Several transportation taxes are increasing Tuesday, but a price increase in liquor won't take effect until September. (It's not a tax, it's a price increase, straightfaced lawmakers maintain. Also: It's not liquor, it's "spirits.")The price will go up 42 cents a liter.
Gov. Gary Locke on Thursday signed the state's controversial two-year, $23 billion budget into law. He used his veto pen to restore about $20 million in spending that lawmakers had wanted to cut. Among the saves: -About $20 million in administrative cuts to state agencies,…
Conspicuously absent in the Legislature's waning days is Senate Majority Leader Jim West. The Spokane Republican is home, undergoing chemotherapy treatments in Coeur d'Alene for the colon cancer that doctors discovered about a month ago. He's not expected back before the Legislature wraps things up…