The city of Spokane spends $1 million a year on information specialists, yet it doesn’t employ a full-time clerk devoted solely to fulfilling public records requests and lags behind other municipalities when it comes to posting information on its Web site, according to the Matrix efficiency study.

Sounds like an organization more interested in controlling public information than disseminating it.

My advice (no charge). Here’s how the city of Spokane can save a lot of money while becoming more efficient: Release public information in a timely manner, which would head off expensive lawsuits and huge payouts, free up attorneys to handle criminal cases, and eliminate the hiring of professional spin merchants.

By the way, the bias toward releasing information shouldn’t be a policy or budget choice. It’s the law. Here’s the relevant passage from the public records law adopted in 1972:

“The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know.”

And AARP is the new hot club. We baby boomers are routinely maligned for being self-centered wimps, but you have to admire our tenacious conceit that the aging process skipped a generation. Last week the “Today” show, hosted by boomers, ran a feature story on how “60 is the new 40,” which means I’ll soon be turning 30. If only 215 pounds were the new 190.

Come to think of it, this superficial redefining of things is all the rage:

“Surge” is the new “escalation.”

“Liberation” is the new “occupation.”

“Proactive” is the new “active.”

“Person of interest” is the new “suspect.”

“Death tax” is the new “estate tax.”

“Tax relief” is the new “tax cut.”

This makes sense once you realize that “strategic communication” is the new “transparency.”

Wrong question. A Jan. 7 Seattle Times headline asks, “Governor’s big spending plan: Can we afford it?”

Oh, we can afford it. Problem is, we can’t effectively collect the money under the state’s regressive tax code. Budgets are always going to grow as long as the state’s economy and population expand. The true test is the size of the budget as a share of all personal income.

The Washington Budget and Policy Center did that calculation and found that Gov. Chris Gregoire’s budget proposal for the 2007-09 biennium is the smallest of the past six. It’s slightly smaller than the 2003-05 budget, which was generally characterized as frugal, and much smaller than the 1995-97 budget.