Eye on Olympia: Bill gives raises to prosecutors

OLYMPIA – Among the hundreds of bills approved by lawmakers this year: a big raise for many county prosecutors.

It’s a public safety issue, the prosecutors argued. County prosecutors’ pay ranges from $55,000 to $155,000, and many small, low-budget counties struggle to keep experienced prosecutors in the job. Twice, local officials have appealed to the attorney general’s office when no local lawyers would run for the job.

And so: Senate Bill 6297, under which the state agrees to pay a prosecutor at least half of what it would pay for a superior court judge.

For some, the change means little. According to figures from the prosecutor’s association, Spokane County’s Steve Tucker would earn only about $2,000 more per year: $138,852.

But it’s a huge raise for people like Ferry County’s Michael Sandona, who in July will see his salary jump from $64,866 to nearly $103,000 a year. In Garfield County the pay will jump from about $53,000 – the lowest in the state – to about $96,000.

The change, approved unanimously by both the House and Senate, will cost about $900,000 a year.

Roach flap only one of many

Republican Sen. Pam Roach’s caused a lot of consternation for Senate GOP leaders last week, when she blasted them in an e-mail to more than three dozen journalists.

A quick review: The clash occurred shortly after Republican leaders banned Roach from talking to many staffers, allegedly because of her constant demands, complaining about lawmakers and demanding a sort of loyalty oath from workers.

This was not the first public clash for Roach, nor the first time she’s been accused of abusing legislative staff. In the late 1990s, she famously railed on the Senate floor against someone who’d moved some flowers from her desk.

In 1998, Roach was reprimanded for “violat(ing) the Senate’s respectful workplace policy.”

The same thing happened in 1999, except that this time Senate leaders offered her counseling “or training in professional treatment of staff to assist you in improving these relationships.”

In 2000, the Senate agreed to pay $2,500 for counseling for a worker who said she’d been traumatized by working with Roach.

When a former intern and aide for Roach complained about Roach’s repeated “angry verbal outbursts” in 2003, the senator demanded the woman be fired – and then led a group of reporters into the basement of a Senate office building, trying to find the woman and confront her. Another aide for Roach quit that year after it was discovered that he was going through other people’s e-mails.

The Statehouse is “a highly stressful environment” and workers and staff need to have “reasonably thick skins,” the 2003 reprimand acknowledged. But chasing a former staffer around with TV crews is beyond the pale, it said.

Roach is doing charity work in Honduras. But this story’s not over.

Top Two may mean same two

As Washington readies for its first Top Two primary election this August, there’s been a lot of speculation about the possibility of the new system leading to two people of the same party facing off on the November ballot.

Such a scenario is looking increasingly likely in the 7th Legislative District, where longtime state Rep. Bob Sump has decided not to run for re-election. After a dozen years in the House of Representatives, he’s becoming a pastor.

So far, no fewer than four Republicans – and not a single Democrat – have filed to replace Sump.

This week, longtime political aide Shelly Short filed to run. She’s worked as the district office manager in Colville for U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt, U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and state Rep. Joel Kretz, including in Olympia as Kretz’s senior legislative assistant.

The 7th Legislative District is huge, encompassing most of rural northeastern Washington and a large slice of north-central Washington. It includes all or parts of Ferry, Lincoln, Okanogan, Pend Oreille, Stevens and Spokane counties.

The other contenders so far: Edwall architect Sue Lani Madsen, Harrington’s Peter Davenport and Kettle Falls’ Kelly White.

(For a detailed map of the district and links to the campaign Web sites or profiles about all four individuals, please see my political blog at www.eyeonolympia.com.)

Will Dr. Death’s run hurt I-1000?

It’s not often that we Washingtonians pay much attention to congressional races in Michigan, but you can rest assured that there are some folks very unhappy with a certain independent’s recently-announced long-shot campaign.

Dr. Jack Kevorkian, 79, this week said he’ll run for a seat representing the Detroit suburbs. The assisted-suicide proponent known as “Dr. Death,” Kevorkian, allegedly helped more than 100 people die before being sent to prison for eight years for second-degree murder. He was recently released.

His candidacy comes at the very time that former Washington Gov. Booth Gardner is spearheading a Death-with-Dignity measure patterned after Oregon’s decade-old assisted-suicide law. Oregon is the only state with such a law.

Kevorkian’s name came up frequently in a recent court hearing at which I-1000 critics and proponents clashed over the ballot language. Foes of the measure wanted it to say “physician-assisted suicide”; backers argue that it’s not suicide because the terminally ill people affected by the law cannot choose life. Plus, they say, the physician would only prescribe, not administer, lethal medication.

The term, I-1000 attorney Jessica Skelton told a Thurston County judge recently, suggests that a doctor “would administer the medication in the style of Mr. Kevorkian.”

Suing the spies

Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna filed suit Tuesday against an Arizona man who allegedly “coerced” consumers to buy pop-up blocking computer software – by first bombarding them with ads for pornography and Viagra.