Gop’s Mielke Gets No Quarter From Visitors

Rep. Todd Mielke, R-Spokane, found himself with some explaining to do recently when miffed constituents wanted to know what a condom vending machine was doing in the bathroom next to his office.

“Some constituents raised a concern about it,” Mielke said when asked about the machine. “But I don’t have any doings with the machine so I really couldn’t say.”

The machine is in an unmarked but public bathroom in the Capitol. Republicans moved into the offices next door when they won a majority of House seats in the November election.

“The machine was just something we inherited from the Democrats,” Mielke said. “One of our many burdens in taking over the majority.”

Divorce bill will feed the vultures

Rep. Mike Padden, R-Spokane Valley, has introduced a bill to require people to get their divorce in the county where they live, and be present in court along with their lawyers when their divorce is finalized.

That adds the cost of a lawyer’s appearance in court - at least $100 - to the $150 fee for a no-fault divorce, said lawyer Dennis Wallace, who handles more divorces than any other lawyer in Spokane.

The bill is no laughing matter in Lincoln County, which rakes in about $125,000 a year in court fees, mainly from Wallace’s divorce cases, said Lincoln County Clerk Joyce Denison.

People choose to get divorced in Lincoln County because the court docket is open, the fees are $10 lower than Spokane County, and their names aren’t published in the newspaper, Denison said.

Padden said his bill will force people to think more carefully about getting divorced.

Wallace said that’s not government’s job. “This is totally contrary to the conservative ideal of getting government out of people’s faces,” Wallace said. If the bill passes, he predicted it will have unintended consequences: “We vicious vultures will just make more money.”

Tell them to go fly a kite

Meanwhile, on the government spending front, consider this when machinations get under way in about a month to crank out another state budget.

There will be great hue and cry from some Democrats about how tight the budget proposed by Gov. Mike Lowry already is - even though it increases spending by about 10 percent over the previous biennium.

But consider these gems unearthed in the capital budget. None are big ticket items, but they reveal a few gaps in the fine-toothed comb allegedly used to police the budget for frills.

The budget includes a $75,000 request for the World Kite Museum in Long Beach, and $60,000 for the Northwest Puppet Center in Seattle. Fine institutions both, but should taxpayers statewide support them?

“These are local tourism things. They aren’t something of statewide significance. I mean this isn’t something people in Colville should have to pay for,” said Sen. James West, R-Spokane.

Then there’s the report in the works at the Legislative Budget Committee, which is investigating the cost of two new state office buildings.

The cost of the $73 million Natural Resources Building and $63 million Labor and Industries Building, both in Olympia, came in at $226 and $164 per square foot, respectively, the Department of General Administration said.

That compares with costs of $66 to $86 per square foot for large offices in the private sector built the same year, the budget committee said.

“We note the figures are not directly comparable,” the committee said, but “the magnitude of the difference suggests there is a reason to believe the cost of the … buildings exceed industry standards.”

The budget committee also is looking into whether the new buildings were economically justified, since the cost was underestimated.

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