OptumHealth, the for-profit company administering mental health care in Pierce County, today announced the names of three agencies that will replace Pierce County as providers of crisis triage and evaluation and treatment mental health services here. I don’t have time for a full article today, but here’s the press release:

N E W S R E L E A S E

OptumHealth Announces IMPROVEMENTS TO PIERCE COUNTY
MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS RESPONSE system
System Will Enhance Services for Community Members in Crisis, Earn More Federal Funding
TACOMA, Wash., August 21, 2009 — OptumHealth Inc. today announced details of an enhanced mental health crisis system for Pierce County residents. Working with the State of Washington, OptumHealth has developed a system that will provide people in crisis with rapid response, 24-hour services and a complete range of inpatient and outpatient support services that create paths to recovery.

The new system allows the state to qualify for higher levels of federal mental health funding than it has achieved in the past, which is significant in the face of current state budget limitations.

“These changes will give people, regardless of the severity and complexity of their mental illness, services that can help lead to recovery and a meaningful life,” said Cheri Dolezal, executive director for OptumHealth Pierce County based in Tacoma. “The enhancements represent one piece of OptumHealth’s commitment to the State of Washington, and the citizens of Pierce County, to continue finding ways to transform mental health services, even during difficult financial periods.”

OptumHealth was retained in July 2009 by the State of Washington to improve and coordinate mental health services for Pierce County residents. With feedback from the community, OptumHealth developed a mental health crisis system that maintains and enhances existing essential services, while adding new, proven treatment options to support recovery. The effort identified and recruited providers with strong track records in community-based mental health crisis programs, and experience in operating facilities in ways that meet federal funding requirements.

Currently, three service providers are expected to participate:

• Recovery Innovations Inc., for a Crisis Triage Center using the “Living Room” model — a new system approach for Pierce County that combines traditional medical and psychiatric care with a home-like environment, and help from peer support specialists who have lived through similar experiences.

• MultiCare Good Samaritan Outreach Corporation and a coalition of local mental health agencies, for 24-hour mobile crisis outreach services, a planned 16-bed Evaluation and Treatment Center and community crisis respite beds. Pierce County residents will be able to call a single, centralized toll-free crisis line.

• Telecare Mental Health Services of Washington, for a 16-bed Evaluation and Treatment center. Telecare specializes in serving those with serious, complex mental illness, and provides a full spectrum of services, including inpatient care, crisis support, residential programs and outpatient services.

=> Read more!

Should voters who sign initiative and referendum petitions be allowed to remain anonymous? Or are petition forms and the names recorded there public records and available for inspection under state open government laws?

Those are the issues in a lawsuit filed by backers of Referendum 71, which seeks to repeal recent expansions in gay partnership rights. Protect Marriage Washington claims that signers would be subject to harassment and even violence if their names were known. They claim their First Amendment rights to petition the government are threatened by disclosure of the names.

The state attorney general will argue to keep the records open because any assertion of privacy by the backers of the referendum are outweighed by the public policy of open government.

The same lawyers are asking the state Public Disclosure Commission to seal the names of donors to the campaign.

The case is Doe v. Reed and is to be heard before U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Settle on Sept. 3.
Here is the filing by state Deputy Solicitor General James Pharris.

I wrote a story over the weekend about the debut of this e-mail alert system. It will be a few more days before it's operational for Pierce County residents.

BY Joseph Turner
The News Tribune
A glitch has delayed Pierce County’s connection to a statewide datebase that sends e-mail alerts to people who want to be notified when a registered sex offender moves next door.
Dawn Larsen, director for projects for the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, said data on an estimated 600 sex offenders in Pierce County was successfully uploaded over the weekend. However, there was a problem uploading up-to-date pictures of the offenders, she said.
That problem should be remedied in a few days, she said.
There are 2,555 sex offenders registered to live in Pierce County, but only about 600 of them are in the notification database – only those who are classified Level II and Level III offenders. Those are the two groups considered most likely to commit another sex crime.
When it is connected, Pierce will become the 36th of 39 Washington counties to be connnected to the statewide alert system. Citizens who sign up will be notified by e-mail when a sex offender moves to within one mile of whichever location citizens choose - their homes, their work place, their child’s day care center, or all of those.

If you want to be notified by e-mail when a sex offender moves into your neighborhood, go to http://www.icrimewatch.net/washington.php and click on “Register for Email Alerts.” The system should be up and running in Pierce County in a few more days.

You have till Friday to file.

Pierce County Auditor Jan Shabro opened a special filing period today, July 29, for Bethel School Board director position number 3 and Fife School Board director position number 3.

Special filing periods are held when no candidates file during the regular filing period or if candidates later withdraw. In the Bethel and Fife cases, each race had only one candidate and that person withdrew.

This will be the third special filing period for the regular filing period held the first week of June.

It’s routine to have one special filing period for races that draw no candidates. However, Pierce County elections manager Lori Augino said this is the first time in 15 years she can recall a third one.

"You always have (them in) water districts. Rarely (a second one) happens in an even year," Augino said. "In an odd year, I’ve never seen two."

In the second filing period, June 24 to 26, a candidate for Orting City Council position 7 withdrew and a candidate for Fire District no. 10, in the Fife area, died, Shabro said.

To file, prospective candidates should go to the Pierce County Elections Center, 2501 S. 35th St., Suite C, in Tacoma, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. today or Friday.

For more information, check the individual school district’s requirements for election and call the auditor’s office at 253-798-VOTE.

Pierce County Executive Pat McCarthy in inviting politicians and neighbors to a meeting July 27 to talk about Sound Transit's plans in Tacoma's Dome District.

More specifically, she is creating a forum in which neighbors can raise doubts about the transit agency's plans for putting Sounder tracks on an earthen berm rather than on an elevated structure.

Dome District residents and others think the berm will place a wall between the upper dome district and the lower dome district. Sound Transit thinks the current plan is the most affordable way of getting trains from Freighthouse Square to existing tracks on the south side of Pacific Avenue.

Those trains will then travel to stations in South Tacoma and Lakewood, hopefully by 2012.

Neighbors think Sound Transit and the city of Tacoma has stopped listening to their concerns. McCarthy, a member of the Sound Transit board, and wants staff to make a presentation on existing plans and then listen to concerns. The meeting will include a walk of the proposed route.

It will begin at 9 a.m. in the meeting room of Freighthouse Square.

Here is the pdf of the meeting invitation.

They're calling it a "Republican Resurgence Rally" and Michael Steele will the special guest.

Steele is a former lieutenant governor of Maryland and the first African-American to lead the national GOP. The rally begins at 6 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency Bellevue Hotel, 900 Bellevue Way NE. Admission is $25.

Also speaking will be state Attorney General Rob McKenna, state Senate Minority Leader Mike Hewitt and state party chairman Luke Esser.

For $500, attendees get into a a VIP reception and photo opportunity with Steele, beginning at 5 p.m.

Watch Esser's invitation.

Attorney General Rob McKenna has launched a new website to help residents find their way through the state's open records laws.

The site is called “Unredacted: Uncovering the truth about Public Records and Open Public Meetings."

“Citizens contact us when, for example, they believe that a city or county council meeting has been held illegally behind closed doors,” McKenna said in a statement. “Our new site provides a road map for pulling back the curtain to find out what elected officials are up to.”

Find the site, called Unredacted, here.

That's what the British magazine The Economist recommends in this article in the current issue.

After pointing out that Washington resolved its budget problems quickly and that California is still struggling with them, it suggests two Washington political traits – a primary system that tends to elect moderates and a bipartisan redistricting process that resists gerrymandering.

(It actually calls our redistricting commission neutral. But a commission made up of two appointed Democrats and two appointed Republicans isn't neutral, it's compromised partisanship).

The Pierce County Planning Department will close its development center (where you get building permits, etc.) on Tuesday because of employee furloughs. Read the press release below. For more information – future closure dates – click here.

May 22, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Pierce County Planning and Land Services Department (PALS) will close its development center for the day on Tuesday, May 26, due to an employee furlough.

The one-day closure is the second in a series of nine closures spread through the rest of the year as a result of budget constraints. In some cases, including Tuesday's, the closures are timed to coincide with holiday weekends, which are traditionally slow periods for the development center.

The Development Center is located in the Pierce County Annex, 2401 S. 35th St., Tacoma. Other services in the Annex will be available on these dates, including those provided by the County Auditor and the County Assessor-Treasurer.

More information, including the rest of the closure dates, is available on the PALS web page, http://www.piercecountywa.org/pc/services/home/property/pals/palsmain.htm.

Contact: Chuck Kleeberg, Planning and Land Services director, 253-798-3130; or Hunter George, Communications Department director, 253-798-6606 or hgeorge@co.pierce.wa.us.
Find more Pierce County news at www.piercecountywa.org or follow us at twitter.com/pierceco .

Here's the long and short of it for Referendum 71, the challenge being mounted to the expansion of rights in domestic partnerships:

BALLOT TITLE

Statement of Subject: The legislature passed Engrossed Second Substitute Senate Bill 5688 concerning rights and responsibilities of state-registered domestic partners [and voters have filed a sufficient referendum petition on this bill].

Concise Description: This bill would expand the rights, responsibilities, and obligations accorded state-registered same-sex and senior domestic partners to be equivalent to those of married spouses, except that a domestic partnership is not a marriage.

Should this bill be:
Approved ___
Rejected ___

David Ammons at the Secretary of State's office sent us an update on the timeline for challenges, etc.

=> Read more!

UPDATE: (5:27 p.m.) Political folks who are more knowledgeable than I say the appointment of Randy Pepple signals that Rob McKenna plans to run for governor in 2012.

I guess it would like Aaron Toso being hired to work in Gov. Chris Gregoire's communications office a couple years ago, and then later going to work for her 2008 reelection campaign.

Et tu, Randy?

McKenna announces new Chief of Staff

OLYMPIA – Attorney General Rob McKenna today announced the selection of former congressional chief of staff and private sector CEO Randy J. Pepple as his new Chief of Staff, effective June 1.

Pepple joins the Attorney General’s Office with more than two decades of experience in management, public policy, strategic planning, media relations and community engagement. His experience includes serving as Chief of Staff to a U.S. Congressman, leading the Northwest offices of the multinational communications consultancy Hill & Knowlton and, most recently, managing his own strategic communications consulting firm.

=> Read more!

Well, it must be a desperate situation because her office is asking for an exemption to the statewide hiring freeze that the Legislature renewed back in February.

Hal Spencer, former Associated Press reporter here at the state capital for many years, finally has retired for the 3rd or 4th time since leaving AP nine years ago. He left The Guv's office April 30. It's May 11. So, this truly is an emergency.

"It is crucial," said Pearse Edwards, the governor's communications director and main guy in charge of constituent something-or-others. "She's got 14 speeches between now and the 20th, not counting weekends."

The job pays about $63,000 a year, he said. (Hear that, my former P.I., Times, TNT, Olympian, TriCity colleagues? But you'd have to move down here to Olympia, which has a whole different ambience than Seattle.)

Here's the Hiring Freeze Exemption request.

So, who will be deciing whether to grant the governor's communications office an exemption to the hiring freeze? That woudl be the governor's budget office. "It's in a whole 'nother building," Edwards dead-panned.

UPDATE: Victor Moore, the guv's budget director, approved the exemption for the speechwriting job, BEFORE I EVEN FINISHED WRITING THE POST!

"It's up to the speechwriter to get basic information about the event (graduations, policy statements, keynote addresses) and prepare talking points or speeches for the governor," the job description says. "This position must be able to accurately research and reflect the governor's voice and policy issues into draft speeches in a timely manner so that the governor can review and edit them prior to an event."

(So, you can see there's at least four reasons why I'm not applying for the job.)

As for Hal, he'll turn up again somewhere, probably as a park ranger or something.

He claims, quite absurdly, that he's up for a "greeter" job at Wal-Mart, "except you have to be cheerful. That's going to be a challenge."