Today's edition of Friday's LIKES and DISLIKES features three LIKES—each with a big hitch, though. 

First, I LIKED state senator Kevin Ranker's (D-40, Orcas Island) timely amendment on the Republican budget. Responding to the religious liberty (to discriminate) law that blew up in Indiana this week, Ranker, whose dad is gay, proposed an amendment to make it illegal for vendors that contract with the state to discriminate.

Ranker's proposal was part of a planned Democratic run on the budget vote last night featuring nearly 50 amendments that had been intended to embarrass moderate Republicans, particularly Eastside suburban Seattle Republicans who may be running for governor in the near future (state senator Andy Hill, R-45, Redmond), by making them vote in lockstep with their conservative caucus against social policy that's popular with the public at large.

The Republicans headed off the ploy by passing a rule earlier in the evening saying any amendments to the budget needed a two-thirds majority to pass, giving moderate senators the leeway to vote with the liberals while fulfilling their caucus's agenda to defeat the amendments.

And so, despite the fact that Seattle suburban Republicans such as Hill voted for Ranker's amendment with the Democrats, the measure failed. In one cynical instance, moderate Republican Bruce Dammeier initially voted against Democrat Annette Cleveland's amendment to require equal pay for women, but when he realized the GOP had one vote to spare, he switched his vote to a yes. Here's a screenshot of the roll call of Dammeier's switch:

Ranker issued a blistering statement after his gay rights bill failed:

“All this amendment said was you cannot discriminate. You cannot discriminate against gay people, you cannot discriminate against pregnant women, you cannot discriminate.

“If we cannot protect our citizens from discrimination then what are we doing here?

“I am astounded that in 2015 we still have to fight for basic civil rights. Even now, we read headlines about state governments making it legal for businesses to discriminate against their own citizens.

“We are not Indiana but we are following their lead.

Embarrassing the Republicans even more, Democratic state senator Christine Rolfes (D-23, Kitsap County) called for a vote to suspend the 60 percent rule just for Ranker's amendment; even though Hill voted for Ranker's amendment, he voted against Rolfes's amendment to help it pass. Gotcha.

"If Hill, Honeyford, Litzow, et al. were really sincere about passing this amendment, wouldn’t they have voted to suspend it for this one vote?" Democratic senate spokesman Aaron Wasser asked after the vote on the Rolfes amendment.

Here's the hitch on the Democrats' anti-Indiana show, though. Despite a GOP desire for similar "religious liberty" laws (they proposed an Indiana-style law just two sessions ago), Washington state attorney general Bob Ferguson famously sided with a gay couple under our state's consumer protection act in a suit against Arlene's Flower shop for refusing to serve gays, winning and making it clear that antigay discrimination is already illegal here. 

2. While I LIKED the Democrats' long list of amendments (you can read them all—including measures to fund low-income health care, address climate change, protect women's birth control choices, restore the state need grant, and assure paid sick leave—here), there was a giant hitch to their slightly righteous stand.

They denounced the GOP accusation that policy bills didn't pass muster as budget amendments with grandiose speeches about how the budget is a policy document about Washington's values.

Okay. But just two years ago, when the GOP tried to attach its policy agenda to the budget (reeling in workers' compensation, a bill to cap noneducation spending) the Democrats lambasted them for holding the budget hostage to "ideological bills."

3. Finally, while I LOVE that Bellevue's Expedia announced yesterday that they're moving to Seattle, it's not quite the urbanist victory it appears to be.

There's been a wise reassessment of the 1980s Microsoft-style corporate campus model that segregated corporate campuses along the lines of ivory tower college campuses in the suburbs. The new idea is to move firms into the city, smack dab in the middle of mass transit, housing, other firms, and culture; the concept, known as "innovation districts," where the overlapping facets of city life are intended to generate creativity and more culture, is an affirmation of mixed-use, urban values.

However, the 40-acre waterfront Amgen site where Expedia is moving—with plans for outward expansion there—isn't a jump into the mix like Weyerhaeuser's move to Pioneer Square (no light rail line on Elliott or 15th). Yes, the Interbay neighborhood is denser than it used to be, but it's mostly still a suburban style drag along Elliott Avenue West.

And Expedia communications director Sarah Waffle Gavin didn't exactly sound like she was embracing the new vision of a city campus (think NYU as opposed to Stanford) when she told me it was time "for our grown-up company to have a grown-up tech campus to match," comparing their current Bellevue lease to being like a 22-year-old versus "buying a grown-up home...a corporate campus befitting a global company."  

Sorry, but buying a low-slung, 40-acre waterfront campus as opposed to renting in a downtown Bellevue high-rise isn't the greenest move around. Gavin, by way of example, is psyched, she told me, about just closing on "a, new, bigger, forever house" in Sammamish, even though she's known about her company's big move into the city for a while.