John Webster

From the outside, you’d never guess what’s going on in the nondescript old building across Capitol Way from the Starbucks in downtown Olympia. Within those painted concrete slabs, an agency few have heard of is completely reinventing the way people and small businesses will get a precious and often unattainable commodity: health insurance.

I used to be a Republican. Voted for them. Wrote nice things about them and their policies. When I was a kid, I even doorbelled for them. Never again.

North of the border, layoffs. South of the border, sweatshops. Is that the best the global economy can do? No, it's not, says the saga of Spokane-based Key Tronic Corp., outlined in a series that concludes in the pages of today's Spokesman-Review.

Spokane's street trees are an asset, exactly comparable to lovely homes and well-manicured lawns. Which is to say, these assets are privately owned, the result of individual pride, initiative, work and expense. No amount of emotional rhetoric can make these trees "belong to all of us," as advocates of a proposed street tree ordinance tend to assert. According to city attorneys, most of the trees in city rights-of-way were planted by homeowners and belong to homeowners.

First Bill Clinton, then Sen. Bob Kerrey, then Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Three prominent Democrats have touched the fabled "third rail" of American politics - Social Security reform. Instead of being electrocuted, all have lived to tell about it. This is good news. What's more, from Kerrey and Moynihan have come proposals strikingly similar to those from the Republican camp, where the influential Heritage Foundation has been arguing that Social Security be changed from an income transfer to an investment program. With President Clinton calling for a national debate on how to prevent Social Security's impending bankruptcy, perhaps a bipartisan solution is beginning to emerge.

Spokane's Arena wasn't built in a day. It took a decade of advocacy, legislation, setbacks, revisions and several public votes before civic leaders devised a funding plan that met with public approval. The proposed addition to Spokane's convention center won't be built in a day, either. But it ought to be built. The visitor's trade has grown into a big asset, injecting dollars from outside the area and strengthening many local businesses.

Now that some of the state's pundits and politicians have finished rounding up the usual outrage over Sen. Jim West's verbal shot at a notorious lobbyist, let us attempt to put this little tempest into a teapot, where it belongs. The Building Industry Association of Washington, fined last month for violating campaign finance laws, angered West with an ad it placed in the March 4 Spokesman-Review. The ad urged readers to put pressure on West for not supporting a couple of bills that purportedly would benefit school children. The ad neglected to mention that the bills would cost taxpayers $70 million and would benefit the building industry to the tune of $20 million.

During the past quarter century, Washington state government ballooned. By 1994, our tax burden was 10th heaviest in the nation. Year after year, the Legislature overspent its revenue. Then, when the economy slowed and revenue fell, it would raise taxes. In 1993, voters whistled this game to a stop, enacting Initiative 601 to control the growth of spending. A year later, they booted out many of the Legislature's Democrats.

At their best, politicians play hard, play smart and win. At their worst, they pout on the sidelines and boo the players on the field. Consider, for instance, the Washington state Legislature's battle to improve congested, potholed roads.

A quarter century has come and gone since states passed laws requiring the public's governments to operate in public, where voters can watch. During that time, too many governments have forgotten this obligation. They routinely discuss their toughest decisions behind closed doors. It is time for a new commitment to open government.

Educrat (ej'-u-krat) n. A heavily degreed bureaucrat who attends committee meetings and uses impenetrable jargon to defend ineffective but trendy educational methods that create a need for more committee meetings. Phonics (fon'-iks) n. A method of teaching children to read. Proven effective during centuries of use. Attacked by educrats during the late 20th century, but restored by popular demand after other instructional methods led to high rates of illiteracy. Teaches children the sounds made by letters of the alphabet. Commission (Kum-ish'-un) n. A group of well-meaning capitalists who assume, to the detriment of the increasingly illiterate labor pool, that educrats know how to make schools better.

After weeks of intercollegiate bickering about which taxpayerfunded bureaucracy should deliver higher education service in Spokane, it is time to re-examine the mission for which such bureaucracies exist. Namely, equipping students and communities with tools to make them stronger for life in the real world.

Spokane is a military town and rallied in a wonderful way behind families left behind during the Persian Gulf War of 1991. If U.S. forces bomb Iraq this year, our community once again might be called upon to line up behind Fairchild's tanker crews. As we have done before, so we should do again. Whatever public opinion might say about the commander in chief or the mission he assigns, never again should Americans in combat sense anything less than firm support from the folks at home. One Vietnam was enough.

How could the city of Spokane be so stupid as to fail to consult the state Department of Ecology before spending millions on the Lincoln Street Bridge project? Actually, the city wasn't stupid. The city was double-crossed. In a two-sentence ruling issued two months past deadline, the Ecology Department said the bridge's shadow would violate the city's shorelines plan.

Your tax dollars at work: Prodded by competitors of Microsoft Corp., political demagogues and busybody government lawyers are yapping like a pack of bloodhounds, hot on the trail of a mouse. They'll save us from the monster, they say. Consumers seek no rescue. They're snapping up Microsoft's products and using them to transform business and communications.

In spite of objections from nervous employees of Eastern Washington University, efforts to improve this area's public higher education offerings continue to progress. Where, a puzzled bystander may ask, should that progress lead?

Who could oppose motherhood, let alone nursing mothers? No one we know. Breast-feeding's good. But it is a poor kind of assistance to nursing moms, and to working women generally, that relies on the discredited tools of bossy regulations and tax-funded bureaucracy.

In between predictable partisan spats about gay marriage and partial-birth abortion, Washington state's Legislature has made some progress with an issue of real-world importance to our daily lives. Namely, roads funding. Washington's city, county and state roads are in bad shape, as every commuter knows. The congestion, the potholes and the ruts are more than a safety hazard. They threaten, business leaders warn, to drive jobs and international trade to other states that are smart enough to maintain transportation. Four weeks into the session, legislators seem well on the way to settling half the issue: Where will money to fix roads come from?

If public schools are going to improve it'll happen because they heed the advice of the local communities they serve. The bond issue proposed in Spokane School District 81 proves the point. Years ago, some district bureaucrats dreamed of abandoning Lewis & Clark High School, an architectural gem priceless in character and tradition, for a more expensive "modern" building somewhere out in the suburbs. Parents, alumni, students, faculty, history lovers and downtown boosters all hated the idea. A grass-roots committee of volunteers, including respected architect Steve McNutt, donated their time, studied all the options and found a lower-cost solution that pleased everyone.