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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883
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Jim Camden

Jim Camden

Current Position: correspondent

Jim Camden joined The Spokesman-Review in 1981 and retired in 2021. He is currently the political and state government correspondent covering Washington state.

Email
jimc@spokesman.com
Phone
(509) 879-7461

All Stories

News >  Spokane

Spokane woman files second recall petition

A Spokane resident, who finds herself reluctantly at the head of a movement to oust Mayor Jim West over sexual misconduct allegations, has filed a new petition to have him recalled by voters. Shannon Sullivan filed the new recall petition Wednesday to replace her May 9 petition, which was rejected by Spokane County's deputy civil prosecuting attorney Monday because it didn't meet all the requirements of state law.
News >  Spokane

Fairchild stands tall as base list released

Spokane's business and political leaders basked in the glow Friday of a successful full-court press to keep one of the community's largest sources of jobs and federal money open and active. Fairchild Air Force Base is not on the list of military facilities the Pentagon announced it wants to close. The base would lose eight jets flown by the Washington Air National Guard, and about 200 jobs connected with them, but the rest of the Guard unit, and all of the active duty Air Force personnel at tanker wing, survival school and other operations will stay open if the Defense Department gets its way.
News >  Spokane

Hanford downwinder case goes to jury

After nearly two days of arguments by attorneys on whether doctors or scientists are more believable, the case of six Washington residents who say they were injured by radiation from a nuclear weapons plant went to a federal jury Friday afternoon. At the suggestion of U.S. District Judge William Fremming Nielsen, the jury went home for the weekend and will begin deliberating Monday the case involving six people who grew up downwind from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
News >  Spokane

Fairchild keeps ‘em flying

Fairchild Air Force Base is expected to survive the latest Pentagon base-closing recommendations, but it could lose planes assigned to the Washington Air National Guard. Congressional sources said Thursday that Fairchild and other Washington state military facilities should come through the latest step of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission relatively unscathed.
News >  Spokane

Hanford companies deny radiation impact

Companies that ran the nuclear weapons production at Hanford are trying to deny their radiation made people sick much the way the tobacco industry denied smoking caused lung cancer, attorneys for six central Washington residents told a federal jury Thursday. But a lawyer for General Electric and DuPont, which ran plutonium production at the nuclear reservation in the 1940s and 1950s, urged the jury to be guided by science and not swayed by sympathy.
News >  Spokane

Downwinder case headed to the jury

A jury begins sorting out today whether some central Washington residents were Cold War casualties of weapons produced at the nearby Hanford Nuclear Reservation. In a move that stunned lawyers representing the Hanford "downwinders," attorneys defending the contractors who ran the government plutonium plants rested their case Wednesday after calling just two experts to rebut more than two weeks of testimony that sought to link cancer to the nuclear weapons production.
News >  Spokane

Threat to veterans’ care seen

The United States may be on the verge of breaking its promise to care for the troops who come home from war in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. Sen. Patty Murray said Wednesday as she met with veterans groups in Spokane and Walla Walla. "We promised those soldiers two years of health care when they returned," Murray said during a morning interview. But the federal budget doesn't have the money to pay for that care.
News >  Spokane

Both sides claim win in pretrial rulings

WENATCHEE – Republicans can try to prove Dino Rossi won last year's governor's race based on statistics, a Chelan County Superior Court judge ruled Monday. But they'll need to meet a very high "burden of proof," and Democrats can offer their own evidence of illegal votes to try to prove that Christine Gregoire is the rightful occupant of the governor's mansion.
News >  Spokane

Politics and a parking garage: Lessons of RPS

The main lawsuit over the River Park Square garage ended last week with a fizzle, not a bang, as the Spokane City Council accepted a $4.25 million settlement offer. That doesn't mean the controversy is resolved.
News >  Spokane

Spokane ends last big RPS fight

The Spokane City Council approved a truce Wednesday to end the long-running legal war over the River Park Square garage by accepting a $4.25 million settlement from its former bond counsel.
News >  Spokane

City may settle RPS dispute

The city of Spokane and its former legal advisers tentatively agreed to a $4.25 million settlement to end the federal trial over the River Park Square garage. The City Council will be asked to vote this afternoon on a proposed settlement with former bond counsel Roy Koegen and his former law firm, Perkins Coie. If a majority of the council says yes, the legal malpractice trial under way in Richland will end.
News >  Spokane

Appraiser says garage overvalued

RICHLAND – The downtown garage that was sold for $26.5 million in 1999 to help pay for the River Park Square renovation might be worth as little as $3.4 million on the open market today, an appraiser hired by the City of Spokane told a federal jury Monday. Bruce Allen, a consultant hired by the city as it prepared for the trial, said many things have changed since other appraisers first tried to put a value on the garage proposal some 10 years ago. The market value has declined steadily, dropping from about $21 million in 1996 to between $7.5 million and $3.4 million last year, he estimates.
News >  Spokane

Views on ecology law mixed

The 35-year-old National Environmental Policy Act is either an important protection the public has from out-of-control government or an excuse for out-of-touch bureaucrats to delay and disrupt worthwhile developments. Both views, and several that fall somewhere in between, were offered Saturday to a congressional task force studying possible revisions to the landmark environmental law known by its acronym of NEPA.
News >  Spokane

Two theories compete at trial

RICHLAND – Responsibility for paying off the multimillion-dollar legal mess spawned by the River Park Square garage may hinge on which theory a federal jury believes of what went wrong. There's the city of Spokane's view: Its former bond counsel Roy Koegen and his firm had a duty to stop city officials from the mistakes they made, from setting an inflated price on the parking facility to providing misleading statements and outright falsehoods to investors who bought garage bonds.
News >  Spokane

Jurors selected to hear RPS trial

RICHLAND – A jury of five men and four women from central Washington was sworn in Thursday to decide whether the city of Spokane got bad legal advice in the River Park Square garage deal. If they agree with the city that it did, they can determine how much of the city's losses on the deal should be covered by its former bond counsel, Roy Koegen, and his former firm, Perkins Coie.
News >  Spokane

Jury selection starts today in RPS suit

Almost four years to the day after investors sued the city of Spokane and nearly everyone else connected with River Park Square redevelopment, a trial is set to start over the mall's financially troubled garage. But the jury being selected this morning in Richland will be asked to decide a much different case than the original claims of fraud and conspiracy in the lawsuit filed on April 23, 2001.
News >  Spokane

Spokane to host congressional hearing on environmental law

The cornerstone of the nation's environmental laws will be put under a microscope Saturday when a small piece of Congress comes to Spokane. A newly formed congressional task force on the National Environmental Policy Act will hold its first hearing on the Riverpoint campus just east of downtown, a nod to its chairwoman, U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris.
News >  Spokane

Curious criticism of Murray perhaps knee-jerk reaction

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is accusing Sen. Patty Murray of "petty partisan politics," which, considering the source, might be considered a compliment. But the odd thing about this criticism, launched in a fairly long and blistering press release, is that it's not for anything that Murray did or didn't do. It just seems to be a matter of her being handy.
News >  Spokane

GOP, Democrats scrap over election lawsuit

Republicans and Democrats dueled with legal briefs and press statements Thursday as they continued the fight to throw out last year's gubernatorial election or leave the winner in office. At the heart of this flurry of paperwork could be a key to the GOP's chance of getting Dino Rossi to replace Gov. Christine Gregoire in the governor's mansion. That is, which votes cast in the Nov. 2 election shouldn't be counted, and how they might be "uncounted" from a race that went through three tabulations and ended with Gregoire winning by 129 votes out of some 2.9 million cast.
News >  Spokane

20 tankers to visit base

Grand Forks' temporary loss will be Spokane's gain this year. When the Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota closes its runway for about six months for resurfacing and remodeling, the base's tankers will have to go somewhere. Twenty of them will come to Fairchild Air Force Base later this month, along with about 376 people needed to fly and maintain them.
News >  Spokane

City wins RPS ruling on damages

The city of Spokane received a victory Friday in the long-running legal battle over the River Park Square garage. A federal judge ruled the city can ask a jury to consider some $40 million in damages for any judgment it might get in an upcoming trial. But first the city will have to win its malpractice claim against Perkins Coie, the law firm of its former bond counsel.
News >  Spokane

City was warned of RPS’ dire straits

The River Park Square mall has been losing between $3. 7 million and $4. 2 million a year since 2000, and bankruptcy by the companies that owned it was "the most likely course of action" if a lawsuit over its garage wasn't settled, city officials were told late last year.
News >  Spokane

Disputed vote trial to start May 23

The Republican Party's challenge to Christine Gregoire's 129-vote win in the governor's race will go to trial May 23 in Wenatchee. Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges also scheduled a May 2 hearing on any issues of dispute between the two sides in the case, such as the burden of proof the Republicans must meet on their challenge to ballots or the voters who cast them. Bridges may also rule on how results might be adjusted for votes that are successfully challenged.
News >  Spokane

Fairchild 96th Squadron inactivated

The Screaming Eagles of the 96th Air Refueling Squadron have been silenced, and their wings clipped. The Air Force inactivated the 96th Monday after nearly 11 years at Fairchild, as it consolidates its units for more efficiency.
News >  Spokane

Former mayor of Valley fined for illegal e-mail

Former Spokane Valley Mayor Mike DeVleming will pay a $50 civil fine for illegally using city computer equipment to campaign for Republican Dino Rossi in early 2004. The state Public Disclosure Commission fined DeVleming $150 on Thursday, but suspended $100, for e-mails he sent out on his city-owned computer when he was trying to find supporters willing to buy tickets to a Rossi campaign breakfast.