TV Tacoma has just done me – and other deaf or hearing-impaired Tacomans – a big, big favor.

Starting Tuesday, Feb. 5, TV Tacoma's cable broadcasts of Tacoma City Council meetings will offer closed captions, otherwise known as subtitles.

If Mayor Bill Baarsma declares, "Read my lips," I can read the caption as well as his lips. I'm biased, of course, but I think this is a great step in making city government accessible.

Now it would be just perfect if TV Tacoma would televise council study sessions as well. But city staffers say the small room the council uses for study sessions isn't suitable for broadcasts and lacks the necessary wiring.

TV Tacoma's web site has details on programs and services.

Abandoned pets are overwhelming animal shelters in some parts of the country as home foreclosures lead many families to leave their pets behind, according to The Associated Press.

But that's not happening here, at least not at the Humane Society for Tacoma and Pierce County. Staff there report that in the last three months, they have seen a decrease in animals entering the shelter because their owners moved, became homeless, were evicted or abandoned them during a move. The decline comes at a time when total shelter admissions are rising slightly.

What's going on? Certainly, our state hasn't been hit as hard by foreclosures as others have, but they are still on the increase. Maybe we just have more responsible pet owners — or more rural places to dump animals.

"Obama in Tacoma." A guy could elected president with a slogan like that.

Pierce County Democratic Party Chairman Nathe Lawver sends word on campaign events this week for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. (What are we to make of the fact that the local chair can't spell Obama's name right?)

The Kerry visit tomorrow for Barak Obama will take place at the
Colored Woman's Club (I believe that's on South Yakima), 4 p.m.
2316 Yakima Ave Tacoma, WA 98405

Then, in the interest of equal time, and Dave W. reported this on the blog, Sen. Cantwell and Congresman Inslee will stump for Hillary Clinton at King's Books Saturday, 1 p.m.

Tacoma City Councilman Rick Talbert, chairman of the Tacoma-Pierce County Board of Health, updates us on the search for a new health director:

We interviewed 6 candidates last week. Three internal and three external. There were also question and answer sessions before a group of stakeholders and a group of health department employees.

The board now has to decide which if any of the candidates should be submitted to the County Executive and The Mayor for final consideration. More comprehensive background checks would also be conducted.

I am hopeful we will have a decision by early next week.

The new chief will succeed Dr. Federico Cruz-Uribe, who retired under pressure last summer over some of his management practices. I asked Talbert what would happen if the county executive and the mayor didn't agree on the board's choice.

That's an interesting question. One for the attorneys. The way the interlocal agreement between the County and the City is structured it is the Executive and the Mayor who must make the appointment.

My non-legal guess is that if they couldn't agree the search would have to continue.

We've just learned that state officials have withdrawn its conditional approval for a controversial $1.1 millon grant for housing released prison inmates in Tacoma and Pierce County.

The state Department of Community, Trade and Economic Development announced the decision today in letters to C4RJ and the Tacoma City Council.
The letter (PDF file here) cited a number of deficiencies in the group's application.

The move comes as no surprise to the ed board, which met for two hours with C4RJ leaders Carl D. Jones and Edryce Reynolds Wednesday afternoon.

Aside from the descrepancies in the group's grant application, it appeared to us that C4RJ, a small, all-volunteer group with a budget of no more than $25,000, is woefully unprepared to manage a much larger program intended to provide housing and support for 70 ex-inmates.

We support the goals of the grant program, which aims to help newly released inmates succeeed on re-entry to the community and reduce recidivism. But it's obvious that the community infrastructure for this kind of initiative is lacking and may need to be built from the ground up -- very carefully and deliberately, with outreach to the neighborhoods where the "clients" will be placed.

1. The legal mess over breath test results from bungling (and dishonest) state patrol lab work has us wondering what kind of oversight the agency applies to lab management.

2. The Tacoma School Board and top officials should forget blaming the messenger -- the state auditor -- and own up to violating the state’s open meetings law and promise not to do it again.

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.

Carl Jones and Edryce Reynolds, two leaders of Citizens for Responsible Justice, came in late yesterday afternoon to persuade us that the Citizens aren't bad guys.

As in "bad guys who submitted a dubious application that won a $1.1 million grant they'll use to import a bunch of felons to the Hilltop."

Jones and Reynolds persuaded us, or me at least, that C4RJ is a well-intentioned group that fervently believes in rehabilitation but is in way over its head.

They overlook important things. They bungle paperwork. They forgot to apply for a renewal of their nonprofit status. They didn't know they needed a business license. They have no legal counsel. They've got a frustratingly unhelpful Website that makes it look like they're hiding something.

But – most of all – they think they can brush off the Hilltop Action Coalition and get away with it.

Jones said the coalition has been on their case ever since they opened a house at 811 S. 11th for released felons.

"They wanted us to sign a good neighbors agreement with them," he said, aggrieved. "Why don't they sign a good neighbors agreement with us?"

See "overlook important things," above. The first thing anyone needs to know about the Hilltop is that the coalition guards it like a pack of Rottweilers. In the 1990s, HAC ran off the trigger-happy crack gangs who'd all but taken over the streets. It doesn't send the Welcome Wagon out to ex-cons. You want to move a house full of released felons in, even for the best of reasons, you'd better make very nice with the coalition.

Does the Hilltop Action Coalition run the Hilltop? Jones demanded to know. Well ... not officially. But asking the coalition to sign a good neighbors agreement is sort of like asking Wyatt Earp to turn over his guns, too, when you ride into Dodge.

While my colleague Pat O'Callahan was working on today's editorial about the McNeil Island prison chaplain and his religious quandary, I asked UPS religion professor Judith Kay for her thoughts on the matter.

For instance, I asked, who decides what is a legitimate religion, and how? Here's Kay's response:

Hi David,

This is a complicated issue.

From an individual’s perspective, we ought to be free to formulate our own understanding of the universe and ultimate reality, including the nature of God, if there is one, etc. There are limits on this freedom, as there are limits to any freedom—minimally, my religious practice ought to be restricted if it harms others without just cause. (Killing innocents in the name of religion does not make the killing of innocents right.)

Prisoners are perhaps even more need of such autonomy because their spiritual freedom is one of the few freedoms they truly possess. With their bodies imprisoned, their minds and hearts are free to adopt perspectives outside the repression that surrounds them.

=> Read more!

Reader Mike Hondorp has an unusual request, aired this letter to the editor that we're publishing in the print TNT Thursday morning. Here's a sneak preview and a response I sent to Mike. Chime in and let us know what you think.

No More Political Preference Letters—Please!

Now that we have entered the political campaign season for national, state and local offices, I am dismayed to see that The News Tribune is printing letters to the Editor that reflect reader’s support for particular candidates. While I enjoy reading input from individuals about the issues and concerns of the day, I certainly do not care to read about another reader’s favorite candidate or political party.

I encourage The News Tribune to desist from printing letters that reflect personal preference towards a candidate or a party. Such letters add nothing of value to the Letters to the Editor section and probably alienate at least as many readers as may be encouraged by the reader’s personal opinion. When it comes to political opinions, The News Tribune can offer its own editorial views at election time. Otherwise, let your readers keep their political opinions to themselves.

Mike,
Don’t you think that would be like taking the chili powder out of the chili? Gosh, the letters page would be pretty dull if readers weren’t allowed to sound off about the candidates or political parties – especially in an election year like this one.

I agree that letters that simply “I like Mike” or “I hate Hillary” don’t add much to the conversation. We try not to run simple “campaign” letters that don’t have much to say. But letters with a strong point of view and a clear point are the spice in the mix. Arguing and speaking up and disagreeing – preferably in a reasonably civil way – about who are best qualified to be our leaders is the very essence of democracy. I love it.

Dave Seago
Editorial page editor

Felix Flannigan, director of Tacoma's Martin Luther King Jr. Housing Development Association, came in for an editorial board Tuesday with some financial types to announce the launch of a so-called “double-bottom line” real estate development fund.

The association has created a nonprofit subsidiary called Sound Community Initiatives, which Flannigan serves as president and CEO. CSI selected the Kennedy Wilson Fund Management Group of Los Angeles, which plans to raise as much as $90 million to invest in low- and middle-income areas in Pierce, King, Snohomish, Kitsap and Thurston counties.

Larry Kopp, a former Citicorp executive and former managing director of the Russell Co., is the chairman of the new nonprofit. Kopp is a heavy hitter in financial and civic circles. See a mini-bio here.

Kennedy Wilson says it services more than $8 billion in real estate assets nationwide and acts in investor, developer and management roles. "Double bottom line" refers to the returns for fund investors as the first bottom line, and neighborhood improvement and economic revitalization as the second bottom line.

This article describes an abandoned 615-unit housing complex Kennedy Wilson took over and transformed in Alameda, Calif.

The Kennedy Wilson representatives said the new fund will have between $65 million and $90 million to invest. Combined with bank financing, the fund's capital could trigger $200 millon to $360 million in development here.

No specific projects were announced. K-W's John Pradhu said his firm has some prospects in mind but will also be fielding proposals from developers. Flannigan said the fund has no connection with the housing association's current $30 million mixed-use project at South 11th Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way.

More on that later.

The case of the McNeil Island prison chaplain who took leave rather than serve an inmate who claims to be both Catholic and pagan presents First Amendment conundrum. The priest shouldn’t be forced to violate his religious conscience, but the inmate, in the custody of the state, also – apparently – has a First Amendment right to practice his hybrid religion, which requires the involvement of a priest. Who knows what the answer is? Prison authorities have to see if some kind of practical accomodation can be made.

The Pierce County Housing Authority’s record of handling complaints at the mold-plagued Eagle’s Watch housing complex suggests that the agency for a long time was not living up to its responsibilities to provide safe and affordable rental housing.

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.

Caroline and Ted Kennedy have been making headlines this week for throwing their support to Democratic hopeful Barack Obama, but Robert Kennedy's kids beg to differ. In a less noticed endorsement, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Kerry Kennedy backed Hillary Clinton on Tuesday.

The family disagreement has played out on op-ed pages on both coasts. Caroline's piece was published Sunday by The New York Times and the Kennedy cousins had their say in The Los Angeles Times.

Their arguments fall along now-predictable lines. Caroline writes, "(Obama) has built a movement that is changing the face of politics in this country, and he has demonstrated a special gift for inspiring young people — known for a willingness to volunteer, but an aversion to politics — to become engaged in the political process." To which Kathleen et al said: "We need a leader who is battle-tested, resilient and sure-footed on the shifting landscapes of domestic and foreign policy. Hillary Clinton will move our country forward while promoting its noblest ideals."

Beyond the inspiration vs. experience divide, their dueling endorsements seem to boil down to which candidate most reminds them of their dad. As if the presidential race wasn't exciting enough, now we've got JFK vs. RFK.

"I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans." – Caroline Kennedy

And from the cousins:

"Like our father, Hillary has devoted her life to embracing and including those on the bottom rung of society's ladder – giving voice to the alienated and disenfranchised and working to alleviate poverty and injustice, while urging that we cannot advance ourselves as a nation by leaving our poorer brothers and sisters behind."

An effort to revise the Pierce County ethics code is stuck in "Park."

Word from council chambers is that the council will once again postpone action on ethics code changes that were tabled in December for "further study."

Councilmen Tim Farrell and Calvin Goings, both Democrats, were frustrated by a raft of new proposed amendments that appeared today with no previous review.
Councilman Roger Bush, R-Graham, who wants the code to take a much different approach that the version proposed by Farrell and Goings, urged taking more time to study the latest amendments.

It looks to me like the ethics code is caught up in election-year politics. (See our Sunday editorial). Both Goings, D-Puyallup, and Councilman Shawn Bunney, R-Lake Tapps, are running for county executive. I suspect Republicans don't want Goings to be able to claim credit for a stronger ethics code. (see response from Councilman Roger Bush, R-Graham) below.)

Which leads me to another thought: Perhaps a wiser and less partisan approach would have been to appoint a reputable, broadbased and independent citizen panel to review the code and propose changes. Maybe it will take a citizen initiative to get the job done right.

County Councilman Roger Bush responds

I want to let you know that I believe that you have misunderstood what took place today regarding the proposed Ethics ordinance discussions.

First, in your third paragraph, you state that Farrell and Goings, "both Democrats, were frustrated by a raft of new proposed amendments that appeared today with no previous review." This would lead readers to a false conclusion. Specifically, out of the four amendments, three were sponsored by Mr. Goings. Three other draft documents were included in the packet for discussion that have not as yet received sponsors (they were there for informational and discussion purposes...one from the Prosecutors, one from the Ethics Commissioners, and one from the Auditor.)

=> Read more!

The ed board talked this morning about today's Page One story on the McNeil Island prison chaplain who's conflicted about serving an inmate who claims to be both pagan and Catholic.

We debated the First Amendment issues involved and plan an editorial later this week. But we were also intrigued by the chart giving a breakdown on the religions claimed by state prisoners.

Why are there more pagans than Catholics in the state prisons? Is Washington a hotbed for pagans? Are Catholics on the wane here? Do the rankings simply mean that pagans are more likely to be sinners – i.e, convicts – than God-fearing Catholics?

The pagan inmate cited in our story says he's Asatru. According the Asatru Alliance web site, that means following "the old Norse gods."

There's our answer: It's all those Norse heathens in Ballard.

The Alcohol Impact Area designation sought for Tacoma’s East Side and South End would be the state’s larget, but the communities have a rock-solid case for it. The state Liquor Control Board should approve this tool to fight public drunkenness.

The Puyallup City Council would be foolish to stymie plans for a bandstand in Pioneer Park, especially given the Rotary club’s promise to put up $50,000 for it.

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.

We were shocked by a a number of details in The Seattle Times' investigative series on criminal activities by members of the Rose Bowl-winning 2000 Husky football team. See today's editorial.

One was King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng's decision not to charge tight end Jerramy Stevens with the rape of a 19-year-old in a Greek Row alley.

Athletic director Barbara Hedges took that decision as an "exoneration" of Stevens, but it's hard to believe anyone is that naive about the criminal justice system. Prosecutors decline to prosecute wrongdoers for any number of reasons, including tight budgets, calculations about the difficulty of convincing 12 jurors beyond a reasonable doubt, and – perhaps in this case – a little too much sympathy for a dynamite football team.

Read Sunday's story, and it's hard to doubt that Stevens did it. Of particular interest is one of the things prosecutors told police after they dropped the case:

It seems highly unlikely that the victim would have consented to anal intercourse with the suspect in a fraternity alley.

It seems the prosecutors also thought Stevens was guilty; they just didn't want to try to prove it in court.

Maleng died last year, so he can't defend his decision in this case. We respected him a lot, but can't help noting that he was a Husky ('60, economics; '66, law).

As, for the record, am I.

The Battle of the Foss begins tonight at 5:30 in the Phoenix Room at Freighthouse Square.

Maybe I shouldn’t hype it as a fight, because Foss Waterway Development Authority officials are hoping they can work out a happy compromise. Tonight's public meeting is the first of two "community planning sessions" on the future of what has been dubbed Waterway Park.

But the bone of contention is whether a new children’s museum should be allowed on a Foss shoreline site the City of Tacoma purchased with a Conservation Futures grant intended for open space and recreation. (News story).

Dan Voelpel, our business columnist, set the stage with a column Friday hoping for a solution that will include the museum. On Wednesday, we’ll publish an oped piece from local rowing and paddling enthusiasts with a different vision:

Recently, the human powered boaters presented the FWDA a plan for the site that proposes to adaptively reuse an existing building, the Berg Scaffolding building, for a boathouse, thus avoiding the not insignificant environmental permitting and remediation that would need to be done to the site for any new construction.

The Waterway Park site is the LAST remaining protected portal into Commencement Bay that could support active boating programs. We see this site as Tacoma's opportunity to build that kind of a healthy presence on Commencement Bay and the Foss, to celebrate our maritime history, and honor Thea, who started it all.

It looks like Citizens for a Healthy Bay, an environmental group that has promoted cleanup of Commencement Bay, also prefers a no-development plan. CHB’s Leslie Rose sent around a Jan. 25 article from the Eugene (Ore.) Register-Guard making the case that downtown parks help drive economic development.

I couldn’t locate a link, but hit "Read More" to get the text.

Finally, if you’d like to see ideas Metro Parks came up with last year for the Foss, go here.

=> Read more!

We aren't fans of Tim Eyman's initiatives, but we are fans of the right of initiative guaranteed by the state constitution.

He and others have been crying foul over attempts in the Legislature to intimidate signature-gatherers by allowing opponents to find out their names and addresses.

Now he says a whistleblower has given him several internal memos purportedly from the Washington State Council of County and City Employees (AFSCME - AFL-CIO).

One reads: "If you see a signature gatherer, we suggest you ask signature gatherers if they are being paid, find out their names and take their pictures (alone). 'We would like to identify as many as possible.'"

And Eyman offers this genuinely disturbing account of actual physical intimidation, from a woman named Danielle. She has an obvious interest in signature-gathering, but it is a sworn affivadit from a 2004 lawsuit in King County Superior Court:

On Saturday, May 8th, while I was in front of Wal-Mart, I was approached by three people. One was a Caucasian male carried a sign approximately 5 feet by 5 feet which said something to the effect "Don't Sign Initiative 864 Please." I do not know his name.

=> Read more!

A reader sounds off on one of our editorial topics for Tuesday. Feel free to chime in.

I sure think this is news, and it doesn't have anything to do with the stadium funding issue. The reader must have missed our Saturday editorial urging the Legislature to give the Husky stadium pitch a fair hearing. I think we were more supportive than any other newspaper around here. We're not anti-sports at all. We're just appalled that the Neusheisel regime was even worse than we thought.

Why the sudden interest in reporting on Jeremiah Pharms? What’s next, a late breaking update on Hitler possibly killing Jews? Where is the NEWS in the sudden outburst of anti-Husky football articles? Seems awfully coincidental with the recent activity to obtain state funding for stadium remodeling that we need to come out with a plethora of anti-Husky articles both in the Seattle Times and in your fishwrapper.

The bottom line is that Tyrone Willingham runs a tight program promoting everything that’s right about college football in the young men on his team. What you are reporting on is not news at all, but an attempt to influence the public against the stadium funding.

Why are you newspaper editorial types so anti-sports? Probably got shoved into too many lockers by football players back in your high school days……..

For Tuesday, Jan. 29

1. The state dropped the ball by “temporarily” revoking local government authority to restrict where sex offenders can live. If lawmakers aren’t going to come up with a statewide policy, they should restore the local power, as the Pierce County Council is requesting.

2. A lot of people, including former Husky coach Rick Neuheisel, apparently covered up serious criminal acts star UW linebacker Jeremiah Pharms. Those glory years hid the ugly side of big-time college football in Seattle.

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 editorial today defended the secure driver's licenses required by the REAL ID Act of 2005 – a position that won't win us any prizes from the ACLU or Libertarian Party.

In fairness, there are many rational people who are scared of the new license. But one old trick of sneaky journalists who want to stack the deck in favor of one side of a debate is to go to outright wackos to provide "the other side" (which is thus automatically discredited).

I don't practice this kind of journalism, by the way, and neither do my colleagues. But for the sake of entertainment, I offer a taste of the debate between those who don't think the "real ID" is the Mark of the Beast and those who fear it's at least a forerunner of the Mark.

Only in America.

Steph Farber, your man to see in Tacoma for cubic zirconium, offers this one:

Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee says the U.S. Constitution needs to be amended to conform with the Bible. This means, presumably, that if Huckabee were to win the GOP nomination, he would name Jesus as his running mate.

Consider the implications: If Huckabee were to expire in office, the nation would have its first Jewish president.

A news brief Sunday noted that 23 trees have been marked for removal along Five Mile Drive in Point Defiance Park.

Tree removal at the park has been a sticky wicket in the past, so I thought I'd check out the candidates for culling on my weekly Sunday morning walk at Point Defiance. And I have to say, I completely agree with the park forester's choices.

All the trees I saw that are marked for removal looked either dead or at death's door. Most of them are on the section of Five Mile Drive between the entrance and the Gig Harbor overlook. Each is marked with a white, horizontal stripe; some also are pointed out by white arrows on the pavement.

Anyone who remembers the disruption caused by the last big windstorm, which shut down Five Mile Drive to bikes and cars for weeks and made many of the trails impassable, should welcome the culling.

When former Tacoma City Manager Erling Mork died last year, friends and admirers launched a scholarship fund in his name at Pacific Lutheran University. Contributions totalled nearly $70,000.

PLU has announced the first recipient of the Erling O. Mork Scholarship for Excellence in Leadership and Diversity. He is senior Joshua Cushman, an English major.

For the past two years, Cushman has mentored high school students at the Peace Community Center in Tacoma. Of the students he worked with, Cushman says, "They are my family, and they are the future."

The ed board took a coach tour of the Port of Tacoma this week, listening to Port Director Tim Farrell do a stand-up guide routine. Those cranes are BIG.

Now we know where NYK will move in, where some nifty yachts are being built, and where the port would like to see a couple more overpasses (on Lincoln Avenue and Taylor Way). Farrell was particularly proud of a new wetland the Port is creating next to the existing Gog-le-hi-te wetland near the Puyallup River.

But the big news of the day was Farrell confirming that he'll become a first-time father sometime around May 1. Mom is Jessyn Farrell, director of the Transportation Choices environmental group based in Seattle.

I met Jessyn F. last year not long after she moved to Tacoma. As you might expect, she doesn't drive to work. In fact, Tim F. sold his North End home so the couple could live closer to convenient bus routes.

It's not Carville-Matalin, but the Farrells are a bit of political odd couple. Last year, Transportation Choices fought inclusion of the Cross Base Highway in the roads portion of Proposition 1 (which failed anyway). The highway was a top priority of RAMP, a Pierce County transportation coalition; Tim Farrell is one of its three co-chairmen.

These e-mail exchanges can be fun. Read Dave Seago's item just below before reading this. I kind of like being called a troll.

Reader:

Again, sorry. I screwed up here I think, drawing a straight line between your name here, the announcement of the upcoming editorial and the note about the blog item on the Yucca Mountain depository being expanded into an editorial (on which I did agree with you BTW) and getting far off the mark. Since David Seago blogged this, my karmic punishment might be flaming by one or more of your more conservative regulars.

Me:

I didn’t blog that item (on Clinton), Roger. I don’t think any of us blogged on that issue.
So you’re a non-resident. We’ll have to put you on our blacklist.
The Troll

Reader:

Blacklisted? I hang my head in shame.
Wait til I move back there..

An online reader (I presume, since his email address suggests he hails from California) didn't care for today's editorial on Bill Clinton's aggressive attacks on Barack Obama.

Perhaps you could follow up this editorial with an opinion on what the proper role of an ex-president should be. Seemingly it is to be treated as a small child that is to be seen and not heard. Ex-presidents are allowed a sort of Lady Bountiful/Mother Theresa role. They can make speeches and promote charitable deeds but not actually do anything that might involve calling upon their on-the-job experience in the White House. Should'nt they be allowed to come out of retirement and re-enter the political arena? Cannot Bill Clinton defend his wife or Bush the Elder defend his son?

O'Callahan's concern for Bill Clinton's image seems disingenuous, much like the person who expresses concern for his friends alcoholism-repeatedly and to everyone he meets to make sure the everyone knows what a compassionate person he is and what a pitiful wretch is his friend.
To borrow a phrase from Dailykos, O'Callahan looks like a concern troll to me.

My response:

I wrote the editorial, Roger, so I’m the one picking the shards out of my skin. You should check the wires and the news sites. There is plenty of discussion out in Democrat-friendly circles about whether Bill is doing Hillary more harm than good. It is true that this is the first time we’ve had an ex-president campaigning for a presidential candidate spouse, but the scholars say you’d have to go back a long way to find a former president who has engaged so directly in partisan campaigning after leaving office.

I certainly think it’s appropriate for Bill Clinton to defend and promote his wife. But he could do it with more grace. That’s just our opinion, of course, and you’re certainly entitled to yours. Editorials, by the way, represent the position of the editorial board, not the opinion of the individual writer.

Feel free to write a letter to the editor if you like. Thanks for engaging.

Dave Seago
Editorial page editor
The News Tribune

Editorial hotsheet

For weekend, Sat, Sun and Monday.
Jan. 26-27-28

Saturday:
The University of Washington's proposal to use existing King County stadium taxes to fund half of a $300 remodel of Husky Stadium deserves a serious hearing in the Legislature, not an apathetic brushoff.

Sunday:

The Pierce County Council will take up the proposed revisions of ethics rules again on Tuesday. Roger Bush has a striker amendment that would make them toothless. Pass a real ethics code.

The main question about the national economic stimulus package is how soon it can be put in place. The faster the better.

Monday:

The Pierce County Council’s bid to regain authority to restrict where sex offenders can live may be doomed in Olympia. State Sen. Debbie Regala, D-Tacoma, says it’s not that simple. We're getting new information on this issue and may table it for further discussion.

The New York Times editorial page today endorsed Hillary Clinton and John McCain in the state’s presidential primaries.

But the juiciest part of the McCain endorsement is what the Times had to say about former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The Times didn't pull any punches:

The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power. Racial polarization was as much a legacy of his tenure as the rebirth of Times Square.

Mr. Giuliani’s arrogance and bad judgment are breathtaking. When he claims fiscal prudence, we remember how he ran through surpluses without a thought to the inevitable downturn and bequeathed huge deficits to his successor. He fired Police Commissioner William Bratton, the architect of the drop in crime, because he couldn’t share the limelight. He later gave the job to Bernard Kerik, who has now been indicted on fraud and corruption charges.

The Rudolph Giuliani of 2008 first shamelessly turned the horror of 9/11 into a lucrative business, with a secret client list, then exploited his city’s and the country’s nightmare to promote his presidential campaign.

Pierce County is a far more logical owner of the Narrows Airport than the City of Tacoma.

Bill Clinton is lowering himself by becoming the chief mudslinger for his wife's presidential campaign.

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.

An unhappy reader in Fircrest emailed to complain that Sunday's lineup of syndicated columns from David Broder, David Brooks and Kathleen Parker, along with an oped piece by former Republican U.S. Sen. Jack Kemp, tilted too far to the right. My response:

Well, you shouldn’t judge from any given day, because we try for a reasonable balance throughout each week. The last time I did a count for an entire month, it came out pretty well balanced between lefties and righties.

As for Sunday, Broder is considered a centrist. Hard-core conservatives consider Brooks a wimp (which is why The New York Times added William Kristol to its columnist lineup recently). Parker is Parker. And the article Jack Kemp wrote was not a typical conservative argument: He urges giving homeowners facing foreclosure the same bankruptcy protection that some businesses and farmers get. He was looking out for the little guy.

So stick with us, (name deleted). Rest assured, there are days when I get calls complaining about too many liberals on the pages. It all works out. Thanks for reading and caring.

Reader's response:

Broder is not a centrist, Brooks is not a wimp and I was not grumpy...maybe you are too far right to notice the facts.

So how about putting 3 (on a Sunday) that seems to lean a little to the left, doubt you would do that.

Reichert Honors Mentors, Big Brothers, Big Sisters Organization
 
Washington, D.C. – Congressman Dave Reichert (WA-08) voiced his support today for House Resolution 908, recognizing January as National Mentoring Month, which passed the House unanimously. Reichert applauded the resolution, which acknowledges the diligent efforts of individuals and groups who promote mentoring; recognizes the contributions of the millions of caring adults and students who are already volunteering as mentors; and encourages more adults and students to volunteer as mentors.

I'm all for mentoring, and Big Brothers, Big Sisters does great work. But couldn't the congressional communications machine be a little more discriminating?

A couple of Hillary Clinton signs have appeared on the North End arterial that I watch for possible (and possibly meaningless) campaign trends.

I noted earlier that a forest of signs appeared before November's election on the broad median of North 21st Street between Stevens and Proctor streets in Tacoma. After the election, only Calvin Goings for county executive signs were left.

Then those mysteriously disappeared, and a few Obama signs cropped up. Now there are two Clinton signs to Obama's four, if I counted right. What does that portend? You tell me.

The presidential caucuses are Feb. 9. The state's presidential primary is Feb. 19. Good info, including a FAQ, on the caucuses is available on the Pierce County auditor's website at this page.

Our friends over on the Politcal Buzz blog have already noted state Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen's proposal to put Sound Transit in charge of regional road projects as well as regional transit.

More details and reaction emerge in this Seattle P-I news story today. Haugen is chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee. Her bill, SB 6772, would reduce Sound Transit's board from 18 members to 12, with seven elected by voters.

Another Haugen bill, SB 6771, would eliminate the Regional Transportation Investment District that Pierce County Councilman Shawn Bunney chaired last year. The RTID, which devised the roads portion of November's unsuccessful roads-and-transit measure, is moribund anyway.

But Haugen wants to allow some regions to form some transportation entities, which might leave room for Pierce County to form some kind of transportation district either by itself or with Thurston or Kitsap counties – an approach that has gained some support among county leaders.

Reality check: House Transportation Chairwomanb Judy Clibborn, D-Mercer Island, doubts Haugen's bills will get through the Legislature in this year's short session.

Our editorial stance on regional transportation governance is not yet well-defined; we have a kind of wait-and-see attitude. But we are concerned that any regional governance proposal not give King County interests the ability to run roughshod over Pierce County interests. Parochial? Guilty as charged!

1. The Federal Reserve’s breathtakingly dramatic interest-rate cut Tuesday, likely to be followed by another rate cut next week, was meant to shore up the financial markets. But it also all but confirms fears that the nation is headed into a deep recession and uncharted economic waters.

2. We reverse-publish a Patrick O. blog item as an editorial criticizing Democratic presidential candidates for pandering to anti-Yucca Mountain sentiment in Nevada. Nuclear power is part of the solution to climate change, and the nation needs a place to safely store nuclear waste.

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.

Every time a presidential candidate stumps through Nevada, it seems, this state gets further from a solution for Hanford's radioactive waste.
And the United States gets further from the nuclear power option, which may well prove a critical alternative to carbon-spewing fossil fuels.
As the three leading Democratic contenders campaigned in Nevada last week, they paid the usual homage to those who bitterly oppose the effort to create a nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain.
Hillary Clinton vowed to "end for good" attempt to create the repository.
Likewise Barack Obama: "I will end Yucca Mountain."
John Edwards not only swore to stop the Yucca mountain, he promised to prevent the construction of any new nuclear power plants anywhere in the United States.
Neither Obama nor Clinton are, like Edwards, ruling out any expansion of nuclear power. But killing the Yucca Mountain project is likely to strangle nuclear power indirectly, by eliminating any place to bury the spent fuel rods from existing or potential reactors.
The stakes for Washingtonians are particularly high. Hanford's plutonium-production days left it with an immense quantity of intensely radioactive byproducts. That hot stuff is designated for Yucca Mountain. If the repository project is stopped, the Hanford waste stays in Washington – not awfully far from the banks of the Columbia River.

=> Read more!

This looks like an off-year for school levy requests.

Federal Way, Yelm and Carbonado are taking four-year "replacement levies" to the voters on Feb. 19. Clover Park plans to do the same on March 11.

The only other local measure on Feb. 19 that I'm aware of is Valley Regional Fire Authority's construction bond issue. Most of the district is in the Auburn area, but part of it extends south into Pierce County.

Federal Way School District Superintendent Tom Murphy visited Monday to outline his district's proposal, which will be the first to face the new simple-majority requirement state voters approved in November. Previously, school levies required 60 percent approval to pass.

Federal Way's 2003 levy measure passed with a 63 percent yes vote. But Murphy said he's a little nervous about the measure being on the same ballot with a state presidential primary that will attract more voters than usual.

Tidbit: The district's web site offers information in Russian, Spanish and Korean as well as English.

Find Pierce County voter pamphlet info on the Yelm, Carbonado and Valley Regional Fire Authority measures here.

Why make enemies in an election year?

It might be different if Gov. Chris Gregoire felt she was home free in November, but all signs point to a competitive rematch with Republican Dino Rossi. Rossi lost to Gregoire in 2004 by the narrowest margin in state history.

Which is why Democratic leaders in Olympia have quietly shelved so-called “labor neutrality” legislation this year. Business leaders strongly oppose several proposals that would forbid employers to require workers to hear company arguments against union organizing.

One bill backed by the Washington State Labor Council takes aim at Boeing, saying that any company benefiting from aerospace-indusry tax incentives must agree to stay neutral on union organizing efforts. Defeating such measures was one of this year’s top priorities for the Association of Washington Business and the Washington Roundtable, which represents the state’s largest employers.

All sides are expecting the fight to be renewed next year, however.

If you have a serious addiction to Internet poker, or perhaps just an inordinate fondness for it, Lee Rousso is your candidate for governor of Washington.

Rousso, a Renton attorney who says he’s state director for the national Poker Players Alliance, is running as a Democrat in hopes of undoing the state’s ban on Internet poker. Gov. Chris Gregoine signed a bill in 2006 making it a Class C felony.

Under this law, Rousso says,

the state can kick down your door in the middle of the night and haul you off to prison for five years for committing the “crime” of playing poker on the internet. And while you are rotting away in prison, the state can steal your house and throw your family out on the street. Really, who knew the Taliban had so much influence, and so far from home?

Rousso filed a lawsuit last year challenging the Internet poker ban as unconstitutional. See an account of his legal fight here. He’s also representing three men who were extradited from Washington to face Internet gambling charges in Louisiana. He blames Gregoire for signing the extradtion papers.

While this space doesn't allow for a recitation of the Betcha.com chronology, the upshot is that the extraditions combine the police misconduct of the Rodney King affair with the political misconduct of Watergate. Christine Gregoire, of course, stars in the darkly calculating role of Richard Nixon.

Rousso urges Republicans favoring Dino Rossi to vote for Rousso in the August primary. With Gregoire out of the way, Rossi would be home free, Rousso claims.

State officials should revoke a $1.1 million grant to Citizens for Responsible Justice to house released inmates in Tacoma’s Hilltop district. Kathleen Merryman’s Saturday column detailed a lot of things wrong with the group’s bid -- including a misleading grant application.

Shame on Tacoma School District administrators for not following up on safety improvements that were supposed to be made after one student shot and killed another at Foss High School last year.

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

I can tell you one way that David Dicks is not a chip off the old block – in this case, his dad, Norm Dicks, the Sixth District's Democratic congressman for life:

You can get a word in when you meet with David Dicks.

Dicks the younger visited the ed board today in his role as executive director of the Puget Sound Partnership. Unlike his old man, he actually stopped for a breath now and then and gave us a chance to ask questions.

Dicks is making the rounds to introduce himself and the work of the partnership, the organization created by the governor and the Legislature to devise an action plan for restoring Puget Sound. The plan is due Sept. 1.

Dicks, previously an environmental lawyer in Seattle, said that besides developing an action plan – "emphasis on action," he said – the partnership needs to find a way to convince the public that Puget Sound needs help – without exaggerating the threat.

According to surveys, he said, "97 percent of the public says saving the Sound is critical, but 73 percent don't know it's in trouble."

Next month the partnership will release its first major work product, a scientific risk assessment that will help partnership leaders decide priorities for action. Former EPA director Bill Ruckelshaus chairs the partnership's Leadership Council. Dicks himself is a member of the governor's cabinet.

Thanks to Bill Casper, unsuccessful Tacoma Port Commission candidate in November, for tipping me to this news report.

Harbor commissioners for the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach voted Monday to charge a fee on loaded cargo containers aimed at raising more than $1.4 billion to help pay for bridge, rail and highway construction.

The $15 per container fee goes into effect Jan. 1, 2009, jumps to $18 in 2010, then decreases to an unspecified amount two years later. It will remain in effect until the projects are fully funded, which officials expect will be seven years, but could be longer.

Funds raised by the fees are expected to cover about half the cost of building the slate of infrastructure projects, with the remaining money coming from federal and state sources.

Among the projects to be funded: construction of a six-lane bridge, a four-lane elevated expressway and several major railway track improvements.

Did you just go "hmm," like I did? The ports of Tacoma and Seattle had conniptions last year when a key legislator proposed a tax on containers to help pay for highway projects that would improve "freight mobility."

The proposal didn't go anywhere. Port officials argued the tax would disadvantage them in competing with the California ports.

Like I said .... hmm.

Pennsylvania may become the latest state to adopt a WASL-style test for high school graduation.

Pennsylvania’s state Board of Education voted unanimously last week to require students pass a series of state exams to graduate, beginning in 2014. Twenty-two states already have similar requirements. Three more will have them by 2012.

This spring is the first time Washington high school students must pass the reading and writing portions of the WASL or alternative requirements. But not if some of Washington's legislators can help it.

Check out our editorial today criticizing legislators who claim delaying WASL requirements would be a favor to low-achieving minority students. Can you believe it?

And one of them is Pierce County's Sen. Marilyn Rasmussen, D-Eatonville, a co-sponsor of SB 6540. Rasmussen's anti-WASL stance is further proof she has outlived her usefulness in the Legislature.

Saturday:
Richard Knerr, the man who brought Hula Hoops, Frisbees and Silly String to the masses, died this week. A measure of his impact on our culture are the psychic scars millions of Americans still bear because they never could do the Hula Hoop. It’s like dancing: Either you can, or you can’t.

Sunday:
We take a stiff shot at legislators making another run at undermining the WASL by delaying graduation requirement for reading and writing.

Fair Share legislation and recent signs of progress in reducing the dumping of felons in Pierce County is an example of what the county’s legislative delegation can accomplish when it gets its act together.

Monday:
We run an excerpt of Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech at the big civil rights march on Detroit.

Tuesday:
With a site in hand and a peace agreement with local community and technical colleges, the proposed Bethel skills center is ready for a push in Olympia.

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.

Crossing the Highway 520 bridge last night was the perfect reminder of the futility of trying to name the new Tacoma Narrows bridge. The Highway 520 bridge, also called the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge, is named for someone important. Know who it is? Post the answer in the comments.

My time in the Tri-Cities taught me that officialdom can slap whatever name they want on a bridge, but drivers usually continue calling it exactly what they always have. (The Tri-Cities have three bridges over the Columbia River — and all three are officially named something other than what locals call them.)

The Murray Morgan bridge would be a notable exception to this rule, but it's a rare case. Here are some more bridges that many Washingtonians would probably be hard-pressed to name accurately. Hit "read more" to see the answers.

1. The Interstate 90 bridges over Lake Washington

2. The Hood Canal bridge

3. Aurora Bridge in Seattle

=> Read more!

Jim Dugan, Tacoma's new school board president, is – bless his heart – as candid a soul as you'll ever meet in public office.

By now most everyone in Tacoma seems to regard the one-year tenure of the last permanent superintendent, Charlie Milligan, as a debacle. A more circumspect school board member would acknowledge that and bite his lip if he disagreed. But Dugan remains outspoken about Milligan's virtues.

Dugan visited today, and we asked why he supported Milligan right to the bitter end, when the board negotiated a settlement with him and sent him packing.

"I stayed the course," Dugan said. He said the search for Milligan in 2006 was driven by what Tacomans said they wanted in a new superintendent. A change agent. Someone who could shake things up. Someone who could turn math scores around.

"We gave them exactly what they asked for," Dugan said.

"Charlie was not interested in how you feel ... We sent him out to win a war, and he went out."

Math performance indeed got turned around in short order, Dugan noted. "He made more changes in one year in math than anyone had in the last 10 years."

Charlie Milligan, wherever you are: You still have one staunch and somewhat lonely defender in the Tacoma School District.

It makes all the sense in the world to require owners of seized animals to post a bond if they want their animals back. The case of Bernadette Vohs, described in today's Page One story, shows how taxpayers are getting stuck with the tab for sheltering mistreated or illegally kept animals.

The latest smear attacks on John McCain show that South Carolina seems to have a political culture with no rules – and it's a national disgrace.

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

I was pretty sure a Pierce County legislator would jump on Art Jarvis’ call for stronger laws dealing with teachers who commit sexual offenses or engange in inappropriate conduct with students. Turns out state Rep. Joyce McDonald, R-Puyallup, was the first to leap – and to trumpet the move with a press release.

Should a school employee convicted of rape be allowed to keep his or her job and educator's certificate? Rep. Joyce McDonald says no! She's proposing to change the law which forced the Tacoma School District to retain a convicted rapist who was paid $8,245 a month to be on administrative leave.

To be fair, McDonald’s bill might have already been in the works before our Monday news story reported the proposals by Jarvis, interim superintendent for the Tacoma School District. We backed the general thrust of his proposals in an editorial Tuesday.

McDonald cited the case of Harold Wright Jr., a Baker Middle School principal who was convicted of third-degree rape in the sexual assault of a woman, who was 19 at the time. He was placed on administrative leave when he was charged but refused to step down when he was convicted July 12. Wright finally resigned Aug. 1, but not before collecting more than $48,000 plus his benefits during administrative leave.

He was able to do that because the district still had to go through extensive “due process” before it could fire him, even though he had already been convicted. McDonald’s legislation, House Bill 2461 would expand the list of crimes that would require immediate termination of guilty or convicted school employees who have contact with children, and permanent revocation of their educator certificates.

The bill is co-sponsored by four other House Republicans, Dawn Morrell of Puyallup, Dan Roach of Bonney Lake, Tom Campbell of Roy and Glenn Anderson of Fall City.

Given the way Olympia works, I’d be surprised if the majority D’s let R’s take credit on this issue. Indeed, a GOP House staffer admits ...

Rep. Don Barlow, D-Spokane, has introduced House Bill 2772: "Regarding school employees' dismissal or certificate revocation." Our policy analyst has looked over the Barlow bill to compare to Rep. McDonald's legislation, House Bill 2461. He tells me that the Barlow bill does not add adult sex offenses, whereas the McDonald bill does. Instead, Barlow's bill adds felony indecent exposure . . .

So in the case of Mr. Wright, it would have no effect, since Mr. Wright was convicted of the rape of a 19-year-old woman. He also tells me Rep. Barlow's bill does not include the reporting requirements that the McDonald bill adds.

So what we're finding is that Rep. McDonald's bill is much stronger and covers more ground than the Barlow proposal.

We don’t care who gets the credit. We just want to see the loophole fixed.

Thanks to Lakewood City Councilman Walter Neary's blog for a heads up on release of the city's 2007 Year End Report. It tells what progress Lakewood made last year and lists "major projects and challenges" in 2008.

The report includes the usual photos of city leaders lined up in a ground-breaking ceremony, citizens participating in community events, etc. My favorite photo, though, is on page 20 – showing the legal department decked out in pirate gear for Halloween. I'm guessing they didn't have to make any court appearances that day. If they did, did they make PhotoCop offenders walk the plank?

Click here to download a pdf version of the report.

Tacoma School Board member Kurt Miller took exception to part of our editorial Sunday about his proposal to create a citizen advisory team to help with selecting a new superintendent.

The editorial said Miller’s proposal was prompted, “at least in part, by pressure from two leading minority advocacy groups, the Black Collective and the Tacoma Ministerial Alliance, who want a greater voice in the superintendent selection.”

Miller told me that’s not true. He said he and Jim Dugan talked about using the advisory group to create greater community involvement in the selection process, but they want the group constituted so that no interest group can dominate the process.

All decisions to be made in the process, from the first cut of the field of applicants to the final hiring decision, would be made by the board, Miller said. (Click on Read More to see the full text of Miller’s proposal.)

At each stage of the process, however, the advisory team would have a chance to meet with the remaining candidates and share their impressions with the board.

If something like this had been done in 2006 when the school board hired Charlie Milligan as superintendent, Miller said, “maybe someone would have seen something that the rest of us missed.”

Milligan lasted less than a full year in Tacoma after his authoritarian management style and disdain for community relations alienated many. He was forced out last spring but left with a $400,000-plus severance package.

Whether Miller’s proposal has a chance isn’t clear. Debbie Winskill, Connie Rickman and Kim Golden still oppose the idea. (News story) Winskill and Miller were assigned to research how other districts have involved citizens in their selection process, but they were given no deadline.

=> Read more!

Two Realtors® (you always have to use that ® behind "Realtor"; it's a ™ and might even be ©ed) stopped in today to talk about what they'd like the Legislature to do this winter.

Stereotype would suggest that the likes of Mike Flynn and Bill Riley, who respectively work in University Place and Puyallup, would be up to no good, trying to blow up urban growth boundaries to permit an orgy of home-building (and real estate sales) in protected areas.

Not so. Flynn and Riley are leaders of the Washington Realtor® Association, and they favor creative ways to build more dwellings within existing urban areas – something that has to happen if home prices are going to stay within reach of ordinary families. They cited a statewide report that housing prices had gone up 61 percent from 2000 to 2005 while incomes had only risen 14 percent.

But the real estate market in Washington and the Puget Sound region is still doing quite well compared to such severely distressed areas as Detroit and Orlando, Fla.

Riley said Washington's rate of foreclosures stands at .23 percent – less than a quarter of a hundredth of all mortgages. Foreclosures are running around 10 percent or more in the black subprime pits that generate the bad news.

Why?

In a word, jobs. People are still moving here and finding work, which keeps the market stable, yet housing prices remain low compared to other hot areas. Riley said that in Seattle, the median-priced house costs 5.5 times the median household income. In San Francisco, the ratio is 10; in San Diego, 9.7.

So things could be a Heck of a Lot Worse®.

We gently oppose the idea of naming the new Narrows Bridge for the late Bob Oke, as much as we admired the former legislator. Our hotline calls are running strongly against it. The bridge is too much of a local icon to bear one man’s name, and besides, other people, including the late Ruth Fisher, played key roles in getting it built. If the new bridge really must be named at all, the public should have a voice in deciding it.

Second edit for Thursday praises new crackdown on bar violence in Lakewood. The recent resurgence in bar violence after a lull in enforcement showed that the city can’t afford to ease up on the issue.

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.

One of our operatives in Old Town alerted us to a temporary win for opponents of a plan to moor two more large ships at Sperry Ocean Dock off Schuster Parkway in Tacoma.

On Monday, city public works officials sent dock owner Gary Coy a formal notice of violations of the city's nuisance code.

The notice cited "Deteriorated over water structure show in enclosed photographs requires removal and or repair" and "Remove in water and upland debris from property."

The notice gives Coy, who lives in Seahurst in Kitsap County, 18 calendar days to come up with a plan to fix the violations or face civil penalties and possible abatement action. The notice concludes:

The maintenance of properties is an important issue to the community. We must work together to protect our properties and the public health, safety and welfare of our neighborhoods. Your voluntary assistance in this matter will be greatly appreciated.

It's not clear how this will affect Coy's bid for a city permit to rebuild and expand the dock. He told the editorial board last fall that he needs the revenue from the two extra ships - two are moored there now - to pay for environmental cleanup of the dock site. He claimed the state and federal environmental agencies support his plan because it would get the cleanup done.

The New York Times recently added conservative William Kristol to its stable of opinion-page columnists.

But the decision has stirred controversy. Here the newspaper's public editor writes about the furor over putting the prominent pundit on its (mostly) liberal op-ed pages and calls the hiring "a mistake."

And to read an Editor & Publisher article about the controversy, click here.

In his New York Times piece on Kristol, public editor Clark Hoyt began thusly:

In 1972, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, was looking for a conservative columnist for his left-leaning Op-Ed page.

At a charity dinner, he wound up sitting next to William Safire, the Nixon White House speechwriter who coined Spiro Agnew’s famous denunciation of the press as “nattering nabobs of negativism.” They soon had a deal.
But, as described in “The Trust,” the authoritative history of the family that has controlled The Times for more than a century, Sulzberger neglected to involve John Oakes, his cousin and the editor of the editorial page, in the decision. Oakes was appalled when he heard about the negotiations, and not realizing it was too late, offered alternatives. How about Irving Kristol, he suggested.
More than 35 years later, Sulzberger’s son, Arthur Jr. — this time in full partnership with his editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal — has hired another conservative columnist for their left-leaning Op-Ed page: Irving Kristol’s son, William.
The choice of Safire, who retired in 2005, set off a storm of protest. “The Times could have saved themselves about 50 grand a year if they just sent an office boy over to the White House to pick up the press releases,” fumed Nicholas von Hoffman of The Washington Post. Kristol’s appointment has not fared any better. “Pretty much the worst idea ever,” grumped Gawker, the New York media gossip Web site.
Of the nearly 700 messages I have received since Kristol’s selection was announced — more than half of them before he ever wrote a word for The Times — exactly one praised the choice.

I wondered what was up Monday when I noticed that a crop of Calvin Goings for County Executive signs have disappeared from the median on North 21st Street between Stevens and Proctor streets. Only a few Obama signs stand there now.

This stretch of busy arterial of the most favored sign-posting spots in Tacoma, second only, perhaps, to Schuster Parkway. The median was covered in campaign signs last fall before the November election.

Would Obama supporters really stoop so low as to stealthily remove Goings' signs? After all, the Pierce County Council member is a Democrat, too. Or had Goings agreed to remove his signs temporarily to clear the field for Obama placards?

If there is any conspiracy here, Goings isn't admitting it. His response:

We have a very active and dedicated group of self-motivated volunteers in Pierce County. I am sure that over the last few months, people have put up signs and people have moved signs. For these streets in particular, I am not sure. I am humbled though by the hundreds of people across Pierce County who have asked for signs for their yards. There is a rising sense that we need change in Pierce County and our message seems to be resonating.

Thanks, Calvin

You don't think Goings was expecting to be quoted, do you? If anybody knows what's going on, nefarious or otherwise, chip in here.

Bethel School District Superintendent Tom Siegel says he's all for legislation that would make it easier to keep problem teachers – especially those who get "too friendly" with students" – from moving from district to district.

Siegel would particularly like to see more legal protection for administrators who avoid giving unfavorable job references for fear of being sued, he told me today just after an ed board meeting on a different subject. Businesses in the private sector face the same problem, he noted.

And the public-education culture of being "nice," Siegel said, is also a problem. Siegel is a former Navy commander accustomed to being direct.

As reporter Kris Sherman reported today, Tacoma Interim Superintendent Art Jarvis is calling for legislation to fix problems that came to light after Tacoma elementary school teacher Jennifer Rice was arrested for kidnapping and sexual assault of a 10-year-old pupil.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that Jarvis is still upset that in 1999 a Bethel principal wrote a favorable letter of reference for Rice, then only three days later gave her an "unsatisfactory" evaluation.

Jarvis' comment that the principal is no longer with Bethel could be misconstrued. Siegel said the principal retired about two years after the Rice evaluation. Siegel didn't become superintendent until 2001.

As Sherman reported, Jarvis' attempt to file a professional misconduct complaint was rejected by state officials on the ground that he didn't have "standing" to file because he works in a different district.

The Legislature can fix this. Expect an editorial this week.

Art Jarvis, the Tacoma School District's interim superintendent, came to see the editorial board Friday.

"Teachers who prey" were on his mind. Jarvis is still upset about breakdowns in the system revealed by the Jennifer Rice episode last year. Rice, a former McKinley Elementary School teacher, is in jail awaiting trial for kidnapping and sexually assaulting one of her students.

I expect we will be editorializing on legislation Jarvis advocates to address issues raised by the Rice case. For instance, Jarvis wants to make mandatory the reporting of "boundary violations" - clearly inappropriate contact or behavior with a student, for example - in the same way teachers, physicians and others are legally required to report what they believe may be evidence of child abuse.

He has other proposals as well. But the little bombshell he dropped was that the Bethel district principal who wrote a favorable reference for Rice prior to her hiring in Tacoma, Jarvis says, wrote an unsatisfactory evaluation for her only three days later.

I asked Jarvis if he had called up the Bethel superintendent to complain. Jarvis said only that he believes the principal has left the district.

In doing background on today’s editorial about the proposed merger of two local fire departments, I checked out Pierce County Fire District 8's rather rudimentary Web site. The merger involves that fire district, which provides service to Edgewood, and the 92-year-old Milton Fire Department.

Now, I get it that fire is a big thing with fire departments. But it struck me as a little odd that the district’s title is ablaze on its Web site.

Check it out by clicking here.

The lesson here could be: Just because you can do something doesn’t always mean you should. Maybe some savvy Web artist could add a little firefighter dousing the blaze.

UPDATE: When I try to log on to the site today, it's suddenly password-protected. I wonder what that's all about.

Saturday:
Despite hard feelings between some residents of Milton and Edgewood, merging the Milton fire department and Fire District 8, which serves Edgewood, is a good idea. It reflects a trend in Pierce County to merge fire districts to promote more efficiency and better service.

Sunday:
The proposal to create a special advisory committee to help in the Tacoma School District’s selection process is problematic. The responsibility for screening and interviewing candidates belongs with the elected board members.

Gov. Chris Gregoire’s call for tolling SR 520 – and nearby highways – in advance to help pay for a new 520 bridge is gutsy and might be unpopular — but it’s the only way the new bridge is going to get built.

Monday:

Keeping a tight rein on spending and looking for a way forward on transportation are the two main things the Legislature should accomplish this year’s short session.

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 item started out as a short blog item, then turned into a column that will run in the print version of the TNT Sunday. Here's a sneak preview

Is the Port of Tacoma raising its property tax levy in 2008, as some critics suggest?
Let’s look at the numbers. Brace yourself for a numbers-laden discussion here, but hey, it’s only your money.
The truth is that the port is NOT raising its tax rate this year, but it will collect more revenue from the levy because of rising property values. Both the port and its critics sometimes talk misleadingly about this.
Friends of the Port’s Ronnie Bush recently sent out an email that implied that the port planned to raise its tax rate in 2008. When I questioned her, Bush said she was certain she had seen this indicated in port budget documents.
Here’s what the budget actually says:

=> Read more!

Remember when the Museum of Glass used to be called Museum of Glass: International Center for Contemporary Art – until people got tired of the mouthful?

Officials at the former LeMay Car Museum are going the other way. They’re upsizing the name for what they hope will be better marketing potential. Now it’s “The Lemay – America’s Car Museum,” with a trademark circle-R symbol at the end.

Maybe the new moniker has been around a while, but I first noticed it in recent press releases announcing new gifts to the museum.

The Bingham family and and Park Place Motors of Bellevue have pledged $250,000. The pledge was made by company chairman David Bingham. Park Place Motors is the place to go if you’ve just got to have an Aston Martin or a Lotus. Comcast, for its part, will sponsor a four-minute cable TV spot about The LeMay that will air repeatedly over a two-week period in Western Washington.

That's nice, but I asked museum spokeswoman Holly Wood (yep) what people really want to know about the LeMay, which is: When are they gonna start building the dang thing? She replies:

We're awaiting construction bids which we'll bring to board for contract approval later this month. Then we'll approach banks for financing and announce a date for this spring.

The anticipated opening date is 2010. The facility housing the late Harold LeMay’s 3,000-plus car collection will rise – banks willing – on the Tacoma Dome’s west parking lot near Interstate 5.

State Sens. Debbie Regala and Mike Carrell are a teensy bit sensitive about claims that a felon "re-entry" bill they sponsored last year didn't stop the Department of Corrections from dumping released felons in the Tacoma-Lakewood area.

They came in today with the armed with latest DOC numbers. These show a trend headed in the right direction.

In August, the DOC released 12 felons to other counties who had begun their criminal careers in Pierce County – but it released 19 in Pierce County who'd first been convicted elsewhere. In September it was a wash: 5 and 5. In October, Pierce came out ahead, 12-to-4. In November, the county came out behind, 5-to-7. In December, ahead 7-to-5.

If the stats are right, Pierce County gained a total of 40 cons from elsewhere and missed out on 41 cons who started locally.

The two lawmakers say August – the first full month after the new law took effect – was bad in part because of prisoner-release plans that were already in place. Regala cited an inmate from elsewhere who'd already signed up for TCC classes and put a deposit down on housing. He was allowed to follow through.

Looking good so far. Regala and Carrell promise to stay on the case.

Emails from well-heeled Husky boosters demanding the firing of Husky football coach Ty Willingham show the seamy underside of big-time college football. The emails wouldn’t have come to light if it were not for the state’s open records law.

The City of Tacoma’s lawsuit against developers who want to turn the Northshore Golf Course into homes is a good move. All parties need a definitive court ruling on the applicabilty of 1981 agreements that, the city maintains, bar the use of the land for anything but golf and open space.

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.

Oh, I'll just say what I said before about Ruston town politics: They're weird.

Today a letter from Tacoma City Manager Eric Anderson to Ruston Mayor Michael Transue came to light, courtesy of the Ruston Home blog. Read the letter here.

Anderson said Tacoma no longer has any interest in taking over Ruston's fire and EMS services. This apparently quells fears among some Ruston residents that town council members were negotiating such a takeover.

What's weird about this is that town council didn't disclose this development at its meeting on Monday, when the fate of the town fire department was discussed. Anderson's letter indicates that Town Council members Wayne Stebner and Dan Albertson were informed in person on Jan. 3 that Tacoma was no longer pursuing a takeover.

Fire Chief Don Torbet even filed a freedom of informnation request at town hall Monday, trying to obtain a copy of a takeover contract he thought was being negotiated behind his back.

Another strange aspect: Although it was Tacoma Fire chief Ron Stephens who initiated the takeover talks in May, Anderson said in his letter that TFD had decided it needed to focus more on gaining accreditation for the department, a two-year process.

Maybe that was the real reason Tacoma backed off. If you ask me, somebody at Tacoma City Hall or the fire department concluded, wisely, that getting caught up in the tangle of Ruston politics is a bad idea.

From the state auditor:

The State Auditor’s Office has released its performance audit report on the Washington Department of Transportation’s Highway Maintenance and Construction Management. The report and information about related public hearings are available at the following link: www.sao.wa.gov/PerformanceAudit/audit_reports.htm.</blockquote>

Auditor Brian Sonntag claims following audit recommendations could save the department nearly $42 million. Top recommendations:

--Designating construction project cost engineers to ride herd costs and change orders.
--Replace the department's system managing "consumable inventory," i.e., supplies.
--Allow greater use of recycled asphalt in road paving work. Texas reportedly saved $1.5 million a year this way.

Tom Swanson wasn't selected to remain in the running for an appointment to the vacant Puyallup City Council District 2 seat. But he's not crying foul. In fact, in a Viewpoint that will appear Friday on the op-ed page, he praises the council's appointment process so far and the quality of the other candidates for the position.

However, he does have a problem with the way the recent election for the city's at-large position was conducted. He writes:

Having spent three years working as a professional in the political and legislative process, I’ve developed a strong stomach for dirty politics. I understand that at the higher levels, negative campaigning is what it is. If it didn’t work, they wouldn’t do it. When these tactics rear their ugly head in our local, community races, it gives me great cause for concern.

Read the rest of his take on Puyallup politics Friday.

Former U.S. Sen. George McGovern, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1972, calls for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in an oped piece in today's Washington Post.

Here's his article:

Time to Impeach Bush and Cheney
By George McGovern
Special to The Washington Post
As we enter the eighth year of the Bush-Cheney administration, I have belatedly and painfully concluded that the only honorable course for me is to urge the impeachment of the president and the vice president.
After the 1972 presidential election, I stood clear of calls to impeach President Richard M. Nixon for his misconduct during the campaign. I thought that my joining the impeachment effort would be seen as an expression of personal vengeance toward the president who had defeated me.
Today I have made a different choice.

=> Read more!

We editorialized a couple of weeks ago about the state Supreme Court decision that handed government agencies broad powers to keep documents secret and to fend off requests for public records.

This week, former state lawmaker Toby Nixon, who now heads the Washington Coalition for Open Government, and Jonathan Bechtle, director of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation's Citizenship and Governance Center, called on the Legislature to sew up the ever-widening attorney-client privilege loophole. This is something that we'll be watching closely this session.

Apparently bent on justifying every stereotype about wasteful government, the people in Olympia:

a) refused to believe that Pierce County needed $3.75 million a year more to run its mental health services,

b) refused to provide that $3.75 million a year even when Executive John Ladenburg said the county would stop running those services on behalf of the state, and

c) took over the services this month – and began spending millions more providing them than the county had asked for in the first place. (Our editorial.)

Here's an e-mail we got today from Ron Klein, the county's communications director. He provides dirty details on the state – and a never-say-die dig at an old, brutal audit of Pierce County's mental health hospital:

Dave Stewart and Dave Dula [county mental health administrators] informed the executive's management team this morning that all the contracts have been signed with DSHS and a smooth transition has occurred. Mental health services continue to be provided and the county's mental health facility is operating at more than 90 percent capacity.

During the course of the conversation, it was pointed out the state will now be paying about $11 million more a year for the services the county was prepared to provide for less than $4 million more.

=> Read more!

Caucus fever is building. I’ve already fielded a couple of phone calls this week from readers asking where their party caucuses will be held on Feb 9. And I’ve seen emails from friends urging the party faithful to turn out.

Caucus turnout will no doubt be high this year. The Washington caucuses will come right on the heels of Super Tuesday on Feb. 5, when 24 states will hold caucuses or presidential primaries. Most politicos think there’s a good chance the races in both parties will still be unsettled when attention turns to Washington.

Here’s where to get the info:

The Pierce County Republican Party has posted caucus locations here. The state GOP website is here.

The Pierce County Democratic Party website offers this caucus finder, plus a video about how caucuses work. State party Web site here.

The state presidential primary, in which anyone can vote by secret ballot but you have to choose a party ballot, is Feb. 19.

Maybe sheriff’s deputies shouldn’t be expected to be lifeguards, but the the conduct of the deputy who stayed in his car during a nearby near-drowning in Lake Tapps was an embarrassment to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department.
The officer says he didn't see any sign two young swimmers were in trouble, but it's clear this guy has a serious attitude problem.

Disasters often bring out the best in people, and last month’s flooding in Lewis County was no exception. Three cheers for the Pierce County folks, featured on Page One Saturday, who took on the task of cleaning mud and repairing equipment for farmers hard hit by the flooding – and for all the other Good Samaritans who went out of their way to help.

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.

In reading about Andrew Kowalczyk — the guy now sitting in the Pierce County jail for identity theft and child porn, and the subject of today's editorial — I got curious about the May 2007 child rape arrest that first brought him to the attention of local authorities.

Pierce County deputy prosecutor Mary Robnett says Kowalczyk was arrested at a Lakewood motel after Lakewood police spotted his car parked there. Oregon had a warrant out for his arrest and had alerted law enforcement to be on the lookout for his car.

When Lakewood police rousted Kowalczyk from the motel room, they found a scantily clad young girl in the room with him. She said she was 17 and denied having sex with Kowalczyk. Police later learned that she was 15; she also eventually admitted having sex with the 33-year-old.

No charges were filed, Robnett says, because a defendant has a statutory defense if he reasonably believed the victim was old enough to legally consent. Authorities instead turned Kowalczyk over to Oregon; I'm not sure what happened to him after that.

Have to hand it to the the pro-marijuana group whose latest press release landed in my email inbox. You'll see why I didn't hit the delete key as quickly as usual.

There are 3 PotCast's being offered - free - at http://www.Time4Hemp.com and
all can be subscribed to through iTunes should you like. EACH SEGMENT HAS
LOTS OF GREAT MUSIC INCLUDED

I don't think the music is Liberace.

Here's proof that cell phone cameras just keep getting better and better.

Reader Caroline Merryweather, who lives off North 10th Street near the Tacoma Narrows bridges, woke up Saturday morning to see a double rainbow over the double spans (the second arc is just faintly visible at the left). Her camera is being repaired, so she snapped a couple shots with her cell phone camera. This was the best of the several she e-mailed to the letters to the editor (letters@thenewstribune.com).

She wrote: "What a great way to wake up early Saturday, Jan. 5, 2008!! What I saw from my bed yesterday, over the Narrows Bridges, caused me to grab my cell phone and take pics."

I saw a double rainbow over the old Narrows Bridge many years ago – from a sailboat going south toward the span. But I didn't have the presence of mind to get a photo. Thanks, Caroline.

Republicans have found a formidable candidate in their bid to retain the seat now held by state Rep. Joyce McDonald, D-Puyallup.

Puyallup School Board member Bruce Dammeier plans to seek the 25th District’s House Position 1. McDonald is running for the Pierce County Council in November.

Besides serving six years on the school board, Dammeier, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, serves on the boards of Good Samaritan Hospital,
Tacoma Goodwill, the University of Washington Tacoma, the Mel Korum Branch of the Tacoma-Pierce County YMCA and Our Savior Lutheran Church.

He is also a reading tutor and coaches football at Ferruci Junior High. In his spare time, he works as a partner in a local printing company.

Any "Shawn Bunney for county executive" signs you see around Pierce County are strictly the unauthorized work of over-exuberant supporters, Bunney's campaign says.

My previous item about seeing a few Bunney signs in Tacoma – after Calvin Goings' signs have been up for months – drew a response from Bunney campaign director Andrea Innes.

David -- Regarding your blog on Shawn Bunney for County Executive yard signs, we want you to know Shawn’s campaign has not put up signs and is not planning to do so until sometime "down the road" awhile. We agree it's "preposterously early" now.

We'll venture a guess that any signs are being put up by some of the 500+ exuberant supporters who attended Shawn’s recent campaign kick-off event, where the glorious Temple Theatre was decorated floor to ceiling with campaign signs. Many friends asked to take them home.

We presume they’re putting them on their private property, unlike Calvin Goings' calculated strategy of sign pollution of public rights of way.

Andrea Innes, Campaign Director and Kick-off Chair
Shawn Bunney for Pierce County Executive

Republican Bunney and Democrat Goings, both County Council members, are joined in the race by Tacoma City Councilman Mike Lonergan, an independent, and county Auditor Pat McCarthy, a Democrat.

I got in trouble the last time I said out loud that Ruston town politics are, well, unusual. So I'll just say this time that the usual sort of thing – small-town politics – is erupting again.

According to the Ruston Home blog, Fire Chief Don Telton filed an official Freedom of Information request today to obtain details of a proposed contract town council members have allegedly negotiated with the Tacoma Fire Department.

And Dr. Thomas J. Ferrer, a Ruston resident and trauma surgeon who was served on a citizen Fire Committee that studied the capabiities of the town's mostly volunteer fire department, blasted the council in an open letter posted on the Ruston Home blog.

Council members have acknowledged talking to Tacoma fire officials about taking over the town's fire and emergency medical services. But Ferrer says response times for medical emergencies will increase if EMS calls go to Tacoma.
He accused town officials of failing to meet with the fire commitee to discuss the report or soliciting public comment on the issue.

They are actively pursuing a course to move the Ruston Fire Station outside of Ruston (Greater than one, two, or five miles away, or even unknown miles away). They are actively pursuing a course that purposely downgrades the rapid response time that Ruston residents now receive. On average, Tacoma will be at least 3 minutes or more slower to arrive.

Today's editorial could have been more critical of the state's stab at regulating for-profit vocational schools, judging by this e-mail I received from Darrell Cochran, the attorney representing former students of the now-defunct Business Computer Training Institute.

The proposed regs here in the state are quite a source of frustration for me, probably because I've spent so much time trying to convince our local congressional delegates, both federal and state, to do something substantive but have ended up with these toothless modifications. Washington's new proposals would finally draw it even with where Oregon was ten years ago in its regulation of private vocational schools.

It was Oregon regulators who first held BCTI to account. And that was before that state proposed even tougher rules that Cochran says have much more bite than Washington's. He goes on to say what's needed in this state and at the national level:

The key is to focus on enrollment practices, make sure that people are not being enrolled for $10,000 a head tuition debts who cannot benefit from the program, monitor placement statistic claims and pay more attention to advertising claims. The State needs to add positions in its department to monitor these schools and give power to the department to suspend business operations. The federal government has to strengthen its regulations too or schools like BCTI will simply pay big lobbying dollars like they did in 1992-3 to persuade the likes of Senator Murray and Rep. Hastings to intercede on its behalf every time the US Dept of Education holds up their federal dollars.

We plan a turnaround editorial on results of New Hampshire primary. If the polls are right, it will be a big win for Obama and maybe for McCain, too. Likely line: A meteoric rise can flame out just as quickly; if Obama becomes the frontrunner, he’ll have to withstand much more intense scrutiny and offer more detailed stands than the mere promise of change.

Puyallup police did great work in cracking a big child porn case.

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.

As I mentioned in a post Monday, Pierce County leaders may be gravitating toward trying to establish a transportation benefit district, either alone or with another county, to pay for major highway projects.

Paul Ellis of the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber of Commerce suggests this helpful FAQ on TBDs produced for city and county officials.

(Elllis works with the Regional Access Mobility Partnership – known as RAMP – and also writes RAMP’s informative blog.)

TBDs have been around for years, but last year the Legislature decreed that counties and cities can use TBDs to levy an annual vehicle fee up to $20 for road projects aimed at reducing traffic congestion. Such TBDs can also impose impact fees on commercial and industrial businessses.

Both the vehicle and impact fees could be imposed without a public vote. Tolls, property tax levies and other fees could also be imposed but would require a public vote.

Establishing a Regional Transportion Investment District just for Pierce County is another option, but Ellis says that’s not attractive.

Our discussion at RAMP to date has identified TBD as a more flexible alternative to a new RTID and, frankly, one which may not be saddled with baggage due to the failure of the proposal in November. To really be effective, however, we think that the current TBD legislation needs tweaking; we'd like to see the powers of the RTID transferred to TBDs--we'll work on that subject to the Legislative Priorities gaining approval (from RAMP) on Wednesday.

About that “baggage:” The roads part of Proposition 1, defeated in November, was devised by a three-county RTID chaired by Pierce County Councilman Shawn Bunney.

Professional initiative promoter Tim Eyman filed his latest brainstorm Friday. Now he’s already made three changes to it.

Initiative 984 is aimed at opening up carpool lanes outside peak hours, requiring synchronized traffic lights and more roadside assistance.

But the latest version – announced today – would divert 15 percent, instead of 10 percent, of the state’s vehicle sales tax to a “Reduce Traffic Congestion Account.” It would empower the state auditor to police the performance of state and local governments in synchronizing traffic lights and providing roadside assistance.

As usual, there’s a high degree of silliness in Eyman’s attempt to micromanage government down to the traffic-signal level. The new initiative also decrees that all revenues from red-light cameras go to the new reduce-congestion account.

Cities use most or all of the revenues from red-light cameras to pay for their operation. In other words, this provision seems aimed at getting rid of red-light cameras – an effective way to make roads safer by catching and fining drivers who run red lights.

How cool is that?

A “go it alone” stance on new highway construction is favored in a legislative priority list Pierce County officials will consider Wednesday.

The final draft document, released today, calls for creating a new transportation benefit district – perhaps along with another county – to pay for big projects like extending SR 167 and building the Cross Base Highway.

The draft clearly rejects the idea of creating a regional Transportation Board to rule all transit and highway planning in the Puget Sound metro region. (See my Sunday column on a regional governance plan state lawmakers will consider this session.)

A coalition of county business and government leaders called RAMP will consider the proposed legislative priorities Wednesday. But first they will hear a pitch from top advocates of regional governance. The meeting will begin at 8 a.m. at the Fabulich Center (formerly the World Trade Center) at 3600 Port of Tacoma Road.

Here's what the draft says about creating a new taxing district:

RAMP believes that a Transportation Benefit District is the most viable vehicle for advancing towards the next voter-approved funding package, whether Pierce County moves forward unilaterally or in cooperation with other counties; consequently, RAMP asks the Legislature to grant TBDs authority allotted to the Regional Transportation Investment District, as well as removing the ten-year limitation on voter-approved tax collections

Click below to see the full document.

=> Read more!

The checks some BCTI students are receiving as part of a settlement with the now-defunct vocational-training company are nice. But tightening regulations to prevent future abuses are more important. New standards proposed by the state Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board will help.

Tacomans should take advantage of their opportunities Wednesday to tell the school board what they want in a new superintendent. No superintendent can be a miracle worker, but we do think a proven track record in improving student achievement and experience working in a diverse community should be high on the list.

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.

Family leave advocates might be headed for a possible showdown with the governor, who is opposed to a legislative task force's recommendation to pay family leave benefits out of the general fund. (The disagreement even has some lawmakers eyeing a second punt on family leave — this time to ask voters to endorse a funding mechanism).

If Democrats in the Legislature won't adopt the payroll tax that was originally proposed as the funding source for the family leave program, and Gov. Gregoire sees the $40 million annual cost of benefits as an unjustifiable burden on the general fund, something's got to give.

Critics of family leave say state-funded leave, which passed on the premise of helping low-income parents, will end up becoming a middle class entitlement. So why not subject it to means-testing or limit benefits to those workers who don't receive any from their employer? It would lower the cost of the program, ensure the benefits are reaching the people who really need them the most and make a stronger case for paying for the program out of the general fund rather than through a tax on everyone's paychecks.

I asked state Rep. Bruce Chandler, one of the Republicans who served on the task force, for his take:

=> Read more!

If you came here looking for the links mentioned in Sid Oluf’s article on our oped page today, you’re at the right place. The URLs were a typographical nightmare to print; here, you can just click to reach them.

Go here to find a website that Olufs and fellow citizens maintain regarding their ideas on the Tacoma School District’s superintendent search.

Go here to find a compilation of information on the district’s achievement gap and related education issues, also organized by Olufs.

Who is this guy Olufs, you may ask. As the article indicates, he’s a political science professor at PLU. He has also been a participant in a longstanding local blog called The Conversation, where the conversation often turned to education. Out of that grew an informal education group that decided last spring to become a presence at Tacoma School Board meetings and study sessions, Olufs says.

He adds:

We are not the only group doing this. The Tacoma Ministerial Alliance and the Black Collective have people at every Board meeting. We also show up at the new study sessions, write letters, rise to ask questions, and so on. People from different groups make appointments with Board members and talk to them.

I am sort of a group scribe. I maintain some web pages that keeps track of things we cover. There is a lot of material out there, and few folks have the time to go through it all. That article was not a list of my ideas. They emerged from a group meeting, and the group made lots of suggestions once I circulated a draft. It is truly a group product, and should be labeled as such. Same with the web pages.

I think this kind of citizen involvement is terrific. I hope it leads, among other things, to better choices for Tacoma School Board races in the future. The district needs stronger board leadership as well as a topnotch superintendent.

The Tacoma School Board will be facing a competitive market as it conducts a national search for a permanent superintendent.

Consider these factoids from a recent Washington Post article about rising pay and benefits for school superintendents:

Superintendent salaries in the nation have increased by almost half in the past decade, according to the nonprofit group Educational Research Service. Schools chiefs, on average, received $141,191 in fiscal 2007. In school systems with at least 25,000 students, the average pay was $204,766.

Salaries have soared in a national bidding war for qualified candidates. Talented superintendents, comparatively plentiful 10 or 20 years ago, have left the field in droves for better-paying, lower-stress positions. They have been driven out by the demands of the No Child Left Behind law and by the increasingly shrill politics on school boards, an increasing number of which are filled by elections rather than appointments.

Over the past five years, superintendents in the District and Prince George's, Fairfax and Anne Arundel counties have left their jobs for something other than another superintendency or retirement.

And:

Superintendents' tenures have declined from an average of 6.5 years in 2000 to 5.5 years in 2006, according to the American Association of School Administrators in Arlington County. The time it takes a school board to fill a vacancy has tripled in 10 years, from three months to an average of nine, said Paul Houston, the association's executive director.

The main point of the Post article was that school boards are increasingly offering more in perks like retirement benefits and deferred compensation to sign superintendents. Such benefits don’t show up in published salary figures.

Tacoma’s interim superintendnet, Art Jarvis, is paid $185,000 in salary. The district has about 29,000 students. His predecessor, Charlie Milligan, who lasted less than a year before he was shown the door, received a base salary of $210,000. But he left town with a settlement worth more than $400,000.

The governor's office just announced that on Monday she will unveil legislation authorizing law enforcement to conduct sobriety checkpoints to catch drunk drivers. Checkpoints haven't been used in this state since the state Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional in 1988, citing the state's explicit and expansive guarantee of privacy - a provision not found in the U.S. Constitution.

There were no details in Gregoire's press release about how she proposes to get around the constitutional issue. But during a visit yesterday from state Rep. Pat Lantz, the Gig Harbor lawmaker said she expects legislation to authorize checkpoints based on a generalized warrant.

We had never heard of such a thing, but Lantz said the warrant would meet the constitutional requirement. The warrant would be issued on a showing of probable cause — not that a specific driver is suspected of driving drunk but that a selected stretch of road has a history or a high likelihood of having drunk drivers. The example Lantz used is the street outside a bar on Super Bowl Sunday.

Saturday:
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.

Sunday:
Iowa caucuses were a huge, historic breakthrough for America's first real black presidential contender. Huckabee, the GOP winner, is also an intriguing novelty, combining social conservatism with social-welfare liberalism.

We applaud the Food Connection’s effort to send food home with schoolchildren who may not have enough to eat over the weekends.

Monday:
Pierce County Library is delivering the better service and technology promised the voters who approved its 2006 levy increase.

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.

You wonder if there was a non-disparagement clause in the $1.75 million settlement the University Place reached with the Aaron Lichtman, the developer who was supposed to deliver the $250 million Town Center complex.

Despite Lichtman recently threatening the city with litigation, and despite the city breaking its contract with him this week, City Manager Bob Jean had nothing but praise for him.

"I don't see it as a bad developer story," Jean told us Thursday. "It just was not going to proceed as fast as we woud have liked."

In a press release (strangely titled "Exhibit B"), Mayor Gerald Gehring described Lichtman's firm as "creative, energetic and full of talent."

"They leave us with a sharpened plan and some very valuable work product."

Jean shared an interesting tidbit: Before Lichtman became a developer, he was an attorney who specialized in development-related litigation.

There's a guy who's got all the bases covered. Before Jean and the City Council hire a new developer, they'd best check if he or she has a law degree.

Here's our latest editorial on Town Center.

Looks like Pierce County won't be the only one in Washington not voting all-mail in November.

The necessary computer software won't be available in time for King County to make the switch as planned, County Exec Ron Sims said Monday.

Pierce County Auditor Pat McCarthy had wanted to switch, too, but the idea was abruptly shot down by the County Council last fall. McCarthy maintains that all-mail would greatly simplify the staging of the county's first ranked-choice voting election in November.

King County's change of plans means Pierce and King will be the lone exceptions to all-mail voting in Washington this fall.

Our special TNT political correspondent in Panora, Iowa, Barb Wollner (my sister-in-law), files this report on her Democratic caucus:

OK, we are home from the caucus. Those of you not here could get all the caucus info you wanted by watching the news...

Since Panora is small, we had 2 precincts caucusing in one location, but we each had our separate votes. Dan & I started out for Richardson, but we weren't a viable group - we had to have 15% of the total attendants choosing to caucus for our candidate for him to get a delegate at the county convention. So we both went on to support different candidates - Dan moved to the Obama supporters and I moved to Edwards.

There were a few Biden supporters that didn't want to move to a different candidate and they stayed "undecided" I think to make a point to stick by their choice. But with this system, it didn't prove anything - they just didn't count because they got no delegates.

Here in Panora for 2 precincts it really was a 3 way tie - our precinct gets 6 delegates at convention - it was 2,2,2 for Clinton, Obama & Edwards. The other precinct got 8 delegates, it was 3 for Clinton, 3 for Edwards, 2 for Obama.

There definitely were more people there than 4 years ago - a lot of first timers that were unsure of what to do, although it isn't that complicated. I think if the Richardson group were more experienced, maybe we could have talked enough people to join us to get enough for a viable group - and therefore 1 delegate, but none of us were good "campaigners" to be able to sway others and I for one caved early to go to my second choice.

I am proud that we get to make an impression on the country, but I do think the campaigns got a little carried away with the time and money spent here. I think they could have backed off on the TV ads and mailing and calls.

We want to know about the candidates and make good decisions, but too many people were saying "enough" these last couple of weeks - it was too much and turned people off, maybe even to ignoring it all. Even Dan & I quit answering the phone this week, and up until then I was talking to every pollster that called ( which literally was at least 1 every night).

Now on to New Hampshire which could be a whole different story.

Even some Iowans have had it up to here with the caucus circus.

Fifth-generation Iowan Michael Judge points out in a Wall Street Journal oped today that excluding incumbents, the winner of the Iowa caucus has never won the White House - with one exception: Jimmy Carter.

Judge quotes former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu: "The people of Iowa pick corn. The people of New Hampshire pick presidents."

Last week the state Department of Transportation asked if they could submit an oped piece about what it has learned after six months of tolling on the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

Fine, we said – as long as it's not just a PR exercise. The article will appear on Sunday's oped page.

Then three Gig Harbor legislators – Sen. Derek Kilmer, Rep. Larry Seaquist and Rep. Pat Lantz, Democrats all – paid a call on the ed board today to discuss that very topic. We suspect the the two events are related.

Turns out that the trio has been poking around to see what tolls are being used for besides paying off the construction debt.

Here are some of the things we learned:

=> Read more!

It's the season when legislators, special interests and think tanks make the rounds of editorial boards, pitching their ideas for the upcoming legislative session. We had one such visit today from the Washington Policy Center.

Jason Mercier, director of the Washington Policy Center for Government Reform, is attempting to pin a couple of bills to Initiative 960's coattails. What I-960 claims it will do for tax increases — increasing government transparency and discouraging abuses of emergency clauses — the Washington Policy Center would like to see applied elsewhere.

One proposal — the establishment of a Web site to track state government spending and performance — was the subject of an op-ed he wrote for us last week. The other is a constitutional amendment to require 60 percent vote to pass any bill with an emergency clause, except the budget.

It's not as onerous as it might sound. Last session, 75 bills came out of the Legislature that purportedly were "necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health or safety, support of the state government and its existing institutions." Of those 75, only seven failed to get 60 percent support.

Neither bill got out of committee last year. We'll see if they fare any better in a post-960 election year.

UPDATE 1/7: State auditor Brian Sonntag and state Attorney General Rob McKenna have endorsed the searchable budget Web site. Read the press release here.

It's anyone's guess as to whether Obama's going to beat Clinton or Romney's going to beat Huckabee in the caucuses about to take place in Iowa.

But if history's making the odds, don't bet too much on the winner making it all the way to the White House.

Here's the pattern, as tabulated by the Des Moines Register:

Since 1976, there have been 12 Republican and Democratic presidental contests in Iowa (a party doesn't hold caucuses when it holds the White House with an unchallenged president – George W. Bush in 2004, for example).

Of the candidates who won those 12, an impressive nine went on to win their party's nomination: John Kerry in 2004; Bush and Al Gore in 2000; Bob Dole in 1996; Walter Mondale in 1984, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter in 1980; Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter in 1976.

So as far as party nominees go, Iowa bats .750. Impressive!

But only two of those 12 Iowa winners – Carter in 1976 and Bush in 2000 – actually were elected president.

Political analysts could probably come up with a dozen reasons to explain that fall-off. One reason seems obvious: Caucuses only go so far as a predictor of how the broad electorate will vote. They're dominated by fired-up activists, party leaders with personal connections to the campaigns and other insiders.

The insiders are good at getting candidates to the nomination. Not so good at getting them to the White House.

Point Defiance master plan does of good job of envisioning improvements to the beloved park without harming its character. Many of the improvements will not occur, however, unless taxpayers eventually approve funding for them.

Iowa’s caucuses Thursday night are attracting an unprecedented amount of attention both from the press and the campaigns themselves. It doesn’t strike as us as right, though, that such an unrepresentative group of voters – mostly older, well-educated and white – should have such a disproportionate amount of influence on the nation’s choice of presidential candidates. Have to acknowledge, though, that it seems likely that the Iowa results this year may be inconclusive.

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Regional transportation governance is a tough sell in Pierce County. But John Stanton and Doug MacDonald, two leading proponents of RTG, are going to give it a shot next week anyway.

Stanton, a Seattle telecom billionaire, and MacDonald, former state secretary of transportation, will make a pitch at the Jan. 9 meeting of RAMP (Regional Access Mobility Partnership). RAMP is a coalition of Pierce County business, port and government officials.

Stanton and MacDonald were members of a blue-ribbon Regional Transportation Commission that a year ago recommended forming a 15-member regional Transportation Board. (Go here for a good summary and useful links).

The board would be responsible for planning for all regional transit and highway planning and have the authority to impose taxes for construction. Nine members would be directly elected by voters; six would be appointed.

A bill implementing the recommendation cleared the state Senate last year but died in the House. New proposals will be filed when the Legislature reconvenes this month. In the wake of Proposition 1’s crushing defeat, the governor is likely to lend her support this year.

Here's a roundup of RAMP's December meeting. This blog, posted by the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber of Commerce's Paul Ellis, is a good way of keeping track of local transportation politics.

Calvin Goings is no longer alone in putting up preposterously early campaign signs.

Just as some have feared – see this Peter Callaghan column – Goings' campaign sign tactic has prompted at least one rival to do the same.

Shawn Bunney, Goings' fellow County Council member and Republican rival for the county executive office in November, now has some signs up, too.

Democrat Goings announced his candidacy in December 2006, a full 23 months before the November 2008 election. Some Goings yard signs appeared last fall, in the midst of signs for the November 2007 election.

If Goings hoped to scare off rivals by coming out of the blocks early, the strategy didn't work. Besides Bunney, county auditor Pat McCarthy, a Democrat, and Tacoma City Councilman Mike Lonergan, an independent, have also declared.

The executive race will be decided in the county's first ranked-choice voting election, which means there will be no primary.

Let us be the first to wish you a Happy New Year with this second-past-midnight posting.

Rest assured this was posted well in advance on New Year's Eve. At the actual magic hour, half our editorial board will have taken a glass of milk and gone to bed. Discretion forbids to me tell what the others are doing.

Whatever your manner of celebrating, do have a healthy and sane 2008. Let us hope our great nation has one, too.