Last week, I blogged about the very serious topic of improvements being made to the the chambers for the Tacoma City Council.

This was the meeting at which the correct pronunciation of the word "dais" was discussed, as well as certain "improvements" like James Bond devices and trapdoors.

Well, now you can listen to it. I edited the relevant parts down to under two minutes, so please excuse any jumps or non-sequiturs.

Original link to the mp3 follows the jump.

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I just got word that this afternoon's Tacoma City Council subcommittee meeting that was to take up both the park exclusion extensions and the park smoking ban has been canceled. Those items will likely be moved to the May 28th meeting.

Want to see more detail about the LeMay Automotive Museum design? Follow this link to see slides from the Power Point presentation given at the Tacoma City Council study session Tuesday. (It's in .pdf format.)

I'm still going over the 234-page performance audit of the Law Enforcement Support Agency, which takes 9-1-1 calls and does dispatching for much of Pierce County.

This is a diagram I found especially interesting. It shows responses from LESA staff to a survey question asking which agencies they like working with the most.

Lakewood Fire Comm topped the list with 22 percent picking it as No. 1. Tacoma Police and Fire got 7 percent each.

Beyond all the performance measures -- the cry and hew about staffing and funding, the stats on call volumes and overtime -- are the men and women who do the job, which is complex and stressful enough without all the additional pressures.

That's a story I'm planning to tell sometime in the next couple weeks. I'm going to be doing a "ride-along" to see what it's like next Thursday.

Current and ex- LESA staffers should feel free to contact me if they want to share their perspectives without having to worry that their name will appear in print and get them sideways with the bosses.

The King County Council will make its selection on Monday, and that person will serve until a replacement for Ron Sims is elected later this year.

Blue-Ribbon Committee recommends Royer and Triplett for appointment as King County Executive

King County Council will interview all four candidates on Monday and may make final appointment

A Blue-Ribbon Selection Committee empanelled by the King County Council tonight interviewed four candidates for King County Executive and recommended two for the short-term appointment -- former Seattle Mayor Charles Royer and interim County Executive and former Executive Chief of Staff Kurt Triplett.

Former County Councilmembers Steve Hammond and Louise Miller were also interviewed.

All four candidates will now appear next Monday at a special meeting of the Council's Committee-of-the-Whole:

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The Senate Republicans provided this look at authorship of bills that passed this legislative session and categorized them by whether the prime sponsor was a Democrat or a Republicans.

Republicans were held to single digits, from a percentage standpoint, they say.

Democrats held 62-36 majorities in the House and 31-18 in the Senate.

In some of my earlier posts, I have noted how the majority party runs roughshod over the minority party. And it doesn't matter which party is in charge. Both do it. And they'll keep doing it.

Anyway, the GOP says only 22 Senate bills that were sponsored by Republicans actually got passed. That's 8 percent of the total. And only 14 of the House bills sponsored by a Republican got passed. That's 4 percent of the total. (They did the math, not me.)

UPDATE: (3:05 p.m.) Upon further review: Here are new, revised numbers from the same source. GOP did slightly better than first blush.

Senate Passed 280 Bills
50 Prime Sponsored by Republicans - 17.8%
230 Prime Sponsored by Democrats - 82.2%

House passed 322 Bills
41 Prime Sponsored by Republicans - 12.7%
281 Prime Sponsored by Democrats - 87.3%

I guess that sends a message, doesn't it?

"The best protection against oil spills is solid prevention," said Dale Jensen, who manages Ecology's spill prevention, preparedness and response program. "Our concern extends far beyond the two gallons spilled. Washington state requires exacting care before and during marine fuel transfers. It's every vessel owner's business to know the plumbing on board, what to check, and the settings required for a tight, closed system."

Barge owner fined $16,500 over Duwamish spill

BELLEVUE – The Department of Ecology (Ecology) has fined Olympic Tug & Barge Co. (Olympic) $16,500 for failing to take measures to prevent an oil spill from a fuel barge in October, 2007 in Seattle.

A valve left open – with no procedures in place to check it – caused approximately two gallons of diesel fuel from the barge Bernie 112 to enter the East Waterway on Oct. 23, 2007. The barge was pumping fuel onto a cargo vessel at Terminal 18 on Harbor Island.

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There was a bill at the end of the just-finished legislative session that would have created this "aerospace competitive council," or something like that. But it died.

Didn't really need the bill anyway. So Gov. Chris Gregoire just signed an executive order creating the group.

I'm sure the business community would have preferred that she sign an executive order forbidding the Machinists or any other Boeing or aerospace worker union to strike ever, ever, ever again, and denying unemployment benefits for anyone ever laid off by Boeing. But that would have been overstepping her bounds by just a tad.

But they certainly would have made Washington more competitive with other states in the assembly of airplanes.

This order will have to do. (Note: the word "competitive" is gone now, too.)

Just as an aside, when Gregoire announced the introduction of the "advisory council" late in session, she was surrounded by more lawmakers than I've seen at any bill signing. I think there is an inverse correlation between the number of people who flank the governor and how insubstantial the action is. You know, more people, less substance.

Gov. Gregoire signs executive order creating aerospace council

RENTON – Gov. Chris Gregoire today signed an executive order creating the Washington Council on Aerospace. The council will oversee state efforts to ensure that Washington remains the leading location in the world in which to design and build airplanes.

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A 9-member substitute panel had to hear the case because Justice Richard Sanders obviously could not rule on his own appeal, and it might be awkward for his brethren and sistren to rule on it, too. All 8 of them bowed out of the case, which was on appeal from the state Court of Appeals.

Anyway, the Replacements, without the services of Sanders or Keanu Reeves, ruled against Sanders. We don't have to pay for his defense on the ethics charge because he wasn't acting in his capacity as a Supreme. But it was close, a 5-4 ruling.

This all stems from Sanders' visit to the Special Commitment Center on McNeil Island and his ex parte conversations with some of the sex offenders who were committed there.

Here is a link to the majority decision, which was signed by 5 replacement judges, including three former homies from Pierce County, Stanley Worswick, Waldo Stone and Donald Thompson. They used to be Superior Court judges on the Pierce County bench.

Here is a link to one of the dissenting opinions.

Here's another dissenting opinion.

We'll have a more detailed story on our Web site from Curt Woodward of The Associated Press.

Here's what Woodward wrote after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review his appeal:

Top U.S. court won't review justice's case
In a no-comment response, the U.S. Supreme Court says it won't look at the appeal of a Washington justice who was rebuked for visiting McNeil Island offenders.

By Curt Woodward; The Associated Press
Tuesday,October 2, 2007

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Gov. Gregoire to take bill action
Event Date: May 14
OLYMPIA – Gov. Chris Gregoire today will take action on several bills.
11 a.m.

Engrossed Substitute House Bill No. 1782, relating to encouraging early and consistent engagement of parents in children's dependency matters.

Engrossed House Bill No. 1824, relating to requiring the adoption of policies for the management of concussion and head injury in youth sports.

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This story appears in today's print edition of The News Tribune, but I like to post all my stories on the blog for a different audience.

It also gives me more space to publish. So, if you want to see what County Executive Pat McCarthy has to say, or look at the list of coalition members, scroll down below my story. (The list is a little ragged, but Microsoft Word doesn't always cut and past very well, so you're on your own figuring out which person is associated with which group or government.)

BY Joseph Turner
The News Tribune
Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed a transportation budget that elevates the freeway carpool lanes through Tacoma to the same status as five other so-called “mega projects” across the state, a status that gives the $1.5 billion Tacoma project a better chance of actually getting built.

The bill-signing took place in downtown Tacoma, and Mayor Bill Baarsma noted the significance of the locale.

“What a contrast of where we began and where we finished,” he said.

He was referring to the difference between the original transportation budget the governor proposed last December and the one she signed into law Wednesday afternoon. Her first budget delayed to death many key highway projects in Pierce County. The final one not only speeds up $130 million of carpool lane construction on Interstate 5, it lays out a 16-year funding plan to nearly finish the project.

For many other state projects, funding will run out by 2015.

Baarsma credited Pierce County Executive Pat McCarthy with mobilizing the community behind the Pierce County legislative delegation to get most of what its lawmakers were promised when they voted in favor a gas tax increases in 2003 and 2005. A coalition of 105 business, labor and other groups and community leaders rallied to get funding for local projects restored in the budget passed by the Legislature.

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Children with the Art Naturally Day Camp from the Tacoma Nature Center drink the rain while learning about the cycle of life at Point Defiance Park, Wednesday August 20, 2008. (Darren Breen / The News Tribune)

To go with my story today about proposed extensions of park exclusions, after the jump is a full list of the crimes that could get you banned for 90 days or a year.

The photo above represents what's still OK behavior, however odd it looks.

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