I know this is a few days old, but I want to applaud Seattle for considering allowing more emergency credit before it shuts off water.

The Seattle City Council is now considering legislation that would give a second emergency credit of up to $340 per year for any family registered in its low-income Utility Discount Program with children in the home. Currently, only one credit is available annually per household.

Seattle Public Utilities said it shut off water to 138 households in 2012 that were part of its low-income program. Of those, 68 had children under 18 years old.

Councilmember Jean Godden, who is sponsoring the legislation, said providing a second credit to those 68 families would cost the city about $20,000 a year. She called that a small subsidy in the context of the utilities’ nearly billion-dollar annual budget.

The article goes on to say that number is probably low because some people don’t know they qualify for the program. When people and families fall behind it’s unfortunate. And I’m glad in a relatively wealthy city like Seattle we’re figuring out how to make this situation a little less awful.

There was a shooting at the Parks Department. It looks like the police have the suspect in custody, but this is scary stuff.

Officers responding to a report of shots fired in a building near N. 80th and Densmore Avenue N. found a man with gunshot wound to the chest just around 2:15 p.m. Medics transported the man to a hospital; he was last listed in critical but stable condition.

Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation spokesperson Dewey Potter identified the victim as Bill Keller, 65, the executive director of the Associated Recreation Council, and the suspect as Carolyn Piksa, 46, a current Seattle Parks and Recreation employee. Piksa is described as a white female wearing a blue stocking cap and a beige or green camoflage jacket.

Since the shooter had the keys to all of the community centers, the kids who were going there after school have been rerouted back to their schools.

Meanwhile, Seattle police have asked several schools in the area of N. 130th and Linden Avenue N to be placed in lockdown as a precaution. The following schools are currently in “shelter in place,” which means exterior doors are locked, but classes are being conducted inside: Broadview Thomson Elementary K-8, Bagley Elementary and Wilson Alternative School.

As a result of the community center closures, Seattle Public Schools released the following statement about students en route to after-school programs at the centers:

Due to the City of Seattle’s closure of all community centers citywide, Seattle Public Schools is returning all students who were on buses bound for after-school programs to their schools of origin. In some cases, students were delivered to community centers before the closure announcement was made. In that case, the community centers are calling parents and asking them to pick up their students. Students returned to their school will remain at school with adult supervision until their parents can arrange for pick up.

I can’t imagine what any of those parents have been going through. Hopefully any parents reading this have found your kids.

The state house passed the Washington Voting Rights Act (second section). If passed it would allow minority groups that could prove discrimination at the local level some relief. The example in the piece, that’s the most common example I’ve heard relating to the act is Yakima:

His bill would give minority communities that can prove they’ve been disenfranchised at the polls (say, in Yakima, whose at-large city council lacks a single Latino member despite the city’s large Latino population) to move to districted elections.

Great. Now we can look forward to it dying in the state senate.

I hate that Metro has to go begging the state just to tax ourselves, but that’s the way we do it in Washington, so sure. Representative Farrell has a bill to let localities either have a $40 car tab or in some cases up to 1% of the value of the car go to transit.* She has a post on Slog in support of the bill.

When King County Metro was last facing service cuts, the legislature authorized a temporary congestion reduction fee that temporarily stabilized budgets of transit agencies. It was temporary because the state expected to move quickly to provide a more stable, comprehensive funding source for public transportation.

That state support has not materialized, however, and with transit services in jeopardy, we need to take action to ensure our economy, our environment, and our quality of life aren’t degraded. My legislation would give King County the local funding options they need to save core programs and high-demand service routes.

OK, I’m sold. You can find your legislator here.

[Read more…]

– I’m all for Rand Paul’s talking on the Senate floor (and Wyden supporting it). I also still oppose Brennan’s nomination in general. But Paul is still an asshole.

– What to do with Hanford’s waste.

– Financial fitness day is Saturday in Seattle.

– The sequester is good news for coke heads (h/t).

– “If we really want to change the food system, we need to change some of the rules”, says Hauter. “This is more than just about voting with our forks”.

– The idea that racism lives in the heart of particularly evil individuals, as opposed to the heart of a democratic society, is reinforcing to anyone who might, from time to time, find their tongue sprinting ahead of their discretion.

– Gun Exchange

I’m sometimes struck by the difficulty of the mundane for lesbian and gay couples. reading this press release from Patty Murray was one of those times.

(Washington D.C.) – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray, a senior member of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, led a letter to U.S. Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki calling for an expedited waiver process granting same-sex veterans and their spouses burial rights in national cemeteries. Currently, only members of the opposite-sex are buried next to their veteran spouse in national cemeteries.

Christ. It’s 2013 and we’re having this conversation. It’s 2013 and this isn’t an obviously done deal. It’s 2013 and instead of this just being a matter of some paperwork because vets’ spouses should be buried with them as a matter of course if that’s what they want, this is a fight. It’s 2013 and only 15 senators agreed to sign the letter.

When you think of the progress we’ve made in the last few decades as a society in treating same sex couples with basic respect, and then think this is still a fight, it’s jarring. When you think the solution — at least for now — is a waver and not fixing the policy, it’s dispiriting how much work is involved in just getting half measures.

The US Department of Education is investigating Seattle schools for disciplining black children more than white children.

According to district data, in the 2011-2012 school year, nearly 13 percent of black high school students received at least one short-term suspension. The equivalent figure for white students was just under 4 percent. In middle schools, the rate was 7 percent of white students and 27 percent of blacks.

The district has long been aware of the disparity, and recently held community meetings that addressed its discipline rates.

This, coming in the wake of the DOJ investigation of Seattle Police, is troubling for Seattle. Of course I’d rather address these problems head on than to have them go unaddressed. Hopefully we’ll have some actual change in school policies.

– Anti gay laws are bad for business.

– Mark Sanford is gross.

– The sequester is gross because it’s suspending housing vouchers in King County.

– And the sequester is gross because of what it does to women.

– The Daily Caller is gross.

– Having concubines may be gross, but they’re Biblical.

– Dan Sytman’s wingnut welfare job.

– Legislators who play music are pretty much awesome, (PS, if someone has video, I’ll post it).

OK, that’s bit more than the data actually say. But Goldy has a piece on a study of economic growth in the last decade.

According to a new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), the economies of the nine states without a personal income tax (Washington included) have actually underperformed both the economies of the nine states with the highest income tax rates, and the 41 income tax states as a whole. Over the past decade real per capita GDP growth was only 5.2 percent in the non-income-tax states, compared 8.2 percent in the nine highest taxed states. Real median household income also fell further in the non-income-tax states, while unemployments were largely uniform across all three groups.

Washington actually did better than average on both per capita GDP and median income growth (while slightly worse on unemployment), but given the aggregate performance of the non-income-tax states it is impossible to argue that our lack of an income tax had anything to do with it. Unless you’re an idiot. Or a liar.

So yeah, 50 quite different states over a relatively short period of time is hardly the last word on what types of taxes make the most sense. But it certainly puts the lie to the notion that we’re getting ahead as a state because of our tax structure. If anything, it’s holding us back.

– Happy Women’s History Month.

– I’m not as opposed to the bike tax as a lot of people who ride bikes, but Rep. Ed Orcutt, um, doesn’t make a good case for it.

– Who could have guessed that conservative justices would be making things up?

– If hell exists, Dick Cheney’s spot is next to Walter Jones.

– (a) Gwen Moore is awesome. (b) Suzan DelBene looks less than happy to be in the frame.

– And if history is bound to repeat itself, the NFL will soon have its first openly gay player(s). When that happens, the supposed locker room and media distractions will be revealed as having been a myth.

Even though I’m a curmudgeonly urban dweller who doesn’t want kids, I’m glad the city put in a playground in Westlake Park.

The year-round play area will include a soft, rubber-like surfacing and a Geode by Goric. This large, netted spherical structure and a collection of large domes will be surrounded by a fence with bench seating in some areas. The design and elements involved were selected specifically with sightlines and function in mind, as the structures do not obstruct views to the retail spaces and through the park. The Geode is designed to be used by children up to 12 years old.

As long time readers of this blog know, when the Fun Forest left Goldy agitated for it to be replaced with a kick ass playground. And while Seattle got the Chihuly museum, well, the reasons to support more playgrounds and more amenities for children are generally true. Making the city more accommodating to all sorts of people, not just those of us who are young and childless, is a worthwhile goal.

In the wake of the supreme court ruling that a majority is needed for a tax increase like the state constitution says, Rodney Tom has decided to huff and puff about it and maybe change the rules.

Senate Majority Leader Rodney Tom, the Democrat who abandoned his caucus to lead a Republican majority, has issued a statement explaining his plot to make an end-run around today’s state supreme court decision. That ruling found a two-thirds voting requirement is unconstitutional. But Senator Tom says never mind: tweaking parliamentary rules could mandate a nearly-impossible-to-attain two-thirds majority for any tax increases.

I’m not sure how you change the rules in the middle of the session. I assume he can if he’s proposing it, and it’s just a bad idea instead of an empty threat. But if he’s as sure as he seems to be about the caucus he’s leading, I don’t see why the 2/3 rule would be necessary.

– Rodney Tom Hates Teachers

– I haven’t written anything about the sequester, but it’s going to have an impact.

– All that has made the borders, and the sharp disparities between states, more important and complex than ever for gay couples, and for interstate tourism as well. The marriage license office in Clark County, Wash., across the Columbia River from Portland, Ore., had to increase its hours to serve border couples when Washington’s new law took effect.

– So if I understand Scalia’s jurisprudence correctly, the 14th Amendment (which says nothing about race) applies only to racial discrimination (that affects white people) (unless a Republican has a presidential election to win), while the 15th Amendment (which explicitly forbids racial discrimination in voting and empowers Congress to enforce the provision) should not be construed as allowing Congress to prevent racial discrimination in voting, because this would be a “racial entitlement.”

– Congrats to Tom Tomorrow.

The State Supreme Court is planning on ruling in the 2/3 majority case.

SEATTLE – The Washington Supreme Court plans to issue a ruling Thursday on a lawsuit challenging the two-thirds majority required for the Legislature to pass a tax increase.

[…]

The Supreme Court agreed to expedite its consideration of the two-thirds majority rule, which came about because of a series of citizen initiatives. Voters most recently approved the supermajority rule last November.

The Washington Constitution requires a simple majority of the Legislature to approve most laws, but the supermajority, or two-thirds vote, has been the law for tax increases thanks mostly to measures successfully pushed by initiative activist Tim Eyman.

I’m no lawyer, but it seems pretty unconstitutional on its face. You can’t bind future legislatures with the initiative process (except up to 3 years for laws that are constitutional). That takes an amendment to the state constitution. Cut and dried.

Still, our state supreme court has heard these sorts of cases in the past and figured out ways to punt. Hopefully they’ve run out of ways to kick the can down the road, and can actually rule on the case. I don’t know how much practical difference it makes with one house of the legislature in the GOP’s hands and Inslee opposing most tax increases in the campaign.

I’ll be at work when the ruling comes down, so I thought I’d put something up now.

Sometimes The Seattle Times has great, important, relevant stories that put a new light on something in the Northwest that otherwise wouldn’t be covered. And I’m going to miss some of those when I don’t read their website behind its paywall. But sometimes they just do hack pieces that they claim are important stories. More and more it’s looking like the Rob Holland piece falls on the hack side.

Except that’s not what happened and that’s not what the report found. Martin did not use Holland’s credit card to purchase anything, and the report Heffter cites actually found this particular allegation to be “unsubstantiated” (PDF, page 25). Martin has repeatedly asked Heffter and Kreamer to issue a correction, and they have repeatedly refused.

“At the end of the day, all you have is your reputation,” Martin told me. And he desperately wants his reputation cleared. The Seattle Times has yet to respond to a request for comment.

[…]

But also, reading their emails to Martin, both Heffter and Kreamer just come off as incredibly confused. “There is a receipt and additional official documentation showing you as the purchaser of camera equipment for the Port, with Commissioner Holland’s Port credit card being used,” Kreamer writes to Martin in a February 25 email, totally ignoring the fact that this so-called “receipt” proves nothing of the kind. “The Port report you cite says the third-party use of the card (by you) was not found to be unauthorized, but we never wrote that it was,” Kreamer continues. “The items purchased were indeed for Port use, the audit found.”

When the Seattle Times goes out of their way to point out stories like this one are vital to the region, so we need to support them, well, you’d think they would at least work harder to get the story right.