Elective politics. Not initiatives. It's a whole 'nother game.

Mike and Jack Fagan are the father-son team that make up two-thirds of Voters Want More Choices, the organization that has brought you about a dozen initiatives over the last decade. Tim Eyman is the other third.

Mike Fagan is running for Spokane City Council. That's something you'll never see Tim Eyman do, or so Eyman has said many times. Run for office, that is. He'd much rather rail against the establishment than become part of it.

Then again, it's always possible he would be state Rep. Tim Eyman, R-Mukilteo, some day.

My colleague, Rich Roesler at The Spokesman Review, has much more detail about the story he broke.

Got a story coming on this, but the city of Tacoma today revealed it sweetened its deal with Russell Investments to include up to $4.3 million in free parking. Final offers from Seattle and Tacoma were delivered Friday.

Here's a .pdf with all the nitty gritty details of both a short-term (2018) and long-term (2028) offer.

Here's a story I wrote for the print edition, but apparently there isn't room in the paper to run it Wednesday. It might appear later in the week. In the meantime....

BY Joseph Turner
The News Tribune

Washington prison officials are closing half of the women’s prison near Spokane and delaying the opening of a unit at a men’s prison north of Tri-Cities because of a smaller budget and fewer inmates.

The state Department of Corrections announced Tuesday that part of the Pine Lodge Corrections Center will close July 1, reducing capacity of the women’s prison to 187 from 359. A unit at the newly opened Coyote Ridge men’s prison which was scheduled to open in June now won’t open until September.

Both moves are in response to a declining state prison population, said DOC spokeswoman Maria Peterson. The prison system also is moving to live within the 2009-11 budget that was passed by the Legislature in late April, she said.

Lawmakers cut about $125 million from the $1.7 billion prison two-year prison budget.

Peterson said these two moves already were in the works. The Legislature still expects the prison system to close even more facilities following a study that is supposed to be done by the end of the year.

The prison on McNeil Island in Pierce County is one of the candidates for full or partial closure by the state because being on an island makes it so much more expensive to operate than mainland prisons. Legislative budget-writers assume the state will save an additional $12 million by closing some facilities.

=> Read more!

This is a tricky one. And it could get ugly.

By signing Referendum 71, you're basically saying that the issue of expanding gay rights to include "everything but marriage" (the new domestic partnership law) should be put to a public vote, and not decided by the Legislature.

Signing also could indicate you oppose gay rights. Otherwise, you'd just let the law stay on the books. Right? (Well, theoretically, anyway). That's not necessarily the case. That's what makes it so tricky.

Supporters of the new domestic partnership law want to point a spot light at everyone who signs the Referendum 71 petitions. They're planning to post the names on line, in front of God and everyone.

The folks circulating the petitions say it's meant to "bully" people who might want to sign it, but don't want the scrutiny.

Here's part of the problem with referenda: The folks who support gay rights will be campaigning AGAINST the signature drive for Referendum 71, but if Referendum 71 actually gets on the ballot, then they will be campaigning FOR its passage. (A referendum puts the original bill on the ballot. The original bill expanded gay rights.)

Curt Woodward of The Associated Press wrote a story that ran in The News Tribune today.

And then we got this, a blog post from David Ammons, chief spokesman for the Secretary of State's office.

State elections folks say they want a "civil debate." Good luck with that.

Be careful out there.

Frustration over sign code enforcement and ongoing tension between the Pierce County Council and the executive branch spilled over at a council meeting this morning.

The result: a blistering condemnation of the county’s public works director.

In a report to the council’s economic and infrastructure development committee, public works director Brian Ziegler said his department has scaled back collecting signs illegally placed in public rights of way as it cuts costs to balance its budget.

That prompted council Chairman Roger Bush, R-Graham,

to label Ziegler’s explanation “a bunch of hogwash” designed to cover up what Bush called Ziegler’s mismanagement of the department.

“You have made mistake after mistake after mistake,” Bush lectured Ziegler.

In recent years the council has been keenly interested in sign code enforcement. Though it didn’t provide new funding, it set aside $40,000 in the 2007 public works budget for a pilot enforcement project in East Pierce County.

The crackdown proved to be popular with county residents, so the council set aside $168,000 for enforcement in 2008 and $100,000 this year. (For more details on the crackdown, read this story published in Sunday’s newspaper).

The department collected more than 16,000 illegal signs during the crackdown. But public works suspended countywide sign sweeps last fall amid questions over how to enforce the law.

Now the department says sign code enforcement isn’t a top priority as it trims the county’s $70 million road fund by $8 million in response to declining tax and fee revenues and the lost proceeds from failed property sales.

This morning Ziegler told the committee the department has been forced to cut spending on road maintenance, commercial vehicle inspection, road sweeping and other programs.

He said the department will continue to collect illegal signs – mostly when bad weather prohibits road maintenance work. And it will remove signs that pose a hazard to drivers and pedestrians. But it won’t conduct the countywide sweeps.

That plan didn’t square with council members.

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The city of Tacoma reached a settlement Monday with retirement director Patricia Pabst, allowing her to retire after 26 years with the city rather than be ousted by the Retirement Board and City Council, Mayor Bill Baarsma said Tuesday.

The settlement will allow her to spend the rest of the year on a combination of paid sick and personal leave and includes a $10,000 payout in exchange for her agreeing not to sue, said Baarsma, who is also chairman of the board.

Despite serious managerial concerns raised by the board at a meeting last month at which members voted 6-2 with one abstention to remove her, Baarsma said she would also be given letters of recommendation if she asked for them.

“There were many, many areas in which she had excelled,” he said. “She had published and won awards.”

Pabst did not return a call seeking comment.

Before voting on a recommendation to the City Council to remove her, the board raised serious concerns about Pabst’s abilities as a manager and her interactions with the board, a recording of the meeting reveals.

=> Read more!

I don't routinely look at out-of-state travel by state workers, but there are some government watchdogs who do. And from time to time they bring said travels to my attention. (Theoretically, there is a ban on out-of-state travel by state workers unless exemptions are granted for special circumstances. Something about a budget crisis.)

"Until July 1, 2009, state agencies are prohibited from making expenditures for state employee out-of-state travel or training not related to an emergency or direct service delivery," according to the bill report for the so-called "belt-tightening" bill passed by the Legislature a few months back.

So I'm looking at this request from the state Department of Early Learning to spend $1,000 to send one of its workers to North Carolina on June 13 to "discuss plans around professional system development integration."

I guess professional system development integration is something that must be done in person. And it must be done in North Carolina later this month. Besides, more than 30 other states will be represented at this planning thing. Moreover, since the Department of Early Learning is the lead on the "Professional Development Consortium" it only makes sense to send on DEL staff person "to attend along with other members of the state team who are also Professional Development Consortium members," the request says.

(Sounds as if some other state workers already got permission to go to Tarheel country and DEL "leader" was going to get left behind. I don't know how many others are going, but I have a call in.)

UPDATE:(11:48 a.m.) DEL spokeswoman called to say the Legislature is requiring DEL to develop standards for day-care center workers, early childhood educators like preschool teachers, or someone who wants to become a child care center director, let them know what they need to do to help them meet those standards. Also, the state school superintendent's office is sending someone.

The person who forwarded this request, which was, indeed, approved by Gov. Chris Gregoire's budget director, Victor Moore, was wondering just how many requests Moore has turned down. So I asked him in an e-mail if he wanted to respond. I'm sure Victor will get back to me.

UPDATE NO. 2 (2:13 p.m.) Got an answer back from Victor Moore.

Joe, there have been 104 travel requests approved, 37 denied, and 26 withdrawn. Requests are sometimes withdrawn after we contact requesters to ask for clarification or further explanation and they figure out that their request is really not appropriate.

It is important to look past just these numbers, though, and realize that agencies are being selective in deciding which travel opportunities to submit for approval. Agencies recognize that many travel opportunities that were appropriate in the past are simply not feasible during these tough economic times. In other words, we only see the borderline cases, and the situations where the travel is clearly not appropriate never make it out of the agency.

Hope this helps.
Victor

I posted a couple others last week, the Paris Air Show, etc.

After all the hue and cry over the devastating cuts to education and health care programs to plug a $9 billion budget hole, one wonders why the freeze on hiring, out-of-state travel and purchases over $5,000 apparently has thawed out so much. Why does travel appear to be business as usual?