Deal reached on malpractice

A compromise appears to have been reached in the contentious battle over medical malpractice.

Gov. Christine Gregoire announced the deal, after weeks of closed-door meetings with groups that were at one another’s throats for much of last year. Although no caps would be placed on jury awards, as doctors wanted, the plan includes other provisions designed to bring peace to both sides.

Among them: protecting whistle-blowers, creating an arbitration system, and making it easier for doctors to say they’re sorry.

“No one got everything they wanted, myself included,” Gregoire said Monday. “But that’s the nature of negotiation, the nature of compromise.”

The deal possibly brings to a close last year’s $14 million battle among doctors, lawyers and insurers over two competing initiatives to reform malpractice laws. After the state’s most expensive ballot measure battle, with ads portraying lying lawyers and deadly doctors, voters killed both proposals.

House budget proposal: Spokane projects were decidedly absent from the state House’s proposed spending plan for next year, putting Eastern Washington legislators in the position of having to negotiate hard in the remaining weeks of the session to get funding in the final bill sent to the governor.

“We work hard at being frugal,” Rep. Helen Sommers, D-Seattle, said of the House’s $478 million supplemental budget. It puts more money into health care and education, while still leaving nearly $1 billion in reserves.

For local projects, the good news is that the House budget won’t be the final word. Over the next couple of weeks, House and Senate negotiators will hash out a deal.

WSU troubles: Hiring lobbyists to persuade lawmakers to do what you want generally is the way the game is played in Olympia.

But if you’re a taxpayer-funded university, you might want to rethink that. House Construction Budget Chairman Hans Dunshee, D-Snohomish, axed Washington State University’s request for $63 million to build a new research center at Pullman, in part because he was upset the school hired its own lobbyists to seal the deal rather than work within the existing system.

“These guys have this old medieval way, where you use lobbyists and it’s (like) crows at the garbage dump to get their buildings,” Dunshee said of the tactic. “We need to change that culture.”

– Staff and wire reports