This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

Win-win: That’s the kind of solution we need more of. It’s the kind of solution Tacoma Public Utilities and the Skokomish Indian Tribe appear headed for in their dispute over the Cushman dams.
Both sides deserve to win.

It’s easy to sympathize with the Indians’ legal claims against the two dams and TPU. When the dams were completed in 1926 and 1930, they devastated the North Fork of the Skokomish River on the eastern edge of the Olympic National Park. As its name suggests, the river runs through the tribe’s reservation.

Back then, Indian treaties were often honored in the breach, and migrating salmon hardly weighed against the economic benefits of a dam. The Cushman Hydroelectric Project dried up the North Fork and put an end to its salmon runs.

The tribe filed its first lawsuit in 1930, and it’s been fighting for compensation ever since. In 1998, it filed a claim for $5.8 billion in damages. It appeared quite willing to see the two dams shut down for good.

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This editorial will appear in Wednesday's print edition.

County’s a better place for Ladenburg’s service
The executive, who is stepping down after eight years, has made significant progress on many of Pierce County’s worst problems.

John Ladenburg has sound advice for his successor as Pierce County executive: “Your reach should always exceed your grasp.”

He seems to have been taking his own advice over the last eight years, and it has served him well – making him as strong and effective an executive as Pierce County has ever had. He hasn’t achieved everything he reached for, but it was not for lack of vision or trying.

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The outgoing Pierce County executive, John Ladenburg, was that rare politician who didn't hesitate to spend his political capital – nearly all of it, the attorney general's race suggests.

Tacoma Power's pending deal with the Skokomish Indian Tribe would end a very long and potentially disastrous dispute over two important dams.

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.

Dear editor: I am 55 years old.

Some of my Capitol Hill lobbyists say there is no Henry Paulson. My union friend Ronald Gettelfinger says, "If you read it in the newspaper, it's so."

Please tell me the truth; is there a Henry Paulson?

RICHARD WAGONER
General Motors, Detroit"

Dear Rick,

Your Capitol Hill lobbyists are wrong. They have been affected by the parsimonious attitude of a financially distressed era. They have been discouraged by Federal Reserve officials with a cramped notion of the purpose of federal bailout funds.

Your lobbyists do not believe except they see the money. They think that no bailout can happen except they wring $14 billion in taxpayer loans from the killjoy Republicans in the Senate.

In this great political universe of ours, your lobbyists are mere children in their strategies, as compared to the White House guardians of Big Business and the Democratic guardians of Big Labor.

Yes, Rick, there is a Treasury secretary, and he will be descending your chimney on a magical night very soon. Henry Paulson exists as certainly as campaign contributions and voting drives exist, and you know that they abound and give to your company wondrous influence in the nation's capital.

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In today's editorial, we support the City of Tacoma's movement away from paying employees for their longevity rather than performance (in theory at least; we also don't think this is the right year to make the move, which requires a sizable downpayment).

The city's nonunion employees feel they are due a pay increase this year after several years of accepting 1 percent adjustments with the promise that the city would be reviewing the entire pay structure.

But I got to wondering, was 1 percent really 1 percent in a system that grants automatic "step" increases above and beyond cost-of-living adjustments? Turns out, the majority of city nonunion workers don't get step increases. The city's salary steps top out after only just three-and-half years – which in and of itself is an argument for reforming the salary schedule.

UPDATE: Longevity pay, however, has helped boost the pay of more senior workers. A city employee gets an additional 1 percent annual bump after five years, 2 percent after 10 years, 3 percent after 15 years and 4 percent after 20 years.

The bottom line is that for the vast majority of nonunion city workers, 1 percent was never not always 1 percent. Nor was 3 percent really 3 percent in better years. (Edited to reflect that longevity pay was suspended one of the two years that city workers received 1 percent COLAs.)

Here's what the city's public affairs chief, Rob McNair-Huff, told me about steps:

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