In brief: Spokane Partnership agrees to settlement with Tedesco

The Downtown Spokane Partnership has settled a dispute with its fired president.

The partnership’s board voted last month to fire Mike Tedesco without cause after less than a year on the job.

Tedesco’s attorney, Bob Dunn, had argued that the board violated Tedesco’s contract when they terminated him.

Dunn said Tuesday that Tedesco and the partnership finalized a monetary settlement late last week. He said both sides agreed to keep the terms private.

The Downtown Spokane Partnership contracts with the city to manage about $1 million the city collects in special taxes on downtown merchants and business owners in the city’s Parking and Business Improvement Area.

Tedesco had a two-year contract and earned $95,000 a year.

Todd Woodard, vice chairman of the DSP board, confirmed that a settlement had been reached.

The full board voted on the deal last week, he said.

R-74 backers raise $2.8 million

SEATTLE – The campaign to uphold the state’s gay marriage law raised $2.8 million in cash contributions over the past six weeks.

According to filings posted with the Public Disclosure Commission on Tuesday, Washington United for Marriage has raised more than $10 million in cash and in-kind donations for its campaign, compared with more than $1.8 million raised by Preserve Marriage Washington, which is trying to overturn the new law. Preserve Marriage’s latest fundraising report had not yet posted to the PDC site.

R-74 asks voters to either approve or reject the law passed earlier this year that allows same-sex marriage in the state. That law is on hold pending a November vote.

Washington United for Marriage has spent more than $5 million on television ads during that same time period. Its ads started running last month, and spokesman Zach Silk said that the money spent on advertising takes them through Election Day. Preserve Marriage just started running its TV ads against R-74 last week.

Judge rejects suit in goat attack

TACOMA – A judge has dismissed a widow’s lawsuit against the federal government over her husband’s death in a mountain goat attack at Olympic National Park two years ago.

U.S. District Judge Robert Bryan dismissed most of Susan Chadd’s claims over the summer and the rest last week. On Tuesday he declined to reconsider.

Robert Boardman was trying to protect Chadd and a friend when the 370-pound billy goat gored him, severing arteries in his thigh. The goat is believed to have been one that harassed park visitors for years.

Chadd accused the government of negligence in its management of the goat. She also alleged that the park botched the rescue effort.

The judge said the government’s actions are immune from lawsuits under the Federal Tort Claims Act because they involved an exercise of discretion related to public policy.

School district sued in shooting

SEATTLE – The family of a girl who was wounded when a gun went off in her third-grade classroom has added the Bremerton School District to its lawsuit.

Lawyers for Amina Kocer-Bowman’s family say the district should have known the classmate who brought the gun to class in a backpack was dangerous and that school officials failed to take reasonable safety precautions.

A spokeswoman for the district, Pattye Heuer, said it has no comment on Tuesday’s development.

Lawyers announced their intent to sue the district in August when they filed a $10 million claim against the district. They also are suing the boy’s relatives for allowing him access to handguns.

Amina spent six weeks in a hospital and endured numerous surgeries for internal injuries caused by the shooting.

DNA leads to arrest in 1976 death

AUGUSTA, Maine – A former Maine man was arrested in Washington state for the 1976 stabbing death of a 70-year-old woman after DNA linked him to the crime, police said Tuesday.

Gary Raub, 63, was arrested Monday night in Seattle in the death of Blanche Kimball, whose body was found inside her Augusta home on June 12, 1976. It’s the oldest unsolved killing in Maine in which an arrest has been made.

Detectives with the Maine State Police and the Augusta Police Department flew to Seattle on Monday and arrested Raub, who was known as Gary Wilson in 1976, with help from Seattle police, state police spokesman Steve McCausland said.

Kimball was last seen painting her steps on Memorial Day in 1976, police said. Her body was found on June 12 after neighbors reported she hadn’t been seen for several days. She died of multiple stab wounds.

Raub at one time rented a room from Kimball and detectives interviewed him twice after her killing, police said.

Police early this year were able to develop a DNA profile from blood from Kimball’s kitchen. Detectives then got Raub’s DNA in July by asking him to participate in a chewing gum survey, according to an affidavit cited by the Kennebec Journal.

Extradition hearings were expected to begin Tuesday or today in Seattle, McCausland said, after which Raub was expected to be returned to Maine.