Eastern Adams County's Only Independent Voice Since 1887
Eastern Adams County's Only Independent Voice Since 1887
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Everybody associates March 17 with St. Patrick’s Day, that one holiday in which we are all encouraged to wear green. Around the Capitol last week, March 17 brought a different meaning of "green." That morning, the state Economic Revenue and Forecast Council announced the first state-revenue forecast for this year showed a surprisingly large increase of $3.3 billion through the 2021-23 budget cycle and $5.2 billion over the next four years. It is the largest positive q...
Democrats in Washington’s Legislature traditionally haven’t been shy about raising taxes. This legislative session is no different. In fact, there are several Democrat-sponsored proposals that would increase existing taxes or create new ones. State income tax: The Senate Ways and Means Committee recently passed Senate Bill 5096, a proposal requested by Gov. Jay Inslee creating a state income tax on capital gains. Voters have rejected a state income tax proposal 10 times ove...
Despite this difficult and challenging year, I hope all of you were able to enjoy Christmas and the holiday season. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many families couldn’t gather with relatives, which made the holidays feel less enjoyable and more distant. Like so many of you, my wish for 2021 is for COVID-19 to be under control so that we all may resume our normal lives. The year 2020 has brought suffering and hardship to many here in our communities, and throughout America and...
More than 230,000 small businesses across our state have been shut down since March 25 by order of Gov. Inslee. While the executive branch does not view these employers as being essential, I and my Senate Republican colleagues recognize the value of these businesses to the families they support, the communities they serve, and the economic activity they generate. We recognize how these employers have already suffered from being forcibly closed and how offers of government...
Some years back, in the biggest town in a small county outside our 9th District, there was a clothing store. Upstairs was the office of the area’s weekly newspaper. Week after week, year after year, the clothing store published the same advertisement in the newspaper, displaying its name, address and a drawing of a coat rack, to signal what people could buy there. No brand names, no sale prices, nothing else. The message this ad sent was clear and reassuring: “We’re still...
Dear Friends, Legislators have to be careful about referring to elections in their official communications, like this commentary – but now that the general-election voting is over for this year I’ll make a few observations, starting with a big “thank you” to our nation’s veterans as the holiday to honor their service is at hand. By protecting our country they have protected our rights and freedoms, including the right to vote. -Initiative 976 – The hard-working taxpayers don’t get many opportunities to reduce their tax bil...
Dear Friends, It’s hard to believe summer is finally leaving us. I recently finished planting wheat for next year and have been busy catching up on farm chores. Besides tying up loose ends on the farm, fall’s arrival also means football. Like so many of you, I’m pleased that the Cougs are off to a good start. While EWU has lost a couple of games early on, I’m optimistic the Eagles will have another successful season. Eastern Washington Legislative Tour last week It isn’t often when legislators from the west side of the state...
Dear Friends, The weather made this year’s harvest more of a challenge, but it’s past us now and I’m on to planting wheat for next year. In case you missed it, there was some nice news coverage of a “harvest bee” for a fellow Ritzville wheat farmer whose cancer treatment put him on the sidelines this year. I can think of numerous times over the years when farmers have pitched in to help with someone’s harvest, although this may be the first time the news story about it went national. I’m looking forward to catching up o...
Dear Friends, Harvest time has come to my farm and others in the area. Every harvest is at least a little different from all the others before it; as much as I might like to see another record wheat-cutting day like we had a year ago, it would be enough for things to simply go smoothly overall – meaning the weather cooperates, the equipment operates as it’s supposed to, and so on. Before putting my commentary aside to concentrate on the harvest, I’ll briefly share a few things. First, past commentaries have mentioned what...
Dear Friends, I have to believe each of us can come up with at least one example of “I remember where I was when…” with the “when” being an important moment in history. I have several, and the 50th anniversary of one is tomorrow: man’s first landing on the moon. In July 1969 the media landscape was very different. I’d guess most families had a television set – meaning one set only, receiving maybe three channels (one affiliated with each of that era’s major networks), selected by turning a dial on the front of the box. But a...
Dear Friends, The 9th District spans all or parts of six counties, and on the Fourth of July that means many celebrations spread across a lot of territory – at last count, six parades plus other community gatherings. One person can’t attend all of them, but my seatmates in the House and I try to get in as many as we can. With that background, here’s how I spent this year’s Independence Day. It’s important to get going early, and the Othello Rotary leads off with a breakfast in the park. As I drove to Othello from Ritzville...
Dear Friends, It’s been a little more than a month since the Legislature adjourned. I was back at the Capitol about 10 days ago for a meeting of the Select Committee on Pension Policy, but for the most part I’ve been able to stick pretty close to the farm here in Adams County – or at least stay within the 9th District. An appointment in Pullman recently gave me an opportunity to drop in at the Pullman chamber and visit with executive director Marie Dymkoski. Earlier this week I split a day between the “Partnership on the Pal...
Dear Friends, I’ll start by congratulating the thousands of WSU students who were awarded degrees this past Saturday, at the end of the 2019 spring semester. And by thanking the state Department of Transportation’s branches in Spokane and Wenatchee for putting several “variable message signs” here and there along US 195 and SR 26 with safety reminders for travelers heading west from Pullman. We want Cougar Nation to be safe! Speaking of travel, Governor Inslee must be taking a break from his job-hunting visits around the nat...
Dear Friends, During the five years that our bipartisan coalition led the Senate, we could protect the people from any bad or extreme (or both) legislation that came over from the Democrat-controlled House. Of course, the House would also block the good bills we sent over from the Senate, which was frustrating. But in the end, fewer bills became laws, and those that did leaned toward the political center. In that sense I think the people of our state were served well by having a divided Legislature. Now that the Legislature...
Dear Friends, While I spent hour after hour this week debating and voting on legislation in the budget committee and in the Senate chamber, a woman from the town of Snohomish was out in front of the Capitol conducting what she calls a “fast in solidarity with starting southern resident orcas.” An elderly woman staging a one-person protest to call attention to the orca situation is bound to attract the attention of the news media. It’s an easy story to tell, with lots of pictures and video to use. But what caught my eye are t...
Dear Friends, One of the many flaws in the 2019-21 budget proposed a week ago by the Senate’s Democrat majority was that it lacked new funding to allow 20 more students at WSU’s Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine in Spokane. When the budget came to the Senate Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday, I offered an amendment to fix that. It was rejected. Yesterday, when the budget came before the full Senate for a vote, Senator Jeff Holy from the neighboring 6th District – a proud Cougar graduate – offered the same amendme...
Dear Friends, A couple of weeks ago we started using a catch-all term—“Taxapalooza”—to highlight the sheer number of tax proposals put on the table before and during this legislative session. If you were to visit my office at the Senate, you’d see a big poster-sized Taxapalooza sign on an easel a short distance from my doorway, detailing the various ways the governor and his political allies would reach deeper into people’s pockets. Now that we see all the taxes Democratic legislators have proposed as part of the budget pack...
Dear Friends, This week brought some happy news for those in the Legislature who like to spend, spend, spend. The year’s first state revenue forecast, released Wednesday, basically predicts there should be another $860 million available for the next state budget, on top of the billions that were already waiting when this year’s session began. I’m encouraged by the revenue forecast for a different reason: because there already was plenty of revenue to pay for existing programs and services, and improve on priorities like...
Dear Friends, To get a good sense of how the priorities differ this year between the left side of the Senate aisle and our conservative side, let’s look at what happened Wednesday. That was the “house of origin cutoff” day, meaning bills that originated in the Senate had to be voted over to the House – and vice versa – by 5 p.m., or they would be considered “dead” for the year. There were several worthwhile bipartisan bills on our voting calendar, like SB 5589, my legislation to clearly prohibit local governments from imposin...
Dear Friends, You won’t find me sending a ton of text messages, or using the “LOL” kind of shorthand when I do. But if I had to describe this past week in a text, the abbreviation “SMH” – for “shaking my head” – would be a good choice. Some of what we saw from the Senate majority is almost too much for words. The biggest shock was probably the decision by the chair of the Senate Transportation Committee to have a special meeting of his committee so he and his fellow Democratic members could push the pieces of his proposed $15...
Dear Friends, We’d been hearing a rumor that Governor Inslee would make an announcement today about his presidential aspirations. When the Democratic majority in the Senate tried to force a final vote yesterday on the renewable-energy legislation Inslee wants, it was a sure sign that the rumor was true. Keep reading for more about how his run for the White House and the Senate’s agenda are already lining up. For me this week was taken up by votes in the Senate chamber and long hours in the Ways and Means committee, which had...
Dear Friends, Last week’s commentary mentioned a man who was awaiting Senate confirmation of his appointment to a state commission, despite having lied about his criminal record. I’ll begin this commentary with what a famous radio personality used to call “the rest of the story.” A day after our Senate Republican Caucus chair and I called the news media’s attention to the man’s lack of honesty, he basically backed out of the appointment – which was to a three-year term on the state’s Housing Finance Commission. Tha...
Dear Friends, This fifth week of the 2019 legislative session began with a snow day for a lot of people, due to the 18 or so inches that fell (and stayed) around the Olympia area in a four-day period. But by today, the “snowmageddon” (or “snowpocalypse”) was mostly over. Instead, we were met with the newest of the tax threats coming from the majority party, which are so far-reaching they could be called “taxmageddon.” Keep reading for the details. Even though road conditions slowly got better as the week went on, the weather...
Dear Friends, One of the more newsworthy things coming out of Olympia this week had to do with the independent commission of citizens that sets the pay of “statewide elected officials” -- from the governor to Supreme Court justices to legislators. It comes up with new salary figures every other year, and the new recommendations were made public this week. I’ve never asked for an increase in the pay I receive for serving the Ninth District, and I never will, but this year I felt compelled to write to the salary commi...
Dear Friends, Before the 2019 legislative session took up, Democratic leaders in the Legislature indicated that they shared our interest in addressing two major issues: improving the delivery of mental-health treatment and addressing the shortage of available (and affordable) housing. I was proud that members of our Senate Republican caucus had put good ideas on the table back in the fall, and hopeful that we could see early action on those priorities. Two weeks into the session, my colleagues in the Senate’s Democrat m...