1. Ron Sims' former chief of staff, Kurt Triplett, wants to be the Interim King County Executive so bad you can almost feel it. And  you can definitely see it. Triplett, who's in the running to be the Interim Executive—along with former mayor Charles Royer and King County Council Member Louise Miller—jumped the gun on the County website:

Check it out:



Shouldn't that be "Acting Interim Executive?" Easy there boy. Settle down.

2. Washington Education Association President Mary Lindquist wrote a 3-page letter to the governor last week, asking Gregoire to veto the education reform bill. The letter , notably more measured than the philippic Lindquist sent out after the bill passed last month, makes the WEA's case that the reforms constitute an unfunded mandate. The governor is supposed to sign the education reform bill on May 19. 

3. President Obama gets another bad report card from the legal community. Last time it was from the Center for Constitutional Rights. This one is from the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School:  



4. Longtime City Council watchdog and neighborhood activist Chris Leman was arrested last week for allegedly assaulting a Seattle Department of Transportation receptionist. Erica C. Barnett got the scoop. 

5. Chris Grygiel at the SeattlePI.com has a Q&A with mayoral candidate Mike McGinn. Most of the interview focuses on McGinn's opposition to Mayor Nickels' pet project—the $900 million tunnel—which amounts to a new freeway for 130,000 cars a day along the waterfront. Same old, same old.

Even though the tunnel caters to our unrepentant habits, people just want to get something done anyway. So, I'm not sure this is a winning issue for McGinn. But he's definitely eloquent about the Nickels' hypocrisy: 

Mayor Nickels has an environmental record that he's very proud of. You too are from the environmental community. What's the biggest environmental challenge for the city of Seattle right now?

You know, talking about the mayor's environmental record -- that was leadership he showed when he said Seattle would reduce global warming pollution to meet the levels in the international treaty, the Kyoto Protocol. The thing about that is when you say you're going to meet the Kyoto Protocol and you ask hundreds of mayors around the country to do that, you really have to follow through. And the mayor's decisions with respect to the tunnel, with respect to his support of the roads-and-transit ballot measure, are really inconsistent with that objective.

Our single largest source of global warming pollution is from the transportation sector. Statewide, something like $12.6 billion a year went out of the state to buy oil and gas. So making a transition to alternatives -- particularly in a city like ours -- it's the right thing to do not just environmentally, but economically.

UPDATE, RE: ITEM #1: 

King County Executive Office spokeswoman Natasha Jones explains:

"There was no jumping of the gun: the “Interim Exec” title is dictated in the Executive Order that delegated the responsibilities and powers of the office to Kurt in the line of succession.

Also, when the council names the replacement, that person will simply be the Executive, not the caretaker, interim, fill-in or any other temporary-sounding title, and we’ll update the website accordingly."