Photo: Colleen Beimer, from Bonney Lake, cries while holding a picture of her grandchildren. Richard Roesler - The Spokesman Review

Lawmakers, parents and a local prosecutor on Thursday blasted state child-protection officials, saying the state is too quick to remove children from their families.

“The system is broken. The children are forgotten,” said Stevens County Prosecutor Tim Rasmussen. He said he found “a culture of deceit and deception” among Child Protective Services workers in Colville.

The standing-room-only crowd, numbering about 100, was full of parents and grandparents, some holding photographs of children.

Thursday’s meeting was called by state Sen. Pam Roach, R-Auburn, who’s been highly critical of state officials for months in a case involving grandparents’ efforts to get custody of their 3-year-old granddaughter.

“Lies are put on desks,” Roach said on the Senate floor later in the day. “Children are being hurt.”

A spokeswoman for the Department of Social and Health Services said officials take such allegations very seriously.

“If someone believes that any of our staff have been dishonest, falsified documents or have retaliated against families, we ask that people report this to the Children’s Administration or Office of the Family and Children’s Ombudsman,” said Sherry Hill.

“The first priority of the Children’s Administration is the safety of children,” she said. “Our goal is to keep children in their home as long as they are safe.”

Of the child abuse and neglect cases investigated, she said, fewer than 20 percent result in the children being placed in foster care. And when that does happen, Hill said, “we then work toward reunification with the family if that is possible.”

Ouch: Senate Democratic chief of staff Rich Nafziger, on his personal blog, blasts Gov. Chris Gregoire for continuing to favor budget cuts over a tax increase. Nafziger, tongue firmly in cheek, names Gregoire the recipient of his new weekly Herbert Hoover award. (Vast 1930s’ tent cities of the impoverished homeless, you’ll recall from your Great Depression history, were known as “Hoovervilles.”)

“It is clearly in the Hoover tradition to cut programs to the needy who spend all their money and cut jobs for public employees who join the ranks of the unemployed and curtail spending. Obviously this is better than taxing businesses or individuals who sit on their money, or oil companies who earn enormous profits…” writes Nafziger. (UPDATE: The post has disappeared from the blog.)

But wait, there’s more: Also drawing fire from Nafziger: lobbyists with bloated egos:

“Last week, lobbyists in Olympia were horrified that that the head of a major regulator(y) agency was not able to testify at a committee hearing. Despite his eminence and importance, the poor guy was forced to wait up to an hour and stomped out of the room in anger…” he wrote.

“The fact of the matter that the public hearing process in Olympia could be improved. Citizens are unable to take time off of work to come down make their opinions. Meanwhile, lobbyist earning 7 figure incomes clutter the hearing dockets and roam the halls. This is broken.”

It’s absolutely true that the hearing process favors the pros. I’ve sat in many hearings, listening to politicians, lobbyists and state agency staffers testifying at length, only to have regular-Joe citizens subsequently be told they’ll get only two minutes. (This comes complete with a humiliating little system of warning signs or red lights.) These are often citizens who have never testified before. Many have driven long distances and taken the day off from work. Some carry photos of family members or little hand-written speeches they’ve labored over. And they end up being told — always with a quick apology — to please keep it short.

-Richard Davis: Writes in the Puget Sound Business Journal that instead of keeping jobs, the churn of lawmaking in Olympia “seems designed to stimulate business departures.” Business is unhappy with a proposed ban on calling mandatory workplace meetings to oppose unionization, for example, and proposals to tap the state’s unemployment insurance trust fund to improve benefits. Writes Davis:

And with manufacturing layoffs piling up like pizza boxes after the Super Bowl party, lawmakers are considering job-threatening climate change regulations. They call this stimulus?

-Pam Roach’s advice: In the wake of economic advisor Robert Reich’s congressional testimony that the federal infrastructure dollars should not simply go to professionals or to white male construction workers, state Sen. Pam Roach, R-Auburn, has these words of warning for those workers:

The plan is the same. Pay off all debt including the house. Put away an emergency fund. Plant fruit trees. Plant a garden. Store a three month supply of food for your family. Learn to do with less.

State Sen. Pam Roach is apparently under investigation again by the state legislative ethics board.

“Yes, Dear Readers…they are on the hunt. And, they intend to find SOMETHING…ANYTHING to punish me,” she writes on her personal blog today.

Roach has been involved in a long-running battle with state social workers over the return of a young girl to her family.

“It will be a public lynching,” Roach writes about the investigation. “You will read about it here. I will not cower to this intimidation, retribution, waste of taxpayer funds, and political payback.”

I called Mike O’Connell, the ethics board’s lawyer, but he’s apparently out of the office for the afternoon.

It’s not like Roach is an unknown to the board, however. She was investigated in 2007 over a claim that she’d used her legislative clout to get one of her sons out of prison early. (He served time on a drug charge.) The board found no evidence that she’d broken any law.

She was also investigated in 2003 for allegedly wrongly releasing “confidential” emails. That case was dismissed when the board said it didn’t have jurisdiction in such matters.

Roach is no stranger to controversy. Over the years, she’s been repeatedly reprimanded for violating the Senate’s “respectful workplace policy.” The Senate offered her training on how to treat employees better, and agreed to pay $2,500 for counseling for one traumatized employee.

From tomorrow’s paper:

On Monday, while many people had a day off, state Sen. Ken Jacobsen was facing a state Senate committee, trying to convince his fellow lawmakers to let people be buried with their pets.

He’s absolutely serious. The idea to him a couple of years ago, when his beloved, 23-pound cat Sam died from cancer.

“I asked the kids to bury him in the back yard and I told them that when I’m ready to go, I’d like to take Sam with me,” said Jacobsen, 63. “Because he really was one of my best friends.”

The buried-with-your-pet proposal is one of 46 so far this year from Jacobsen, a Seattle Democrat who tends to be the legislature’s most prolific filer of bills. Barely a week into this year’s legislative session, Jacobsen has proposed an airline passenger’s bill of rights, allowing pet dogs in bars, designating a state oak tree, and giving tax breaks to taverns that install on-site breathalyzers.

Last year, he lobbied unsuccessfully to restore a centuries-old tradition of outfitting the state poet — yes, there is one — with a large barrel of wine. This year, he wants to hire a state bird-watching expert, and to declare the marmot Washington’s official “endemic mammal.”

Jacobsen says his proposals may be quirky, but that they’re not frivolous. If a good idea strikes him, he says, it’s his job as an elected official to throw it into the mix.

“It’s that theory of chaos,” he said. “You put things on the table and you never know what the interactions are going to be.” And he welcomes ideas, holding court regularly with constituents at a local Burgermaster.

Sometimes, Jacobsen said, what sound like wacky ideas are actually trendsetters. In the mid-80s, for example, he was mocked for championing state labeling of organic food.

“When I started the first time, I was treated like I was talking about kinky sex,” he said.

The bill that’s raised the most eyebrows this year…