Morning Fizz
TransAlta Agreement Not a Done Deal, Says House Environment Chair
1. City council incumbent Jean Godden
released her March fundraising numbers yesterday. One stat we noticed while crunching the numbers: Of the $91,000 Godden has raised so far, more than a quarter of her support comes from people who identify themselves as "retired."
Godden, as she herself has noted (defensively) is far and away the oldest member of the city council, and will be 84 when she leaves office if she's reelected.
Godden's leading opponent, King County deputy prosecutor Maurice Classen , raised more than $17,000 between February 10 and March 7, not counting the $32,000 he contributed to his own campaign. (Godden raised $12,000 in February.)
We took a look a city council member Tim Burgess' fundraising numbers yesterday.
2. According to state Rep. Dave Upthegrove (D-33, Des Moines), chair of the house environment committee, the agreement reached by Gov. Chris Gregoire, TransAlta, and environmentalists—passed by the senate this weekend—that the company's Centralia power plant would phase out coal, is not a done deal .
Gov's big TransAlta deal in hands of state house environment committee chair, Rep. Dave Upthegrove, pictured at right.
"The environmental community and the company reaching a deal is one thing," Rep. Upthegrove, whose committee will hear the bill next Tuesday, told PubliCola yesterday, "but that doesn't mean it's in the best interests of the state ."
Explaining that the bill was done "too quickly in the senate and never received a public hearing," Upthegrove says he has a lot of questions and "there's a lot of due diligence left to do."
Senate side sponsor Sen. Phil Rockefeller (D-23, Bainbridge Island) introduced a brand new version of the bill on Saturday that reflected the deal but had not been vetted before the 36-13 vote.
Upthegrove says he wants to get a handle on the impact the deal will have on ratepayers—both big industrial users and low-income people; a concern that was raised by Republican Sen. Mark Schoesler (R-9, Ritzville) on the senate floor Saturday, before he, along with a handful of Republicans and one Democrat, voted "No."
Upthegrove also asks: "Is this the best we can do? Is this the soonest we're going to get away from coal?"
The original house version of the bill proposed by Rep. Marko Liias (D-21, Edmonds) had called for phasing TransAlta off coal by 2015. The version passed by the senate Saturday doesn't complete the phase out until 2025 when the second coal boiler is scheduled to close. (The first is out by 2020.)
3. A volatile debate was avoided this week when a move by centrist Democrats and Republicans in the state senate to bring Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen's (D-10, Camino Island) driver's license to a vote failed 23-25.
As if it hadn't already been controversial enough, the bill—which set up a "two-tiered" system branding licenses of undocumented immigrant s with a "not valid for identification purposes" stamp—came with a new amendment that turned opponents' metaphorical "Scarlet Letter" charge into a literal aspect of the legislation.
Sen. Jim Honeyford's (R-15, Sunnyside) amendment specified that the "not valid for identification purposes" be printed in red lettering.
According to the amendment's report the effect was pretty simple:
Godden, as she herself has noted (defensively) is far and away the oldest member of the city council, and will be 84 when she leaves office if she's reelected.
Godden's leading opponent, King County deputy prosecutor Maurice Classen , raised more than $17,000 between February 10 and March 7, not counting the $32,000 he contributed to his own campaign. (Godden raised $12,000 in February.)
We took a look a city council member Tim Burgess' fundraising numbers yesterday.
2. According to state Rep. Dave Upthegrove (D-33, Des Moines), chair of the house environment committee, the agreement reached by Gov. Chris Gregoire, TransAlta, and environmentalists—passed by the senate this weekend—that the company's Centralia power plant would phase out coal, is not a done deal .
Gov's big TransAlta deal in hands of state house environment committee chair, Rep. Dave Upthegrove, pictured at right.
"The environmental community and the company reaching a deal is one thing," Rep. Upthegrove, whose committee will hear the bill next Tuesday, told PubliCola yesterday, "but that doesn't mean it's in the best interests of the state ."
Explaining that the bill was done "too quickly in the senate and never received a public hearing," Upthegrove says he has a lot of questions and "there's a lot of due diligence left to do."
Senate side sponsor Sen. Phil Rockefeller (D-23, Bainbridge Island) introduced a brand new version of the bill on Saturday that reflected the deal but had not been vetted before the 36-13 vote.
Upthegrove says he wants to get a handle on the impact the deal will have on ratepayers—both big industrial users and low-income people; a concern that was raised by Republican Sen. Mark Schoesler (R-9, Ritzville) on the senate floor Saturday, before he, along with a handful of Republicans and one Democrat, voted "No."
Upthegrove also asks: "Is this the best we can do? Is this the soonest we're going to get away from coal?"
The original house version of the bill proposed by Rep. Marko Liias (D-21, Edmonds) had called for phasing TransAlta off coal by 2015. The version passed by the senate Saturday doesn't complete the phase out until 2025 when the second coal boiler is scheduled to close. (The first is out by 2020.)
3. A volatile debate was avoided this week when a move by centrist Democrats and Republicans in the state senate to bring Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen's (D-10, Camino Island) driver's license to a vote failed 23-25.
As if it hadn't already been controversial enough, the bill—which set up a "two-tiered" system branding licenses of undocumented immigrant s with a "not valid for identification purposes" stamp—came with a new amendment that turned opponents' metaphorical "Scarlet Letter" charge into a literal aspect of the legislation.
Sen. Jim Honeyford's (R-15, Sunnyside) amendment specified that the "not valid for identification purposes" be printed in red lettering.
According to the amendment's report the effect was pretty simple:
EFFECT: "Not for identification purposes" licenses/permits must be labeled so in bright red lettering no shorter than 3/8" high.
