I have to tip my hat to Jason Mercier for his quip (those are his words in the headline) after learning the state Arts Commission had extended the contract for its Poet Laureat through the end of 2009.

Mercier is director for the Center for Government Reform for the Washington Policy Center, a sorta watchdog group on state spending.

Samuel L. Green of Waldron will get $13,500 for continuing his job as Washington Poet Laureat. The governor's budget office approved the 1-year contract extension last month.

I also have to commend Mercier for his restraint. He made no mention of the state's $6 billion budget shortfall -- well, not directly anyway.

He's leaving the Olympia Press Corps to go work for newly sworn-in state Treasurer Jim McIntire.

Once again, Niki Sullivan has a post with links to the Post Intelligencer's announcement.

With the imminent sale of the P.I. (or not) you can't blame the guy. And he's another who loved being a reporter.

Dave Ammons, Associated Press
Dave Postman, Seattle Times
Ralph Thomas, Seattle Times
Chris Mulick, TriCity Herald
Chris McGann, Seattle P.I.

And I'm not mentioning the newspapers who just pulled their reporters out of Olympia.

Who's next?

I knew reading the TVW blog would pay off for our readers, too.

They reported the Randy Hodgins told members of the Appropriations Committee that the UW will freeze enrollment, so 300-400 fewer students will be admitted. That's out of something like 40,000 total enrollment.

Gov. Chris Gregoire gave the universities a lot of flexibility to make cuts where they choose.

Here is a link to Niki Sullivan's post on Capitol Record, the TVW blog.

A commenter on the post about Jan Shabro being appointed Pierce County Auditor made reference to Shabro finishing one point ahead of Dick McEntee, one of two other finalists for the position. It attributes the statement to Pierce County Councilman Dick Muri.

I wan't aware of any scoring system being used in the controversial appointment, so I asked Muri for an explanation. He said he used his own personal scoring system to rank the candidates, and it's a practice he's used hundreds of times in the Air Force.

The council as a whole did not score the candidates, but Muri said he informed his colleagues of the outcome of his scoring during the executive session just before the council vote.

For the record, Shabro finished with 59 points out of 70 on the Muri Scale, one point ahead of McEntee. Katie Blinn scored a 46.

The appointment is controversial because Democrats wanted the council to replace Democrat Pat McCarthy with another Democrat, even though voters approved a charter change in 2007 making the position non-partisan. Nathe Lawver, chairman of the Pierce County Democratic Party, maintains that council members improperly modified the charter and repeatedly violated state Open Public Meetings law while creating the process for appointing a replacement for McCarthy.

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This is the segment from downtown Seattle to the University District and Husky Stadium. The first segment from downtown Seattle to Sea-Tac International Airport will open later this year. The $1.9 billion University Link line is scheduled to open in 2016 and add more than 70,000 daily riders to the system, Sound Transit says.

FTA awards Sound Transit $813M grant to begin University Link light rail extension

Sound Transit today welcomed Federal Transit Administration officials to Seattle as the FTA awarded an $813 million grant to build the University Link light rail extension. The nation’s top transit official awarded the grant agreement at Sound Transit headquarters.

“It’s time to get to work and start digging,” said Sound Transit Board Chair and Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels. “Thanks to the FTA and Senator Murray, we’re ready to deliver more transit options and more construction jobs to this region with the University Link project.”

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Here's a story I wrote for tomorrow's paper. You've seen parts of it already because I wrote about them in mid-December when Gov. Chris Gregoire unveiled her 2009-11 capital, transportation and operating budgets.

Here is a link to the project list.

BY Joseph Turner
joe.turner@thenewstribune.com
Expansion of the University of Washington Tacoma is one of the projects that Gov. Chris Gregoire counts as part of Washington Jobs Now, the state version of an economic stimulus plan that she says will create 20,000 jobs over the next two years.
The governor unveiled her jobs plan Thursday in Seattle, but it’s largely a repackaging of the transportation and capital budgets she submitted to the Legislature in mid-December, with an added emphasis on green-collar jobs, sweeter unemployment benefits and some last-minute add-ons such as paving projects that can begin fairly soon.
There is $34 million for Phase III of the UW Tacoma campus, a project that will renovate the Joy Building in downtown Tacoma and add a fourth floor to provide additional classroom and faculty office space. That building will help the campus make a transition to a four-year campus. It will provide capacity for at least 600 more fulltime students.

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I'm losing track of all the unions that are suing Gov. Chris Gregoire, basically accusing her of double-crossing them by not forwarding agreed-upon contracts with pay raises to the Legislature.

Her budget director, Victor Moore, said the state can't afford to pay for the pay raises, so the guv doesn't have to.

Nurses at Rainier School, Western State Hospital and other state facilities are among the 900 state nurses who are suing to governor.

The suit, filed on behalf of 900 state registered nurses, alleges bad faith bargaining, breach of contract, and failure to follow the legal mandate that would implement the collectively bargained agreement.

The 40,000-member Federation of State Employees was the first to sue. Two SEIU locals followed suit, so to speak. This latest one by the nurses is another local of the Service Employees International Union. It's 1199NW.

State Nurses Sue Governor to Protect Safe Patient Care

SEIU Healthcare 1199NW registered nurses today filed suit in King County to protect patient care and public safety in state psychiatric hospitals, nursing homes, and schools for developmentally disabled and juvenile offenders.

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God Bless the Washington State Labor Council, David Groves and all the kind works they do for struggling workers everywhere!

(There! Does that make up for all the slights I've given you so far and all those I'll give labor in the future?)

Seriously, David has a point about our set-up for this legislative session. We tended to give more of an airing to business concerns than labor. But, trust me, it will balance out over the session.

Here are the stories he refers to, John Gillie's and mine. Both ran in last Sunday's paper.

Here's the exchange of e-mails between Groves and me, starting Monday, the very first day of session.

I couldn't help but compare the legislative-agenda coverage you granted all the business lobbying groups (today's "Business lobby battens down" featuring a complete listing of their priorities along with their explanation of why they are necessary -- sans comment from opponents of their agenda), compared to the coverage you gave the state's largest labor organization after we had a press briefing on our agenda last week (Joe's blog posting about one of our issues -- raising unemployment benefits -- and a quick mention in an Joe's Sunday article about whether taxes will increase).

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This is a particularly scathing condemnation of King County government and the way it treated a public records request by a citizen. The case was from 1997.

UPDATE: The lawyer for Allied Daily Newspapers called me back. She said the fine at $15 a day amounted to about $123,000. At $100 a day, it would be well over $750,000.

Here is part the 5-4 ruling handed down today by the Washington Supreme Court:

Specifically, we decide whether the trial court abused its discretion by imposing a $15 per day penalty in response to King County's grossly negligent noncompliance with the Public Records Act. Under the facts of this case we hold the trial court abused its discretion by imposing a penalty at the low end of the PRA penalty range.

The case is Armen Yousoufian vs. Office of King County Executive Ron Sims. It involves a public records request made in 1997 by a guy who wanted to learn more about the rationale for the public to build a $300 million stadium for the Seattle Seahawks.

Lower court judges ruled against King County for giving Yousoufian the royal runaround, but fined the county only $15 a day for the violation of the state Public Records and Open Meetings Act.

The court majority said the fine should be at the high end of the $5 to $100 a day range because there were many "aggravating" circumstances, and "proper deterrence for King County and others clearly requires a penalty at the high end of the penalty range."

Here's my favorite line from the ruling:
"A flea bite does little to deter an elephant."

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Circle that date on your calendar. That's when the state Economic and Revenue Forecast Council meets to listen to chief economist Arun Raha tell them just how much money legislative budget writers can expect for the remainder of the 2007-09 biennium and the next next one.

Generally, the Legislature (this time it will be the Senate going first) comes out with its budget proposal. It's merely a coincidence that March Madness begins around the same time as the revenue forecast. However, this year, it may refer to more than just the NCAA basketball tournament.

State Sen. Joe Zarelli of Ridgefield, top Republican on the Senate Ways and Means Commitee, already is predicting a $7.5 billion deficit. (That's for a 30-month period.) Technically, right now we're up to about $6.2 billion, but that includes $220 million of new spending in Gov. Chris Gregoire's 2009-11 budget proposal.