Goldy

What the P-I said:

If a government utility discovers it has been underbilling a resident for electricity, the homeowner can expect to pay, perhaps with a bit of extra time. Everyone sympathizes with the homeowner, but no one expects the government to give away something valuable without payment.

The state constitution forbids it, in fact.

A Building Industry Association of Washington program apparently has been receiving state overpayments of millions of dollars. The state’s course should be to get the money back.

Due to a programming error, the BIAW has been reaping retro-rebate overpayments since 1994, and then using the money to back right-wing causes and candidates.  And now they argue they should be allowed to keep most of those overpayments because, you know, it wasn’t their fault.

Well fuck that.

BIAW and other retro programs should pay back the entire amount—the first few years worth immediately, and then the remainder deducted from future retro payments over a reasonable term… say, the next five years.  This isn’t their money, and they have no right to keep.

Which of course raises a broader issue:  this isn’t their money.  And particularly now, during this economic crisis, it is time for the legislature to consider reforms that put more of the money back into the pockets of workers and small business owners, where it belongs, rather than into the coffers of partisan political organizations like BIAW.

Is Gov. Gregoire being coy?

Asked to list the top impediments to business in the state, Gregoire said she would like to overhaul the business and occupation tax, the state’s main tax on businesses. Calling the tax “ill-conceived” and harmful to small businesses, she invited business leaders to develop a plan for changing the system.

“If you want to come forward with an alternative to the B&O tax system in the state of Washington, the welcome mat is out from me,” Gregoire said.

I suppose there might be a number of B&O alternatives, including a Value Added Tax, or perhaps no business tax at all, but in inviting business leaders to develop their own plan, it certainly sounds like Gov. Gregoire is inviting them to propose a corporate income tax… a surprising invitation from a governor who has repeatedly dismissed even the notion of starting a conversation on such reforms. Encouraging, sure, though considering the longstanding split in our business community over this issue, if she really wants to overhaul the B&O tax, our negotiator-in-chief is going to have to do a helluva lot more than just put out the welcome mat.

The B&O tax is not only “ill-conceived,” it is an historical anomaly. In 1932 Washington voters overwhelmingly approved a personal and corporate income tax, overhauling a tax system that had previously over-relied on property taxes, but when the Supreme Court controversially ruled the new income tax unconstitutional while leaving the new property tax limits in place, the state was thrown into a budgetary crisis. The B&O tax was created as part of a hasty, and presumably temporary, political compromise.

75 years later, Washington’s B&O tax—a tax on gross receipts, rather than profits—remains just as ill-conceived as the day it was implemented, especially during this economic downturn when many businesses are forced to pay taxes on their losses. But while business leaders love to bitch about the B&O’s complexity and burden, they’ve thus far been unwilling to work together to propose a reasonable replacement.

Washington remains one of only five states without an income tax, and while Gov. Gregoire is right that there is currently little public support for a personal income tax, I doubt there would be much public opposition to the corporate variety, if that’s what the business community chooses for itself. And while such a revenue neutral reform would do little to address our long term structural revenue deficit, it would at least be a first step toward that conversation that Gov. Gregoire insists voters have no interest in starting.

According to both local and White House sources, President Barack Obama will nominate Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske as director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy—a cabinet-level position commonly referred to as the Drug Czar—an appointment that could signal a substantive departure from our nation’s current marijuana-focused, interdiction-heavy drug policy, and a more realistic and progressive approach toward the issue of drug abuse in general.

Within the context of career law enforcement professionals, I think it safe to label Kerlikowske a “progressive.”  During his ten-years at the helm of the Seattle Police Department and his current term as president of the Major Chiefs Association, Kerlikowske has been a vocal advocate for gun control and community policing, while serving as a prominent critic of the use of intrusive data mining techniques as a tool for combating domestic terrorism.  But while he hasn’t been particularly outspoken on drug control policy, Kerlikowske’s relative silence is encouraging in itself, considering the progressive mores and statutes of the city whose laws he has enforced for the past decade.

While Kerlikowske opposed a  2003 citizens initiative making marijuana in Seattle a “low priority crime,” calling the measure vague and confusing (and… well… most initiatives are), he emphasized to local reporters at the time that marijuana possession and use already was a low priority, and in fact, Seattle’s already low marijuana prosecution rate has dropped even further since the measure’s passage, indicating a responsiveness to the will of the voters.  Indeed, local drug reform advocates seem downright ecstatic about Kerlikowske’s appointment:

“Oh God bless us,” said Joanna McKee, co-founder and director of Green Cross Patient Co-Op, a medical-marijuana patient-advocacy group. “What a blessing — the karma gods are smiling on the whole country, man.”

McKee said Kerlikowske knows the difference between cracking down on the illegal abuse of drugs and allowing the responsible use of marijuana.

Kerlikowske’s laissez faire approach toward low-level possession fits well with our region’s libertarian streak and its progressive attitudes toward medical marijuana, needle exchanges and other drug issues.  Seattle has long been home to one of the largest Hempfests in the nation, where otherwise law abiding participants routinely light up in front of police officers without fear of arrest.  Meanwhile, Kerlikowske’s predecessor, Chief Norm Stamper, has established himself since leaving office as one of the nation’s most outspoken advocates for comprehensive drug policy liberalization and reform.  Yet despite the dire warnings of drug war hard liners, Seattle’s crime rate has dropped to a 40-year low during Kerlikowske’s tenure.

Kerlikowske’s office has not avoided controversy, particularly over accusations of lax discipline of officers, but he is widely admired.  Speaking on our Podcasting Liberally podcast last night, Seattle City Councilmember Tim Burgess, a former police officer, and current chair of the committee that oversees the police department, agrees that Kerlikowske is “no Bill Bennett,” and credits him for a “progressive” approach toward drug control issues:

Clearly the drug war as it has been waged traditionally in our country over the last 20, 30 years is not working, and there is a lot of collateral damage that’s unintended but is real, that is not helping us in that regard.  Chief Kerlikowske himself has been advocating some diversion programs, pre-arrest strategies, that are quite progressive.

Of course, Kerlikowske is no Norm Stamper either, but given the history of the Drug Czar office, his appointment should hearten those advocating for a more humane, rational and effective national drug control policy.

I totally agree with the Seattle Times editorial board in arguing that government should “use technology to provide public records cheaply,” but I can’t sign on to their actual arguments.

In fact, our public records statutes can create an incredible burden on public agencies, requiring untold hours at taxpayer expense to fulfill requests that often amount to little more than vindictive fishing expeditions.  (I’ve often been tempted to file a public records request asking for the cumulative cost to taxpayers of Stefan’s many public records requests… but I didn’t want to waste taxpayer money on a lark.)  So when the Times complains about proposed legislation that would raise the maximum copying charge to $0.25/page, or deny requests to people who refuse to pay their outstanding balance, they make it sound like fulfilling a request requires little more effort than feeding some documents into a copier.

Hardly seems right that public agencies would be making such a profit off documents to which citizens are entitled. Though municipal lobbyists suggest the higher fee would offset costs of staff time in fulfilling the request, that is expressly prohibited by the state’s Open Records Act.

Um… so… if the Times recognizes that there are actual “costs of staff time in fulfilling the request,” why would they suggest that public agencies are making a profit?

Of course, they’re not.  The Times is just being the Times.  But at least they attempt to be constructive.

A better idea? Require cities, counties, ports and school districts to better manage their records. Why not make documents available by e-mail or copying them on to a disc — pennies a serving — even less if the requester provides the disc.

Yeah, that would address the cost to the requester of making copies, but it does nothing to address the real cost:  the many staff hours spent gathering documents and fulfilling the request in the first place.  In fact, it takes just as much effort, if not more so, to scan a document to disk as it does to feed it into a copier.

So how about an even better “better idea”?  Since most records are produced on computers, why not just take every electronic document or file that would be open to a public records request, and just automatically place them in a searchable online database?  Every email.  Every Word document.  Every spreadsheet or PowerPoint presentation.  Everything.

Because the vast majority of public records requests would probably be unnecessary if the records were actually, um, public.

UPDATE:
Erica takes umbrage:

Goldy argues that the “many hours of staff time” it takes to fill records requests should be compensated, and argues that every single public record maintained by government agencies should be put in computer files for the public to sift through themselves. The logic is tortured: Government agencies provide a valuable service we should pay them for (sifting through records to fill requests), therefore we should get rid of that service entirely and make people who file records requests find the records they want themselves. Not to mention the fact that most agencies don’t have a surplus of public-disclosure staff; in my experience, most government agencies only employ one public-disclosure officer. Is Goldy really arguing that we should eliminate that position from every government agency?

Um… no.  I’ve reread the post, and I don’t find myself making that argument anywhere.  I didn’t present an either/or.  Rather, I suggested that merely delivering records requests electronically doesn’t save all that much money, and that the real savings would come from putting as much of the public record as we can online, where much of the snooping could be done in a self-service manner.  But I don’t see how one infers from this post that I favor eliminating public-disclosure staff.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rX7-R54-Q8[/youtube]

I will agree with the whiners over at (u)SP about one thing: the turnout in last week’s special election for Elections Director was absolutely pathetic.  A week into the counting it looks like barely 22% of registered King County voters cast a ballot last Tuesday, compared to almost 84% in November.  To put that in perspective, the 48,001 votes runner-up David Irons Jr. managed to garner would have only amounted to about 5% of the November vote.

Huh.  I guess folks weren’t all that exercised about the performance of the elections office after all, a notion reinforced by the fact that Sherril Huff, the winner, was not only the incumbent, she was the only candidate in the race to speak out against electing the Elections Director in the first place.

It has been suggested to me that with the 2004 gubernatorial race finally over (and this was indeed the final nail in the coffin of that controversy), we can perhaps amend the charter back to appointing the Elections Director before the position goes back on the ballot in 2011.

Well, good luck with that.  Understandably, voters rarely vote for less democracy, no matter how sensible that option might be.

My daughter and I are flying to Florida later this week, and I’d love to get my hands on one of those nifty new Amazon Kindles to help pass the time on those long travel days, and perhaps a little more time while sitting by the pool.  But to be honest, I’m not a speedy reader, and I doubt I’ll get through even one book on this trip, let alone the twenty-or-so books I could buy with the money spent on the $359.00 Kindle alone.

Sure, it’s a cool piece of hardware, and the electronic-ink display is literally easy on the eyes—the best display technology I’ve yet seen for reading large amounts of text… you know, short of the printed page.  But the feature I covet most is the ability to wirelessly download one of hundreds of thousands of books, in minutes, from just about anywhere.

That’s the way content should be: totally and completely ubiquitous.  And while the book may yet survive as our last physical medium holdout (despite Jeff Bezos’ best efforts), content consumption in general is inevitably moving online.  No more CDs. No more DVDs or BlueRay.  And in some cities, no more newsprint.  Even radio and television broadcasters’ airwave monopoly will collapse as audio and video consumption increasingly shifts to the Internet.

I know there are a lot of people who worry about finding a business model that can support content creators in this new online world, but me, not so much, especially when there are so many smart, creative folks like Jeff Bezos out there willing to risk failure.  Yeah, sure, in the short term these new technologies are incredibly disruptive, but then, history tells us that new technologies almost always are.  

If we don’t find a viable business model, in the end, I believe, a viable business model will find us. In this, you could say, I almost have faith.

FAA to loosen fuel-tank safety rules, benefiting Boeing’s 787 :

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has quietly decided to loosen stringent fuel-tank safety regulations written after the 1996 fuel-tank explosion that destroyed flight TWA 800 off the coast of New York state.

The FAA proposes to relax the safeguards for preventing sparks inside the fuel tank during a lightning strike, standards the agency now calls “impractical” and Boeing says its soon-to-fly 787 Dreamliner cannot meet.

[…] But the move has stirred intense opposition inside the local FAA office from the technical specialists — most of them former Boeing engineers — responsible for certifying new airplane designs.

Good.  Now, if a 787 blows up in a lightning strike, we know exactly who to sue.

Former Renton hypnotist sentenced for fraud

The imagination runs wild, but alas, the fraud had absolutely nothing to do hypnotism.

Our friends at (u)SP are still in a huff over Huff, disappointed that King County’s newly elected Elections Director does not represent “change” (ie, a partisan Republican), and fantasizing once again about the prospect of overturning an election in court.  (How’d that work out for you last time, Stefan?)

But while the “all Dems are crooks” crowd continues to scoff at her mere plurality, it is interesting to note that Huff keeps edging closer toward an actual majority as the ballots trickle in, her 44% election night lead growing to about 46.3% by Thursday afternoon, an impressive 27-point margin over the runner up. In a six-way race, that’s a landslide.

And that Stefan and friends just can’t seem to accept the results as legitimate?  Well, I think that tells you everything you need to know about their respect for the intelligence and integrity of King County voters.

Following up on my previous post about Pend Oreille County’s efforts to triple the $1.4 million a year in impact fees Seattle City Light pays on the Boundary Dam, I stumbled across some numbers which kinda pound home one of my central theses:  that contrary to the bitching and moaning often heard from the other side of the mountains, big, bad Seattle is not sucking tax dollars from the rest of the state.

At least, not when it comes to transportation dollars.

According to a report from the Washington State Department of Transportation (hat tip: Political Buzz), between 1984 and 2003, the Puget Sound region received 98-cents back for every $1.00 spent in state and federal transportation taxes.  And Pend Oreille County?  They saw an impressive $2.58 return.  That’s a $68 million subsidy over 20 years, or roughly $260 annually per man, woman and child.

Of course, after decades of neglect and a couple of gas tax increases, things have turned around for Puget Sound residents, who are projected to realize a $1.02 return for every buck spent between 2004 and 2015… though Pend Oreille still brings home the bacon, munching on a sizzling $1.88 of transportation spending for every dollar in taxes.  Sweet.

I point this out not to begrudge Pend Oreille’s good fortune, but merely to acknowledge that it exists.  An acknowledgement you won’t get from most Eastern Washington politicians, who would rather play the “Fuck Seattle” game than address their region’s underlying problems.

Yesterday the Seattle Times reported on the fiscal crisis in rural Pend Oreille County, where declining tax revenues and stingy voters have forced local officials to seek a bailout from Seattle City Light, which owns and operates the profitable Boundary Dam on the Pend Oreille River in the northeast corner of the state.

Well… maybe “seek a bailout” isn’t the right term.

To compensate Pend Oreille County, Seattle pays an annual fee, which last year was $1.3 million. Now, leaders of this poor, sparsely populated and isolated county want to share in the riches Seattle has found on their river. They’re pressuring Seattle to triple its annual fee.

“It’s kind of like we’re the cow and they’re getting the milk from the cow in our barn,” said County Commissioner Laura Merrill, “and so there is an impact in Pend Oreille County.”

No, it’s kinda like Pend Oreille is a county in which there’s a dairy farm, and the owner of the farm is getting the milk from the cows in their barn. But, whatever.

City Light owns that dam, and took a big risk back in 1964, investing millions of dollars constructing the dam and 300 miles of transmission lines at a time when electricity was relatively cheap.  It’s the kind of public investment and forethought that has long delivered Seattle residents some of the lowest electricity rates in the nation.

And in return, Pend Oreille County got well-paid jobs, a recreational lake and new school buildings… not to mention about $1.3 million in annual impact fees, plus cheap, wholesale electricity that saves county ratepayers about $20 million a year… all told, an average of about $1,615 in direct cash benefits annually for every man, woman and child in Pend Oreille.

That was the deal.  Signed, sealed and delivered.

It’s not that I don’t have empathy for Pend Oreille County’s current predicament—I do, and I wouldn’t necessarily oppose some sort of grant to help them out.  But it’s a predicament they got themselves into, and I’m getting pretty damn sick and tired of rural Washingtonians blaming Seattle residents like me for all of their problems.

In Pend Oreille County, politicians and residents harbor some resentment toward Seattle. They feel the west side of the state doesn’t understand their rural lifestyle or their conservative politics. They’re outnumbered in the Legislature. Regardless, they find themselves somewhat dependent on Seattle.

Seattle paid for the county’s school for grades 7-12 as part of the original deal in the 1960s to build the dam. Since then, enrollment in the Selkirk Consolidated School District No. 70 has fallen by nearly half, and seven bond measures to remodel the school have failed.

It’s not Seattle’s fault that Pend Oreille voters refuse to tax themselves for the services they need, nor that the state has fewer and fewer resources to help them out.  Seattle taxpayer… City Light ratepayer… we’re one and the same… and if Pend Oreille wanted more of our money, perhaps they shouldn’t have voted for I-695 by a better than 2-1 margin, eliminating most of the state car tab, and with it, the hundreds of millions of dollars in annual sales tax equalization transfers on which rural communities had long relied to help balance their budgets?  And if they wanted a little sympathy from Seattleites like me, perhaps they shouldn’t have passed I-776 by a 69% margin, an initiative that had absolutely no impact on Pend Oreille taxpayers, but was successfully marketed by Tim Eyman as a “Fuck Seattle” measure that would keep us from taxing ourselves to build the light rail system we wanted.

They harbor resentment toward us? For what… building their infrastructure and subsidizing their public services?  If the Boundary Dam was owned by a corporation, well, that’s capitalism baby, and I doubt you’d see Pend Oreille have much success pressuring shareholders to triple their payments, you know… just because.  But since it’s owned by Seattle ratepayers, we should feel all guilty and everything over how well our investment paid off, and just fork over a share of the profits?  I don’t think so.

Rural governments and the communities they serve are in crisis statewide, many on the verge of insolvency, and it’s a crisis that the state needs to address collectively.  But we’ll never move closer to a lasting solution until elected and civic leaders throughout rest of the state stop lazily blaming Seattle for all of their woes, and start taking a realistic tally of what it actually costs to provide the public services their communities need and want.