Doug Floyd

In 1970, Washington voters decided this state's longstanding restriction against lending public money for private purposes was too limiting. They amended the Constitution just enough to let local governments loan money to private property owners for water- or energy-conservation improvements. Now, House Joint Resolution 4209 offers voters a chance to extend that authority to stormwater and sewer services.

Twenty years ago, the crisis in Washington state's public schools was how to pay for them. Today's crisis is even more urgent than that. It's how to set higher learning standards and hold students, parents and teachers accountable for reaching them. It's how to do it while affording all students, regardless of differences, an equal opportunity to learn. And it's how to relate the whole process to the world where today's youngsters will contribute as workers and citizens.

Homosexuality is controversial. Fairness isn't. And Initiative 677 is about fairness more than it's about homosexuality.

It's the American way: identify a problem, write a law, go on to the next problem. So, if teenagers account for a disproportionate share of traffic accidents, it's not surprising that several states have responded with a complex system of graduated driving privileges, doled out along age divisions narrow enough to defy the most observant law-enforcement officers' ability to make the distinctions.

A virus is going around. It goes around every election season. It's called cynicism.

Police officers are vested with virtual life-and-death authority. That, Spokane Police Chief Terry Mangan has said, subjects them to a higher standard of conduct than other citizens. In spite of that, he has conceded, police officers, being human, sometimes err.

It doesn't happen often, perhaps twice a year, that a hazardous-waste scare shuts down one of the Spokane regional trash-disposal facilities. When it does, it's annoying, it's costly and, usually, it's avoidable. Most recently, on Sept. 15, the Valley Transfer Station was closed for half a day after alert employees spotted some common but nevertheless hazardous items mixed in with normal household garbage. Whoever discarded those materials may not have been aware of the proper procedures, or may have been deliberately trying to duck what he or she expected would be cumbersome compliance rules.

Less than a fourth of Spokane County's registered voters cast ballots in Tuesday's primary election. Yawn. Dismal as it is, that wholesale abdication of civic duty is only half the story. The other half is that only about two-thirds of the eligible population is registered to vote in the first place.

If the name thalidomide scares people, it should. Unfortunately, people who ought to be scared the most - women of childbearing age - "have no clue" about the 12,000 severe birth defects blamed on thalidomide before it was banned worldwide in 1962. The words quoted above are from Dr. Janet Woodcock, director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. Her agency has been measuring public awareness of thalidomide as the FDA moves toward approval of the drug in the United States.

Here's today's multiple choice question. Clinton Falls is: (a) A town in Indiana (b) A town in Minnesota (c) The headline Newt Gingrich dreams about (d) A renowned tourist destination The answer? All of the above - except d.

At least five young offenders who had just completed their confinement were back in Spokane County's juvenile detention facility Friday - but for the best of reasons. They returned, voluntarily, to finish what they'd started. They returned to graduate from the county's unique boot camp program, Delta F.O.R.C.E.

The revival of West First Avenue in downtown Spokane suffered a setback when the Children's Museum of Spokane abandoned plans to move there. It didn't suffer a defeat, however. Landing the museum and Spokane Marketplace as wholesome, vibrant, family-friendly tenants in the once crime-plagued district was considered a key part of reversing the decay on which drug dealers and prostitutes had feasted for too long. The Marketplace remains. As its first summer rolls into fall, it has plans for an expanded holiday season later this year and, ultimately, for year-round, seven-day-a-week activity. Like the Marketplace, the Children's Museum and its predicted 35,000 visitors a year, would have generated the kind of law-abiding foot traffic that gives civic vitality to a neighborhood while discouraging criminal activity.

Every editorial writer has heard, and most have repeated, this definition of their craft: Editorial writer: someone who charges downhill after the battle and slays the wounded. Joke or not, the line carries a certain sting of truth. So U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno had better protect her head from a swarm of pundits headed her way. Reno, you see, OK'd the Justice Department's decision not to prosecute four FBI officials over the North Idaho shootout in which, five years ago today, a federal marksman killed Vicki Weaver on Ruby Ridge.

A 1995 survey, paid for by the Coors Brewing Co., found that 90 percent of the chief executives for Fortune 1,000 companies consider illiteracy a workplace problem - but only about 20 percent have programs to deal with it. In the case of many communities, Spokane among them, the problem is often the reverse. Programs are in place, but relatively few people seem to understand them or the extent of the need for them. Thus, the Literacy Advocacy Team, a program announced last week in Spokane, has a major task to perform. Created by the Washington state Office of Adult Literacy, team members will lobby, will campaign for volunteers and will raise community awareness about illiteracy.

After one term on the Spokane School Board, Nancy Fike will step down at the end of the year. But she has issued her colleagues this challenge: Make it worth people's time to attend school board meetings. Fike is distressed that regular board meetings, even special public forums held in neighborhood schools, are poorly attended by those in whose interest the school board functions. Is it the people's own fault if they abdicate their responsibility? Partly. But what are they missing? The Spokane School Board traditionally works decisions out before its regular meetings, then formalizes them while the public looks on. Absent is any substantive discussion of the diverse views that have been shared, the alternatives that have been considered, the trade-offs that have been made to achieve consensus.

Has the impossible happened? Have the Clinton White House and the Republican Congress truly come up with a budget compromise that both sides believe will produce a balanced budget and allow tax cuts? That's the word out of Washington, D.C. What makes it all possible, analysts say, is a vigorous economy that is generating surprisingly high tax collections.

Relatives of murder victims Gertrude and Richard Mattausch left court disappointed last Tuesday. They had expected to hear one of the defendants in the case plead guilty, part of a deal with the prosecuting attorney. Once before the judge, though, Cheyenne T. Brown changed his mind.

Remember this about Lewis and Clark High School's program to test student athletes for drugs: It was suggested by student athletes. Some seniors on last year's football team took the idea to their coaches out of concern that drug abuse was hurting the team. The coaches pitched the plan to administrators and administrators sold the Spokane School Board. Last year, on a voluntary basis, LC football players submitted to a random drug testing program. Next year, all LC teams will participate.

Spokane County's 20-year-old juvenile detention facility was designed to house 44 offenders. By fudging on accepted standards, officials can accommodate 65. With the creative use of holding cells and day room space, the population has recently been as high as 67. At the beginning of June, newly sentenced juveniles were being given "report dates" in July.

Nearby residents not only gave the Spokane MarketPlace a warm reception when it moved into its new home at First and Jefferson, some even pitched in to help spruce up the building. A year ago that wouldn't have happened. Residents in and around the 1100 block of West First were too terrified of street crime to venture outside their locked doors. In July 1996, "the block," as the area was known, accounted for 165 times its share of the Spokane Police Department's attention.

Public opinion surveys leave no doubt: Most Americans want Timothy McVeigh killed. McVeigh should suffer the same fate that his victims suffered when he bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995. So the prevalent reasoning goes.

First, they were flooded by Mother Nature. Now, they're being snowed by their federal government. Residents in 33 states eligible for national flood relief sit helplessly on their sandbags while Congress and President Clinton exploit them - and their circumstances - for political advantage. The Republican Congress bears most of the guilt, but Clinton owns a share of culpability, too.

Elections officials think as many as 70 percent of Spokane County's registered voters will cast ballots in next week's statewide election. Imagine, 70 percent. That would be substantially higher than the normal turnout - except you can't call it a turnout. Spokane County decided to conduct this election by mail. There are no polls at which to turn out. Voters are following a campaign restricted to the media, then punching their ballots at home and turning them over to their postal carriers.

It doesn't matter to Spokane's Chase Youth Commission if some low-income kids who get scholarships to play in Hoopfest live outside the city limits. It didn't matter, either, that some youngsters who got free running shoes for Bloomsday were not city residents. The commission is a city entity, established in the Spokane city charter and operated in conjunction with the city Youth Department.