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...
Students say why they support the Senate Majority's plan to reduce tuition.
Watch a video featuring comments from Sen. Padden and some of the Down syndrome self-advocates who attended today’s reading of Senate Resolution 8657, honoring those with Down syndrome and recognizing those individuals and organizations which advocate on their behalf.
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...
During a television interview, Gov. Jay Inslee puts the (rather questionable) cost-estimates for his carbon-reduction program in perspective: “We can do this for pennies. And our kids' health is worth pennies.” KIRO-TV, Nov. 17, 2014.
“We continue to offer better solutions and ideas to move Washington forward. The cutoff for policy bills shows that we’re serious about job growth, funding education as a first priority, and making sure the state lives within its means. We’re making great progress on...
By Rebecca Gourley | WNPA Olympia News Service OLYMPIA — Thirty years ago, construction was halted on the massive cooling towers on Fuller Hill at Satsop with hopes of a nuclear power future vanishing in the biggest financial boondoggle in state history, coining the...
