Spotted a Washington state angle in this Wall Street Journal story today about small towns that like having prisons for neighbors – because they benefit from cheap inmate labor.

Medical Lake, on the other side of the Cascades, is worried because state officials facing a fiscal crisis want to close a local correctional facility to save money.

In the small city of Medical Lake in Eastern Washington, Mayor John Higgins pleaded with his state representative to help keep the nearby Pine Lodge Corrections Center for Women from shuttering. The state is thinking about closing the 350-inmate prison by 2010.

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in Tuesday's print edition.

Puyallup trail link needs swift action
Puyallup could lose out on $300,000 – and that would be
bad news for Pierce County recreation enthusiasts.

Little by little, mile by mile, Pierce County’s remarkable Foothills Trail is taking shape.

Today it is 15 miles long, stretching from Puyallup to South Prairie, and plans are for it to eventually be more than 28 miles long and link up with King County’s Interurban Trail. But 7.35 miles of trail could be added fairly quickly – if the City of Puyallup could only complete a land deal with local property owners.

The land acquisition would make possible a 1.35-mile trail linking the Foothills Trail with Puyallup’s six-mile-long Riverwalk Trail. That deal is being held up until completion of a city annexation plan. But if it doesn’t happen soon, $300,000 in state money for the trail linkage project could go away. And it might be years before it’s available again, if ever.

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in Tuesday's print edition.

President Obama all but reverses a purely political Bush policy that denied states the power to regulate tailpipe emissions.

President Barack Obama can’t help but look good against his predecessor’s do-nothing record on climate change, but give him credit for the speed at which he is moving to break with the Bush administration’s disastrous policies.

On Monday, Obama effectively unraveled one of President Bush’s more overt concessions to the auto industry – the rejection of 14 states’ request for the authority to impose stricter car emission standards.

Obama ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its denial, making a reversal all but certain.

The tougher standards – sought by California and Washington, among others – would drive improvements in fuel efficiency and greenhouse emissions to roughly half the nation’s automobile market.

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President Barack Obama can't help but look good against his predecessor's do-nothing record on climate change, but give him credit for the speed at which he is moving to break with the Bush administration's disastrous policies. On Monday, Obama effectively unraveled one of President Bush's more overt concessions to the auto industry.

Little by little, mile by mile, Pierce County’s remarkable Foothills Trail is taking shape. About seven miles of trail could be added fairly quickly – provided state Recreation and Conservation Office cuts the City of Puyallup a little more slack.

If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.

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This column from a North Carolina professor (which will run in the print edition Tuesday) makes the case that the Obamas should get their daughters' pooch from a kennel, and a Southern one at that.

But that's not why I'm posting it. I was more interested in reading what it had to say about the grand success of spay and neuter campaigns – which we took note of last week – and their possible unintended consequences.

By Hal Herzog
Special to The Washington Post

In choosing his Cabinet, President Obama turned to the North, the Midwest and the West. Because Obama stiffed the South, he really ought to look below the Mason-Dixon line for the First Dog. This would be a solid move politically, but it’s also a matter of supply and demand.

The Obamas are reportedly leaning toward a labradoodle or a Portuguese water dog. They say they want the First Pet to be a dog from a shelter, a decision that’s both fashionable and morally sound. But as with other shifts in our collective tastes in pets, the growing popularity of shelter animals has had an unanticipated side effect — there is a mismatch between the number of people who want to rescue a dog and the number of dogs needing to be rescued.

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Our Sunday editorial lamented the threats to government transparency in this legislative session and briefly mentioned a couple of bills that would supposedly implement the recommendations of the state Sunshine Committee.

The Washington Coalition for Open Government took a close look at one of those bills and determined that SB 5294 is not all that it purports to be.

Under the cloak of implementing the “nonunanimous” recommendations of the Sunshine Committee, this bill would codify the very broad attorney-client privilege exemption of Hangartner.

Hangartner is the state Supreme Court case that introduced an attorney-client privilege into the open records act, thus making whole bunch of records exempt from public disclosure even when there is no controversy. Last last year, the Sunshine Committee voted 7-3 to recommend the Legislature close the loophole.

Sen. Adam Kline, a Sunshine Committee member, was on the losing end of that vote. Now, guess who the prime sponsor of SB 5294 is? You got it. Kline couldn't persuade his fellow committee members when the matter was up for discussion, so now he's apparently trying to have his way under the guise of doing the committee's bidding.

House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler also sits on the Sunshine Committee – and she was on the winning side of that vote. Here's hoping a bill with language that actually reflects the committee's recommendation will be forthcoming from her office.