In brief: Bill would ban drivers from text messaging
Dnt txt msg wl drvng.
That’s the message from the state House of Representatives, which late Tuesday passed a bill to ban people from sending text messages on a cell phone or other wireless device while driving.
“This bill is targeted at anyone who thinks it’s safe to text message while driving,” said Joyce McDonald, R-Puyallup. Hunting and pecking for tiny keys and reading a tiny keyboard while driving is even more distracting than chattering away on a cell phone, she said.
McDonald cited a Puget Sound crash in December involving three cars and a bus. The cause? A 53-year-old man sending a message on his BlackBerry.
“I know that we don’t like to have our rights restricted,” she said. “This is America, and we like to be free. But there are some things that are just not acceptable.”
The bill passed 73 to 23. It now goes to the state Senate for consideration.
– Richard Roesler
Senate OKs expansion of veterans program
Trying to restore both habitat and psyches, the state Senate wants to expand a program that puts returning military veterans to work on outdoor projects.
The Senate on Tuesday passed Senate Bill 5164, which would transform the state’s volunteer “Veterans’ Conservation Corps” into more of an apprenticeship program.
The VCC, run by the state Department of Veterans Affairs, does restoration and protection work on watersheds, rivers, streams, lakes, forests and other land.
Under the bill, more than 100 troops returning from Iraq or Afghanistan would be put to work on outdoor restoration projects, in the process getting heavy equipment and other training that they could use to get permanent employment. The state’s cost: $2 million over the next two years.
“The estimate is we’ll have 48,000 returning veterans from Iraq,” said the bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Ken Jacobsen, D-Seattle. “Many of them have young families to support and need to find a family-wage job.”
– Richard Roesler
Spokane
School board selects interim leader
The Spokane Public Schools board of directors selected Nancy Stowell as the interim superintendent Wednesday night.
Stowell, 58, is currently the associate superintendent of teaching and learning for the district and will replace Brian Benzel. He announced last month that he would retire at the end of this school year and take a job as the vice president of finance and administration at Whitworth College.
Stowell has been an educator for more than 30 years, at least 20 of those in Spokane.
The school board decided last month to find a temporary replacement for Benzel so that a national search for a permanent superintendent would not be rushed.
– Sara Leaming