John Stucke

The Washington Attorney General's office has accused the owner of a favorite Spokane breakfast spot of being a tax cheat who uses bankruptcy law to avoid paying his fair share. For at least the fifth time in 13 years, an Old European waffle house restaurant has filed for bankruptcy protection. The filings have used different corporate entities, but all have listed Rick Pedersen as the owner.

Avista Corp. wants to scale back its request to charge Eastern Washington customers more money for natural gas. In Idaho, the utility plans to cut rates.

A Gonzaga High School teacher went on to molest at least four more young boys after Jesuit leaders shipped the troubled priest to Seattle University in 1950, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle on Wednesday. The Rev. Michael Toulouse, who died in 1976, cultivated friendships with Catholic families, and then groomed their sons for sexual abuse even as Jesuit leaders worried about his behavior, according to court filings.

Richard Ziehnert hurried to the trash can and started digging. At last he retrieved an unopened, nondescript envelope from Wells Fargo. Inside was a check for $263. It wasn't so much the money Ziehnert wanted. The $263 represented so much more: betrayal, loss, patience and finally payback. The check was his initial disbursement from his lost Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities Co. investments.

RENO – Mediation to settle the Spokane Catholic Diocese bankruptcy was cut short this week without explanation. Teams of leaders and lawyers from the diocese and the Association of Parishes, and those representing victims of priest sex abuse negotiated into the evening on Thursday. Then they canceled Friday's planned mediation session.

A final attempt to end the Spokane Catholic Diocese bankruptcy unfolds today in Reno, Nev. It is the third and last scheduled mediation with a federal judge. Those close to the case say this is the best chance yet to reach a settlement, though considerable financial concessions – such as victims willing to accept less than the average of $600,000 per person originally pledged by Bishop William Skylstad, and parishes willing to pay millions of dollars – are necessary.

At last. After 31 months, 12,500 court filings and a full-scale federal accounting fraud investigation, Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities Co. is mailing checks today to the thousands of people burned by Spokane's worst corporate financial failure.

Workers at eight nursing homes in Washington have unionized during the past month, and management didn't fight the efforts. After 30 years of acrimony and what the Service Employees International Union calls "a bloodletting," the state's largest health care union has reached an accord with the owners of nursing homes.

Avista Corp. said it needs to charge more for electricity and natural gas to offset climbing energy prices, more homes being built in Spokane County, and upgrades to dams and power plants. The Spokane-based utility asked state regulators Thursday to approve an 8.8 percent rate hike for electricity starting Feb. 1. The new rate would increase the average monthly electric bill by $5.80 per month, for a total of $65.96.

Running the Post Falls Dam in a way that satisfies the Coeur d'Alene Tribe and other interests would be an unfair $400 million to $500 million endeavor to be borne by Avista Utility ratepayers over the next 50 years, according to the company. Avista is fighting what it calls unreasonable demands to relicense and operate the dam that maintains the water level of Lake Coeur d'Alene. Among the conditions demanded by the tribe: stop looters of tribal artifacts by hiring police; monitor water quality; fund studies for stream restoration to boost cutthroat trout numbers; and pay for lands and habitat damaged by boat wake and wave erosion.

Registered nurses at Sandpoint's Bonner General Hospital will decide Thursday whether to join the Teamsters Local 690 of Spokane. It's the third time in recent years that the 112 nurses at the hospital have been asked to organize. Previous attempts failed and today there are no unions representing any of the hospital's 398 workers.

An attorney representing people who were sexually abused by priests said Catholics in Eastern Washington can settle their church's sex abuse crisis and bankruptcy for $60 million – half of which he suggests could come from the pockets of parishioners. Bishop William Skylstad already has $30 million at his disposal from asset sales, insurance settlements and pledges from the likes of Catholic Charities. The rest, another $30 million, could be raised through what those involved in negotiations are calling the "latte-a-day" plan.

People who were sexually abused when they were children by Catholic clergy in Eastern Washington are considering suing parishes and might even explore the legal liability of individual churchgoers. Such a move could ignite worries among the laity and steer the bankruptcy case of the Spokane Catholic Diocese in a direction that alleged abuse victims and parishioners have hoped to avoid since early on in this case: a direct confrontation.

Jim Fitzgerald, who has headed the federal government's key farm support efforts in Washington state for the Bush Administration, has been appointed to a higher profile job in Washington, D.C. As chief of staff of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Development agency, Fitzgerald will now oversee the day-to-day operations of an agency with 7,000 employees. He had been the state executive director of the Farm Service Agency since 2001.

Things were getting a bit warm under all those white collars at Avista Corp. Monday afternoon. Workers at company headquarters were asked to dim the lights and draw the shades to cover all those south facing windows. The Spokane utility, which earlier in the day issued a conservation plea, even eased up on the air conditioning.

Things were getting a bit warm under all those white collars at Avista Corp. Monday afternoon. Workers at company headquarters were asked to dim the lights and draw the shades to cover all those south-facing windows. The Spokane utility, which earlier in the day issued a conservation plea, even eased up on the air conditioning.

Investors in defunct Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities Inc. will receive a small payout within about two months. It's been a 2½-year wait for thousands of people, who could only watch as the Spokane financial conglomerate went bankrupt and became engulfed in a snarl of accounting scandals and lawsuits.

Power bills for Avista ratepayers stand to rise if federal regulators and American Indian tribes follow through on demands that the Spokane utility pay for numerous conservation and cultural projects on Lake Coeur d'Alene. It's a scenario wrapped up in the company's complicated, years-long attempt to relicense its Spokane River dams. That effort took another turn this week as government agencies, environmental groups and tribes, in filings with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, urged changes to the way Avista manages the lake's water level, accounts for habitat destruction and alters river flow.

Avista has pledged $200,000 to build a new recreation site on Lake Coeur d'Alene as part of a deal that wins the support of the Bureau of Land Management for the company's attempt to relicense its Post Falls dam. The settlement announced Wednesday also requires Avista to pay $33,000 a year to the BLM for upkeep of the agency's 10 existing recreation sites, including boat launches and picnic areas on Wolf Lodge Bay, Blackwell Island, Windy Bay and Mica Bay. Both Avista and the BLM declined to say where the new site will be located.