News
Initiative Roundup

Here's a Cola roundup of the initiatives you're going to run into in QFC parking lots, farmers markets, outside Nordstrom, and at Mariners games in the next three weeks as the campaigns race to collect the 241,000 valid signatures needed to make the November ballot by July 8.
They are:
I-1130, a measure to ban the practice of confining egg laying chickens in stacked cages. The biggest contributor is the D.C.-based Humane Society at $300,000. Overall, the campaign has raised a half a million dollars so far.
The opposition, calling themselves "Stop the Extremists," has raised $420,000 from egg farming companies such as Oregon's Willamette Egg Farms and Utah's Oakdell Egg Farms.
I-1125 is an Eyman measure (whose funding includes more thant $600,000 from Eastside developer Kemper Freeman), that would give the legislature, rather than a commission, the authority to set tolls. It would also mandate that the toll revenues only go to fund the road or bridge where the toll was collected—and the money cannot be spent on transit.
I-1163 , a home care union initiative (the Service Workers International Union, which represents home health care workers, has kicked in $1 million already), would reinstate rules mandating training for home health care workers. The state delayed the training this year, which was already mandated by initiative in 2008 (by a 72 percent vote), in order to save money.
I-1183 is the Costco liquor privatization initiative that we've written a lot about lately. The measure, which Costco has already put $350,000 toward, would take the booze business out the state's hands—keeping the tax in place and committing 17 percent of annual booze sales back to the state. Stores would have to be at least 10,000 square feet to sell liquor.