Morning Fizz
This Kind of Damage
Caffeinated News & Gossip. Your daily Morning Fizz
1. Two weeks ago , Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna reviewed the GOP presidential field with King 5's Robert Mak. McKenna said he likes Mitt Romney's business background, called him "very, very competitive" and said the nomination was "his... to lose."
As for Newt Gingrich (who hadn't yet cleaned up in South Carolina nor made it a tight race in Florida), McKenna took a long pause, threw in some "ums" and "ya knows" and said: "Newt is not doing any of us any favor by attacking Romney or for that matter any other candidate, using arguments that even some Democrats would hesitate to use. I think the odds of him being the nominee are quite low, so for him to be doing this kind of damage doesn't make sense to me."
As for Rick Santorum, McKenna said, "I respect the fact that Rick has very strongly held views on social issues...I don't think he'd be a majority candidate in our state, to say the least..."
Speaking of social issues and Rick Santorum, McKenna did another TV interview just this week with Q13's C.R. Douglas where he echoed Santorum's social views on gay marriage (as opposed to his squishier earlier statements when he said his position was the same as President Obama's), saying definitively "I will vote to uphold the current law and the current definition of marriage" after Douglas asked him how he would vote on a likely gay marriage measure in November.
Asked about abortion, McKenna said he believes "life begins at conception," but, sounding nothing like Santorum, he added: it's "[the woman's] choice and it shall remain her choice."
2. The recession has been bad news for the environment; once a front-and-center cause in the mid and late 2000s, saving the planet has become less of a priority in the great recession.[pullquote]We reject the false choice between a healthy environment and a robust economy.[/pullquote]
Note that the big deal movement on the left last year was the class-conscious Occupy movement as lefty Seattle voters shot down a car tab fee increase.
The reaction has been the same in the legislature: Since 2009, with a focus on protecting immediate kitchen table line items, the state has cut environmental programs, including a $45 million hit to the state’s hazardous substance cleanup fund and made 25 percent cuts to both the Department of Ecology and the Department of Natural Resources.
No more, says a group of 10 Democratic state senators and 18 Democratic state representatives. As the session started earlier this month, the Inconvenient Truthers signed a letter to party leadership saying they will not tolerate any more cuts.
Seattle-area state Sens. Sharon Nelson, Jeanne Kohl-Welles, David Frockt, and Adam Kline along with Seattle Reps. Joe Fitzgibbon, Eileen Cody, Zack Hudgins, and Gerry Pollet signed the letters, which you can read here and here .
3. Staff for the state legislature have completed their fiscal analysis of the controversial business and occupation tax bill that would give the state the authority to collect all city B&O taxes, eliminate some city taxes, and require cities to pay a fee to the state for taking over tax-collecting authority. Cities generally oppose the proposal because they believe it will cost them tens of millions of dollars (a claim the state disputes).
The fiscal note for the bill calls expenses to cities "indeterminate"---in other words, the state has no estimate of how much the new system will actually cost cities. And it includes, among several "assumptions," the premise that cities that do lose money will simply raise other taxes to make up the difference, by "adjust[ing] their fees as necessary under this new system to maintain revenue neutrality."
And for the smaller cities that don't currently collect a B&O tax (207 cities don't), they could certainly take advantage of the state setup and start to levy the tax.
Overall, staffers estimate, the bill will cost just over $23 million to implement, and will bring in projected revenues of just over $10 million, over the next six years---a total loss to the state over those years of $13 million.
4. Federal Way just may be the new Bellevue? At least when it comes to internal feuds over Sound Transit.
Federal Way State Sen. Tracy Eide (D-30) has declined to support proposals by Federal Way mayor Skip Priest that would abolish the appointed 18-member Sound Transit Board and replace it with a new, all-elected five-member countywide board. Priest has been going after Sound Transit ever since the agency's announcement that it could no longer afford to build light rail to Federal Way as promised because tax revenues in South King County have fallen short of expectations.
In a letter to Priest earlier this month, Eide along with her Federal Way colleague in the house, GOP Rep. Katrina Asay (R-30), wrote that they want to wait until the state auditor has completed his audit of Sound Transit, including its ridership projections before running with Priest's agenda.
"Until we have the chance to review the auditor's findings, we simply do not know all the facts. By dismantling Sound Transit without first targeting where waste and abuse exists, we jeopardize our end goal of eventually extending link light rail to Federal Way," the letter says.
However, yesterday, Rep. Asay sponsored a batch of bills that would allow cities to bail on regional transit authorities if plans changed, mandate that ballot titles state the exact duration of a tax, and prohibit capital and operation costs from being in one ballot measure.
Asay also signed on to one other anti-Sound Transit bill that was introduced yesterday by another Federal Way area Rep. Mark Miloscia (D-30) that would order Sound Transit to do an annual audit and pay for it. (Miloscia is running for state auditor.)
Federal Way has hired lobbyist Martin Durkan, a longtime light rail opponent, to push its case in Olympia.
1. Two weeks ago , Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna reviewed the GOP presidential field with King 5's Robert Mak. McKenna said he likes Mitt Romney's business background, called him "very, very competitive" and said the nomination was "his... to lose."
As for Newt Gingrich (who hadn't yet cleaned up in South Carolina nor made it a tight race in Florida), McKenna took a long pause, threw in some "ums" and "ya knows" and said: "Newt is not doing any of us any favor by attacking Romney or for that matter any other candidate, using arguments that even some Democrats would hesitate to use. I think the odds of him being the nominee are quite low, so for him to be doing this kind of damage doesn't make sense to me."
As for Rick Santorum, McKenna said, "I respect the fact that Rick has very strongly held views on social issues...I don't think he'd be a majority candidate in our state, to say the least..."
Speaking of social issues and Rick Santorum, McKenna did another TV interview just this week with Q13's C.R. Douglas where he echoed Santorum's social views on gay marriage (as opposed to his squishier earlier statements when he said his position was the same as President Obama's), saying definitively "I will vote to uphold the current law and the current definition of marriage" after Douglas asked him how he would vote on a likely gay marriage measure in November.
Asked about abortion, McKenna said he believes "life begins at conception," but, sounding nothing like Santorum, he added: it's "[the woman's] choice and it shall remain her choice."
2. The recession has been bad news for the environment; once a front-and-center cause in the mid and late 2000s, saving the planet has become less of a priority in the great recession.[pullquote]We reject the false choice between a healthy environment and a robust economy.[/pullquote]
Note that the big deal movement on the left last year was the class-conscious Occupy movement as lefty Seattle voters shot down a car tab fee increase.
The reaction has been the same in the legislature: Since 2009, with a focus on protecting immediate kitchen table line items, the state has cut environmental programs, including a $45 million hit to the state’s hazardous substance cleanup fund and made 25 percent cuts to both the Department of Ecology and the Department of Natural Resources.
No more, says a group of 10 Democratic state senators and 18 Democratic state representatives. As the session started earlier this month, the Inconvenient Truthers signed a letter to party leadership saying they will not tolerate any more cuts.
We will stand strongly against any attempts to undermine them under the guise of reform and simplification. We will not provide our support for a budget that exchanges our environmental protections for votes on the budget or new revenue. We reject the false choice between a healthy environment and a robust economy.
Seattle-area state Sens. Sharon Nelson, Jeanne Kohl-Welles, David Frockt, and Adam Kline along with Seattle Reps. Joe Fitzgibbon, Eileen Cody, Zack Hudgins, and Gerry Pollet signed the letters, which you can read here and here .
3. Staff for the state legislature have completed their fiscal analysis of the controversial business and occupation tax bill that would give the state the authority to collect all city B&O taxes, eliminate some city taxes, and require cities to pay a fee to the state for taking over tax-collecting authority. Cities generally oppose the proposal because they believe it will cost them tens of millions of dollars (a claim the state disputes).
The fiscal note for the bill calls expenses to cities "indeterminate"---in other words, the state has no estimate of how much the new system will actually cost cities. And it includes, among several "assumptions," the premise that cities that do lose money will simply raise other taxes to make up the difference, by "adjust[ing] their fees as necessary under this new system to maintain revenue neutrality."
And for the smaller cities that don't currently collect a B&O tax (207 cities don't), they could certainly take advantage of the state setup and start to levy the tax.
Overall, staffers estimate, the bill will cost just over $23 million to implement, and will bring in projected revenues of just over $10 million, over the next six years---a total loss to the state over those years of $13 million.
4. Federal Way just may be the new Bellevue? At least when it comes to internal feuds over Sound Transit.
Federal Way State Sen. Tracy Eide (D-30) has declined to support proposals by Federal Way mayor Skip Priest that would abolish the appointed 18-member Sound Transit Board and replace it with a new, all-elected five-member countywide board. Priest has been going after Sound Transit ever since the agency's announcement that it could no longer afford to build light rail to Federal Way as promised because tax revenues in South King County have fallen short of expectations.
In a letter to Priest earlier this month, Eide along with her Federal Way colleague in the house, GOP Rep. Katrina Asay (R-30), wrote that they want to wait until the state auditor has completed his audit of Sound Transit, including its ridership projections before running with Priest's agenda.
"Until we have the chance to review the auditor's findings, we simply do not know all the facts. By dismantling Sound Transit without first targeting where waste and abuse exists, we jeopardize our end goal of eventually extending link light rail to Federal Way," the letter says.
However, yesterday, Rep. Asay sponsored a batch of bills that would allow cities to bail on regional transit authorities if plans changed, mandate that ballot titles state the exact duration of a tax, and prohibit capital and operation costs from being in one ballot measure.
Asay also signed on to one other anti-Sound Transit bill that was introduced yesterday by another Federal Way area Rep. Mark Miloscia (D-30) that would order Sound Transit to do an annual audit and pay for it. (Miloscia is running for state auditor.)
Federal Way has hired lobbyist Martin Durkan, a longtime light rail opponent, to push its case in Olympia.
