This blog is designed to give readers a glimpse of our editorial-page operation and how we make our decisions. We’ll let you know who we’re meeting with, what they’re telling us, what events and issues we’re looking at. We’ll also pass on information and observations that may not make our print editions. In addition to the editorial board members who post on this blog, the board includes Publisher David Zeeck, Executive Editor Karen Peterson and Managing Editor Dale Phelps.
Editorial board bloggers
Editorial page editor Patrick O’Callahan oversees the online and printed opinion sections of The News Tribune. He came to The News Tribune in 1987 and has worked at Washington newspapers since 1979. E-mail him at patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com
Editorial writer Cheryl Tucker, in addition to writing commentary, manages the daily production of the editorial and op-ed pages and edits letters to the editor. She began her journalism career in 1974 at a Virginia newspaper and came to The News Tribune in 1978. E-mail her at cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com.
Editorial writer Kim Bradford manages the online opinion section of The News Tribune and writes commentary. She joined The News Tribune in 2005 after working 11 years at newspapers in Washington and Maryland. E-mail her at kim.bradford@thenewstribune.com.
Guest bloggers
Editor emeritus David Seago retired from The News Tribune in 2008 after 41 years at The News Tribune. E-mail him at sds99@harbornet.com.
Richard Davis’ column on state politics frequently runs in the print edition of The News Tribune. He was president of the Washington Research Council, a statewide think tank, from 1986 through 2006. Currently, as a principal with The Simeon Partnership, Inc. he coordinates the activities of the Washington Alliance for a Competitive Economy, a business coalition founded by the Research Council, the Association of Washington Business and the Washington Roundtable.
Karen Irwin of University Place, a mother of four, has been a frequent contributor to The News Tribune's print editions. She has also written for Seattle's Child, Puget Sound Parent, the Tacoma Weekly, the Fayetteville Observer Times and the political blog Right Meets Left. She graduated from California Lutheran University with a degree in English literature and is currently working toward a history degree.
Michael Allen, professor of history at the University of Washington Tacoma, was born and raised in Ellensburg. He served with the U.S. Marines in Vietnam from 1969-70. He has written five books, including the prize-winning "Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus' Great Discovery to the War on Terror," "Rodeo Cowboys in the North American Imagination" and "Western Rivermen, 1763-1861: Ohio and Mississippi Boatmen and the Myth of the Alligator Horse." Allen lives in Tacoma and Ellensburg and has three children.
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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition:
Short term, this will be a miserable year for public education, with teacher pay raises and other priorities being torpedoed by Washington’s fiscal crisis.
The one consolation is that other state programs, by and large, will be suffering much more than the schools.
Long term is another story. In an otherwise dismal year, the Legislature has laid the foundation for sweeping future improvements to the state’s schools – more funding coupled with demands for better performance from the education system.
The prospects of House Bill 2261 seemed iffy at times, mainly because the state teachers union mounted a bizarre and lonely war against it. In the end, the WEA found itself abandoned by nearly all its traditional allies, including the state PTA, the League of Women Voters and a host of lawmakers who’s always supported the K-12 system.
We've talked a couple times about commenting on Jennifer Rice's kidnapping and rape conviction. We couldn't figure a way to do it – an interesting way to do it.
One thing we look for when picking topics for commentary is some degree of controversy. Take a case like Rice. Once you say that "pedophilia is bad, especially when teachers do it," that's about the end of it. Nobody's going to argue that it's good for teachers to molest their students. We can't argue a position, because there's no other side to argue against.
So, no editorial of Jennifer Rice. For the record, we're opposed to child-rape, too.
Our editorial today mentions two specific concerns about how the Legislature is building the next state budget: sheltering state workers from the brunt of the recession and building a beefy savings account.
On the former, we were struck by the action in the Senate Ways and Means Committee last week. As Adam Wilson of our sister paper The Olympian reported, Republicans unsuccessfully proposed making state employees pay a greater percentage of their health insurance premiums as a way to buy back devastating cuts to social services.
I emailed the Senate Republican caucus staff this afternoon for more details and got this response:
Sen. Zarelli’s amendment would have upped the employee share to 23 percent assuming the current value of the benefit package is maintained (scaling back benefits would reduce the employee share). For comparison, the Kaiser Family Foundation found covered employees nationwide paid 27 percent premium share for family coverage.
