1. The state Senate will release its transportation budget today and Sound Transit will get screwed. The budget delays funding for R8A—modifications to I-90 needed to accommodate light rail. This pushes back the schedule and raises the costs for the east side link. The House transportation budget will do the same thing. Seattle Transit Blog has been watching this story closely. 

2. In other state budget news, here's an example of what's in store: On Friday, The Everett Herald reported that Planned Parenthood is closing its Monroe Clinic.

Well, follow the money: Bush administration guidelines enacted in 2005 forced the low-income health services and family planning provider to lose federal assistance for about 46,000 of its clients. Of course, as a non-profit, Planned Parenthood cannot turn patients away, and so they continued to serve those patients and lose money. Not a sustainable model. Goodbye Monroe clinic, one of just four in Snohomish County. 

The thing is, the state had allocated about $10 million to help Planned Parenthood cover some (about half) of those people who were no longer eligible thanks to the Bush-era guidelines. In other words, at least Planned Parenthood wouldn't have to scale back even more. (They also closed their Vancouver clinic in January.)

Well, that state money is now in jeopardy. And of course, as the economy falters, Planned Parenthood—which has seen a 35 percent increase in the Puget Sound service area (comparing January '09 to '08)—will continue to serve those people anyway. Not a sustainable model. 

3. Okay, enough bad news. Here's something cool that just came to Morning Fizz's attention: Young, local attorney Lorena Gonzalez   (Seattle U. Law School, 2005) was selected as one of just seven lawyers across the country to receive the Hispanic National Bar Association's "Top Lawyers Under Forty" award. Gonzalez, who's been practicing for just four years, is an attorney at Schroeter Goldmark & Bender in Downtown Seattle. Gonzalez focuses on labor, police brutality, sexual assault and wage class actions where she wins cases like this: A $360,000 race and national origin discrimination settlement for a group of Latina/Latino students.

4.  In more good news, my favorite local composer, Chris DeLaurenti, has two new albums out. Explaining one of his new releases, "Found Soundscape: C-SPAN Presidential Inauguration, January 20, 2009," DeLaurenti says on his website:  

"I captured this found soundscape from C-SPAN immediately after the inauguration of Barack Obama ... Shifting crowds, broadcast glitches, and supposedly "off-mike" comments mingle with the pageantry, power, and telling truncations of the event. Culled with no internal edits or processing, this free mp3 album released by and/OAR is the first in my forthcoming series of raw, panoramic soundscapes heard in and winnowed from everyday life." 

Cool. DeLaurenti, whose other new piece is titled "Wallingford Food Bank," is performing on Friday  night in a benefit for Hollow Earth Radio  at 8 pm at the Fremont Abbey 4272 Fremont Ave N.

5. Once again, we're hearing that former Sonic James Donaldson is in for mayor.