No, not Lisa Brown yet for governor.

Locally, however, there’s already some interest in city council seats. A quick run through Public Disclosure Commission files shows that:

Tom Towey is running for a Spokane Valley city council seat. Towey’s a Spokane Valley planning commission member, longtime Rosauer’s manager and former write-in candidate for council against councilman Steve Taylor.

Spokane Valley Mayor Richard Munson (who appointed Towey to the commission) is also running for re-election. Munson’s a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and retired stockbroker.

Brenda Grassel, impressively, already has a website up for her run for Spokane Valley City Council. She and her husband own a manufacturing company, Precision Cutting Technologies, and have rental properties.

Steve Eugster, a longtime Spokane attorney, would-be long-haul trucker and law school classmate of Justice Richard Sanders, is running for Spokane City Council against Councilman Michael Allen, a 2007 appointee and former Eastern Washington University official who’s running for re-election.

Eugster was on the council at a more contentious time, departing 6 years ago, and he has uttered what is so far the best quote of the 2009 campaigns, referring to the now-much-less-exciting council: “This `Era of Good Feelings’ is putting us all to sleep.” (Eugster’s political resurrection prompted actual rejoicing from S-R columnist Doug Clark.) Still, judging by Allen’s former job with EWU, his fundraising should be formidable. He was director of the school’s corporate and foundation relations.

Spokane Valley City Councilman Gary Schimmels is running for re-election. He’s a longtime construction company owner who two years ago sold his business, Affordable Lock Express since 1998.

Spokane City Councilwoman Nancy McLaughlin’s running for re-election. She’s a co-owner of a kitchen and bathroom remodeling company.

Challenging McLaughlin is Karen Kearney, a women- and children’s advocate and the former campaign chairwoman for Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich.

Amber Waldref is running for Spokane City Council in District 1, for the seat currently held by Councilman Al French. She’s works for the Lands Council (a Spokane-based environmental non-profit group) is a Georgetown alumna, and counts among her Facebook friends state Sen. Chris Marr.

And Forbes magazine, apparently unimpressed with the official “Near nature, near perfect” city slogan in Spokane, today pronounced the Lilac City the “Scam Capital of America.”

From writer William Barrett’s story:

Welcome to Spokane, Wash., a metropolitan object lesson in what can befall the unwary when rugged individualism is revered and consumers unsuspecting.

The story paints the city as a sort of freewheeling frontier town. And I suspect it has city leaders doubling up on their blood-pressure medication this morning.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with politics, and yet I’m quite confident it will be my best-read post of several today:

Plagued by ground squirrels at Spokane’s Finch Arboretum, the city’s parks and recreation folks have strapped on their Rodenator Pro, a device that pumps propane and air into a tunnel, then triggers an explosion that apparently knocks rodents dead and sends dirt flying.

But this video really says it all, particularly starting at about the 90-second mark when Ed’s heartfelt passion for anti-rodent combat really comes to the fore.

NOTE: The permalink URL for this post is automatically generated. Yes, it’s been pointed out to me already. Stop.

I missed this in the Senate budget earlier this week, but others sure didn’t:

45. Star USA Skating Spokane - Funding is provided to Star USA to assist hosting the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Spokane, scheduled for Jan. 14-24, 2010.

How much funding? A couple hundred grand.

That’s quite a bit less than the $600,000 that the group was hoping for (see page 13) on the eve of the legislative session last December. But it’s still raised some eyebrows among budget hawks, at a time when the state is proposing laying off thousands of people and slashing university budgets, health care for the poor, and support for things as basic as the state’s poison control center.

From Northwest Public Radio: So what do lawmakers fund? One item in the Senate budget – but not the House – is 200-thousand dollars for the US Figure Skating Championships in Spokane next year. That was a special request of Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown – a Democrat from Spokane.

From the Washington Policy Center: Here are some examples of those priorities that apparently are recession proof…

From the Tacoma News-Tribune: Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown is from Spokane. (It’s just a coincidence, I’m sure.)…I point this out only because, in a sea of $4 billion in “hard” spending cuts, isn’t it interesting to see what new things are being paid for?

Mary Verner at a recent community event.

This one’s of interest mainly to readers in Spokane. From tomorrow’s paper:

OLYMPIA _ A controversial proposal to merge the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture with its Western Washington counterpart appears to be dead.

One of the state’s most powerful lawmakers said Thursday that the Senate will not be approving the plan, which was proposed in December as a cost-cutting move by Gov. Chris Gregoire.

“The bill is on my desk. It’s not going to be introduced in the Senate,” said Sen. Lisa Brown, D-Spokane.

So it’s dead on arrival, a reporter asked.

“It is,” responded Brown.

The bad news: torpedoing the merger won’t necessarily shield the museum and its operations from state budget cuts. Gov. Chris Gregoire in December proposed cutting the MAC budget by $524,000 over the next two years, which is about a 13 percent cut. And the state’s budget picture is now believed to be much bleaker.

Stopping the merger, however, would keep the MAC as a distinct organization, separate from the Tacoma-based Washington State Historical Society.

Brown’s comments came on the same day that MAC officials were in Olympia, urging skeptical House lawmakers not to allow the merger or deep budget cuts.

“Simply saying that it’s going to be hard or that it would be impossible is falling on our deaf ears,” state Rep. Jeannie Darneille, D-Tacoma, warned CEO Dennis Hession and development officer Lorna Walsh Thursday. “…We’re looking at just the most dire of budget circumstances.”

When Gregoire called for the $524,000 cut, state budget writers thought they faced a shortfall of

From the printed paper:

OLYMPIA – Fred Watley’s need for a liver is changing state law.

A year ago, the Spokane man nearly died while waiting for an insurance-law loophole to expire so he could get the liver transplant he desperately needed. His insurer finally relented.

On Thursday, Watley – with a new liver – urged state lawmakers to close the loophole so that people no longer have to risk their lives waiting.

The near-tragedy prompted newly elected state Rep. John Driscoll, D-Spokane, to sponsor House Bill 1308, which would reduce the wait in such cases.

“I wasn’t planning to make history. I just wanted to save his life for our 11-year-old son,” said Watley’s wife, LiAnne.

The change is backed by Watley’s health insurer, Group Health, and other major health insurers in the state.

“It’s a loophole that needed to be cleared,” said state Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler, who said he was stunned to learn that when employers switch health plans it restarts the waiting period of at least six months allowed for organ transplants.

I spent a couple of hours yesterday sitting in on meetings between state officials and a large group of business/political/community leaders from Spokane. Among the things that came up:

-Gov. Chris Gregoire said she expects the state’s revenue picture to keep getting worse for a while. The March, June and even September revenue forecasts, she believes, will all be worse.

“The hopes are that it won’t be down in December,” she said.

-If she mentioned a source on this I missed it, but by way of good news, Gregoire also said that Washington is the second best-positioned state to emerge quickly from the recession.

-She said that the likely federal infrastructure money — $535 million — was less than the billions the state had been hoping for.

-And she also repeatedly cautioned that that other federal money will come with a lot of strings, conditions and restrictions attached, rather than just being a big check that state budget writers can use to backfill any cuts.

“They (the feds) have kind of learned the lesson of giving $350 billion to Wall Street with no strings attached,” she said.

-Also, one observation: this is a business-organized trip, but this year, business people were pretty scarce among the 85 Spokane-area folks who made the trip. Far more numerous: local government officials (mayors, city council members) and people with a direct stake in how the state’s budget pie is divvied up (WSU, hospital folks, community organizations, the Armed Forces and Aerospace Museum, SIRTI, the MAC, etc.). In a year of cuts, organizer Rich Hadley said, many were there largely to play defense.

Here’s the print version:

OLYMPIA _ Gov. Chris Gregoire once was asked by a reporter if there was anything she didn’t like about the job.

Yes, she said. She hated getting the news that a child in the state’s care had died.

Four years later, Gregoire says there’s a second thing she doesn’t like: getting notice after notice that companies are about to lay off workers.

“And it comes in a wave, every day,” she said.

Gregoire spoke Thursday to politicians, business leaders and other Spokane-area officials on their annual lobbying trip to Olympia. Some 85 people from the region are spending three days in the capital pushing local priorities and trying to keep Spokane on lawmakers’ radar.

The message from Gregoire and top lawmakers: Things are bleak, but Washington is well- positioned to rebound quickly. And as in the other Washington, Olympia is trying various tactics to kick-start the economy.

“No one knows what to do right now, to be perfectly honest with you,” Gregoire said. “We are in uncharted territory.”

The state’s economy relies 

The state is deploying up to 200 soldiers and airmen to Spokane to help remove snow from school roofs and other structures, Gov. Chris Gregoire’s office said a few minutes ago.

State officials (see the full press release below) are particularly worried about “a warm, moist Pacific air mass” bringing “significant precipitation” to western Washington over the next day and a half.

“Spokane can also expect to see warm and moist subtropical air, causing rain and melting snow,” reads the statement from Gregoire’s office.

So yes, the dreaded “rain on snow” phenomenon, better known as “flooding.”

From the statement:

Significant hazards will be created by the warm rain, including risks of flooding, landslides, avalanches and potential roof collapses caused by snow and rain accumulation on roofs.
 
The avalanche threats will be greatest in the next 24 hours.  Snow levels are expected to rise to 5000-8000 feet, causing extreme avalanche danger for the Olympics and Cascades.  The risk of landslides also will be greatest on Wednesday. The rain will then cause a flood threat for nearly all Western Washington rivers and streams beginning Wednesday and peaking on Thursday.
 
Flood impacts may include the need to close US-12 at Randle and I-5 in Lewis County.

Full text below.