Lowry Rewards Aides With Nice Fat Raises
What better going-away present could anyone ask for from the boss than a nice fat raise?
Some top aides to outgoing Gov. Mike Lowry got raises more than three times the size of the 4 percent cost-of-living raise received by rank and file state employees this year.
Lowry’s top aides will most likely be out the door next year along with him: Lowry won’t be running for re-election. But merit raises may help them sock a little away for the job hunt.
The raises are for a job well done and for working long hours, said Jordan Dey, head of Lowry’s press office.
Dey’s salary went from $68,640 to $69,999. Other press aides got bigger increases.
Barbara Dunn’s salary went from 52,071.96 to $56,000, a 7.5 percent increase. Press aide Kris Betker’s pay went up 12 percent to $56,012. Another press aide, Martin Mungia, got a 15.2 percent raise. He makes $56,000.
Lowry’s top lawyer, Kent Caputo, saw his pay go to $93,080 from $86,400.
The governor has always been tight-fisted when it comes to his own pay. Lowry has turned back $31,000 of his $120,000 salary every year since taking office.
Talk about political ‘hacks’
Some are calling him a nut, but nobody’s calling Ron Taber a wimp.
Taber is a Republican candidate for superintendent of public instruction. The Democratic incumbent, Judith Billings, won’t be running for re-election.
Taber told Libertarians gathered for their state convention in Spokane last week that drug dealers who sell to minors should be put to death.
Kids who sell drugs to other kids should get life sentences with weekly caning until they reveal their supplier, after which they would become eligible for parole, Taber continued.
His opponents jumped with glee. GOP challenger Chris Vance, a King County councilman, called Taber’s idea “insane,” and added that the state’s schools chief had nothing to do with prosecuting criminals.
“Beating kids with sticks?” Vance said incredulously. “He’s dangerous and crazy … I don’t want my kids to go to schools run by him.”
But Taber said parents are on his side. They want discipline in schools and stern measures to deal with drugs, he said.
Taber also favors paddling public school kids who misbehave.
“When I was in school in Cashmere they used the board of education on the seat of learning. Boys would talk later about their hacks. That’s what we called it.
“I was a good boy. I got my hacks at home.”
He said corporal punishment was mistakenly dropped in schools because of pressure from groups such as “the ACLU and with their weak-kneed liberalism.”
He wants to bring back the days when “fathers were expected to discipline their sons and sons were expected to be able to walk into a room, bend over and grit their teeth and take the punishment they deserved.”
Coming out of the broom closet
Sacha Chevalier of Aberdeen, Wash., doesn’t ride a broom and her cat is a calico. But Chevalier calls herself a witch anyway, and does so with pride.
Chevalier, 50, is deputy state director of Witches Against Religious Discrimination, a national group headquartered in Rhode Island. She’ll help lead the second annual rally against discrimination in Olympia May 15th on the Capitol steps.
She says many witches, druids, wiccans, and other neo-pagans are afraid to worship openly because of discrimination. “They are still in the broom closet.
“I don’t have anything against Christians, but I do object to fanatics.”
She moved here from California four years ago, where she worked as a manager for a resort near Carmel. “Washington is a real center for witches. It’s like Mecca is for Islamic people.”
Chevalier said she and other witches worship nature. They don’t believe in Christianity’s God or Satan. “Everyone has the right to their own beliefs. And no, I don’t turn people into toads, although sometimes I wish I could.”
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