This editorial will appear in Wednesday's print edition:

U.S. Supreme Court: Not ready for prime time?

Fourteen years ago, the Supreme Court of Washington heard arguments in a death penalty case, live on TVW. It has never looked back.

Today, all of its court proceedings are broadcast and archived online (tvw.org) for future viewing – providing a valuable resource for teachers, attorneys, historians and everyday citizens interested in how the justice system works.

The U.S. Supreme Court is a different story. Despite individual justices proclaiming in their confirmation hearings that they’d have no problem with cameras in the courtroom, it hasn’t happened yet. But an opportunity has arisen. The strongest opponent of televising – Justice David “over my dead body” Souter – is retiring, and senators questioning nominee Sonia Sotomayor during the confirmation process should get her opinion of televising on the record.

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

Let’s forget for a moment that U.S. troops didn’t leave Iraq on Tuesday, only the streets of its cities.

Let’s forget that their combat role in the countryside and on the borders is likely to continue for more than a year.

Let’s also forget that Americans will be supporting Iraqi security forces from behind the scenes until the end of 2011.

That’s a lot of forgetting to do. Still, Iraq’s newly declared “National Sovereignty Day” left everyone with a lot of celebrating to do.

In the United States, the disappearance of American soldiers from the cities of Iraq on Tuesday seemed almost a footnote to the death of Michael Jackson. That says much about America’s short memory and self-absorption.

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An interesting story in the Wall Street Journal today: Financially strapped states are going after unused gift cards. Even more interesting: The paper's interactive graphic makes it seem like Washington state is one of the most aggressive states in that regard.

But, alas, it's not true. Mike Gowrylow at the Department of Revenue said the graphic is in error. The Legislature changed the law way back in 2004 to allow companies to keep the money from gift cards in exchange for prohibiting expiration dates or inactivity fees that eat into the balance.

Gowrylow sounds a bit frustrated with the national press:

Unfortunately, we’ve had several of these national rankings that were way off base. Forbes magazine, for example, recently rated Washington has having the eighth-highest personal taxes in the nation. The problem was they mistakenly counted the business-and-occupation tax a personal tax while excluding corporate income taxes. I pointed out their error and they never corrected it, but then they published another overall taxes-relative-to-personal-income ranking that was more accurate and based on tax foundation data (we ranked 35th).

And Lakewood thought its anti-casino people were hard core:

Putin tells Russian casinos to cash in their chips

By CATRINA STEWART
Associated Press Writer

MOSCOW (AP) — Nearly two decades after the Soviet collapse set Russia’s roulette wheels spinning again, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is calling in the chips on the gambling industry — a symbol of the glitz and excess of Russia’s oil-fueled boom.

It’s all part of a Kremlin crusade to clean up a country that has long had a fascination with games of chance — and to rein in an industry seen as a breeding ground for corruption and organized crime.

The government ordered the closure of all casinos and gambling halls Wednesday — confining gambling to four special zones in far-flung regions of Russia, most thousands of miles and half-a-dozen time zones away from Moscow.

There is a downside, though. It deprives the federal budget of billions of dollars a year in taxes, while leaving more than 400,000 people without work amid the country’s economic crisis.

“They’ve killed the industry overnight,” said an embittered Michael Boettcher, the British founder of Storm International, a casino group that includes the gaudy Shangri-La in central Moscow.
“It’s like closing all the five-star restaurants in London because you’re eating too much, and saying that if you do want to have them, you’ll have to relocate to North Wales,” he said. “Who’s going to go? Nobody.”

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A long-awaited milestone in Iraq has arrived: No more American soldiers on the front lines.

The Washington Supreme Court has been televising its proceedings for 14 years now. It’s time for the U.S. Supreme Court to allow TV cameras into the court, too.

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.

A year after Washington made driving while celling illegal, anyone who spends any amount of time out on the road can tell you the law is having little effect. Plenty of drivers are still trying to juggle their phone and the wheel (and sometimes a stick shift and a breakfast sandwich to boot).

NPR reporter Austin Jenkins reports that the State Patrol is also not impressed. It wrote 1,600 tickets for talking on a cell phone and another 230 for texting while driving during the past year. But troopers say drivers are still largely ignoring the law.

That's largely because the ban is only a secondary offense. Police have to catch drivers doing something else first before they can pull them over and write a ticket for talking on a cell phone.

The Legislature seems to prefer to ease the driving public into new rules by enacting them piecemeal. It took 16 years before the seat-belt law was promoted from a secondary to a primary offense. Let's hope for everyone's sakes that it doesn't take that long to give the cell phone law some teeth.

This editorial will appear in Tuesday's print edition.

Tacoma police say this is the year that they really will get tough with the pyromaniacs who turn neighborhoods into war zones.

Law-abiding city residents who already have spent too many nights worrying about stray rockets and too many mornings searching for their terrified cats want to believe them.

Past experience would advise against holding out too much hope. Despite the Tacoma City Council’s declaration in 2007 that the city was serious about its fireworks ban, the police department’s follow-through has been disappointing.

Ten tickets were issued that first year, and 25 in 2008 – progress to be sure, but not the kind of crackdown that fireworks-frazzled Tacomans know it will take to quiet the nightly barrage.

Now, Capt. Mike Miller, who oversees the city’s fireworks enforcement, says police hope to make this the breakthrough year. They’re aiming for “a lollapalooza type of change,” he says.

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

If you were starting from scratch designing a 911 system for Pierce County, you’d never get the system the county is saddled with.

To devote every possible dollar to fast action on emergency calls, any needless duplication of overhead costs would be ruthlessly cut. Not a penny would be spent perpetuating local fiefdoms that actually hurt the efficiency of the overall system.

In Pierce County, however, piecemeal decisions over the years have produced five “primary call centers” – Puyallup, Sumner, Buckley, Fife and the giant Law Enforcement Support Agency. LESA – which is already strained and facing further budget cuts – handles the police calls from about 90 percent of the county.

Even that understates the duplication. Because LESA doesn’t handle fire and emergency medical dispatching, any calls for those emergency services are transferred elsewhere. The Tacoma Fire Department, for example, is a “secondary” center that handles that city’s fire and EMS calls. According to a recent performance audit, the TFC does so at much higher cost than LESA – $31.61 per call as opposed to $11.10.

That’s $31.61 in addition to $11.10 for any calls that first go to LESA.

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Disclaimer: This writer is an anti-communist. Well, actually, this writer is an anti-socialist, because there aren’t any communists left any more (except in Cuba, North Korea, and on American college campuses).

Each time I hear some erstwhile progressive ask “Why can’t we have socialism like they do in Scandinavia?,” I am a little less than supportive….

First of all, not even the Scandinavians “have socialism like they do in Scandinavia.” From 1945-1989, Scandinavians, like other western European nations, boasted large social welfare bureaucracies, 50 percent taxation rates and a healthy number of capitalists they allowed to exist in order to pay for the whole mess. “Progressive” western Europeans were too smart to kill off the capitalist goose that lays golden eggs. Like Franklin D. Roosevelt, they kept capitalists around to pay the price tag of their social experimentation.

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A consultant's report offered a road map to fixing the inefficiencies of emergency dispatch in Pierce County – including the plethora of fiefdoms. Lives are at stake; let's use our tax dollars to best effect.

Tacoma's plan to really crack down on fireworks this year is welcome, as is news that the Puyallup tribe is cooperating with police. Washington's Indian tribes could be doing more to control the dissemination of illegal fireworks outside their reservations.

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.

Last week Dan Choi, a Lieutenant in the Army National Guard, sent out a mass email asking for help, a character reference to be exact. Hard to believe Choi, a West Point graduate who majored in Arabic studies, needs a character reference from his fellow citizens but according to his letter, he does.

In spite of the fact that Choi speaks Arabic, Farsi, and is passionate about serving in the Middle East, he is about to lose his job for disregarding the don’t ask don’t tell policy, or D.A.D.T., circa President Clinton. Wanting to live by the West Point honor code, Choi was honest with the military and told them he was homosexual, saying he did not want to spend his career, or his life, hiding that truth.

Unfortunately for Lt. Choi, those three little words “I am gay” are grounds for dismissal.

Approximately 13,000 service men and women have been fired for the same reason, fired not for conduct unbecoming, but for who they are as people. Many of them, like Choi, spoke Arabic. The loss of this personnel seems like a brain drain the military can little afford, especially at a time when recruitment standards are said to be lowered, i.e. the military has allowed high school dropouts, former drug users, and former white supremacists.

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The people at C-Span are making a good argument – see below – for televising U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments. Naturally, we agree.

With U.S. Senate hearings on Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court beginning shortly – July 13 – we're hoping your editorial page might endorse the idea of televising Supreme Court oral arguments.

C-SPAN has long argued for opennesss and transparency in the Judicial Branch. If the Supreme Court does open its oral arguments to cameras, C-SPAN will carry all of the approximately 75 one-hour oral arguments in their entirety.

A milestone in transparency was reached during the Court's 2000 hearing of George W. Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board when C-SPAN requested televising the arguments. In response, the Court granted instant audiotape release of that case's oral arguments - and since then the Court has allowed selected same-day oral argument audio be released in response to subsequent C-SPAN requests.

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This editorial will appear in Monday's print edition.

Rape and sexual abuse remain too much a fact of life behind bars.

That’s intolerable. In the United States, our criminal justice system sends convicts to prison as punishment, not for punishment.

The recommendations of the federal Prison Rape Elimination Commission could be a step toward changing the prison culture that permits sexual abuse to continue.

The commission found that more than 60,000 prisoners are the victims of rape and sexual abuse each year. Many inmates are afraid to report such crimes and even those who do are often ignored or dismissed.

Not only hardcore criminals are being victimized. The commission heard from former inmates who made relatively minor mistakes – a political protest gone wrong, a drunken driving arrest or a probation violation – and ended up being brutally raped.

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I’m a longtime skeptic of “medical” marijuana. You’ve got to do a lot of doctor-shopping before you find one who thinks smoking anything is healthy and wholesome.

Cleaner, vaporized extracts of marijuana’s active ingredients may be a different story, but this remains the only high-potency drug legalized by political campaigns, not the Food and Drug Administration. No question it makes users feel better; so did the various 19th century elixirs spiked with alcohol, opium or cocaine.

Enough of the rant. Washingtonians approved a regulated medical marijuana regime when they enacted Initiative 692 in 1998. In contrast to California’s system of commercial “medical” marijuana shops, the initiative offered the voters a deal: personal medical use, but no buying and selling.

That deal is now being broken in Spokane, where the city appears to be tolerating California-style marijuana dispensaries that sell the drug in clear defiance of the law.

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

Pity the poor, rich, famous celebrity. Really.

Nobody will ever look back at Michael Jackson and say, “That man had a wonderful life.” He started out as a buoyant kid loaded with musical talent. By the time he died Thursday, he was a freakish-looking recluse whose plastic surgeries and skin-whitening treatments had left him looking like a ghostly villain from a “Batman” movie.

In the interim, what a career.

Jackson’s 1982 album “Thriller” outsold anything recorded by the Beatles or Elvis Presley. All told, he sold more than 750 million albums and secured a place right up there with Elvis and the Fab Four. He amassed a huge personal fortune.

Yet he died a pathetic figure, in debt, isolated, shadowed by persistent allegations of child molestation. His untimely heart attack may have been hastened by excessive doses of prescription drugs he was taking to assist a comeback attempt.

Jackson joins a pantheon of superstars, stars and semi-stars who might have fared much better had they never been trapped in the spotlights, grown addicted to adulation and acquired fortunes large enough to indulge their most destructive appetites.

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This column by Washington Post writer Eugene Robinson moved on the wire late in the day Friday, so it won't get in the print edition over the weekend. I'm publishing it here for any online readers who haven't had their fill of Michael Jackson commentary.

PERILS OF A PRODIGY

Many performers can impress or delight, but only a few can astonish. Michael Jackson did it twice.

The first time was October 1969, when the hit single “I Want You Back” introduced a cherubic 11-year-old boy who sang with unbelievable maturity, soulfulness and swing. The second was March 1983, when the prodigy — now grown tall, thin and angular — moonwalked through an electrifying “Billie Jean,” leaving a national television audience slack-jawed at how effortlessly he defied the laws of physics.

Jackson’s personal trajectory, though, was excruciating to watch.

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Ah, Farrah Fawcett. That smile, that kick-butt role in "Charlie's Angels," that tragic love life.

That hair. If you were a girl or young woman in the '70s, you wanted Farrah Fawcett hair. Future editorial writers were no exception.

At left is Cheryl Tucker, circa 1977. And on the right is my belated attempt to get in on the fad in 1980.

Want to share yours? Upload it at www.thenewstribune.com/community. (You'll be asked to pick a "genre." Select "Happy" – because who wasn't happy when they finally mastered the Farrah flip?)

Jenny Sanford should stop while she's ahead.

Up until now, the first lady of South Carolina has been a model jilted wife. This former Wall Street executive didn't stand by her man as he gave a rambling account of his six days AWOL in Argentina and pathetically copped to adultery. Neither did she go into hiding.

Instead, she did what many a self-respecting cuckolded wife would love to do, given the temperamental wherewithal and a public stage: She cast herself as a loving, forgiving spouse who will accept Gov. Mark Sanford back but is not about to put up with any crap.

Jenny's statement to the press was a case study in effective public relations. She emerged looking dignified, resolute and adult. (Some have said she also sent all the right signals to the fundamentalist faithful.)

South Carolinians have certainly known that side of Jenny Sanford, but for the rest of the country, it has been a grand introduction.

That acquaintance made, now's the time to draw the curtains and say "no comment." Do we need to know how the first lady discovered her husband was stepping out on her? Or that she warned her husband not to go to Argentina after she kicked him out of the house? It's all so tawdry, and we've already had plenty of that from her mooning husband.

Jenny Sanford doesn't need to say another word to secure the moral high ground, and she shouldn't.

In reviewing the Tacoma school board members' evaluations of Superintendent Art Jarvis, I was struck not by what they contained, but by what they didn't.

The "teaching/learning" category listed three "essential functions and goals" on which the board judged Jarvis. Not one of them mentioned student achievement. Rather, the school board considered whether teachers and students were assigned to schools and classes on time, and whether the district had a plan to provide sufficient curriculum resources, especially in math.

That's all important stuff, but as we said in today's editorial, all is for naught if kids aren't learning.

The school board has set rather ambitious goals for the district as a whole; reducing the dropout rate and increasing student achievement by 10 percent a year are among them. Jarvis should be evaluated, at least in part, on how whether the district achieves those goals.

I wrote board president Kim Golding to ask her if the board had a reason for not wanting to tie the superintendent's evaluation explicitly to student performance. Here's her response:

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This editorial will appear in Friday's print edition.

Father Tim: Five years later, a casualty of war

Some who die in war die quickly. Others take longer.

Father Tim – the Rev. Henry Timothy Vakoc – took just over five years. He died Saturday in a Minnesota nursing home of injuries inflicted by a roadside bomb in Iraq on May 29, 2004 – becoming the first chaplain to die of combat-related injuries in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

Vakoc, an Army major and Catholic priest who ministered to Fort Lewis units serving in northern Iraq, was coming back from celebrating mass in the field near Mosul when a bomb ripped through his Humvee.

His brain injuries were so traumatic that he was categorized as being in a “vegetative state,” but that was later upgraded to “minimally responsive state.”

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This editorial will appear in Friday's print edition.

The Tacoma School Board is happy with its superintendent hire, and it has reason to be. But the board shouldn’t stop expecting more.

Art Jarvis, who was named permanent superintendent last July, has ably put the district’s house in order following the disastrous reign of former Superintendent Charlie Milligan.
The school board gave Jarvis high marks in both public and employee relations and financial management in its recent performance evaluation.

Jarvis’ financial leadership helped prepare the district for the region’s economic woes and buffer cuts to state education spending. Tacoma is among the few school districts not laying off teachers in the wake of the Legislature’s patching of a $9 billion budget hole.

He also has rebuilt relationships within and without the school district. Jarvis is, perhaps above all, a people person who understands that the district cannot succeed if it’s at odds with the community.

But good fiscal management and community relations only get students so far, especially in a district where half of them are poor enough to qualify for free- or reduced-price lunch and test scores typically lag the state average on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning.

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When news of Michael Jackson's death broke this afternoon, we had an internal discussion about whether to write a quick turn-around editorial for Friday.

My impulse – since I'm the one who probably would have had to write it – was to say no. I couldn't figure what I would say, other than something along the lines of "great talent, weird life, even weirder face."

I had already written the tribute to Army Chaplain Tim Vakoc, and just didn't see a good reason to pull it and substitute one about Jackson. I suspect enough will be written elsewhere in the paper that readers won't mind that we took a pass on MJ.

UPDATE: The Los Angeles Times just moved an editorial on Jackson, so I'll get that in on the "rail" Friday. Here it is:

Michael — maybe we knew
too much about ye

What felt the most shocking, as the first reports of Michael Jackson’s death rolled out, was how expected the news was. Maybe not this day exactly, but if ever there were a Greek tragedy that seemed to be forming in the very first years of a man’s life, this was it.

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The Tacoma school board rightfully gave first-year Superintendent Art Jarvis high marks for financial management. He scored lowest in the area of student and teacher performance, a perpetual struggle for the urban district. It's there that Jarvis needs to make the most progress if the board hopes to retain community support.

On Saturday, the Rev. Tim Vakoc became the first military chaplain to die in the Iraq/Afghanistan war – more than five years after he was wounded. There are many like Father Tim out there, Americans who survived their war injuries but will never completely recover from them.

If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to kim.bradford@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 hate to be the party pooper here, but this looks an awful lot like an adult religious leader conducting a religious ritual with a gathering of students at McIlvaigh Middle School.

Connie McCloud – a Puyallup cultural leader – told the students that the pole was a living spirit who watches over the community and “knows who you are.”

Nothing wrong with her remarks, but the setting? If a Baptist minister or Roman Catholic priest were invited to a public school to pray with students, everyone from the ACLU to myself and my colleagues would have cried foul.

I’m a fan of many aspects of Salish culture, which tends to be more community-oriented than the individualistic American mainstream. But I’m not sure why Indian rituals are exempted from the usual concerns about religion in the public schools.

Romance writers get out your pads and pencils ‘cause I just read the emails between South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and his Argentinean paramour and you’re gonna want to take notes.

Steamy is one word that comes to mind.

Sad is another.

Sad that we are even able to read and gawk at such a private correspondence. The State, a newspaper out of Columbia S.C., deemed this email exchange newsworthy. The love notes began over a year ago and displays in embarrassing detail how quickly grown-ups revert back to adolescence.

Yes, reading a grown man wax poetic about a woman’s “curves,” “tan lines” and “two magnificent parts” is now newsworthy.

But hey, the personal failings of politicians have long been fair game. Paging Ken Starr. Remember him? The man who helped expose President Clinton in his personal affair. Governor Mark Sanford does because in 1998 he called for President Clinton’s resignation, saying, “The issue of lying is the biggest harm.”

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

Seattle and Tacoma can’t help being neighbors, and they’ve also been friendly rivals at times. The “friendly” part has included an implicit gentleman’s agreement not to fire nuclear warheads at each other’s economic base.

With his covert move to lure Russell Investments out of Tacoma, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels has ditched the friendliness and turned rivalry into enmity. Plenty of Tacomans take this very personally.

Don’t get us wrong. We’re not talking about the citizens of Seattle or its City Council. Of the city’s political leadership, Nickels alone appears to have initiated secret contacts with Russell executives and offered them a tailor-made break on its business and occupation tax, providing they move the company’s headquarters from downtown Tacoma to Seattle.

Without that tax break, Seattle already had plenty to offer Russell, including lots of cheap, vacant office space and the international cachet of its name. We like to think that Tacoma has more to offer, including $148 million worth of incentives the city is offering the company to stay home.

Tacoma is playing defense here. The loss of its headquarters and its roughly 900 well-paid – and civic-minded – employees would hurt the area badly. If that loss occurs, Tacomans would long remember any complicity on the part of Seattle’s city government.

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This editorial will appear in Thursday's print edition.

U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg has a point, to a point.

The Democratic lawmaker from New Jersey says it “simply defies common sense” to allow gun sales to people suspected of being terrorists. He’s right – until he proposes that the government’s terrorism watch list should be the deciding factor of whether someone can buy a gun.

At Lautenberg’s request, the Government Accountability Office recently studied firearms and explosives purchases among terror watch list members. It found that people on the list tried to buy guns 963 times in the last five years, and nine out of 10 times they were successful because nothing else in their background disqualified them.

That sounds outrageous, but consider this: The FBI refused to divulge details about who was able to buy a gun and what their connection to terrorism might be. That itself makes conclusions rather hard to draw.

Then there’s the watch list itself, which has a number of problems, the first being its size.

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Pat, Cheryl and I are in the thick of interviewing 40-some local candidates with primary election races.

Among the candidates we've talked with so far are two of the people running in the crowded contest for Judge Michael Morgan's seat on the Federal Way Municipal Court. One of them – Rebecca Robertson, a Seattle city prosecutor – shared with us that she's been rated by the King County Bar Association as "well qualified."

In checking the bar association's Web site, it looks like Robertson is the only candidate so far to receive a rating. I have a note into the bar to find out who else has requested a rating and will update here when I hear.

UPDATE: The bar association will be rating each of the candidates by the end of July. Possible ratings are: “exceptionally well qualified,” “well qualified,” “qualified” and “not qualified.” The judicial screening committee also has the discretion to decline rating a judicial candidate, with statements of reason – “insufficient information to rate” or “declined to participate” or to give a rating with the notation, “failed to cooperate fully with the judicial screening committee.”

In 2005, Morgan was rated by the bar association as "not qualified" – and circumstances certainly haven't improved since then – so I am guessing that he won't be voluntarily sitting for interviews with the bar association's judicial screening committee. But I could be wrong.

Robertson, by the way, is one of several candidates who lives outside Federal Way. State law requires that a municipal judge need only live in the same county as the city where he or she presides, presumably to help create a bigger pool of talent from which small cities can draw.

Here's what we're working on for tomorrow:

• The best defense in the business-recruitment-and-retention game is a good offense, and we like how Tacoma's offensive to keep Russell Investments stacks up against Seattle's attempts to lure it away.

• A U.S. senator from New Jersey says it “simply defies common sense” to allow gun sales to people suspected of being terrorists. He's right – until he proposes that the government's terrorism watch list should be the deciding factor of whether someone can buy a gun.

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.

I can't help but be newly impressed every time I see the transformation happening at South 11th and Tacoma Avenue.

The new owners of the historic Samuel Roberts building have single-handedly spiffed up an entire neighborhood with their overhaul of the building that once housed the storied Kelly's Restaurant. I wasn't around these parts when the former jazz club was in its heyday, so I don't know how it used to look. But in recent years since the club closed, the building has been an eyesore, with its tattered awning and grimy facade. Situated as it is on a prominent corner, the building made the area around the public library and County-City Building seem downright downtrodden.

The new owners, who are remodeling the building into law offices and a bistro, have accomplished a stunning makeover. The whole feel of the neighborhood has changed with this one building. While it's not a cure for everything that ails this stretch of Tacoma Avenue, which has seen more than its share of crime and still has a certain dicey air, it certainly is a start.

Before

After

This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

It’s no big deal in the scheme of things, but U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott’s would-be earmark for an exclusive private club is too easy a target to pass up.

The Seattle Democrats wants $250,000 – a microscopic sum on Capitol Hill – to repair the limestone window sills of the Rainier Club building, a historic bastion of privilege in downtown Seattle. The piddly item might not have been noticed had McDermott himself not listed it among other budget requests on his Web site.

The rationale is historic preservation. The Rainier Club building dates to 1904, when it opened as a clubhouse for the city’s alpha males and their buddies.

The structure’s getting down at the heels; according to McDermott’s office, an engineer’s report “concluded that the sills require replacement to prevent water from penetrating into the fabric of the masonry. Water seepage into the wall fabric will cause deterioration of interior and exterior mortar.”

The organization itself doesn’t seem to be suffering from water damage. The club’s membership requirements have loosened up over the last 100 years, but its Web site still describes its building as “a home-away-from-home for business, cultural and civic leaders, diplomats and other professionals. Our members are pampered with personalized service within the context of an elegant setting.”

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

Does the Tacoma Police Department have too much money to throw around and too many officers at its disposal?
How else to explain the fact that it has been paying cops to play against city firefighters in an annual fundraiser?

Thanks to a whistleblower’s complaint, the City of Tacoma acknowledged the practice this week. On May 29, a basketball team’s worth of officers did their hook shots and rebounds on the public’s dime during a game that raises money for the Hilltop Action coalition.

City officials confirmed Tuesday that the cops got a full 10-hour shift’s work of pay for their pseudo-charitable participation in the roughly two-hour event. Additional officers had to cover the actual police work the players weren’t doing during those lost shifts. The players were also paid to practice for the game.

Whose genius idea was this? It should be blindingly obvious to anyone in the TPD and city government that police time is one of the scarcest commodities in Tacoma.

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Apparently as a concession to the angry dissidents who’ve been filling the streets lately, the Iranian theocracy may be moving to outlaw the stoning of criminals.

Stoning is supposedly a gender-neutral death penalty. It’s not quite that simple. Condemned men and women are partly buried before the rocks start to fly. Any convict who can break free of the earth and run off wins a complete pardon.

This is where the sex discrimination comes in: Men are buried up to their waists; women are buried up to their necks. So it’s somewhat easier for the men to escape.

I swear I'm not making this up. Read this account of several recent stonings in Iran.

Men half-buried; women completely buried. That seems an apt metaphor for Iran's medieval dictatorship.

The Tacoma Police Department has way more money than it needs if it can afford to pay its officers to play basketball.

It's no big deal in the scheme of things, but U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott's would-be earmark for an exclusive private club is too easy a target to pass up. What worries us is the probability that some of his colleagues in Congress are slipping earmarks far more absurd and expensive under the taxpayers' radar.

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.

Pierce County lawmakers are not happy with the City of Seattle's decision to sweeten its deal to lure Russell Investments away from Tacoma. They wrote Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels today, essentially accusing him of adopting an "economic development strategy based on regional poaching."

It had first appeared that Seattle would be a reluctant suitor, in keeping with the gentleman's agreement among Puget Sound cities not to poach each other's prized companies. But with Seattle's move last week to give Russell a break on the business tax, it become clear that Seattle was playing to win.

Now, the Pierce County delegation wants Nickels to rescind the offer.

... it was with tremendous disappointment we read about your efforts to provide local tax incentives to lure away Pierce County’s largest private sector, for-profit employer. Not only does a public competition for Russell Investments represent misguided and cannibalistic public policy from a regional economic development perspective, it erodes the very foundation of cooperation we have worked to develop in recent years. ... For the sake of continuing to move the Puget Sound region forward, we hope that you will reconsider your recent proposal.

We've also heard word that Sen. Jim Kastama of Puyallup and Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown are preparing an op-ed for The Seattle Times along these same lines. UPDATE: Here it is. They say:

In the best interest of all concerned, we urge Seattle to look to the future instead of its neighbors' backyards. Poaching businesses is no substitute for true economic strategy.

Funny, tobacco has taken the lives of countless millions and it took until today, June 22, 2009 for the government to finally say, in effect, “maybe the public should be aware of just what exactly people are killing themselves with.”

To be sure plenty of public health campaigns have come and gone. Kids and adults alike are well aware of the dangers of smoking. I am thinking of my own jr. high school science teacher Mr. Marcola, who held up a picture of an old woman, who, most agreed, looked like Freddie Kruger in drag, and told us if we lit up we would look like her, a haggard and mean insomniac undergoing some kind of gender identity crisis.

Not an effective strategy.

First of all, our parents smoked and they didn’t look that bad, and Mr. Marcola himself reeked of cigarettes and he looked ok for an old dude. Then of course there were the filmstrips of black lungs and giant hearts, but again, not applicable to the young and indestructible.

What worked for me, what made me never want to touch the stuff, was watching my own parents smoke.

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in Tuesday's print edition.

Happy Days here again, no thanks to moratorium

Almost everything about the Happy Days Casino in Lakewood is new: new owner, new city business license, new state gambling license. The only significant link to the casino of the same name that went belly up in early 2008 is the building along Bridgeport Way Southwest.

As a new casino, Happy Days shouldn’t even be able to exist under Lakewood’s gambling moratorium, which aims to limit the number of casinos in the city to those that are already there. The fact that the new casino does exist shows how toothless that moratorium really is.

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in Tuesday's print edition.

If a Tehran protester is shot in the street and no one uploads video of her last moments to YouTube, does her name – Neda – still become a rallying cry?

Put another way, will the Web prove the undoing of Iran’s hard-line leaders?

The answer depends in large part on whether Iran’s political uprisings ever develop into something more. Much has been made about the intersection of civil unrest and technology-enabled citizen journalism. Perhaps too much.

Twitter and its kin are the vehicle, not the genesis, of the unrest that has rocked that country since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared re-elected soon after the polls closed June 12.

The chief opposition candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, counted among his supporters many young Iranians, who represent a potent political force. Half of Iran’s population is 26 years old or younger, and about a third of the eligible voters are under 30.

Many of them have taken to the streets in recent days to dispute the election and accuse the regime of election fraud. And they have taken their cell phones with them.

=> Read more!

Congress routinely writes checks for hundreds of billions of dollars, so a mere $250,000 is budget dust in the federal scheme of things.

But U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott is still getting razzed for seeking to earmark a quarter of a million dollars to fix the window sills on the Rainier Club, an exclusive enclave of Seattle’s elite.

Here’s the earmark language from the Seattle Democrat’s very long list of budget requests:

Recipient’s name and address:
The Rainier Club Foundation: Not For Profit Entity
820 Fourth Avenue
Seattle, WA. 98104

The Rainier Club window repair and limestone sill replacement; $250,000:

In 2004, The Rainier Club Historic Foundation commissioned a report to evaluate and define the infrastructure-related concerns of the Club’s 1904 building.

The engineer’s report detailed the damage to the exterior limestone window sills due to over one hundred years of exposure to water and pollution.

The report concluded that the sills require replacement to prevent water from penetrating into the fabric of the masonry. Water seepage into the wall fabric will cause deterioration of interior and exterior mortar.

=> Read more!

We recently published an op-ed from the Community Health Network of Washington warning that the state's strategy of cutting costs by increasing Basic Health Plan premiums could end up making the plan far more expensive for the state. The concern is that the healthy will choose to forgo coverage, thereby raising the price of insuring the pool of sicker people who stay on.

That might sound like so much scare-mongering given that most of the news coverage has focused on the average amount that monthly premiums will rise, which is just $25. Now the Washington State Budget and Policy Center is out with a more details in an attempt to underscore the real impact.

Using the pricing for a single enrollee aged 40-55, Jeff Chapman explains that premiums will double for individuals making less than $13,538. The bigger earners, those making between $20,036 and $21,660, will pay $2,408 a year, or about 11 percent of their income.

That might still be a relative bargain for someone who has a lot of health problems. But for a 40-year-old guy who is healthy and maybe visits the doc once a year, if that, the premium increases might serve as a big disincentive to staying insured. And as those folks opt out of health insurance, we all pay the price – because no matter how fit they are now, there will inevitably come a time when they need medical care.

This editorial will appear in Monday's print edition.

We can’t remember when a snub has felt so good.

Powerball states have apparently thought better of their offer earlier this year to cut rival states in on the action. In a vote late last month, the cabal’s tally was 12-18 against allowing Mega Millions states to also sell Powerball tickets.

Washington Lottery folks are none too happy about the alleged double cross.

They had hustled to convince the Legislature that the state stood to lose millions if it didn’t buy in. They had been counting on being able to keep Powerball fans from going to Oregon or Idaho to get their fix. They had promised to deliver an extra $11.5 million for state coffers over the next two years.

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

Many wonderful commencement speeches have been given this month at this state’s high schools. Unfortunately, too many young might-have-beens weren’t there to hear them.

Randy Dorn, superintendent of public instruction, drew some welcome attention to the state’s abysmal dropout rate last week when he announced the latest round of results from the Washington Assessment of Student Learning.

Dorn spent much of his campaign against his predecessor, Terry Bergeson, attacking the WASL. That may be why he wanted to de-emphasize the fact that 93 percent of the senior class had passed its reading and writing sections this year.

A high passage rate is meaningless in itself. It’s good news only if the test – which has been dumbed down – demands genuine proficiency from students. But any graduation test is better than no graduation test, which is what the state had until a few years ago.

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I own a Chevrolet Colorado pickup, and I love that truck. But last year, when it became obvious that General Motors (the manufacturer of Chevrolets) was going bankrupt, I had to develop a backup strategy: I decided that, were I some day forced to replace my Colorado, my second choice would be a Ford Ranger, followed by a Toyota Tacoma.

Both Ford and Toyota are solvent. Their trucks are solid, comfortable and durable, with decent (not great) mileage. I am glad to pay the going rate, around $22,000. Many folks would choose an Isuzu, or a hybrid 4-wheeler or another ‘greener’ vehicle, and they should be free to make that choice. That’s how we buy and sell cars in a capitalist economy.

Or, rather, that’s the way it used to work.

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You want a composite sketch of the American dad, look no further than the Father’s Day ads.

In the world according to retail marketers, Dad doesn’t like to read. You don’t want to give him a book, a Kindle or a gift certificate to a bookstore. It’s quite possible he’s illiterate. Also, he’s not big on music.

Probably not suits either. About 99 percent of all suit purchases are the woman’s idea. She wants to go somewhere dolled up like Carrie Bradshaw without looking like she’s got a day laborer in tow.

Dad does like clothes, though: polo shirts, shirts with NFL logos, shorts, golf duds, loungewear. No underwear, except maybe with NFL logos.

Despite not liking suits, Dad has a strange penchant for ties, preferably bad ones.

Dad is the Tool User. “Homo faber” is the scientific term. How many Mother’s Day ads do you see hawking cordless drills or power saws? Dad lusts for anything with a handle: socket sets, edgers, wet/dry vacuums, lawn shears, wrenches, utility knives, reciprocating saws. He’s constantly remodeling the house or building a new one.

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

What are they thinking at Tacoma’s city hall?

City officials are – seriously – contemplating asking voters this November to approve a six-year, $180 million levy to repair Tacoma’s streets and sidewalks.

This would be a down payment on a four-phase, citywide overhaul project that would ultimately cost $750 million.

The need for the repairs is undeniable. Many of Tacoma’s streets belong in a Third World city. Some of the potholes look like lunar craters. Their one virtue is that they force people to drive slowly, if only to protect the oil pan.

The issue isn’t necessity; it’s timing. A case could be made for a street-and-sidewalk levy – in better times. This year is not better times. Legions of people have lost jobs, homes and health insurance in the economic downturn.

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I may have finally figured out People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

They’ve opposed the drinking of milk, linked their cause to the shooting of an abortion doctor, scolded veterinarians about fish-tossing. Now they’ve expressed regret that Barack Obama has swatted a fly.

"We support compassion even for the most curious, smallest and least sympathetic animals," PETA spokesman Bruce Friedrich said Wednesday. "We believe that people, where they can be compassionate, should be, for all animals."

My theory: PETA is a troupe of performance artists out to stay in the news by parodying the animal-rights movement. What else explains their antic absurdity and utter disdain for credibility?

Coming soon: public hand-wringing over smashed mosquitoes, exterminated lice, crushed ticks and murdered tapeworms.

Here's fellow blogger Karen Irwin's take on PETA.

This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

There’s nothing wrong, in theory, with Federal Way having its own municipal court. Other cities have their own courts, and the wheels of justice grind along just fine.

But the Federal Way City Council is now exploring the possibility of handing its misdemeanor cases back to King County. That’s understandable. Federal Way launched its municipal court in 2000, and things haven’t gone well. The court looks downright snakebit.

The idea of creating the municipal court in the first place was to control costs. King County District Court had handled Federal Way’s misdemeanors through the 1990s – since the city’s inception – but it had been sending ever-larger bills for its services. Although the new municipal court would cost more than county justice at the outset, city officials figured they’d stay in control of the expenses by not sending the cases to another government.

That should have worked. It hasn’t.

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in Thursday's print edition.

The new bluegrass capital of the Northwest is Bellevue, as improbable as that sounds.

With the announcement this week that Wintergrass is leaving its Tacoma birthplace and moving to allegedly cheaper pastures on King County’s east side, Tacoma has lost a major cultural and economic asset.

=> Read more!

A clown up at Seattle Public Utilities is trying to prove some point by forcing disclosure of the names of employees who participate in what could loosely be called a gay-advocacy group.

He’s got the law on his side, given that SPU – for reasons incomprehensible – subsidizes such “affinity groups.” It actually pays employees for attending the meetings. Under the state’s public records laws, that makes the group and its meetings everybody’s business.

As far as his forced-outing project goes, the fact that it's legal doesn't make it right. Same goes for the people who want to out the signers of Referendum 71.

What piqued my interest is the name of this particular group: “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Questioning and Friends.”

=> Read more!

In this morning's paper, I wrote the pillars of the state economy shouldn't be taken for granted. There's evidence that critical decisions are being made now affecting one of those pillars: The Boeing Company and the aerospace cluster it anchors.

In yesterday's London Times, Boeing CEO Jim McNerney says the company may move the second 787 line outside the Puget Sound region.

Mr McNerney also indicated that he was willing to consider locating a second production line for the 787 outside of Boeing’s traditional base in Seattle because of an on-going battle with unions.

He said that all sites would be considered but a US factory was most likely. Boeing’s Seattle union shut down production for about six weeks last year in a dispute over pay costing the company several billion dollars in lost earnings and compensation payments.

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

Governments rig elections for only one reason: They’re afraid of the people.

The fear appears to run deep among Iran’s ruling mullahs and their allies. The massive demonstrations since Friday’s presidential election show that their worries are well-founded.

So far, no proof has emerged that lunatic-in-chief Mahmoud Ahmadinejad engineered his own re-election as president Friday, but the circumstantial evidence would persuade any impartial jury.

His nearly two-thirds majority against three opponents, including the popular Mir Hossein Mousavi, was suspect. More suspect was his “victory” in their hometowns and among their ethnic constituents. Our last presidential election would have been less than credible had Barack Obama triumphed among white Arizonans or John McCain among black Chicagoans.

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

When the state Supreme Court takes a couple days to unanimously rule against you, it’s a safe bet you didn’t have much of a case.

Such was the fate last week of a lawsuit to prevent the public from seeing a report on the inner workings of the Federal Way Municipal Court.

Judge Michael Morgan spent 15 months trying to keep what is known as the Stephson report from seeing the light of day. Now we know why.

Amy Stephson is a Seattle attorney who specializes in on-the-job harassment and hostile work places. The City of Federal Way hired her in January 2008 to investigate claims that something was seriously amiss in the municipal court.

=> Read more!

Rae Iwamoto, the administrator of the Federal Way Municipal Court, has this to say about Michael Morgan:

If all that I knew about Judge Morgan was based on the items in the Stephson report, I might have a very different view and opinion of him. However, I have had the good fortune and privilege of getting to know the whole person during the year and a half that I have worked with him.

Also, please note that I was not interviewed by Ms. Stephson when she did her investigation, although I was employed at the court during all of the period from January 2006 until November 2007.

What is missing from the report are any allegations of misconduct while Judge Morgan was on the bench. I have received numerous positive comments about his judicial demeanor, knowledge of the law and fairness. And although I recognize the Stephson report is not concerned with his judicial competence, I include this because it does shed light on the whole person.

What is also missing from the report are the numerous activities and attempts by Judge Morgan to foster good staff relationships: He hosted an all-staff outing to a Mariners game; hosted an all-staff bowling party; paid for custom T-shirts for staff to wear at a Relay for Life event; and provided other generous gifts and perks.

=> Read more!

Michael Morgan, the embattled Federal Way judge, offers this rebuttal to the newly released Stephson report, which harshly criticized his administration of the city's municipal court:

Ms. Stephson's report was thoroughly vetted by the Commission on Judicial Conduct. The CJC interviewed all the witnesses Ms. Stephson interviewed and also interviewed additional eyewitnesses.

The CJC was also furnished a report written by a lawyer that determined that one employee that Ms. Stephson heavily relied upon was considered by that lawyer to be "blatantly dishonest." Four days after Ms. Stephson interviewed this particular employee, this employee also made unfair and untrue claims about four other court employees.

Eyewitnesses (besides myself) interviewed by the CJC contradicted some of Ms. Stephson's assertions and the witness that one report described as "blatantly dishonest" was contradicted in large part by an eyewitness that Ms. Stephson did not interview. Ms. Stephson, as reflected in her report, did not ask for my account of certain situations before she made conclusions about those situations.

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Inherent to parenthood are awkward conversations.

Parents know them as the Where-How-Why-Yuck conversations. They don’t necessarily follow in the where, how, why order but they all pretty much finish with “Yuck!” (Reference classic “Where do babies come from?”)

New parents can expect these exchanges to begin at about age four, although some kids start much earlier, peak at age nine or 10, and dramatically drop off at age 13, only to pick up with gusto in mid-life, or so I am told.

The best way to get through these “talks” is a “just the facts” approach.

The one I always dreaded was the “Where did this meat come from?” And every kid asks it.

The first time it’s asked, you can usually deflect: “Fred Meyer, honey, now eat your green beans,” but if your little one was prompted by an older sibling who counts grossing out a younger sibling as one of life’s few joys, then you will not get off so easy.

You will have to say, “It came from a cow, honey.”

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

Tobacco is unique. As many have pointed out, it’s the only legal product that, when used as intended, kills its users.

It’s unique in another respect. Paradoxically, it’s been exempt from the Food and Drug Administration’s oversight. The FDA has routinely regulated lipstick, dog food, bottled water, prescription drugs, Cheerios, mascara and other innocuous and outright wholesome items.

Yet it’s been explicitly forbidden from regulating tobacco, which kills an estimated 400,000 American every year – nearly as many as were killed by the entire Second World War.

That’s about to change. Congress on Friday gave final approval to a bill that will finally let the FDA restrict the contents and marketing of cigarettes and other tobacco products. The agency will be able to order the likes of Philip Morris and Lorillard to sharply cut nicotine levels, alter the stew of chemicals they add to cigarettes and reduce their addictive properties.

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in Sunday's print edition.

So Randy Dorn wants another delay in holding our children, their teachers and the state’s school districts accountable for learning.

The state schools superintendent is not the first nor will he be the last public official to call for pushing back high school graduation requirements. The math WASL and its underpinnings have proved about as popular with politicians as the prospects of closing state parks or letting sex offenders run loose.

That said, Dorn’s comments last week did provide a glimmer of hope for those of us who believe that a diploma should mean a student did more than warm a seat for four years.

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The timing is curious.

On Tuesday, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright – Barack Obama’s pastor not long ago – blames “them Jews” for keeping him away from the president. (Actually, comments like “them Jews” and “God damn America” may have more to do with his lack of photo ops with Obama.)

On Wednesday, a Jew-hating extremist shoots and kills a guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The nation is outraged and the air waves are full of condemnations of anti-semitism.

On Thursday, Wright suddenly finds it a good idea to apologize “for the way I framed my comments.”

“I misspoke, and I sincerely meant no harm or ill will to the American Jewish community ...”

It seems the Rev. Wright can sound downright reasonable when circumstances warrant.

The Wintergrass plot thickens.

We had an editorial Thursday on efforts to keep the Wintergrass festival from moving to Bellevue. One of the problems festival organizers have cited with staying in Tacoma is the Hotel Murano's chillier attitude toward musicians jamming throughout the facility compared to when it was the Sheraton. See article here.

The editorial didn't mention it, but the organizers also would like the Murano to match the lower room rate they say is being offered by the Hyatt Regency in Bellevue.

Today we received this e-mail from the Murano's Portland ownership. It makes some excellent points about Provenance Hotels' investment in Tacoma's arts scene (which we lauded at the time the Murano opened), but the tone suggests that negotiations with the hotel may have reached an impasse.

Side note: Although the editorial did describe the ownership as "absentee" (it is based in Portland, after all) it never referred to it as "uncaring." All we said is that if Wintergrass stays in Tacoma, "the city needs to work on the Hotel Murano's absentee owners and impress on them how important keeping Wintergrass is for downtown."

Dear Tacoma:
As the management partner of the company that owns the Hotel Murano, I would like to offer our perspective on the Wintergrass Festival.

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North Korea’s bizarre government has been in the kidnapping business for a very long time.

Its agents may have abducted dozens of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and early 80s, including a 13 year old, Megumi Yokata. The Japanese government has identified 16 who were spirited out of Japan to North Korea, and Kim Jong-Il has fessed up to 13 of those.

Here's a Slate magazine discussion of this nasty North Korean habit.

Hundreds of South Koreans have been snatched over the years. The northern dictatorship to this day claims to be the rightful government of South Korea, so by its lunatic logic it may feel entitled to grab anyone on the Peninsula.

Kim Jong-Il is a famous movie buff. In 1978, he is believed to have ordered the abduction of actress Choi Eun-hee and her film director husband, Shin Sang-Ok. They were put to work making movies. Shin made a break for it at one point and was sent to prison for five years. Eventually, they both got out.

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in Friday's print edition.

Two American journalists sentenced to 12 years of hard labor in North Korea this week are quite the catch for Pyongyang.

One’s the attractive sister of a TV news personality and suffers from a recurring ulcer that is sure to be aggravated by time in a North Korean labor camp. The other, of South Korean descent, is mom to a 4-year-old girl who recently had to celebrate preschool graduation without her.

Both were reporting a story on human trafficking for former Vice President’s Al Gore’s San Francisco cable television network when they were arrested. Their families, journalism organizations, women’s groups and human rights advocates are all pleading for their return.

These are not the sort of Americans that the United States can simply leave behind, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il knows it.

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

Unless you suffer from cancer, rheumatoid arthritis or some other serious and difficult-to-treat illness, you may not know about the promise of “biologic” medicines.

Decisions being made now in Congress will likely determine how big that promise will be.
Biologics are a new breed of pharmaceuticals manufactured in living organisms, often bacteria. Based on advances in molecular biology, they are precisely targeted at the biochemical processes that produce disease.

A good example is Herceptin, which is proving successful in treating the most aggressive forms of breast cancer. Developed from an antibody found in mice, it homes in on the stem cells that fuel the spread of breast cancer. By comparison, such traditional treatments as surgery and chemotherapy are crude and untargeted.

=> Read more!

There were two state Supreme Court justices that I would have liked to see on the bench Tuesday when the court was hearing oral arguments in Federal Way Municipal Court Judge Michael Morgan's lawsuit against his city and The News Tribune. (See our editorial).

Justices Barbara Madsen and Richard Sanders both recused themselves and were replaced by Court of Appeals judges. Sanders consistently votes for public disclosure. Madsen is a bit more unpredictable, although she appeared to be the justice most on the fence in the pivotal Soter v. Cowles case two years ago. Madsen sided with the majority in that decision, but expressed grave concerns about the implications of letting public bodies cover up investigations into matters of legitimate public interest.

There are some important distinctions between Soter and Morgan's case, at least in this non-lawyer's mind. Soter involved records pertaining to a child's peanut-allergy death while on a school field trip. The Spokane School District, anticipating the lawsuit that the child's parents later filed, hired attorneys to investigate its liability. In the Federal Way case, the city attorney hired an investigator to follow up on an hostile workplace complaint. This was an investigation of the complaint's veracity, not the city's potential legal culpability.

One other important difference: At fault in the Spokane case (presumably, since the report wasn't released) were school personnel and field trip volunteers. In Federal Way's case, the focus of the investigation was an elected official who, court officer or not, should expect greater public scrutiny.

This editorial will appear in Thursday's print edition.

The fight over an investigation into the Federal Way Municipal Court could have broad implications for the public’s right to know everywhere in Washington.

Judge Michael Morgan is suing his own city and The News Tribune in an effort to keep a potentially embarrassing report under wraps.

The report, written by a Seattle attorney hired by the city, followed an allegation that the municipal court was a hostile workplace. The city was planning to release the document last year to The News Tribune, until Morgan intervened.

On Tuesday, he pleaded his case to the state Supreme Court, where it became evident that he is willing to try any legal theory to keep the report out of the public eye.

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in Thursday's print edition.

Wintergrass should stick with its Tacoma roots

We could learn today or Friday whether the Wintergrass music festival will move to Bellevue next year after 16 years in Tacoma.

If the festival board opts for Bellevue, it won’t be due to any lack of effort from local folks to keep it here.

When word got out that festival organizers were considering relocating north to a city better known for its shopping than its roots music, representatives from the city and hospitality industry went into action. They put together an attractive incentives package designed to keep the bluegrass festival here, bringing thousands of music lovers from all over the country to Tacoma, filling up hotel rooms and injecting millions of dollars into the community every February.

Bellevue offers logistical opportunities for the festival that Tacoma can’t – particularly the ability to put up everyone in one hotel (the 700-room-plus Hyatt Regency) at a reasonable price instead of scattering them around at different locations. Five stages would be offered at one site, saving on the cost and inconvenience of shuttling between venues.

But the most important incentive Bellevue offers is less tangible than room rates and performance sites.

=> Read more!

The bad guy in this wreck Tuesday is the driver who caused the collision. Especially if that driver turns out to have been drunk or otherwise impaired.

But what about the adults in the Ford Explorer that got slammed? Nine people – including six children – were sardined into the SUV, which had seats for eight. None of them was buckled, including a 2-year-old who should have been in a safety seat.

That toddler and an older child were thrown from the Explorer as it rolled; both were taken to the hospital in critical condition. Police say they might have escaped with only minor injuries if they'd been properly secured.

It's been common knowledge for – 40 years? 50 years? – that seat belts prevent injuries in car accidents. Washington law requires their use, for reasons this crash makes abundantly clear. I'm feeling sorry for the parents of the injured children, but I can't come up with a single excuse for failing to buckle in those kids before pulling out of the driveway.

The lawmakers who drafted the state's new domestic partnership law may have inadvertently sabotaged the effort to repeal it – just by making it so long.

This just in from Gary Randall, a repeal advocate who's trying to put the petition drive together:

The process of preparing this petition for print has not been usual or normal and at times very frustrating for all of us, in a number of ways.

Perhaps the most challenging is the fact that the bill – SB 5688, must be printed, in its entirety, on the petition. The bill is about 100 pages.

We have had experts in these matters working on how to best accomplish this. Several have said that this is the longest bill ever printed on a petition form in the history of the state. I don't know about that, but I am satisfied that those working on it have done an excellent job, received approval from the Secretary of State and finally, it is going to press.

We will post a sample of the petition on our website for you to see, however we have been instructed to not have people download and print because of the size and configuration of the form.

UPDATE: The Secretary of State's office released this photo of the petition. Sponsors used a layout with 6-point font and a fold-out design that has eight “pages.” When unfolded, the petition is nearly 2 feet by 3 feet, front and back.

We’re commenting tomorrow on the latest plan to require Americans to carry medical coverage. We like the idea of an individual mandate.

A few observations relevant to the current attempt in Congress to do something about health care:

• Health Affairs, an authoritative policy journal, says the $2.4 trillion America spent on health care last year accounted for a sixth of the country’s entire gross domestic product. An analysis the journal published in February projected that health care would cost a $4.28 trillion in 2017, a fifth of the estimated GDP. Another analysis has it consuming a fourth of GDP by 2025.

• Straight-line this trend out and eventually we’re spending every penny we’ve got on health care. Just joking. Kind of.

• Various studies have shown Americans to be less healthy than the citizens of many other wealthy countries.

• Medicare, famously, is fast going bust: We now spend $450 billion on it every year, and Medicare taxes aren't keeping up. The federal government spends another $200 billion a year on Medicaid, money that is matched by the states.

• General Motors has long spent more on health insurance than on steel. In 2005, then-GM CEO Rick Wagoner was warning that health costs were threatening GM’s survival. At the time, it was spending $5.2 billion a year covering 1.1 million people; health costs were adding $1,500 to each automobile it produced.

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

Hillary Clinton must be gnashing her teeth.

During the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama beat her up over one of the differences in their dueling health care plans. She had proposed a federal requirement that all Americans carry medical coverage. He denounced it as a plot “to go after people’s wages.”

Now that Obama is in the White House, the idea of an individual mandate apparently looks better. In response to a congressional plan to include such a requirement in pending health care legislation, he’s calling it “a principle of shared responsibility – making every American responsible for having health insurance coverage, and asking that employers share in the costs.”

Clinton had it right the first time around. As Obama now acknowledges, the proposed mandate is a matter of individual responsibility.

The best analogy is mandatory auto insurance. When an uninsured driver hits someone, he or she shifts the cost of the crash – sometimes huge hospital bills – to the victims. Some scofflaws still drive without insurance, but the requirement has reduced the number of uninsured on the roads.

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in Tuesday's print edition.

Anyone who has looked on in horror at the increasing politicization of the judiciary through big-ticket campaigns can take some relief from a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this week.

On Monday, the court ruled that a West Virginia judge should have recused himself from a case involving a business executive who spent $3 million to help the judge get elected.

Three years after his election, West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals Justice Brent Benjamin cast the deciding vote that overturned a $50 million jury verdict against the donor’s corporation.

On Monday, a 5-4 majority on the nation’s highest court took note that the businessman had spent three times more than all other Benjamin supporters combined and deemed the connection too obvious to ignore.

=> Read more!

Ooh wee, it’s going to be a long, hot summer.

The air is stagnant. Ain’t nothin’moving. The notion that the stimulus package won’t improve things fast enough has settled like a rock. Folks are heavy with worry. They’re still losing jobs, or losin’ sleep about losing jobs. They’re being asked to take a 24% pay cut, asked to reduce their hours, asked to take a leave of absence.

Asked? More like told.

Retirement accounts have been decimated. Thousands are getting kicked out of insurance plans, others are told to expect a seventy percent increase in their premiums over the coming year.

We find that other countries are taking advantage of our instability, our vulnerability. North Korea is pointing out to the world that the U.S. of A is just a paper tiger and our paper’s no good. How are we gonna kick their ass without kickin’ their ass? If there’s a third rail, let it be shown to us now.

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Supreme Court ruling making it easier to force elected judges off cases if they have accepted big campaign contributions is a strike against the increasing politicization of the judiciary.

The House’s plan to require individuals to carry health insurance, provided affordable options exist, is a fundamental matter of shared responsibility. People who go without coverage cost us all.

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.

This editorial will appear in Tuesday's print edition.

Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler spoke too soon Monday, or so it seemed for a while.

Only an hour after Kreidler announced a huge increase in the number of Washingtonians with no health insurance, his economist was scrambling to recalculate the numbers.

Kreidler had said he expects the ranks of the uninsured to swell 21 percent, or 150,000 people, by the end of the year. That number was based partly on the seemingly foregone conclusion that the state’s Basic Health Plan would have to kick 40,000 people off its rolls to absorb a $238 million budget cut.

An hour after Kreidler’s press conference, the state’s Health Care Authority boss, Steve Hill, made an announcement of his own. Instead of forcing people out of the state’s health plan for the working poor, the agency would cover its budget hole by asking subscribers to pay more out of pocket.

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This editorial will appear in Tuesday's print edition.

Primary filings can reveal a lot about incumbents

It’s been said that any publicity is good publicity. A couple of high-profile incumbents may beg to differ.

Some South Sound office holders drew one or even two opponents for the Aug. 18 primary. But two incumbents who have been in the news – and not in a good way – have attracted swarms of eager candidates itching to replace them.

Most notably, five candidates are challenging Tacoma School Board member Connie Rickman, who was president of the board during the troubled tenure of former superintendent Charlie Milligan. Fellow board member Kurt Miller, an early critic of the school leader, drew only one challenger. The conclusion is obvious: Rickman is considered vulnerable over the Milligan affair, Miller less so.

Municipal Court races rarely drum up much attention, but that’s certainly not the case this year in Federal Way.

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

Most of the controversy surrounding Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor focuses on a sentence she uttered in Berkeley in 2001:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Barack Obama and his spokesman have more or less said that she misspoke on that occasion. But a raft of documents released by the White House last week suggest that the “better conclusion” part has been more recurrent theme than one-time misstatement. Seven years earlier, for example, she said almost the same thing, adding that “better” meant “a more compassionate, caring decision.”

These statements should be kept in context. In the Berkeley speech, she also acknowledged that white males could reach wise decisions, as in the 1954 Supreme Court decision mandating school desegregation. Nor did she seem enthusiastic about the jurisprudence of a black male who’d grown up in poverty, Clarence Thomas.

On the whole, though, she sounded skeptical that judges can “truly transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices” and suggested that genuine impartiality was no more than an aspiration “because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others.”

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This editorial will appear in Sunday's print edition.

County sign law needs enforcement

The recession gets blamed for many a deficit these days and often rightfully so. But Pierce County’s failure to rid street corners and rights of way of illegal signs can’t be so easily explained away.

Long before the current economic troubles, Pierce County was doing a poor job of dealing with roadside clutter. Tolerance bred, if not contempt for the law, then ignorance of it. And the community was the uglier for it.

Relief of a sort came in 2007 when the Pierce County Council launched an experimental sign-removal program in East Pierce County. The work continued into 2008, aided by a $168,000 earmark in the 2008 budget.

In all, county workers collected more than 16,000 signs – that is, until their work came to a halt last August.
Public works officials have cited various reasons for abandoning the crackdown: They didn’t know how to handle new rules adopted by the County Council; the department has more pressing priorities; the council didn’t correctly word a budget provision appropriating $100,000 to the task this year.

Whatever the explanation, illegal signs have proliferated in the absence of anyone doing anything about them. News Tribune reporter David Wickert recently counted 37 signs at just two East Pierce County intersections.

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The main issue here, for those who've obviously missed it, is not the pros and cons of legalizing pot – it's drug use in public schools.

We wouldn't be cheering this kid if he'd downed a shot of whiskey in front of the Peninsula High School class, either.

George W. Bush probably said it best: "When I was young and stupid, I was young and stupid."

Today is National Trails Day – a day to rediscover how much fun it is to take a walk in nature. While you're at it, take a kid with you. While adult participation in outdoor recreation is growing, participation by children has dropped 11 percent since 2006.

My favorite local trails are at Point Defiance Park, where I walk with friends almost every week. But I have a love/hate relationship with them, having twice broken an ankle by tripping on roots.

The lessons: Wear sturdy walking shoes or boots, not sneakers, on rough trails. And watch where you're going. You might avoid my two trips to the emergency room.

Click here for a printable map of the Point Defiance trails.

The day after the November '08 election, columnist George Will commented on the part of Barack Obama’s victory speech respectfully lauding American combat forces in Iraq. Will noted that Obama was already beginning to “find his voice as commander in chief….”

A brief article in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, combined with five months of systematic actions, supports Will’s hypothesis. The Obama administration just refused to comply with a federal judge’s subpoena of classified intelligence. Ordered to provide “access to a top secret document in a wiretapping lawsuit,” the administration declined, terming the order an “intolerable risk to national security.” This challenge may reach the Supreme Court.

Now, combine this kind of tough defense with several other related and recent developments (for yesterday’s Cairo speech, see the postscript below): Continuance of the Bush/Rumsfeld military commission system for trying enemy combatants; support for indefinite detention of 100 such combatants, thus hedging on the closing date of Guantanamo; opposition to a Senate Democrat “truth commission” to investigate alleged Bush-era “torture” of prisoners; refusal to prosecute CIA agents falsely accused of such “torture” and rebuttal of Nancy Pelosi's version of her "torture briefing"; refusal to release “torture” photos to the media; and, as noted above, strong indications the Obama administration supports, and is continuing, wiretapping terrorist telephone conversations.

Then there’s the belated admission that removing Saddam Hussein was indeed a great victory over Middle Eastern tyranny; and finally there is Obama’s Afghanistan surge and reinvigorated fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban.

To be sure, all of Obama's rhetoric and Middle East diplomacy purports 'moderation' and 'opening dialogue' but what about his actions? One could argue that all of the above add up to, well, a militaristic campaign to protect America and pursue and defeat our terrorist enemies. One could also argue the new Commander in Chief has indeed “found his voice” and it has a slight Texas twang....

P.S. Re yesterday’s Cairo speech: Today’s Wall Street Journal’s oped headline reads “Barack Hussein Bush.”

This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

The robbers who gunned down an armored car guard inside the Lakewood Wal-Mart Tuesday were mad dog killers. Also, uncommonly foolish.

This utterly senseless crime appears to have been planned. One of the four defendants charged with murder is a woman who worked inside the store; she is believed to have provided the two actual gunmen with information about the comings and goings of the armored car.

Despite the planning, the robbery was an instant blunder. Some fathomless depravity prompted the robbers to walk up and shoot Karl Husted in the head – they apparently knew he was wearing body armor – without giving him a chance to peacefully surrender the money he’d picked up in the store.

Their casual brutality triggered a massive manhunt that included the FBI. It also triggered the state’s capital punishment law: Murder in the commission of another felony potentially incurs the death penalty.

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Criminals can be on the callous side.

Get a load of how one of the accused Wal-Mart robbers, Marshawn Turpin, reportedly responded when a detective asked if he had anything to say to the family of the guard killed in the robbery:

Turpin: "Sorry, I guess."

Detective: "You guess you're sorry? A man was shot dead for money."

Turpin: "I wouldn't apologize. What would that do. He's already gone."

Detective: "If you would have gotten away with this," the detective asked, "how would you have felt?"

Turpin: "Bad, but, but I would have gotten over it because of the money."

And what do you do after robbing a store and leaving an armored car guard dead inside? For two other suspects, it seems to have been time for a spending spree.

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During a tour of Giza, a photo, one among many, is captured today of President Obama walking under a Sphinx. The iconic face of Egypt, the Sphinx looks to be made of sand and yet is seemingly impervious to time. Somehow the photo captures the impermanence of President Obama’s youth, his vitality, his effectiveness, as it would should any of us stand next to such a timeless giant.

And therein lies the value of visiting the world’s wonders. We go see these amazing achievements of man, in part, because we are reminded that there are things that went before us and things that go on long after we are gone. We go to these treasures to be reminded that time is not on our side, that we have but one brief moment to get it right.

This couldn’t be truer than for our current president, who is only guaranteed four years to make inroads where there are none in U.S./ Middle East policy. One brief moment to get it right.

He enters the arena with scaremongering among all sides. War. Jihad. Oil. Blood.My territory. Your territory.

Conservatives are upset today that he called ours a Muslim nation regurgitating, (or maybe it never left?), old campaign rhetoric that Barrack Hussein Obama is secretly hell bent on the Islamization of the U.S.

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

There are two good arguments for the City of Lakewood’s decision to require its contractors to confirm the legality of their employees.

First, there will never be a solution for illegal immigration in this country unless businesses stop hiring undocumented workers.

The dynamic U.S. economy has always been a magnet for immigrants – legal and illegal – seeking better incomes. As long as enterprising Guatemalans or Chinese or Mexicans can readily find work in America, legions of them will find a way to sneak past the borders.

Even a vast roundup of illegal residents – logistically impossible in the first place – couldn’t begin to solve the problem. Drying up the jobs is the only way to restrict immigration to those who’ve stood in line and played by the rules.

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This editorial will appear in Thursday's print edition.

Nearly 17 years have passed since Misty Copsey disappeared during the Puyallup Fair, 16 years since her jeans, sock and underwear turned up in a ditch near Highway 410.

Puyallup police have known for two years that six hairs found in those jeans were suitable for DNA testing, and they’ve known for at least a month that they’d probably be asked to publicly account for why they hadn’t requested that test.

What are police waiting for?

On May 22, following The News Tribune’s publication of an exhaustive account of the investigation into Misty’s disappearance, police spokesman Dave McDonald said, “I expect that it’s likely we’re going to ask for a test, and very soon.”

The state crime lab has yet to receive Puyallup’s request. Puyallup police said Wednesday they still intend to submit one, and soon.

We’d like to believe them. But this wouldn’t be the first time the police have said they were pulling out all the stops and in reality doing little.

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Tuesday’s deadly Wal-Mart robbery struck too close to home for me. My wife Patti – who's been quoted as a witness in the news accounts – was in the store at the time and not far from the shooting. The only thing between her and the gun was a rack of clothes.

She could easily have been shot herself had she entered the store a minute later and wound up standing 40 or 50 feet closer to the crime.

I never met the guard who was killed, Kurt Husted. The sympathy I feel for him and his family is deeper for knowing how close to tragedy my own family came in the shooting. Life is fragile, even when you're just out doing your job, even when you're just out shopping.

Lakewood's experiment with E-Verify mirrors intense national concerns about competition for jobs among citizens and illegal immigrants during a severe recession.

The Puyallup Police Department's foot-dragging on requesting a DNA test in the Misty Copsey case looks familiar. It's the same defensive posture that caused a lot of other missteps in the investigation of her 1992 disappearance.

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.

This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

The Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky was once warned that his rival Josef Stalin would not strike at his ideas, but “at his head” – which is precisely what Stalin did.

That’s the tactic of terrorists: Don’t argue, kill. An anti-government zealot, Scott Roeder, appears to have done just that by gunning down Wichita abortion provider George Tiller.

As one of a handful of American doctors specializing in late-term abortion, Tiller has been a flashpoint of bitter controversy for many years.

The polarization has been so intense that it is hard to determine what Tiller’s practice actually consists of. He and his supporters say he rescues women whose lives and health are gravely imperiled by pregnancies gone tragically awry. His critics say he also performs elective abortions of viable fetuses – a practice barred by Kansas law.

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This editorial will appear in Wednesday's print edition.


‘Outing’ petition signers could backfire

WhoSigned.Org is running a risk with plans to “out” those who sign petitions for Referendum 71, a proposed statewide ballot measure that seeks to overturn “everything but marriage” rights for same-sex domestic partners.

The group could do what the killer of Dr. George Tiller did for the anti-abortion movement: potentially create a backlash and inspire sympathy for the very people it opposes. That could happen if WhoSigned.Org’s actions result in even a few voters being harassed for exercising their constitutional right to petition the government.

WhoSigned.Org director Brian Murphy claims that it’s not his group’s goal to make it easier to harass potential signers. (He has yet to decide whether to publish signers’ street addresses or just their city and ZIP code.) He says the purpose of creating a searchable database for petition signers’ names is “to have a conversation.”

Sorry, but that doesn’t pass the smell test.

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The murder of a Kansas late-term abortion doctor – and the reaction to it – is a good illustration of the need for civility President Obama spoke of at Notre Dame.

The people behind WhoSigned.org aren't likely to help their cause by targeting individual citizens who want a referendum on domestic partnerships.

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.

I took advantage of a lovely Sunday morning to finally visit the "new" Hill Ward site at Fort Steilacoom Park. What a difference from the last time I was there a few years ago.

Most of the ugly, graffiti-covered ruins of the Western State Hospital building are gone. A paved walkway leads up to the site from the path that circles Lake Waughop – a local treasure that many locals don't seem to know about. Someone seems to have scattered wildflower seeds about, as splashes of color dotted the landscape.

It's interesting to read the historical information about the site and surrounding area that has been carved into the stone floor (pictured) of the building's ruins. The ward once housed Western State patients who worked on the hospital's farm – which is now part of the park. The farm's barns and many of the fruit trees are still there.

It cost the state, Pierce County and Lakewood $693,000 to tear down the dangerous old building and create the memorial to those who worked and lived there from the 1930s to the mid-'60s. It was worth the money, and a hike up the hill on a pretty day.

Here's the article by Brent Champaco that ran when the memorial was commemorated in mid-March.

This editorial will appear in Tuesday's print edition.

President Obama might want to have a chat with his Interior secretary, Ken Salazar.

While Salazar and his agency have lately been touting the promise of harnessing of ocean tides and waves, the rest of the Obama administration appears headed in another direction.

In the budget Obama recently sent to Congress, he seeks big increases for nearly every source of renewable energy but wave and tidal power.

The budget would deliver big boosts to research of solar, wind and geothermal power-generating technologies. But funding for studies of wave and tidal power would be cut one-fourth, from $40 million to $30 million.

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Is this a slow news time? Or is bashing Rush Limbaugh really the best the Democrats can do only five months into “Change We Can Believe In”?

I am referring to the news cycle of the last three weeks in which Democrats (and a few Republicans) have dragged out the tired, worn-out (15 years old) mantra of “Rush Limbaugh’s extremism = GOP main-streamism!!!”

Please consider:

1. If Rush Limbaugh is “the Worst,” then he has an evil twin in Keith Olbermann. If you want to hear some truly venomous rants, turn on "The Countdown."

2. Speaking of which, Rush is no more representative of Republicans than Olbermann is of Democrats. They are both extremist members of mainstream parties.

3. And why don’t the Dems talk about their "positives"? Aren’t the “stimulus,” “ending torture” and “universal health care” good enough news banter? Isn’t Barack Obama still our hero, the Messiah, the greatest president ever?

4. Of course, the best reason for Democrats to leave Limbaugh alone is because Rush LOVES all this attention! These attacks are truly a gift, the best break Rush has had since Monica Lewinsky saved that little blue dress.

5. Limbaugh wanted John McCain to lose for many, many reasons, but one of them was to have Obama for a target, upping his listenership to 20 million (that’s 5 percent of all Americans) per three-hour show. Now, his ratings are being upped even further by the very folks he is attacking. Tune into 770 AM: El Rushbo is on a roll; Dittoheads are happier than they have been in a decade.

6. And poor Keith O: He’s learning that it’s a lot harder to preach hate when your party has power and it’s your guy in the White House. Winning elections, and taking responsibility, is “the Worst.” But maybe Keith’s ratings will go up in 2013?....

Note: Thanks D.A.

We're writing about the Obama administration’s decision to cut funding for tidal power research just weeks after its own Interior Department suggested it could be a leading energy source. The cut smacks of bad policy.

We're also running a revised version of Pat's blog post about the tendency of many smokers to treat the world as their ash tray.

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

Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Pierce County's major 911 call center has been drafted into what's shaping up to be a heated battle for the Tacoma City Council's at-large position.

Keven Rojecki, a legislative liaison and district representative for the Washington State Council of Firefighters who is running against Metro Parks commissioner Victoria Woodards, issued a press release (see below) Friday expressing concern over what he's read in The News Tribune about problems at the Law Enforcement Support Agency.

To recap, the agency that handles the bulk of the county's 911 calls is in trouble. It's overwhelmed with calls and underwhelmed with funding. It has long struggled to answer calls quickly, but had been making progress. Now LESA faces the possibility of laying off communications staff this summer as declining tax revenues squeeze the county and city governments that fund it.

Rojecki complains that it takes too long for LESA's call takers to transfer calls to a separate Tacoma fire dispatch. LESA officials agree. But here's the rub: Money that Tacoma and other jurisdictions spend on having separate fire dispatches could be going to beef up staffing at LESA. A recent audit found LESA's cost-per-call was about $9; Tacoma Fire's was $32. UPDATE: Ian Demsky over in the newsroom just posted the link to the full audit report.

There's the chicken-and-egg question of what should come first: LESA improving its call-response time so that agencies feel more confident about a consolidated dispatch, or the agencies consolidating to give LESA the funding it needs to make more progress. I don't have the answer, but the underlying issue remains whether it is efficient – either in the short or long term – for jurisdictions to maintain separate police and fire dispatches.

It'll be interesting to hear how the candidates address that question. The police and fire unions are powerhouses in local politics.

Rojecki troubled by Law Enforcement Support Agency issues
Firefighter expects more efficiency and accountability

TACOMA – Firefighter Keven Rojecki has been reading the Tacoma News Tribune (TNT) articles on the audit and financial problems of the Law Enforcement Support Agency (LESA) with apprehension. As a firefighter for 18 years he knows the importance of fast and reliable 911 response times.

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