratic candidates for Pierce County executive.

The county Democratic Party voted 55-45 last night to allow up to three Democratic candidates in the only partisan county races at stake – executive and county council. Here's the overnight report from county Democratic chairman Nathe Lawver:

Our party reaffirmed its faith in the democratic process and the will of Pierce County voters by approving up to three candidates  in the Rank Choice Voting environment.

It is important that voters have choices, and it is apparent by the last two November ballots concerning RCV, that voters understand this new voting system.

We will now work hard to see to it that our county is in the hands of a party that believes in fiscal responsibility, open government, and prudent growth.

I'm proud of what we accomplished tonight.

Ken Miller, another Democratic activist in attendance emailed this report:

(The meeting) was excellent, actually. About 100 PCOs (precinct committee officers) – unheard of – plus many others. Three hours of discussion, with one person speaking at a time and people listening. Ended up about 55-45 in favor of up to three candidates per office.

Races for county auditor, assessor and sheriff will also be on the RCV ballot, but voters this year opted to make them non-partisan. Contests for judges and prosecutor will be on the regular general election ballot, after a primary in August.

I just about fell out of my chair when I read this oped piece in the Seattle Times tonight.

Former legislator and state Supreme Court justice Phil Talmadge and Max Baerwaldt, the Seattle businessman who led the campaign against Proposition 1, were the authors. They contended that Plan B, now that Prop. 1 is dead, is to be "lean, green and now."

But what stunned me was the following paragraph:

We must fix what we have first. We can all agree there are certain actions that simply must take place from a safety or mobility standpoint. Certain road- and bridge-replacement projects like the Murray Morgan Bridge in Tacoma, the U.S. Highway 2 trestle in Everett, the Highway 520 floating bridge, the Alaskan Way Viaduct and the South Park Bridge all need immediate attention. Innovative methods that minimize disruption to existing traffic flows should be used for these improvements.

The Murray Morgan Bridge? What planet are these guys on? I'd dearly love to save the historic bridge, but it's beyond saving. It's not even close to being a major transportation corridor. Even if we had the $80 million or so that it would take to rebuild it, Pierce County has a lot more pressing transportation priorities than that.

Suggesting that fixing the Murray Morgan Bridge is comparable in urgency to rebuilding or replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct or the 520 bridge is so absurd that I suspect neither of the authors have ever laid eyes on it.

Tacoma architect David Boe is the both the most passionate and the most credible of the critics who hate Sound Transit's plans for a Sounder commuter rail crossing at Pacific Avenue near South Tacoma Way.

Boe, vice chair of the Tacoma Planning Commission, has worked on major urban reconstruction projects in London. Boe contends the "least ugly" option for the Sounder crossing is an at-grade crossing, rather than the grade-separated crossing the City Council supports.

The Sound Transit board today approved the grade-separated option.

Although we've taken a different editorial stance, Boe's views deserve to be heard. Here's a letter he sent to the council earlier this week outlining his concerns:

=> Read more!

I raised some questions this morning (see post below) about how schools handle, or should be handling, juvenile sex offenders.

Some answers.

Gig Harbor High School was trying to follow state rules when it came down on a kid for posting fliers warning other students about two sex-offender classmates in the school.

Here's how law enforcement and state education officials want it done:

The sheriff notifies school administrators when a sex offender enrolls. The principal then notifies staff as the circumstances warrant. The principal is required to tell the teachers if the offender is classified as Level 2 or Level 3 – moderately or highly likely to reoffend.

The state doesn't want schools notifying the student body or parents. The idea is that notification is the job of law-enforcement, and school administrators aren't trained or equipped to deal with the consequences of notification, which can include attacks on the offender.

Kathleen Sande, an administrator at the Superintendent of Public Instruction's Office who led the development of these rules, puts it this way:

"What we're trying to prevent is harassment of students and families."

"What are you going to do if you are a school administrator and you stand up and tell people about all the sex offenders in school with them? What are you going to do about it if people start doing vigilantism? You are not in a position to mitigate that, whereas law enforcement is."

Say it ain’t so: George Mitchell’s report on Major League Baseball steroids use is worse than the Black Sox scandal. Only a true crackdown and a serious, independent testing system will clean up the game.

Republicans say the governor’s proposals for better tracking of sex offenders isn’t enough. We think it’s a pretty robust attempt to test some approaches and find out what works best.

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.

Comment from state Rep. Larry Seaquist, D-Gig Harbor:

I also appreciate your editorial today on the bridge lights.That one made me squirm a bit more because I've been trying to get this agency ownership issue resolved with DOT. I'm completely in favor of getting the whole installation up on both bridges -- along with its solar power 'farm' -- asap.

We want both to light the bridges and to show that we can, in a small way, turn part of the bridge into a profit center. DOT has been preoccupied with the shift in leadership and urgent problems like ferries and flooded highways.

Seaquist, former commander of the battleship USS Iowa, is not your run-of-the mill legislator. Check out his personal website, "Cafe Politique."

The case of the Gig Harbor High School student who was suspended for outing two juvenile sex offenders at the school has gotten our attention.

Question: When a sex offender (one of these was a Level II) is attending school, what should be done about it? Who should do it? (Not a fellow student – we think the administration's right on that score.) See this 2006 Seattle article about the problem.

When an offender enrolls, are school officials always notified by police? How are other students protected if they aren't informed? Do school administrators discuss the issue? How can a reformed offender get an education if he's ostracized by classmates?

No answers yet. Watch our page.

In the wake of Proposition 1's crushing defeat, I predicted the future of light rail in this region is wholly within King County - at least for a century or so.

More support for this view comes from former University of Washington demographer Richard Morrill, who analyzed the demographic and geographic breakdown of the election results and, in this article for the online news site
Crosscut, concluded:

In light of these findings, my advice to Sound Transit would be as follows:

* Vote on a transit measure separately. Devise a much smaller rail component. The two corridors of support are to Northgate and to Bellevue, but not to Pierce county or to Snohomish county. I 90 would be an ideal corridor for a bus rapid transit alternative, reserving a future SR520 for possible rail. The majority component of a revised package must be transit, but not rail; perhaps a combination of enhanced bus transit, but also consideration of local to regional circulators.

* Put effort into raising the capacity of the freeway and arterial system to handle improved and faster bus transit. Do not rely on raising the sales tax. Wait until a couple years of operation of rail to SeaTac. If it as popular as, say the Minneapolis line to the airport, then the public would be more inclined to support additional lines.

The massacre of 32 students at Virgina Tech in April prompted authorities across the nation to study whether their state laws and reporting systems are adequate to prevent mentally-troubled people from obtaining guns. (See our editorial on the subject.)

At a press conference Thursday in Seattle, Washington Attorney Gen. Rob McKenna will discuuss the work of a state task force that studied the issue. He’ll propose ways to improve reporting of mental health commitments to state and federal databases.

A statement issued by his office says Washington is already one of the top four performers in consistently reporting mental-health commitments.

In the Virginia Tech incident, the killer was able to buy a handgun even though federal law bans the sale of firearms to customers who have been ordered to receive mental-health treatment. The order was not reported to law-enforcement authorities, however.

The biggest land-use issue facing the Pierce County Council this year – rules for development in the Puyallup valley between Sumner and Orting – ended well. I think.

Reporter Dave Wickert posted this short report on the TNT's home page. The Alderton-McMillin community plan was the object of council maneuvering all day long Monday. According to one participant, the plan looked like it was going to get sent back to committee, then "things got weird" in the afternoon.

Invesco, the Sumner-based developer, made a last-ditch efffort to win a provision that would allow it to develop its Orton Farms property on the south side of Highway 410 near Sumner. The site, however, is designated as prime agricultural land.

I'm told that the plan as passed provides for "no net loss" of farmland. If so, that's excellent, but Sumner and Orting, if left to their own devices, would probably expand their urban growth areas and inexorably build over the valley.

That's why, from a farmlands-preservation point of view – one strongly held by our editorial board (editorial here) – it was important to be exceedingly careful if development were to be allowed south of Highway 410.

More details will emerge in a follow-up news story Thursday, I'm sure.
We'll do an editorial after the dust settles.

I recently overheard a snippet of conversation suggesting that the City of Tacoma had lost the recipe for Bimbo's (in)famous spaghetti sauce. I shot off an e-mail to Mayor Bill Baarsma, who said that wasn't so.

His reply: "Martha Anderson is the keeper of the recipe. The last I heard, it is safely in her keeping." (Anderson is assistant director of the city's Community and Economic Development Team.)

Baarsma also had some interesting news:

Joe Stortini called the other day to suggest a taste contest: Mama Stortini versus Bimbo's. I have talked to Martha about this, and she seems to think it is a keen idea. But it needs checking out. Joe’s restaurant would be a site — with a fundraiser element — and, of course, blind taste tests. We are still talking about this. We will need the chef for the Convention Center to mix it up. BB

The mayor emphasizes that this is all in the talking-about-it stage. But I'd pay to taste both sauces in a Bobby Flay-like throwdown. Mama vs. Bimbo's: The Battle for Sauce Supremacy!

Pictured: Bimbo's owner Jerry Rosi stirred his restaurant's sauce in this 2000 photo. The downtown Tacoma restaurant closed in 2001.

Pierce County Republicans settled their rules for winning the party label in next year's RCV election for county executive and council. The county Democrats thrash out theirs Thursday night.

Here's GOP county chair Deryl McCarty's report:

In fact we did meet as scheduled on Saturday and the outcome was thoughtful and well discussed. We agreed to a new (additional) standing rule, Rule 12, which passed 57-2.

The new rule specified that in order to carry our name in the county partisan races in 2008 you must be a paid-up member of the Pierce County Republican Party; declare yourself running as a Republican; give a great speech (ok, maybe that was not in the rule) and convince 40%+1 of the council district caucus (council member candidates) or convention as a whole (Executive candidates) – in secret written ballot - that you are a Republican in their eyes. I then send a letter to the Auditor on the first business day after the convention and specify which of the candidates who file may use our name.

There is then ample time for those who cannot or choose not to carry the Republican name to complete the minor party or independent filing process and get on the ballot that way. I suspect that our Democratic friends may choose a similar process, though they may choose a different percentage.

If you were to have a group of 5 D’s and 5 R’s sit down in a room and try to figure RCV’s impact on the 2008 election, we’d have 13 points of view plus the 3 points of view from the two editors in the room. Its going be interesting, as in the Chinese saying: “May you be condemned to live in interesting times”.
Deryl

Deryl is wrong about those editors. If there are two editorial writers in the room (if that's what he means), they would contribute four points of view. Each would offer the traditional "on the other hand."

Here's my unsolicited opinion (on only one hand): I think the GOP rule makes a lot of sense. The 40 percent requirement assures that two relatively strong GOP candidates for the same office would both get to run. A candidate who got less than 40 percent at the party meeting would presumably be perceived as a much weaker candidate by party members.

Preventing the much weaker candidate from running as a Republican keeps him or her from drawing votes from the prime contender.

Imagine a network of charging stations, strategically located around the metro Puget Sound region, where drivers could plug in their electric cars – and, in a pinch, utilities could draw power from the cars' batteries.

That's the vision Bruce Agnew and Steve Marshall pitched in a meeting with the ed board today. And it's not so far-fetched. Tacoma Power will soon have two PHEVs – Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles – for demonstration use by employes.

Agnew is policy director of the Discovery Institute's Cascadia Center. Marshall, a former legal adviser for Snohomish County PUD, is a senior fellow at the center and passionate advocate of PHEVs.

The failure of Proposition 1, they believe, has created "a perfect storm" of opportunity for the region to try alternative transportation solutions. The region can no longer depend on gas-tax revenue to pay for all the highway fixes that are needed to maintain business-as-usual, they argue.

More extensive use of tolls – not only for traffic management but to raise revenue for transportation work – will be necessary. But Agnew and Marshall are campaigning to create a three-county demonstration project for plug-in cars.
They envision charging stations at truck stops, interstate rest stations and transportation hubs like Tacoma's Freighthouse Square.

General Motors is nearing mass-production of a plug-in car called the Volt, which has a range of 40 miles on a single charge. But a PHEV can go 600 miles on a combination of gas and battery power. Marshal says 78 percent of all motorists dive less than 40 miles a day.

It turns out that Tacoma Power has already converted one Toyota Prius hybrid to a PHEV, and another will be converted next week. Here's a note from Tacoma Power spokesperson Sue Gleason:

=> Read more!

Patience, patience was the advice we heard today for Lake Tapps homeowners worried about the future of the lake.

Representatives of the Cascade Water Alliance told our ed board today they’re convinced Lake Tapps residents will be better off after the alliance buys the lake from Puget Sound Energy.

The alliance, a coalition of Eastside King County cities including Bellevue and Redmond, won’t be using the White River to produce energy. That means more water will be available to keep the lake full for recreational use between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and more water will be left for fish runs, too.

Besides, the alliance won’t start drawing water from the lake for another 20 years. In drought conditions, the alliance would ask its customers to conserve before resorting to a significant lake drawdown.

The delegation, led by alliance chair and Bellevue Mayor Grant Degginger, acknowledged the anxiety felt by Lake Tapps residents. But the alliance won’t control the lake until it completes negotiations with PSE. Degginger said a deal appears close – in a matter of weeks rather than months, he hopes.

The cities of Auburn, Bonney Lake and Sumner have said they’d like to make an offer for the lake, too. But the alliance has every intention of going through with the purchase from PSE. Currently dependent on Seattle for water, the Eastside cities want to control of their future supply. But the alliance would be happy to sell water to the three cities, especially in the near term, the officials said.

The alliance expects to spend about $1 billion over 50 years on the Lake Tapps project.

As we've learned from experience in Tacoma, you don't believe reports of a new hotel until you see the steel rising.

But a developer may be serious about building a new hotel on part of the old Heidelberg Brewery site in the Union Station-Warehouse Historic District in downtown Tacoma.

Derek Young at Exit 133 confirmed earlier this year that Seattle-based Hotel Concepts had purchased the site for $1 million with a hotel in mind. The same company built a new hotel in Bremerton and has plans for another.

The developer’s plans will be the subject of a briefing at a Tacoma Landmarks Commission meeting Wednesday (5 p.m., Room 16, Tacoma Municipal Building North, 728 St. Helens Ave.) Agenda here.

The city’s historic property inventory shows that the building, also known as the Columbia Brewing Co., lies within a historic "conservation district" but has not been designated as a historic building.

Update: Blogger Kevin Freitas has a few more details here.

The TNT reported last month that a construction start date had slipped again for a hotel project on the Foss Waterway. Prium Cos., the developer that bought the historic downtown Winthrop Hotel, is struggling with a slowing condo market and converting one of its completed buildings to apartments.

I wondered if this was a bad sign for Winthrop restoration hopes, but Tacoma Mayor Bill Baarsma says he met recently with Prium's top people. They assured him, Baarsma said, that restoration plans are intact and efforts to develop alternate housing for the Winthrop's current low-income residents are moving head.

Our editorial on Sunday about a woman who couldn't find an attorney to represent her in a child-custody dispute got me wondering about access to legal services in Pierce County.

The Tacoma-Pierce County Bar Foundation, in a press release last month promoting its annual fundraiser, estimated that Pierce County lawyers donate $400,000 a year in services for low-income clients.

The county bar association claims 1,400 members, putting the average pro bono donation at $285. At today's billable rates, we're talking about maybe two hours a year.

Now, I know there are some lawyers who are prevented from doing outside legal work, but the question remains: Are the lawyers who can give giving all that they can?

The American Bar Association encourages lawyers to donate 50 hours a year. A 2006 ABA report found that only 46 percent of lawyers met that goal.

The local bar does have some handy how-tos for family law cases in case you ever find yourself up a crick without a lawyer.

Our editorial Sunday about a state Supreme Court ruling in a divorce case generated some heat in the online comments section. Some readers – and at least one caller – apparently believe the editorial shows a bias against fathers in divorce cases.

Not so. I wrote the editorial. Here's a response I added to the the online comment thread.

=> Read more!

The legal fight over pharmacists and emergency contraceptives is heading for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Backers of a new rule requiring pharmacies to dispense prescriptions even if they have moral or religious objections are seeking a stay of a injunction issued last month by federal judge Ron Leighton in Tacoma.

The appeal was filed today by the ACLU of Washington, the Northwest Women’s Law Center and Planned Parenthood of Western Washington. (ACLU statement here.)

Update: The governor's office says the state filed an appeal today, with the state Department of Health as the lead agency. The private groups may have filed a separate appeal.

The injunction bars enforcement of the new rule adopted earlier this year by the state Board of Pharmacy. The controversial rule allows pharmacies to accomodate individual pharmacists who object to dispense the drug, but if another pharmacist is not available to fill a request in “a timely manner,” the prescription must be filled.

No word yet from the governor’s office on whether it is also appealing the injunction. Gov. Chris Gregoire pushed strongly for the new rule.

Here's our editorial comment on Leighton's ruling.

Word on the digital grapevine was that both Jake Fey and Marty Campbell are thinking about running for Calvin Goings' Pierce County Council seat.

I was initially surprised that Fey, a Tacoma City Councilman who lives in Northeast Tacoma, and Campbell, an East Side resident who ran unsuccessfully for the City Council this year, were even eligible in that district.

But’s true: County Council District 2 extends north to Dash Point and takes in a chunk of the East Side and part of Puyallup. (Map here).

State Rep. Joyce McDonald, R-Puyallup, has announced she will seek the seat.

The word from Fey:

I had originally thought I’d make up my mind about running for the County Council by the first of the year but it it’s already clear to me what is in my heart. For the record I was very flattered to have a number of elected officials, friends, and others urge me to consider running.

However, I very much enjoy where I am right now with my work on the City Council and my job with WSU. I feel that I am making a positive difference on the City Council. I enjoy working with my current colleagues and am looking forward to working with Marilyn (Strickland) and Lauren (Walker) as well.

My district is at the heart of where most of the action is in the City and I care deeply about the City and the great people who live and work here. If I left to pursue another elected position I would be going back on my word to actively and effectively represent the citizens who elected me to the City Council. So, in short, my decision is thanks but no thanks.

As for Campbell – sorry, I lost his email. But he did tell me he’s interested. Right now, though, he’s going to recover from his campaign, enjoy his family and the holidays and make up his mind later.

Goings, who will be term-limited next year, is running for county executive.

A week ago, it was the water. Now it's the mud.

I went down to the Chehalis area Saturday knowing that thousands were pitching in on the cleanup. I thought the work might be wrapped up before long.

No way. The ruin the flood left behind is staggering and heartbreaking. Drive through the rural roads along the Chehalis River and its tributaries and you see homeowners and farmers burning furniture and other once-valuable possessions, all wrecked.

On some houses, the highwater mark was close to the roof. Low-lying dwellings were full of mud, literally tons of it. Yards, fields, living rooms were deep in it. I grew up near the Midwest's meandering brown rivers, but I'd never pictured Pacific Northwest streams carrying such vast quantities of dirt.

The volunteers were working in sub-40-degree weather to dredge mud out of homes, rip out soggy sheetrock and pull up waterlogged floorboards.

A lot of them were smiling. It feels good to help your neighbors.

Photos:
Here's where this steel-truss bridge was:

Here's where it is now – full of debris, upside down and 100 yards downstream:

=> Read more!

U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert is happy. He's happy that South Pierce County Fire and Rescue is getting a new fire truck. He's happy that he's able to announce that a FEMA grant will pay for it. He hopes everyone in South Pierce County will be happy.

Aren't you happy that the 2008 election season hasn't even hit full stride yet?

Here's Reichert's press release:

$261,250 Awarded to South Pierce Fire and Rescue
 
Washington, D.C. – Congressman Dave Reichert (WA-08) is pleased to announce that South Pierce Fire and Rescue (SPFR) has been awarded $261,250 by the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency through their Assistance to Firefighters Grants (AFG) program.  The money will go toward the SPFR’s purchase of a new vehicle.
 
“I spent dozens of years working with firefighters and emergency management services, and understand the need for proper equipment,” said Reichert, the former Sheriff of King County. “The need for high quality vehicles and equipment is essential to what a fire and rescue team can accomplish in saving lives and keeping our citizens safe. I am happy that $261,250 is coming to Pierce Fire and Rescue.”

Building the City of Tacoma's Urban Waters project to the highest "green building" standards will be pricey if the City Council gives the go-ahead this month. The price tag looks like $40 million to $45 million.

But the really hard part will be getting employees and visitors to the site on the east side of the Foss Waterway, north of the Murray Morgan Bridge.

Plans call for only 35 parking spaces, but 100 to 110 employees will work there. And some of those spaces have to be saved for visitors, Pugh and Larkin told the editorial board last week.

That means, they acknowledged, that the city will have to allow no more than one of every five employees to arrive by car and park there. I suggested – facetiously, of course – that maybe the city could encourage employees to swim to work. Save parking, cut car emissions, improve fitness!

Pugh admitted that transportation to the isolated location will be a challenge. He said the city hopes to work with Simpson and other businesses in the area to develop some kind of local transportation system. The city might try offering a flex-car plan, too.

As for the big runup in estimated cost – from $18 million last spring to $40 million-plus now – Larkin said the original plan called for a conventional industrial style building. The new one would be built to "Platinum" green standards; it would cost more but use 30 percent less energy. it will also be significantly larger to accommodate offices for the Puget Sound Partnership, the state task force leading a cleanup of Puget Sound.

The price tag gives us heartburn, but the new building would certainly be a big lift for the east side of the Foss. We'll be discussing the topic this week.

I asked Kelly Haughton, the Pierce County Charter Review Commission member who successfully championed ranked choice voting, to weigh on the debate we've had here on county party strategy for 2008.

The county Republicans and Democrats have to decide how many candidates will be allowed to run under their party labels for county executive and county council. Here's Haughton's take:

In order to prevent a legal challenge based on freedom of association grounds, we needed to put in the RCV law the provision giving the parties control over the use of their name. Most people would agree that the parties should be allowed to prevent candidates such as Mike the Mover from using their name. They should also be entitled to use any process they want to select the candidates who they wish to use their name.

The process which Nathe (Pierce County Democratic chair Nathe Lawver) describes for the Democrats seems the best one at balancing the voters' ability to participate with the party's desire to control its ballot line. Allowing up to three candidates to use their name provides voters with a good amount of choice and allows the party to eliminate the Mike the Mover type candidates. They should not change their process next week.

=> Read more!

This is rich.

Darcy Burner, once and future challenger of U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert, has become a one-woman Consumer Products Safety Commission. She and her political allies are going to make the rounds in her congressional district next weekend to test your Christmas toys for lead.

Her e-mail today:

Too many of our elected officials have failed us [that wouldn't include Reichert, would it?], but I will do what we have to in order to protect our kids. Even my son, Henry, had been playing with Thomas the Tank Engine toys that contained lead. So this holiday season I am joining with local community leaders to test toys in seven Eastside and South Sound communities for contamination with lead and other toxic chemicals. Parents can bring in toys (or other children's products) and we will test them – for free – to ensure that the products are safe.

Give Burner credit: Someone in her campaign has a flair for publicity stunts.

Over on the Political Buzz blog, our man in Olympia, Joe Turner, has a post about Tim Eyman being evicted from a Yakima City Council meeting Wednesday.

But the juiciest thing Eyman said in Yakima deserves special note. In his prepared remarks, Eyman offered a telling comment about his self-perceived importance in this state:

As this city’s highest ranking UNelected representative, I want to comment on the Ensey/Bonlender thing.

This confirms the impression that Eyman considers himself the equal of the governor and any legislator, city council member or Supreme Court justice in the state.

Eyman was shut down by Yakima Mayor Dave Edler when he launched into a defense of Rick Ensey, who won re-election last month but is under fire because he wife had anonymously attacked his opponent in a blog. The incumbent Ensey defeated, Ron Bonlender, has filed a lawsuit against Ensey and his wife.

Eyman's summation, read aloud in the hallway outside council chambers, was a classic Eyman:

My message to Ensey: The bad guys want to badger you into quitting or cow your conservatism as a councilman. They will never like you, never accept you, never vote for you. So you need to sponsor ordinances and vote for legislation that is more conservative than you’d normally do just to shove it back at them. You didn’t beat Bonlender by kowtowing to critics. Always stay focused on the policies and principles that the voters want and you’ll do just fine. And most importantly, never stop talking.

Eyman also laid into the Yakima Herald-Republic for conducting a "witch hunt" against Ensey. In an editorial today, the newspaper said the mayor should have Eyman have the full three minutes allotted for public comments, even if Eyman's comments were "mean-spirited." Said the H-R:

Edler's heart was in the right place, even if Eyman's mouth was not.

We've got a spirited discusssion going on how the Pierce County Republican and Democratic parties should play their cards in the 2008 RCV election for county executive and county council.

Here's another observation from a political figure who requests anonymity:

I believe that if either party attempts to limit how many “qualified” candidates they will allow to carry their designation, you will see a citizen-led effort to force a charter amendment to be placed on the November ballot that will make the Exec and Council races non-partisan.

I was told that polling had already been done and that favorable numbers aligned very close to November’s numbers for the Auditors / Assessors / Sheriff partisan ballot vote. While this may rankle the party purists, it sounds like they are sure to suffer a defeat if Pierce County voters get a chance to vote on the issue. Thus they (the parties) will be shooting themselves in the feet if they attempt to limit the number of candidates . . .

Finally, one of the major benefits that the supporters of RCV expounded during the campaign to implement RCV was that this system would encourage more candidates to run for office – not less. I hope that the two parties step back and look at what the voters expected with RCV.

After the failure of Proposition 1, what next for roads and transit?

Pierce County Executive John Ladenburg, who moonlights (daylights?) as Sound Transit chairman, told Crosscut editor David Brewster that Pierce, Thurston and Kitsap counties might try to hatch their own regional plan for road construction.

Crosscut is the online news site created by Brewster, founder and former publisher of the Seattle Weekly. Ladenburg told Brewster he doesn’t favor breaking up the regional alliance Pierce, King and Snohomish counties formed to advance the roads portion of Proposition 1.

Ladenburg opposes the breakaway effort, though he's intrigued by some elements of it. He's a dedicated believer, from many trips to other regional economic powerhouses around Asia and Europe, that regions, not cities, are keys to economic growth if they can figure out how to act in concert. He notes that one third of Pierce county workers have jobs in King County, and he doesn't want to kill that economic golden goose.

See the Crosscut article here. And go here to see an Everett Herald editorial suggesting that Snohomish County could go its own way on funding highway work.

The TNT’s Joe Turner reports on our Political Buzz blog that Tacoma City Manager Eric Anderson is mulling a city roads tax that would be part of some undefined “larger effort.”

Parents and grandparents aren't the only ones struggling with what to give for Christmas, as we noted in today's editorial about toxic toys. Charities, too, are having a heck of a time making sure donated toys aren't on recall lists. Many charities are screening every toy, putting additional strain on volunteers during an already busy time.

One local toy clearinghouse is taking a different approach: The Toy Rescue Mission in Tacoma is putting the onus on parents whose kids receive the donated toys. Parents or guardians have to sign a liability release form and then are given the phone number and Web site for the Consumer Product Safety Commission so they can check on recalls themselves.

This is what founder Karol Barkley told me:

Since we are a 99% volunteer-run agency, and don't always have the same volunteer staff from week-to-week or month-to-month, we can't put the responsibility of this burden on the volunteers or volunteer staff. They give the time they are able to give. We train them with the time and knowledgable staff that we have available. But, even in a perfect world, with NO toy recalls, there will always be misappropriation of how a toy should be used or situations of children younger than the designated age for the toy, playing with it and being harmed by it. Example: emergency rooms have for years had to remove marbles and buttons from children's noses, ears, etc.! At what point does the parent assume their rightful parental role? (If they are not capable of making those safety determinations, then maybe they shouldn't be parenting....)

“Turnaround expert” is one of the qualities some Lakewood residents want to see in the Clover park School District’s next superintendent, accord to a report in today’s TNT.

That might not be as good an idea as it sounds, if Maryland’s experience in trying to improve failing schools is any indication.

A local school administrator with a sense of irony sent me a news article from the Baltimore Sun reporting that only 12 of Maryland’s 76 officially-designated failing schools have improved significantly in the past three years. Here’s the meat of the article:

"Even in an advanced state like Maryland, that has tried to deal with these problems for a decade ... we just don't know what to do," said Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy.

The most commonly tried solution - bringing in a turnaround specialist - usually doesn't work, the report said. And a newer option, replacing the teaching staff, has caused disruption but hasn't gotten results.

Maryland is to be commended, Jennings said, for learning from what doesn't work and changing its strategy so that it no longer allows turnaround specialists as an option. The lesson for other states around the nation, he said, is "that we ought to be humble ... that it is a long, hard slog to bring about change, and it is something we just have to keep working at."

=> Read more!

Former Tacoma-Pierce County Health Director Federico Cruz-Uribe and his wife are moving to Nicaragua to do good works there.

Cruz-Uribe, who headed the department for 14 years, retired last summer amid department turmoil over his efforts to obtain bird flu vaccines from foreign sources.

Here's the word from the doctor himself:

Dave, the rumors are true. we are building a house down in the south east
part of Nicaragua (south of Rivas, the provincial capital and east of San Juan del Sur, a fishing village on the Pacific coast and hopeful tourist center.)

I am hoping to do public health stuff down there. I am also thinking about
taking in students from the UW school of public health. they are looking for
overseas placements for their Masters in Public Health students. We will be growing palm trees and harvesting the fruit to make bio-fuels. My wife is also looking at being involved in helping to set up a hospital/clinic in the area where we will be living.

My daughter is still at UPS. she has taken a liking to the school so I do
know where I will be addressing the tuition checks for the next two years.

We are in the process of selling our vacation home in Leavenworth and will be
putting our Tacoma home on the market in january. So there will be some changes in our lives. I am happy about my time here in Tacoma. I hope over time that the community appreciates how good a health dept it has. At least I do. federico

Calvin Goings and Pat McCarthy, both running for Pierce County executive next year, have always been Democrats. But one of them might not be next year.

Could happen – depending on the outcome of the Pierce County Democratic Party’s central committee meeting Dec. 13.

Persistent but unconfirmed reports say Pierce County Republicans plan to allow only one candidate in the 2008 races for county executive and County Council to run as a Republican entry. My emails to a couple of county GOP leaders have gone unanswered.

Update: Pierce County GOP Chair Deryl McCarty responds in the comments below. County Democratic Chair Nathe Lawver does, too.

Certainly the D’s believe this to be true. And some Democratic activists are convinced the party will hand the county executive’s race to the Republicans if it doesn’t adopt the same rule.

The issue arises because the executive and council races will be decided for the first time with ranked-choice voting, a no-primary system county voters approved last year. And parties have a constitutional right to decide who gets to run under their party labels.

Read on for more details, plus an email from a local party activist making the case for naming only one Democratic candidate in the key races.

=> Read more!

The Bethel School District will be going to the Legislature this winter with a request for $42 million to build a regional voc-tech "skills center" for high school students.

But legislators aren't always eager to write checks for a project if they get wind of local opposition to it. And Pierce County's two-year colleges are a long way from sold on this one.

Several of their leaders visited today to talk about other matters. We asked about the skills center, which would be built near Frederickson.

The core argument is over duplication of programs – or competition for students and money, to put it another way.

As they noted, Pierce County already has two technical colleges – out of five statewide – and 160 technical training programs.

Said Bates Technical College President David Borofsky, "When they say they're going to offer computers and construction, I have to ask, 'Why?' They're going to teach students computers when we have unused cpapacity?"

Tana Hasart, president of Pierce College Puyallup, said Bethel and the colleges are "30 percent on the way to agreement."

That sounded optimistic. We asked Borofsky if Bethel would be able to present a united front to the 2008 Legislature.

One word: "No."

Political consultant Christian Sinderman confirms that a “Death with Dignity” initiative campaign will launch in January, with petitions on the street by February if the ballot title is approved by the state attorney general’s office.

Sinderman says the 2008 initiative will differ from Initiative 119, the 1991 version that Washington voters rejected.

=> Read more!

Dick Davis, an occasional TNT contributor and one of the state's most astute political analysts, thinks Tim Eyman's newly enacted Initiative 960 will be toast when it inevitably hits the state Supreme Court.

"The Court recently telegraphed its hand," he writes this week. "The foreshadowing came in a case challenging the way lawmakers manipulated and retroactively amended the Initiative 601 spending limit in 2005 and 2006 to raise taxes."

"... it’s likely that most members of the Court, possibly all except Justices James Johnson and Richard Sanders, think the initiative’s restraints on legislative authority are unconstitutional. With passage of I-960, which raises similar issues, they’ll get another chance to weigh in. Expect the initiative’s restrictions on legislative tax-raising authority to fall."

Here's Davis' kicker:

=> Read more!

In a bid for the enviro vote in his bid for Pierce County executive next year, County Councilman Calvin Goings, (D-Puyallup) announced today that his campaign will be "carbon neutral."

He is purchasing carbon offsets to make amends for the carbon emissions his campaign will generate. From his statement:

I think it is incredibly important for elected officials to understand that we must make changes in the way we operate.  Climate change is a reality that we must take head on.

Pierce County must be a sustainable county that takes climate change into consideration when we make policy decisions.  I hope that other politicians will voluntarily offset their carbon emissions.  It is a first step and it is the right thing to do.

Goings is buying his carbon offsets through CarbonCampaign.org, a for-profit firm that provides eight "custom packages" for political candidates seeking that environmental edge. CarbonCampaign.Org was founded by Ryan Dicks, son of Sixth District Congressman Norm Dicks.

The younger Dicks was the Cascade Land Conservancy's man in Pierce County, then a CLC vice president briefly before leaving earlier this year to go out on his own as a political consultant specializing in environmental issues. His business is called Air Water Land LLC.

=> Read more!

No false alarm this time. An amicable settlement of Northwest Trek founder David Hellyer’s 2005 lawsuit against Metro Parks Tacoma is truly at hand.

Parks official Gary Geddes told me the same thing in June, but wrapping up the deal took longer than expected. Now the park board is scheduled to approve the settlement Monday. Details will be posted on the Metro Parks website later this week.

The lawsuit was filed in early 2005 by the Northwest Trek Foundation and Dr. Hellyer, who donated the 535 acres near Eatonville that is now a Metro Parks-owned wildlife park. Claiming Metro Parks was mismanaging the park, Hellyer wanted Trek transferred back to his possession, whereupon he would transfer it to the state Department of Wildlife.

But Hellyer, 92, died not long after the lawsuit was filed, and his wife, Connie, had no interest in pursuing the matter, according to Geddes. For all practical purposes, the foundation is nearly defunct.

The settlement means Northwest Trek can begin using the Hellyers’ longtime home on the property for meetings and educational activities, as the Hellyers had intended once they no longer lived there.

Ruston town politics have always had that small-town flavor – intense and highly personal. And weird, sometimes.

Which is the only way to describe the latest development, reported by former town council member Karen Pickett on her open-forum blog, Ruston Home.

The majority of the Ruston council seats were unexpectedly handed to new people tonight. Council members Mary Joyce and Del Brewer resigned their seats a month before their terms expired at the end of December. Councilmember Bob Pudlo also resigned his seat. He had said previously that the stress of dealing with some of the council members was impacting his health. Those council members (Wayne Stebner and Bob Everding) are the only two members to retain their seats after tonight’s meeting.

Recent election winners, Bradley Huson and Jim Hedrick, were appointed to fill the vacancies left by senior council members Joyce and Brewer. For Pudlo’s seat, past practice for the council would have been to take applications for the vacancy and invite the public to provide input prior to making their decision. Instead, they choose to install Dan Alberston, who lost a close race to Jim Hedrick. There was no consideration of Lyle Hardin, who also lost a fairly close race to Bradley Huson. It is unclear how long Albertson will hold his seat – probably until fall 2008, perhaps until the end of 2009.

Pickett served on the council from 1987 to 1992 and ran unsuccessfully for the council in 2005 and this year.

In what smacks of a summons, Tim Eyman has invited all the Republican lawmakers and officials in the Yakima area to a forum in which he will (according to his email) "recap the special session, highlight the issue of 'banked capacity' and the 1% property tax cap ... and talk about the Republican Party."

"Finally, I want to discuss what we've got planned for 2008 and beyond. It will be an excellent opportunity for me to meet and talk with the leaders in my hometown of Yakima."

A mere month ago, Eyman was a has-been; now – thanks to the state Supreme Court's unfathomable overthrow of Initiative 747 – he's holding court and setting forth strategy for the GOP. I wonder: How many Yakima Valley Rs will actually show up at his vanity party?

And any Dems who thought they might have appeased Eyman last Thursday by putting 747 back on the books have gotten a rude surprise. Now he's circulating a "scarlet letter" addressed to almost every D in the Legislature. Its accusation:

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The Puyallup Tribe is seeing a healthy dose of real politics with the arrival of a maverick Website and the upstart Full Circle.

Pierce County’s proposed domestic partnership benefits won’t break the bank and reflect a common practice designed to compete for qualified employees.

Lyle Smith served Tacoma and Pierce County through some tumultuous times as police chief and sheriff.

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.
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Port of Tacoma spokesman Rod Koon tells me the port is seeking proposals to provide webstreaming video of port commission meetings. Here's his report:

I also wanted to let you know that the Port of Tacoma sent out a Request for Proposal today for web streaming/video. It was e-mailed to about 15 companies. It is also posted on our Port website in the REQUESTS FOR BIDS - PURCHASED GOODS AND SERVICES section. (Link to it here)
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The pre-proposal conference is on Wednesday December 5 from 1 to 2:30 at the PBC (Port Business Center).. This will give people the opportunity to see the meeting room, look at the existing sound system, ask questions, etc. Proposals are due by Wednesday, December 12 at 3 p.m.

As our faithful readers know, a citizen group called Friends of the Port has been urging the port to televise commission meetings or at least use streaming video to make them available on the Web. In this editorial, we said that's a great idea. The Port of Seattle and the City of Tacoma already post streaming video for commission and council meetings.

We knew that former Washington Gov. Booth Gardner, 71 and battling Parkinson's disease, wants to help make assisted suicide legal in this state.

But we didn't realize how deeply split Gardner's family is on the matter. The cover story in today's New York Times Sunday Magazine (registration may be required) reveals that Gardner's son, Doug, is adamantly opposed to his father's wishes. And Gardner's son still feels bitter that his dad "wasn't there" for his family during Gardner's political career.

According to writer Daniel Bergner, Gardner and other advocates of aid in dying, as they prefer to call it, hope to have an initiative on the ballot in November 2008. Voters turned down a similar initiative in 1991.

Bergner notes, however, that the proposed new law would not apply to Gardner even if it passed. Gardner's disease is not considered terminal, which would be a condition in the new law.

Gardner spoke at a City Club forum on assisted suicide earlier this year. (See my column about that here.)Although he has a home on Vashon Island, he resides in Tacoma most of the time.

I saw Gardner last month in a North End barbershop, holding copy of "The World Is Flat" while the barber worked. Booth said he was re-reading the Tom Friedman bestseller.

It was good to see him and to hear he is able to drive himself around town now. Apparently a recent surgery he had was helpful. That's why it was painful to read this quote from Gardner in the article: "I don't see where it benefits anybody to have me hanging around."

We're inevitably hearing talk of a new push for regional transportation governance in the wake of Proposition 1's defeat at the polls.

Advocates include state auditor (and Pierce County resident) Brian Sonntag, who touted the idea in his TNT oped article Nov. 19.

Randy Lewis, the City of Tacoma's man in Olympia (his job title is governmental affairs director), begs to differ.

I noticed our State Auditor joining the chorus for consolidated governance on your op-ed pages recently. As with most proponents of regionalization, he trotted out that alarming statistic about there being over 100 agencies doing transportation planning.

Proponents of regionalization want to scare people into believing that is evidence of out of control bureaucracy of course so they never point out that the vast majority of those agencies are cities planning their residential and arterial streets. There are 24 cities in Pierce County, another 40 in King and a dozen more in Snohomish and Kitsap. Add four counties and there is the vast bulk of this so-called problem.

I am sure Mr. Sonntag doesn't propose turning over construction of Tacoma's streets to some regional government.

For Lewis' unabtridged remarks, click on Read More. If a thoughtul argument breaks out, we'll put some of it print.

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Aaron Toso, a Tacoma-based political consultant, is Gov. Chris Gregoire's new press secretary. He starts Dec. 10.

The ed board met Toso when he worked with advocates of payday lending reform during the 2007 legislative session, crossing swords with South Tacoma's state Rep. Steve Kirby, Democratic chair of the House financial institutions committee. To our disappointment, no bill came out of Kirby's committee

Toso joined the governmental affairs section of the Tacoma law firm Gordon Thomas Honeywell earlier this year and soon afterward moved from Seattle to Tacoma's North End. He also served as spokesman for the unsuccessful Yes on Roads & Transit campaign this fall. See Toso's bio at Gordon Thomas here.

Gregoire's previous press secretary, Holly Armstrong, resigned in September to move to Denver.

Interesting graphic from Thursday's Seattle Times showing how dependent each of Washington's counties is on property taxes.

Note the curiosity: King County is the least dependent (except for tiny San Juan County) on this unpopular tax. And it has been the bastion of opposition to Initiative 747 and other measures aimed at cutting property taxes.

Must be nice to have such a large industrial and commercial tax base that property taxes aren't such a big deal.