The Washington state Supreme Court has just ruled against state Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Wash., who filed suit last year to try to overturn a requirement that tax increases be approved by a two-thirds vote of the Legislature.
OLYMPIA – As state park officials wrestle with a budget cut of up to $23 million over the next two years, they’re considering temporarily closing – or permanently getting rid of – dozens of state parks.
Potentially on the list for mothballing: Mount Spokane State Park.
OLYMPIA – No, lawmakers aren’t declaring open season on Fido.
On Monday, Washington’s state Senate approved what is probably one of the most misunderstood bills of the year: Senate Bill 5200.
OLYMPIA – With state child care subsidies well below the actual cost of caring for enrolled kids, some Spokane-area workers and lawmakers say it’s time to give the industry more clout.
Top House and Senate lawmakers this afternoon unveiled their plan for spending $341 million in federal transportation money that’s coming to the state from President Obama’s economic stimulus plan.
OLYMPIA – To state Sen. Chris Marr, it’s a simple cost-benefit analysis.
The cost: an estimated $18.2 million a year in state road damage from metal tire studs hammering away at pavement.
OLYMPIA – In what one senator described as “Spokane versus Spokane,” health and government officials clashed Monday over a proposal to remove most of the elected officials who now oversee the Spokane Regional Health District.
OLYMPIA – Saying that “everything we feared could go wrong, did,” Washington state’s economic weather forecaster on Thursday said state revenues will likely drop another $2.3 billion by mid-2011, bringing the state’s overall budget shortfall to about $8 billion.
OLYMPIA – A controversial “cap and trade” plan that would put Washington at the forefront of efforts to combat global warming has been dramatically watered down under pressure from businesses and rural Republicans.
If you didn’t know better, it would have looked like a celebration.
College marching bands and cheerleaders crammed into the state capitol rotunda Tuesday, grinning and blasting out fight songs. Team mascots high-fived – and sometimes chased – lobbyists and lawmakers. And Washington State University boosters handed out lots of ice cream.
OLYMPIA – Three weeks after a teenage girl was killed trying to cross U.S. 195 from Cheney-Spokane Road, two local lawmakers on Monday introduced legislation to pay for work to improve the intersection.
OLYMPIA – Don’t look for a flood of federal or state cash to suddenly speed up construction on the 53-years-and-counting North Spokane Corridor. The federal stimulus plan, slated to be signed today, includes no sweepstakes-sized check to complete the region’s $3.3 billion “mega-project.”
OLYMPIA – Visiting longtime friends recently, Kettle Falls’ Brandon Hatch was stunned at what he saw.
His friends, who lived in Skagit County, were running a puppy mill, breeding dogs and churning out hundreds of puppies amid what Hatch called horrific conditions.
OLYMPIA – On the face of it, the bill reads like a parody. The Legislature is thinking about “creat(ing) a commission within the legislature to evaluate the legislature.”
OLYMPIA – Emotions ran high Wednesday as state lawmakers discussed allowing illegal immigrant students – many of them brought to this country as young children – to qualify for millions of dollars in state college grants.
OLYMPIA – It’s become an annual ritual in the Statehouse: low-income people and advocates descend on Olympia to blast payday loans. It’s too easy, they say, for desperate families to get trapped in a cycle of high-interest debt. And every year, the bills tend to die in the same place: the committee headed by Rep. Steve Kirby, a Tacoma Democrat who defends the loans as a needed product for people who don’t qualify for credit cards or bank loans.
OLYMPIA – Washington has long had sin taxes, but they’ve usually been on things like tobacco, liquor and beer. Now, with Washington facing a big budget shortfall, a state lawmaker from Federal Way has an idea for a new one: a porn tax.
OLYMPIA – Washington has long had sin taxes, but they’ve usually been on things like tobacco, liquor and beer.
Now, with Washington facing a big budget shortfall, a state lawmaker from Federal Way has an idea for a new one: a porn tax.
Gov. Chris Gregoire, who has repeatedly vowed to “blow past the bureaucracy,” proposed blowing parts of it away. Gregoire wants to eliminating 154 of the state’s 470 boards and advisory commissions.
Washington's House of Representatives on Friday voted to temporarily boost benefits for jobless workers by $45 a week, and plans to follow that up with a unemployment tax decrease for businesses next week.
A few years ago, a homeless woman named Lee Ann Winters was nearly run over by a car while walking across a downtown Spokane intersection. She yelled at the driver, saying she was in a crosswalk and had a green light.
Gov. Chris Gregoire says she doesn’t like getting notice after notice that companies are about to lay workers off. “And it comes in a wave, every day,” she told a group of community lobbyists from the Spokane area.
