July 20: Judicial Candidates

Doug Nadvornick — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 19:44:00 +0000

Evaluating local judiciary candidates, tension over housing developments in Kootenai County, and the 150th Anniversary of the Sisters of Providence.

July 1: Christine Gregoire town hall meeting in Spokane

Doug Nadvornick — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 23:53:00 +0000

On June 27, Washington Governor Christine Gregoire met with Spokane-area residents at the West Central Community Center gymnasium. SPR's Doug Nadvornick recorded the town hall meeting, with questions from the audience. The entire town hall meeting is online at the Inland Journal podcast.

July 6: Citizens Initiatives

Doug Nadvornick — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 00:19:00 +0000

KSFC explores the current citizen initiatives coming to Washington State residents' attentions. They are 917 ($30 car tabs), 920 (repealing the estate tax), 933 (property rights), 937 (renewable energy), and 921 ('Dylan's Law'). Audio is at the Inland Journal podcast.

Inland Journal: Washington legislative wrap

Doug Nadvornick — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 01:41:00 +0000

Inland Journal…KSFC…3/10/2006

This is the “Inland Journal”. I’m Doug Nadvornick.
Washington legislators are back home, telling constituents what they’ve accomplished during the last two months. They finished a day early, right after approving a supplemental, middle-of-the-session budget. They also adopted capital and transportation budgets.
Lawmakers got off to a quick start. On the third day of the session, the House debated whether to send seven-point-six million dollars to poor people for their winter heating bills. Shelton Representative Kathy Haigh told a story about her renter, a single mother with two boys.
“She works hard”, Haigh said. “She does everything she can to provide for her kids. And she pays her rent. I mean, the first day, she and her kids and the dog are there to pay their rent. But she never knows how much money she has to build into her budget to pay to keep the house warm. So you know what she does when it gets cold? The kids put on their coats and they turn down the heat.”
A few Republicans tweaked the governor for not calling a special session a month earlier to allocate money for home heating, but they went along and the House overwhelmingly approved the bill. The Senate followed later that day with a similar vote and the governor quickly signed the bill into law.
It was a session where Democrats and Republicans actually worked well together. Most bills were approved either unanimously or overwhelmingly. Leaders of the two parties agreed on a package of bills that are meant to punish, and keep a better eye on, sex offenders.
They also came together in the last week of the session to lengthen the jail terms for repeat drunk drivers. Spokane Representative John Ahern proposed to make a fourth DUI conviction within seven years a felony. He went to the Senate Judiciary Committee to sell his bill.
“Let me ask you this, Senator,” Ahern said. “What’s a life worth, in dollars and cents? We need to go back to basics, I think, here in government and that is, what is the purpose of government to begin with? And the purpose is for the protection of its citizens. We do that through the military, army, navy, marines and police, fire. And also, in this situation right here, it’s protecting citizens against drunken drivers.”
Ahern’s bill was initially seen as too expensive because it would have meant hundreds of people spending longer periods of time behind bars. But the legislation was amended to apply to the fifth DUI within ten years. Within a week, the bill was approved unanimously by both the House and Senate. It awaits the governor’s signature. The new law would take effect next year.
Progress was made on one more legal issue, reforming the medical malpractice system.
Last November, voters rejected two competing medical malpractice initiatives, one sponsored by doctors, the other by lawyers. Some lawmakers came to Olympia thinking those rejections gave them a chance to develop a compromise. Governor Gregoire convened the major players in the debate for several weeks, and in late February, announced an agreement. Tacoma Representative Pat Lantz told her colleagues on the House floor the compromise made improvements in three areas.
“For patient safety, because ultimately that’s what this is really all about is making certain that our health care in as safe a way as possible. What we might do to make our civil liability system work better in the event that there is a mistake or an adverse event. And finally, what we can do to make certain that our insurance system is as transparent as possible.”
The bill flew through the House and was unanimously adopted by the Senate, although, as I wrote after the vote, it was probably the closest 48-0 vote in the chamber’s history.
“I’m gonna vote for this bill, but I do not believe, as the proponents say, it does much to advance patient safety,” said King County Senator Brian Weinstein. “Quite the opposite and we need to keep working in that regard.”
Weinstein, a Democrat, joined others in reminding the governor that the bill was just a start in reforming the medical malpractice system. Ultimately, the chance to claim victory in a long battle over the issue convinced Bellingham Senator Dale Brandland to vote for the bill.
“I gotta tell you, folks, in the four years I’ve been here dealing with med mal, I’m tired of saying no. I’m very pleased to be able to stand up before this body and say yes to something that is going to move us in a positive direction.”
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If a biodiesel industry develops in Washington, the 2006 legislative session may be seen as its genesis. The governor and some legislative leaders did everything they could to create a biodiesel industry. Lawmakers approved incentives to entice eastern Washington farmers to grow the crops needed to make biodiesel. And they approved incentives to convince companies to build the crushers and refineries needed to turn canola and the other crops grown into liquid fuel. They also approved a bill designed to create a market for that fuel.
Jim Armstrong from the Spokane Conservation District, who has been a tireless advocate for biodiesel, egged them on.
“We have the opportunity here, and I think it’s a very, very unique opportunity, to kick start two brand new industries in this state; not every day we have that opportunity,” Armstrong said. “And right now, we’re sort of at that crossroads. If we do this right, if we take the time to do it right, we’re going to build two very viable, sustainable industries. And agriculture benefits. We all benefit.”
Most lawmakers were enthusiastic, but a few, including Colville Senator Bob Morton, balked, saying government could not drive the growth of a new industry.
“We do not know that we’ll actually have the crop. Nor do we know that we’ll have the processing to process the crop. Very serious that we could depend on farmers to grow when they have no guarantee their crop will be processed or even a processor established to do it.”
The biodiesel bill, packaged as the governor’s energy freedom program, was approved and sent to the governor this week. The budget approved by the legislature allocates two million dollars to the Spokane Conservation District to help create a biodiesel crushing facility in Spokane County.
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We’ll focus on one other bill of interest to Spokane. Lawmakers, at the request of Spokane County interests, approved a statewide reduction in the amount of phosphates in dishwasher detergents. County Commissioner Todd Mielke told members of the Senate Water and Energy Committee about the need to make major improvements to the wastewater treatment plants in the county.
“We are currently out of compliance with the federal Clean Water Act because of a lack of dissolved oxygen,” Mielke said. “A large piece of that is because of too much phophorus entering our system. We are prepared to spend not just $125 M, that’s only the Spokane share, Spokane County share. We will be spending more than a half a billion dollars to try to reduce phosphorus entering our system. We are talking about using the most advanced technology available in the United States and that doesn’t get us to meeting the goal. We have to look at other sources and other tools and that’s we’re looking at every source of phosphorus that’s entering the system.”
Soap industry officials like Dennis Griesing fought the bill.
“We think it’s absolutely premature to proceed with any limitations on these products at this time.”
Spokane Representative Timm Ormsby shepherded the bill through the system, getting overwhelming votes in both the House and Senate, but not without attempts to limit the scope of the phosphate reduction, as you hear in this exchange between Hoquiam Senator Jim Hargrove and Vancouver Senator Craig Pridemore.
“The testimony and everything else seemed to be Spokane centric yesterday and, whatever day we had that testimony and I believe this should be limited to Spokane County and that’s what this amendment does,” Hargrove said.
“This is just to clarify,” Pridemore said. “While there may not have been testimony from elsewhere, we have challenges of this down in southwest Washington, both rivers, creeks and lakes. So it is applicable to other places and I would encourage a no vote on this amendment.” The Senate committee followed his wishes and voted no.
The bill, which has yet been signed by the governor, would take effect in Spokane, Whatcom and Clark counties in mid-2008 and around the rest of the state in 2010.
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Among the bills that didn’t make it through the legislature this year was the
annual attempt by school districts to reduce the threshold for voter-approved levies from 60% to a simple majority. Last bill the bill was approved by the House and ignored by the Senate. The sponsor, South King County Representative Shay Schual Berke, asked her colleagues to put the proposed constitutional amendment before voters.
“Why is it easier to pay for a stadium than it is to let voters put taxes into their own schools at their own request?” Schual Berke asked. “Why should a landslide win of 59-percent for a politician be a crushing defeat for a school levy?”
Kirkland Representative Toby Nixon responded. “Again and again, the people have told us that they want it to be harder to pass tax increases, not easier.”
Nixon lost the battle; again, the House approved the bill, but he won the war; again, the Senate ignored it.
Lawmakers said no to a bill that seems to be making the rounds of the nation’s legislatures. It would require Walmart and other large employers to spend a certain percentage of their payroll on health benefits, or reimburse the state for the cost of providing subsidized care to those company’s employees. They did, however, agree to study who are the people on the rolls of the state’s Basic Health Plan.
“We need to find out and get rid of all the rhetoric and get rid of all the anecdotal reports and find out who really takes advantage of the Basic Health Plan, which, for the most part, is paid for by the taxpayers of the state of Washington,” Yakima Senator Alex Deccio said.
And finally, one other bill that caught our eye, failed. Initially, it would have made driving while talking on your cell phone a misdemeanor. One lawmaker called it “creeping socialism”. Eventually, the bill was neutered to apply only to drivers 18 and younger with provisional drivers’ licenses. Ultimately, the bill never received a final vote and died.
One bill that didn’t die was the supplemental budget, which authorizes more than $500 M in new spending. Included in that is $100,000 to help Spokane market the U.S. Figure Skating championships next year. There’s money for the Spokane International Trade Alliance. $2 M to help renovate Avista Stadium. $10 M for mental health programs in Spokane County.
Spokane Senator Lisa Brown defended the spending, arguing the state can afford to spend money on projects it couldn’t fund during hard times.
“You’ve gotta go back at least four years to tell the true story of this budget and, believe me, I know, because four years ago, I stood here and we cut a billion dollars,” an emotional Brown said. “And we cut it from human services and we cut it from education and we cut it from seniors and we cut it from the developmentally disabled. We did that because we had to. And in this budget, we are able to make some gains in all those areas.”
Senator Brown and her budget were criticized by Republicans like Vancouver Senator Don Benton, who accused the Democrats of putting the state’s fiscal future in peril.
“And Mr. President, what we do in this is we try to buy everything that we haven’t been able to buy, that delayed gratification that we haven’t been able to experience in the last several years, all comes to fruition in a supplemental budget.”
Ultimately though, Benton voted for the final budget, one of only a few Republicans to do so. That budget hasn’t yet been signed by the governor.
The transportation and capital budgets also include money for Spokane area projects. The Fox Theater received about $2.5 M dollars. There’s $400,000 for a whitewater park on the Spokane River downtown. Almost $300,000 for an armed forces and aerospace museum near Fairchild. There’s money for the children’s museum and the proposed science center, money to expand the Northeast Community Center and authorization for Eastern Washington University to sell its downtown center. There’s also money to work on the phosphorus cleanup of the Spokane River and to preserve the water quality of the Spokane-Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer.
Our thanks to TVWashington for help with this report and with our legislative coverage the last two months.

Inland Journal: Home energy conservation

Doug Nadvornick — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 19:53:00 +0000

We've produced an Inland Journal program about home energy conservation.

Here are some sound excerpts from interviews we conducted, but didn't include in the program.

Avista Utilities energy engineer Mike Littrel talks about assessing your home's energy situation and where to start weatherizing.

Littrel talks about getting the most from your furnace.

Chris Davis, Director of Housing Improvements for Spokane Neighborhood Action Programs (SNAP), and Jim Blake, SNAP’s Conservation Education Coordinator, discuss changing your energy habits.

Davis thinks insulating your house is the most effective conservation move you can make.

Davis and Blake talk about cost effective ways to cool your house.

Avista's Vice President of State and Federal Regulation, Kelly Norwood, talks about the utility's current and future energy strategy.

Here are websites you can visit to get more information about energy conservation.

Avista Utilities....www.avistautilities.com

Inland Power...www.inlandpower.com

Spokane Neighborhood Action Programs...www.snapwa.org

Energy Star...www.energystar.gov

Inland Journal from Spokane Public Radio News

July 20: Judicial Candidates

July 1: Christine Gregoire town hall meeting in Spokane

July 6: Citizens Initiatives

Inland Journal: Washington legislative wrap

Inland Journal: Home energy conservation