No time to examine this any further. I'll be paying some attention to the race to replace Ron Sims. But earlier today I covered the governor signing the transportation budget in Tacoma, so I'm spread a little thin today.

Friends of Susan Hutchison
www.susanhutchison.com

SUSAN HUTCHISON OUT-RAISING OPPONENTS
SINCE ANNOUNCING BID FOR COUNTY EXECUTIVE

Campaign Finance Report Filing Shows
Over $58,000 Raised in Only Two and a Half Weeks

SEATTLE—Campaign finance report documents filed with the Public Disclosure Commission on Monday show Hutchison has quickly caught up to her six opponents, surpassing all in the rate of fundraising since she entered the race for King County Executive.

“We are off-and-running with strong financial support from both Democrats and Republicans throughout King County,” said Hutchison. “We are very encouraged by the early momentum our campaign has generated.”

Since announcing her bid on April 8, Susan Hutchison has raised $58,280 in cash contributions– more dollars raised than any of her opponents during the same three-week period.

“The fact that we are out-raising candidates who have been in this race longer, most of whom are career politicians, sends a strong message that King County is looking for new leadership, new energy, and new direction,” said Hutchison.

Hutchison’s filing with the PDC covered all contributions and expenditures made between April 8 and April 30. Filings for three other County Executive candidates covered a period one-week longer than Hutchison due to her later entry into the race.

Link to PDC reports: http://www.pdc.wa.gov/qviewreports/candidates.aspx

Hutchison is currently Executive Director of the Charles Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences – a $100 million philanthropic foundation based in Seattle that provides grants to the arts, science and education programs – and was a former Emmy Award-winning anchor for KIRO-TV.

The Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office has declined Assessor-Treasurer Dale Washam’s request to investigate wrongdoing related to skipped property inspections.

In a letter dated Monday (you can download a PDF copy here), Prosecuting Attorney Gerald Horne told Washam the matter does not warrant further investigation.

Horne is the latest public official to spurn Washam’s call to review the circumstances surrounding skipped property inspections in Pierce County. Previously, the state auditor, attorney general and Department of Revenue have declined to investigate.

For years Washam has claimed the assessor’s office skipped physical inspections of properties required by state law under former Assessor-Treasurer Ken Madsen. Washam won election to the office in November and announced his suspicions were true shortly after taking office.

Documents and interviews with current and former employees indicate Washam is right. And Madsen has admitted his office did not conduct “boots on the ground” inspections of every property. Instead Madsen said it relied on accepted statistical methods to assess property values for tax purposes.

Washam now claims the assessor’s office skipped inspections of more than 181,000 properties. He asked Horne to review his allegations that the office falsified various documents to make it appear the inspections had been conducted.

In rejecting Washam’s request, Horne cited a recent review by the county’s performance audit staff that found no reason to believe individual property owners were harmed by the skipped inspections. And he noted that Washam’s accusations failed to pass legal muster when he filed a recall petition against Madsen in 2005.

Republicans seem to have had a disproportionate share of health maladies since the start of the year.

Rep. Norm Johnson, R-Yakima, is the latest, although his was a "minor" problem, he said.

(I just met Johnson this session, and he offered to demonstrate he could kick, even if he wasn't the former Seattle Seahawks kicker.)

Rep. Johnson 'on the mend' after minor stomach procedure
Lawmaker resting comfortably in Yakima hospital

Rep. Norm Johnson says he's feeling well and "on the mend" after undergoing a minor procedure Tuesday to repair some stomach problems.

Johnson entered Yakima Regional Medical Center Monday after feeling ill.

"I spoke to the chamber of commerce on Monday and I felt fine. But later in the afternoon, I suddenly became nauseous. I had some friends take me to the hospital and the doctors discovered I had a lesion in my stomach. They did an endoscopy yesterday and repaired the lesion," said Johnson, R-Yakima. "It wasn't anything serious and the repair was successful. I feel much better and will be released from the hospital within the next day or so."

You can hear the gnashing of teeth at the County-City Building as Pierce County tries to address a projected $13 million revenue shortfall.

County Executive Pat McCarthy is considering several measures that are sure to be unpopular as she tries to balance the budget. Here’s more information about two of those measures.

Cuts to community groups. For years the county executive and council have doled out money to community groups, festivals and other pet projects. Council members say they use the money to target specific needs in their districts, like street lights, senior centers and youth programs.

The spending is lumped into a catch-all budget category called “miscellaneous current expense.” It also includes some mandatory spending like unemployment insurance and severance reserves.

Last year the county budgeted $6.1 million for miscellaneous current expenses. This year’s budget initially included $4.8 million. But the council cut that to $4.1 million as part of an initial round of budget cuts in March.

On Tuesday county budget director Pat Kenney told the council that McCarthy likely will propose eliminating most miscellaneous current expense spending in her 2010 budget. He said she will propose spending on “very, very, very few” outside programs next year.

Council members – who like spending money more than cutting budgets – greeted that news with silence.

Planning department fees. Kenny said McCarthy likely will propose a substantial increase in planning department fees next year. The fees are assessed for building permits, plan reviews and other department services.

=> Read more!

Overheard at last night's Tacoma City Council meeting:

"Matt couldn't throw very well, but he made up for it by being a slow runner."

State Rep. Larry Seaquist, D-Gig Harbor, says all the talk about partisan bickering is overstated. Behind the scenes and even out in public, Ds and Rs worked together on some things.

Here is Seaquist's piece at Seattlepi.com.

He has a few valid points. That said, most of the time the majority runs roughshod over the minority party. And Seaquist must be a centrist himself. They are the only ones who are any good at working with folks from "across the aisle," as they say down here. The others are way too extreme to get along much.

Seaquist, by the way, also has his own blog on the economy.

The ForehandedWA blog came from my attempt before the session started to try to engage my voters in the 26th and more generally people across the state in a ‘public strategy forum’ about what were certain to be huge public policy issues as we adapted to the recession. The legislative lawyers ruled that this could not be done inside the legislative framework --- too close to politicking – so I hired my usual webmaster in Gig Harbor to design the site.

It has evolved as a near-daily and enjoyable habit for me. I read widely anyway, this lets me capture day by day for myself the shape of what is happening is as this state-, country-, and world-changing recession unfolds and what implications that has for us, especially with state budgets. Now that the crash itself is less the news, I’m shifting a bit to tracking what is happening as our economy rearranges itself.