What would you say if you were presented with an agreement over which you had no say, was negotiated in secret and cost you millions -- and the only thing you could do was turn thumbs-up or thumbs-down? Most likely what you would say would be unprintable....
When talk turns to the Voting Rights Act, that old black-and-white news footage starts running through our minds -- sit-ins, boycotts and the March on Washington. The federal law of 1965 was one of the most significant bills of the last century, fulfillment of the...
It’s one of the facts of political life: Whenever good times return, some people want to spend as though they’re going to last forever. Happy days are here again. Turn that frown upside down! Only a gloomy fellow speaks of recession. And those of us who are grown-ups...
Last week, when there was still a chance for us to finish our business in Olympia on time and adjourn this weekend, we were flabbergasted by an argument we heard from our Democratic colleagues in the House. As budget negotiations started, they said they should not be...
The Washington Education Association, the union that represents most schoolteachers in this state, is teaching Washington a most valuable lesson this week. You can’t believe everything you hear. For the last few days a radio ad has been making the claim the Senate has...
Jay Inslee dropped a bomb Thursday. Pass a tax increase, the governor told us, or he won’t sign the budget. No one is sure if he is threatening to veto the budget. Maybe he’s saying he will allow the budget to become law without his signature. Or maybe we just ought...
Over the weekend a news story highlighted one of the big problems the Legislature faces this year. We’re mandating all-day kindergarten and reducing class sizes in grades K-3. And if we do that, we’re going to need to build more classrooms. The story got it right, but...
For the last year our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have been saying we can’t avoid a tax increase -- a head-bobbing consensus that seems to have been taken by many as conventional wisdom. Then we came out with our budget proposal in the state Senate and...
In the Senate this year we are looking to undo an historic three-decade mistake on the part of the state Legislature – its decision to allow college and university tuition to skyrocket. We are proposing an unprecedented rollback, an average tuition reduction of 25...
What do you do when the state’s top investigator finds himself under investigation? That’s the uncomfortable question before us this week as state Auditor Troy Kelley hunkers down in his office and addresses enormous public doubt by saying nothing at all. Kelley has a...
Fifteen years ago, home care workers and others like them were the last great frontier for public-employee-union organizing efforts nationwide. They didn’t look like state employees, they didn’t work like state employees, but they collected state paychecks and there...
Some things go without saying. It’s a good idea to obey traffic signals, you ought to pay your taxes, and you should always eat your vegetables. Some things here in the Legislature are just as basic. When our Democratic colleagues in the House present their budget...
