Amy Cannata

Despite repeated assertions that they must keep the county's budget trim, Spokane County commissioners Monday approved almost $500,000 in additional spending on outside economic development organizations. As it stands, the $133.6 million 2006 general fund budget exceeds projected revenues by more than $5.5 million.

It was just plain disappointing. There were so many slide-offs and fender benders last week during our first big storm of the season that it almost seemed like Spokane had never seen snow before.

Almost one-quarter of Spokane County's 2006 general fund budget will be spent on incarcerating adult and juvenile criminals. Rising costs at the Spokane County Jail and Geiger Corrections Center are part of an overall trend of burgeoning criminal justice system expenses.

Local officials and environmentalists faced off Tuesday with detergent and fertilizer industry representatives in the brewing battle over whether banning phosphates from dishwasher detergents and lawn fertilizers is a necessary step to clean up the Spokane River. "Phosphate is central to cleaning in automatic dishwasher detergents, said Dennis Griesing, vice president of government affairs for the Soap and Detergent Association.

Spokane County officials are asking a judge to force the city of Spokane to stop taxing some county sewer customers. The lawsuit, filed in Spokane County Superior Court after a year of negotiations between the two local governments failed to resolve the conflict, also seeks repayment of more than $2 million the county contends was improperly charged. The city is planning a counter suit.

So much for $30 tabs. First the Department of Licensing tacked on a small processing fee, and starting in the new year they will raise the tab price altogether, basing it on vehicle weight.

Voters are returning their mayoral recall ballots at a brisk pace, with 30,000 arriving at the Spokane County Elections Office in the past two days. But hundreds of voters are forgetting to sign their ballots in the vote-by-mail election on whether to recall Spokane Mayor Jim West.

Environmentalists agree with government officials and industry leaders that it's going to take a combination of treatment technology, water conservation, changed habits and improved agricultural practices to clean up the Spokane River and Long Lake. But the two groups disagree on how a proposed new Spokane County sewage treatment plant fits into the picture.

The Spokane Transit Authority could be liable for more than $1 million in missed Social Security payments for 114 employees. The mistake, involving about a quarter of the agency's employees, is being blamed on administrative confusion over which workers had to pay into the national retirement system and which were covered by a private retirement plan only.

Taking the travel out of Thanksgiving is like leaving cranberry sauce off the holiday table. It's downright un-American.

Voters in Spokane and Kootenai counties favor decisive action to improve the quality of the Spokane River, even if it means opening their wallets and putting up with some inconvenience. According to a survey conducted in July by a consortium of local government and industrial groups, and made public Wednesday, a majority favored banning phosphates from dishwasher detergents and fertilizers, switching houses from septic tanks to sewer systems, reusing treated sewage for irrigation and installing state-of-the-art treatment technology at local sewage plants.

Local officials, scientists and environmental groups gathered Tuesday morning in the downtown Spokane Public Library to push for a community discussion about banning phosphates in dishwasher detergents and fertilizers to protect the Spokane River. With a commanding view of the river as a backdrop, representatives from Spokane County, the Washington State Department of Ecology, the Lands Council environmental group, and the cities of Spokane and Spokane Valley explained that a ban is a key step toward improving river water quality.

Winter driving is bad enough, but families divided by the Cascades may have a rough go of it at Thanksgiving. Making your way across Washington could be a bigger battle than breaking off the winning side of the turkey wishbone.

Forget the Electrasol and Cascade. Residents may soon be using environmentally sensitive detergent brands like Seventh Generation and Ecover in their automatic dishwashers. Spokane County Commissioner Todd Mielke is leading an effort to ban phosphates in dishwashing detergents and lawn fertilizers, and he's calling on elected officials in Spokane and Kootenai counties to jump on board.

An abandoned Interstate 90 rest area near the Idaho state line may soon be transformed into a new park linked to the Centennial Trail along the Spokane River, and may offer travelers a new tourist information center. Spokane County commissioners could decide by the end of the year to lease the site from the Washington State Department of Transportation, fix it up, reopen the restrooms and link the site to the Centennial Trail and riverfront parkland the county already owns.

Spokane County voters passed two advisory ballot propositions, approving a 0.1 percent sales tax increase for mental health services and buying into a plan to cast all ballots by mail. But while all three commissioners said Tuesday that they would institute the tax, two balked at eliminating poll site voting, saying they needed to further study the issue.

Kaiser Aluminum officials are asking Spokane County to help finance a $3.6 million tunnel under the North Spokane Corridor to provide access to the company's Mead property. The tunnel would link the 412-acre site to Market Street on the east and continue through the Kaiser property to Highway 2 on the west. It's all part of a plan to sell the site – where hundreds of people once worked on the pot lines – as a mixed-use property open to residential, commercial and light industrial development.

The traffic artery through Spokane's core is causing some downtown boosters heartburn. The Washington Department of Transportation recently announced a two-summer plan to repair the Interstate 90 viaduct through downtown. It involves closing one side of the viaduct each summer over the next two years, reducing traffic from three lanes in each direction to two lanes and closing multiple downtown freeway ramps.

Nearly all of the $30,500 contributed to a group advocating voter support of a mental health tax comes from those who benefit from government spending on mental health services. The top contributor, Spokane Mental Health, gave $25,000 to People United for Mental Health, a political action committee supporting passage of a Spokane County 0.1 percent sales tax increase for mental health services.

Spokane County will spend $40,000 to $50,000 to connect 34 Colbert-area homes to the Whitworth Water District after the recent discovery that the North Glen community well is contaminated by a previously unmonitored chemical. The north Spokane residents live near the Colbert landfill, which closed in the mid-1980s and may have caused the contamination. Spokane County has been paying for bottled water delivery for most of the households there, even though there are no federal or state drinking-water standards related to the chemical stabilizer.

Let's face it. There are some really mean people out there — people who will take your meticulously crafted jack-o'-lantern and roll it down Freya Street. Turns out so many people roll pumpkins down that hill and other Spokane slopes that the city's Street Department gets frequent calls for sweepers the day after Halloween.

Spokane County budget writers have trimmed more than $1 million from the proposed $134.7 million 2006 budget. Now, however, a group of county judges, attorneys and other criminal justice employees are asking county commissioners to authorize hiring 26 new employees at a cost of about $1.6 million a year to tackle a criminal case backlog.