Some predictions for ‘06 easy to come by

A whole new year, bright and shiny, stretching before us like snow on a side street. Sort of makes one want to peer into the crystal ball for predictions.

So, as the moose used to say, “eenie, meanie, chili beanie.” Let’s take a look.

Prediction 1: Candidates with no previous political experience will announce plans to run for legislative or county office, saying they want to “give back to their community.” They will take such risky stands as “Children are our future” and “Spokane needs more jobs” but will have nothing to say about budgets, taxes or programs that should be trimmed or eliminated.

Prediction 2: Candidates who follow the pattern described in Prediction 1 will lose.

Prediction 3: The Legislature will start its session with a flurry of bills being introduced on controversial topics. Most will die before they get out of the chamber where they are introduced. The budget – which is the main business of the session – won’t be settled until the final week, under threat of a special session.

Prediction 4: The Spokane City Council will face a budget crisis because revenues are less than expenditures.

Prediction 5: The council will take some action that will prompt former Councilman Steve Eugster to sue.

Prediction 6: Weather patterns will create one of the following potential disasters that will lead the evening news for a solid week: a continuing drought will suggest serious summer forest fires; an early thaw will create flooding in Inland Northwest cities and towns; a heat wave will strike before the city’s pools are open, or a cold, rainy period will strike the day they open.

Prediction 7: Republicans will continue to tout Dino Rossi as the opponent to Christine Gregoire in 2008. Rossi will continue to demur, saying he hasn’t made up his mind, but that won’t keep pollsters from testing his strength against Gregoire every few months or stop the GOP from releasing the results.

Prediction 8: Democrats will continue to brag about their prospects for electing candidates in Washington’s red counties, citing figures that show President Bush’s declining approval ratings. The bragging will be boldest before they have a specific candidate.

Prediction 9: King County will not be able to reconcile its voting statistics in the general election, leading to charges that there are “more votes than voters” from Republicans, who may conveniently overlook similar problems in counties that went Republican. Election reforms they propose will prompt the Democrats to say the GOP wants “to take away the right to vote.”

Prediction 10: Some magazine will place Spokane on its “Best Places List” for something most local residents take for granted or ignore. Within a month, some other publication will place it on a “Worst Places To …” list for something local residents have complained about for years.

Prediction 11: Critics will continue to make fun of the “Near Nature. Near Perfect.” slogan, unless local development boosters come up with a new line. Then we’ll all make fun of that.

Prediction 12: A major public works project will be over budget and behind schedule. The people charged with oversight will say it was unavoidable and they are being extremely careful with the public’s funds. Critics will say they warned about cost overruns and delays years ago.

Prediction 13: Gypsy Leader Jimmy Marks will attribute every civic or governmental problem to the curse his family put on the city in the mid-1980s. Newer residents will wonder what things were like in the days before the curse, when the city was perfect.

Prediction 14: The best measure of the civic pulse will be the public forum after the Spokane City Council’s regular Monday night meeting. Most of the regulars will complain about the same things every week.

Prediction 15: Forces of righteousness will find something to complain about the way other people are celebrating or not celebrating Christmas. They will either kvetch that stores are trading too much on the season to commercialize a religious holiday or that stores aren’t saying Christmas enough as they commercialize the season.

By now most readers are probably saying that these predictions aren’t particularly startling or even difficult. Spin Control could have printed most of them last year. And the year before.

That may be true. But if the crystal ball really worked, it would have said to buy Microsoft stock when the company first went public or bet the Red Sox when they were down three games to none to the Yankees in 2004, and Spin Control would be seeing in the new year somewhere warm and sunny.