Jim Camden

Spokane County expects to receive the last third of $30,000 by the end of the week that will cover monthly payments through July from racetrack operator Bucky Austin. County officials will meet Monday with Austin and his staff about notices from contractors for past-due bills totaling more than $1 million for work done on the county-owned track. They will also try to determine whether a surety bond was obtained for the improvements, as required by the lease.

The operator of Spokane County’s West Plains racetrack owes $20,000 in back payments to the county and more than $1 million to contractors who have been refurbishing the facility, county officials say. County Executive Marshall Farnell confirmed Monday that Bucky Austin, the track’s operator, has missed two monthly payments of $10,000 each, which are required under the terms of the lease announced last fall.

Word came last week from Gov. Chris Gregoire’s office that she is now on Twitter. In truth, she’s been tweeting for a few weeks. But with the revolution in Iran apparently running on social networking media, her office wanted to make sure the governor is recognized as being whatever this week’s term for au courant might be.

Supporters of an initiative to tighten state immigration laws got a significant portion of their funding from a man described by human rights organizations as the driving force behind “immigration hate groups.” John Tanton, a retired physician from northern Michigan, has set up a network that tries to use fear to change immigration policy, the Southern Poverty Law Center contends. The center’s list of hate groups nationwide includes several of the groups Tanton founded.

Spokane County will wait at least two more weeks to decide how much to raise sewer rates. After a lightly attended public hearing Tuesday night, county commissioners gave the public until June 30 to send in written comments and put off a decision until July 7.

A group pushing an initiative to change immigration law in Washington paid to insert 77,000 petitions in today’s Spokesman-Review. They’ve used a similar tactic to distribute copies of Initiative 1043 petitions in Yakima, Ellensburg, Republic and the Olympic Peninsula as the July 2 deadline for signatures draws near, Craig Feller, of Respect Washington, said Tuesday.

A city resident took umbrage recently at the e-mail address of one of the City Council candidates, complaining that Council District 1 hopeful Mike Fagan’s listing is a derogatory acronym well known to texters, instant messagers and the like. The letters in Fagan’s “1dilligas” e-mail address, according to Marshall Smith, stand for Does It Look Like I Give A “S-word.” This “little display of indecency” has lost Fagan a supporter, Smith wrote.

Otto Zehm is responsible for the events that led up to his death while in police custody, the city of Spokane said Friday as it asked a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Zehm’s mother. A 56-page response to the civil rights claim by Ann Zehm offers previously unreleased – and, according to her lawyer, irrelevant – information about a 1990 altercation between Otto Zehm and a county sheriff’s deputy. It also includes an allegation that Zehm was “on something” during the incident that was not in the transcript of the tape of the 911 call released by the city in 2006.

A stretch of the Spokane River between Harvard and Barker bridges was reopened Monday to boaters and floaters by Spokane County commissioners.

About once a week, some reader is kind enough to forward something from the Internet that shows what an absolutely abysmal job the news media are doing on some topic. Sometimes the complaint involves not telling them that Barack Obama was really born in Africa, or is a closet Muslim, or perhaps is from another planet. I can live with that, because a) I’m pretty sure he wasn’t born in Africa but couldn’t prove otherwise to their satisfaction if my life depended on it; b) I take all people at their word on their religion but wouldn’t care if he were a Muslim; and c) I’m from another planet, too, and we aliens stick together.

A gay rights group’s plan to post the names of everyone who signs Referendum 71 petitions has some people outraged and others insisting that folks shouldn’t sign petitions unless they have the guts to defend their decision. In other words, it’s your standard dichotomy in politics: WhoSigned.org is either assisting in a more open electoral process or engaging in a scurrilous political ploy in its fight against a ballot proposal that would overturn certain legal rights for same-sex couples.

One of the largest public works projects in Spokane County history, which has been nearly 30 years in the making, got its official start Thursday as local officials “turned dirt” for the $140 million wastewater treatment facility. Standing on land once occupied by stockyards off Freya Street, elected and appointed government leaders from the county, the city of Spokane Valley and the city of Spokane stuck shovels into the pre-softened soil and complimented one another for their cooperation.

Spokane City Council races and a special election for a legislative seat in southeastern Washington began to fill up Tuesday on the second day of filing week. Michael Fagan, one of the lieutenants in a state initiative operation headed by Tim Eyman, filed for the council seat in Spokane’s Northeast District. Retired health care aide Barbara Lampert, a perennial candidate, filed in the Northwest District. Jon Snyder, publisher of Out There Monthly, an outdoor recreation magazine, filed Monday afternoon for the South District seat.

Spokane County will offer taxpayer funds to the city to buy the YMCA property in Riverfront Park, but only after the city completes a feasibility study and agrees the building will be demolished in seven years. County commissioners voted 2-1 Tuesday to offer $4.4 million from the Conservation Futures fund to buy the building and slightly less than an acre on the south side of the Spokane River.

Spokane County commissioners closed a portion of the Spokane River through the Valley this afternoon at the request of Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich.

If you’ve been telling people that our local electeds are A) clueless; B) wasting money; C) spending most waking hours with their heads in small, lightless places; or D) all of the above, it’s put up or shut up time. This is filing week in Washington state.