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Winston Churchill once quipped that “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried,” and nothing bears that out more than Seattle Public Utilities’ packed workshop at the Rainier Community Center last night, where angry citizens gathered to loudly voice their (sometimes ill-informed) concerns over the North Henderson Combined Sewer Overflow Reduction Project.

That’s right, over sixty citizens gathered on a Wednesday night to debate storm water overflow reduction alternatives, a heartening and surprising display of grassroots democracy in action. Unfortunately, a handful of attendees quickly disrupted the meeting out of misplaced fear that SPU was intent on seizing their private property (by far the least likely outcome of any project of this sort), and/or in staunch opposition to spending any rate payer dollars to reduce the 100 million gallons of raw sewage contaminated storm water Seattle dumps into its waterways every year. One woman even angrily stormed out of the meeting after being informed that yes, she would be required to pay for this citywide project whether she wanted to or not. Sigh.

I suppose it’s unfair to refer to these angry citizens as “teabaggers,” as I did in a tweet last night, for there didn’t seem to be anything organized or overtly political about their actions. But in their knee-jerk assumption that government was out to get them and their wallets, and in their willingness to disrupt the proceedings for everybody else, in the service of loudly voicing their own personal objections, they sure did appear to embody the spirit of the Tea Party movement.

And, just like the teabaggers, they didn’t seem to want to let any facts get in the way of their outrage. This was the fourth such meeting with SPU I’ve attended in my efforts to help safeguard the interests of tiny Martha Washington Park, and it was more than a little frustrating to waste so much of my time on some angry newcomer yelling about tunneling and soil conditions, when by this point in the process it is already clear that the preferred alternative for North Henderson is unlikely to include any tunnels at all. As for that angry woman and the others who objected that Lake Washington was already “clean enough,” had they bothered to listen to what the SPU reps were telling them, they might have understood that yes, their objections were being heard… but they were objecting to the wrong people. SPU didn’t establish the policy to reduce storm water overflow to one event per year per outlet—the EPA and the state legislature did—and SPU must meet this mandate or risk legal and financial consequences.

I guess the point is, democracy is hard. It’s complicated. It’s messy. It’s inefficient… perhaps, especially at the community level. But it becomes nearly impossible when citizens enter it so profoundly skeptical and distrustful of the democratic process itself.

More on what this chart means, over at Slog.

A few months ago, I wrote that Seattle should elect our city council by districts. Hey, maybe I’d know who represented me instead of it being everyone and no one. But as the legislative session started, I wondered why all of the Seattle legislators seem so willing to go along with the cost overruns provision of the tunnel. not to mention their support of this project that will increase traffic on surface streets downtown and eliminate the downtown exits (making my bus ride through the free ride area longer, as well as making it tougher to drive around). Surely the people who represent Downtown should join the mayor and should lead the effort to oppose the tunnel, or at least the cost overruns.

But if you look at the districts, it turns out nobody really represents downtown. The urban core is split into 3 districts. So the 36the represents the Northern part of Belltown, but its legislators represent Ballard, so it’s sort of understandable that they’d support the tunnel (even though I’m not sure it’s as good for Ballard as advertised; if people want to go from Ballard to Downtown, a tunnel sans exits doesn’t exactly help).

The 37th represents Pioneer square and SoDo, and while there’s no real reason for the legislators from the 37th to support the tunnel, their district sprawls pretty far South. So I can understand why they wouldn’t think of downtown issues as their issues.

The space between Belltown and Pioneer Square is represented by Capitol Hill legislators in the 43rd District. Those legislators should worry about what losing capacity on 99 will do to I-5 (I do too,and I’m a big supporter of Surface/Transit/I-5). If done right, S/T/I-5 could get significant numbers of people out of their cars. But if done wrong (basically not investing in transit or improvements to I-5), it could clog I-5, and push a lot of cars to the surface streets. And if we’re honest, the anti Seattle legislature could easily not do things right. I understand their pushing the extra cars on the surface to downtown as opposed to further East.

So I sort of get why no legislator has taken the lead in opposing the tunnel and the cost overruns provision. The most logical people to oppose them also represent neighborhoods with the most potential downside to the tunnel alternatives. And the other districts that will be hurt by a tunnel also represent a significant portion of non-downtown Seattle.

And while the tunnel is the most conspicuous issue, there are quite a few issues in the legislature that effect downtown residents, and where nobody really takes the lead. So there isn’t a legislator who’s taking the lead on the state parts of McGinn’s nightlife initiatives. And while we’ve got some good legislators on public transportation, density, and biking, it’s decidedly a mixed bag.

This could be improved by anchoring a district in the urban core. It seems to me that most of the people who live in the large chunk of blocks where you pay for parking (pdf), or at least most of the contiguous ones, share a common set of needs from the legislature that people in largely single family homes further from the urban core don’t.

And I know that any redistricting is going to make legislative seats that is cut some neighborhoods, or cities in strange ways; there are only so many ways to cut up the map. Still, there are 2 districts that represent Greenlake (43rd and 36th), and those same 2 districts also represent Belltown. So there is room for improvement. Combining the parts of the 36th, 43rd, and 37th districts that constitute the urban core would give downtown residents a voice in Olympia we don’t have now.

This post has been corrected because I mislabeled one of the districts.

By far my favorite fundraising event of the year is tomorrow night, NARAL Pro-Choice Washington’s annual Chocolate for Choice, a celebration of two worthy causes: the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and of course, chocolate. Featuring generous tastings from over 40 local bakers and chocolatiers, my daughter and I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Thursday, January 20, 2011
7:00 – 9:00pm
Safeco Field, First Base Terrace Club
1250 1st Ave. S, Club Level, Seattle

Tickets start at $40, buy yours NOW!

Once again I’ll be attending as a “VIP Chocolate Tasting Judge,” along with such local luminaries as Sally Clark, Joe McDermott and Larry Phillips, and fellow word-mongers Erica C. Barnett and Lindy West (together we’ll comprise the ghosts of Stranger past, present and future), an honor I’ve long considered to be one of the few perks of blogging. And while my advanced age prevents me from enjoying quite as much chocolate as I used to, I look forward to living vicariously through the youthful pancreas of my chocoholic daughter.

Anyway, great event, great cause. Be there.

This Thursday, the Senate Health and Long-Term Care Committee will be having a hearing for the medical marijuana bill introduced by Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-36). State Rep. Jim Moeller (D-49) has introduced an identical bill in the House.

These bills have been introduced because of the numerous shortcomings in the original medical marijuana law passed by voters in 1998 and updated in 2007. These shortcomings have been frustrating for patients and law enforcement as it’s given rise to a quasi-legal system of underground dispensaries. Here are the main items that this legislation aims to address:

– Arrest Protection – Under the current law, patients don’t have any formal protection from arrest. Under the February 2010 State Supreme Court decision in State v Fry, courts affirmed that police can conduct searches and arrest even the patients who are following the letter of the law and force them to prove in court that they’re in compliance. In most of the state, this hasn’t mattered as few county prosecutors are willing to drag medical marijuana patients through the court system when they’re clearly in compliance, but there have been exceptions (particularly in rural counties like Kitsap).

– Cooperative Grows – Under the current law, there’s no provision for cooperative grows, which for many is a convenient way to ensure a constant supply of medicine. Under the language of the bill, coops will be limited to 25 people and 99 plants.

– Licensed Producers and Licensed Dispensaries – The most significant part of this bill is the creation of a regulated system of marijuana producers and dispensers. Producers will be licensed and regulated by the Department of Agriculture and dispensaries will be licensed and regulated by the Department of Health. Under the current language of the bill, the licensing would begin on July 1, 2012. In the interim, the bill claims that dispensaries operating under the terms of this law will be able to present an affirmative defense in court. One issue that’s been raised is whether adding these responsibilities to these state agencies can be done in the current all-cuts environment – even with the knowledge that the taxes collected from this bill would be a minor windfall for the state budget.

– Designated Providers – While this bill authorizes dispensaries and coops, it does not dismantle the existing rules regarding designated providers. However, dispensaries have used some creative legal reasoning to maintain that they’re complying with the restrictions on designated providers that they can only provide for one patient at one time (in some cases by having each customer sign a paper denoting that the dispensary is their provider for the duration of the transaction). Under this bill, a designated provider must wait for 15 days to switch the patient they’re providing for. It’s not entirely clear whether the provider will be in violation of the law if he continues to grow plants in that fifteen day period.

– Employment Protection – Earlier today, the State Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of Jane Roe v. Teletech. This case involves a woman who was fired from a customer service phone job that she’d just started after she tested positive for marijuana on a drug screening. She’d previously informed them at the time she was hired that she was a medical marijuana patient. The bill includes language that provides employment discrimination protection against cases like this unless the job involves public safety, operating heavy machinery, or handling dangerous substances. It doesn’t provide any protection for those who want to use medical marijuana while at work.

– Probation – There’s language in the bill that allows for individuals (if allowed by a judge) to use medical marijuana while on probation. This is a response to the aggressive attempts (at the behest of Rob McKenna’s office) to prevent anyone on probation from being able to use medical marijuana – even if they’d been an authorized patient for years.

– Patient Registries – What’s arguably the most controversial part of the bill among patients is the patient registry. In order to provide an easy way for law enforcement officials to determine whether individuals are authorized patients, the bill establishes a patient registry. The language of the bill is fairly strong about providing the proper kinds of mechanisms to keep this information secret, but recent news events from other states have shown that promises of confidentiality don’t always work out as expected.

I’ve been typing up this list while at the Cannabis Defense Coalition’s meeting to discuss the pro’s and con’s of the bill. There’s a lot of nervousness among patients that this bill could end up like the bill in 2007, where the strongest aspects of the bill are stripped away, leaving patients in continued limbo. My hope is that the experience of the last few years gives the legislature a greater impetus to provide real fixes for a broken system. On Thursday, we’ll begin to find out where this is headed.

UPDATE: The city of Edmonds is trying to ban dispensaries. They apparently already have one that operates openly there. If Kohl-Welles’ bill passes, however, cities like Edmonds would not be able to override the state law and ban dispensaries outright. They could only use “reasonable” zoning restrictions to keep them from being located in certain areas.

UPDATE 2: Nina Shapiro has more here in the Seattle Weekly.

Please join us tonight for and evening of politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at 8:00 pm. Or stop by around 7:00 pm and join some folks for dinner.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 234 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

[In a fit of nostalgia (and laziness), I’m marking my remaining days here on HA by posting links to some of my favorite and most influential posts. If you have favorites you’d like to see, please let me know.]

07/15/2008: Young woman quit DNR after being sexually harassed by Commissioner Sutherland

If a statewide elected official were to humiliate a young female employee in front of her coworkers and supervisors by inappropriately touching her—twice—while lewdly remarking on her breasts, and ultimately leading to her resignation… you’d think that might generate a few headlines from a local press corps proven oh so sensitive on matters of perceived personal offense. But apparently, not if that elected official is a likable, grandfatherly type, like Commissioner of Public Lands Doug Sutherland.

The incident dates back almost three and a half years, and while hushed whispers have been making the rounds for nearly as long, it was not until March of 2008 that the allegation was substantiated through a public records request that produced a 62-page document detailing a number of eyewitness accounts. (The name of the victim is redacted throughout.) Yet even with this document in hand, multiple news organizations have declined to inform voters of an undisputed incident that portrays a shocking lapse of judgment on the part of Commissioner Sutherland, a management style disruptive to the operations of his agency, and a clear violation of his department’s anti-harassment policies, if not the law itself.

Perhaps no post better illustrates the crucial role of independent bloggers like me than this muckraking expose on then Commissioner of Public Lands Doug Sutherland, and his sexual harassment scandal. The story, excruciatingly documented in 62 pages of public records, had been shopped around for months, but no mainstream news organization would run with it. Finally, as a last resort, the documents came to me, and after a couple weeks of further investigation and careful study, I posted. The next day the story hit the front page of the Seattle Times (prompting me to print up Seattle Times business cards with title “Volunteer Ombudsman”)… and Sutherland went on to lose a close reelection race to Democrat Peter Goldmark.

Read the whole thing.

I’m gonna tell you something nearly every Democrat in Olympia knows, but most are too chicken-shit to admit: Washington’s taxes are too low, and without substantial tax restructuring, few if any of the draconian budget cuts being proposed will be temporary.

Remember the boom years of the 1990’s, when our local economy clicked into overdrive and new residents flocked here for great jobs and the good life?  Between 1990 and 1999, Washington’s population increased by over 21 percent, even as state and local taxes as a percentage of personal income swelled to a thirty-year high, peaking at 10.4 percent by mid-decade.

Since then, lawmakers and initiative writers have fed the public a steady stream of tax cuts and business exemptions, ultimately slashing state and local taxes below 8.9 percent of personal income by 2008, a thirty year low. And with revenues dropping faster than incomes as the Great Recession came on, and recovering slower than incomes in its aftermath, new data will surely show our state and local tax “burden” dropping yet a couple tenths of a percent further over the past two years.

For much of the past decade, both tax revenues and our economy were propped up by the real estate bubble, but with that fantasy having popped, Boeing moving production out of state, the Microsoft dynamo reaching maturity, and population growth dramatically slowing, the bill for the past fifteen years of public pandering and disinvestment is finally coming due. Our current level of taxation, and the manner in which its burden is distributed, is simply insufficient to sustain a level of essential services and public investment necessary to maintain our quality of life and assure economic growth.

No state relies more on the sales tax than Washington, which at over 62 percent of total revenues tops out at nearly twice the national average. But the sale of goods as a percentage of the total economy has been steadily shrinking for the past half century, requiring a series of sales tax rate increases just to keep revenues in pace with growth in demand for public services and investment… a demand that closely tracks growth in the economy as a whole.

What this describes is a structural revenue deficit that barring a broadening of the tax base or a steady increase in rates, assures that state and local government as a percentage of our economy will continue to shrink, and with it, its ability to provide the services and investments we want and need. Health care inflation, economic booms and busts and other cyclical factors can merely delay or accelerate the inevitable.

The math is undeniable.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: there is a legitimate debate to be had over the proper size and scope of government… but we’re not having it. Instead, even as we continue to elect Democratic majorities, we’re getting the Republican agenda by default. And unless Democrats start providing a little leadership and confronting voters with the hard truth that in government like everything else, you get what you pay for, our state is going to increasingly look less like the Washington of the 1990’s, and more like the Arizona of today… only without all the sunshine and warm weather.

[In a fit of nostalgia (and laziness), I’m marking my remaining days here on HA by posting links to some of my favorite and most influential posts. If you have favorites you’d like to see, please let me know.]

05/16/2007: Falwell That Ends Well (or An Ode To The Mortal Majority)

Reverend Falwell, fond farewell:
Your soul has fled its mortal shell
And flown across the great divide
To savor at your Savior’s side.
Or so you think… um… so you thought,
Well, so, at least, your Bible taught,
While unbelievers who deny
Eternal afterlife, like I,
Think when you’re dead, well, you just die.

But if, when I give up the fight,
I’m strangely drawn into the light?
And there your reverent form I see?
Don’t laugh sir, that the joke’s on me,
For since I’ve never claimed nor known
Your Savior Jesus as my own,
If you should meet this faithless Jew
In Heaven or in Hell’s review,
Well, either way… the joke’s on you.

Say what you will about my punditry, but I’d wager that there isn’t another political blogger in the nation, left or right, who is more skilled at writing rhyming verse. And yet, in my six years of blogging, this is the only vaguely political poem I’ve written. Huh.

Anyway, if you enjoyed this little bit of verse, be sure to check out my epics: “How the Kvetch Stole Chanukah” and “The Little Black Cat’s Big Catch.”

A group of Bellevue homeowners is alleging that Sound Transit has intentionally increased cost and risk estimates of a proposed light rail alignment, to make it look worse. The agency says it’s just not true, but it’s a sign of how much tension there is in a debate over where trains will travel.

Because as we’ve learned from experience, public agencies always overestimate the cost of large infrastructure projects. The Big Dig came in at a fraction of its original projected cost, and no doubt Seattle taxpayers are due for a big rebate when the deep bore tunnel comes in well under budget. That’s just the way these things work.

(Just more evidence that if you say something loudly and angry enough—and with hand-made signs—our media will eventually report it as news.)

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Had President Barack Obama made this statement, instead of President Dwight Eisenhower (50 years ago today), he would no doubt be attacked by conservative Republicans and their media surrogates as a communist, a weakling and a friend of terrorists.

I’m just sayin’.

Last week’s contest was won by Brian. The correct answer was the church at the end of the movie Sixteen Candles, which is located in Glencoe, IL.

This week’s is a random location in Washington, good luck!

Also, this week’s View From Your Window contest at Andrew Sullivan’s blog looks like it could be from around these parts, but I haven’t pinpointed it yet. Does anyone know?