Recent Stories with tag governor gregoire

Governor Gregoire

CNBC asked Governor Gregoire to respond to analyst Meredith Whitney's comparison of states to banks, pre-financial crisis. Here's what Whitney said in late September:

The similarities between the states and the banks are extreme to the extent that states have been spending dramatically and are leveraged dramatically. Municipal debt has doubled since 2000, spending has grown way faster than revenues.

Whitney said what reminded her most strongly of the banks' situation was the absence of "reliable data on state spending and debt."

Governor Gregoire chose to play off the phrasing, saying that, "We're in crisis mode. We the states are not in pre-crisis at all." That's no doubt true, but it evades Whitney's point that state spending and debt now represent a separate economic danger from the banks' credit meltdown, and that transparency is hard to come by. In fairness, Washington's credit rating is quite good, but with the caveats that a) if credit ratings were infallible, we wouldn't be in the crisis we're in, and b) things can change very quickly.

Gregoire noted that Washington has trade to rely on; unusually, we don't have a trade deficit with China. And state economists see mainly good news in that relationship for the future. Yet the state has to figure out how to avoid a $3 billion deficit over the next two years, and cuts have approached the bone. CNBC says:

In August, Gregoire announced plans for four- to- seven percent budget cuts across the board, as well as a phase-in of $51 million in cuts to state welfare aid. The cuts will disqualify nearly 2,500 families from child-care subsidies in October, and an additional 5,500 families from cash welfare benefits in February.... (more)

Council President Richard Conlin

Yesterday at 5:38 p.m. I got an email from the City Council announcing that "Seattle City Council President confirms next phase in Alaskan Way Viaduct environmental review,"and that Council President had signed the supplemental draft environmental impact statement (SDEIS) so the city could "remain as co-lead on the [...] project."

The problem with this "git-r-done" mentality is that it doesn't follow the established process and contravenes the city charter. The official signatory for the SDEIS would be Peter Hahn, the chief of Seattle's Department of Transportation. And Hahn reports to Mayor McGinn, who had told him not to sign yet--not the Council. The City Council has no authority in the matter, an upset Mayor McGinn told The Stranger last night.

The City Council's predictably defensive email goes on to explain that the deadline for signing was yesterday, and nothing was happening:

The Director of Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) had a scheduled appointment with the state to complete this task. This date has been known to all parties since early July. Yesterday, the Mayor requested more time to review the SDEIS.

It may sound like the deep-bore tunnel SDEIS has been sitting around since July, but as Publicola reports, the city was given just a few days to review it and hand back:... (more)

I know, the recession is over. But here's the first line of a Seattlepi.com article this morning: "King County Executive Dow Constantine announced Tuesday morning that his proposed budget would eliminate all general fund support for human services." It would also cut ten percent of the sheriff's budget.

That's in response to the county's $60 million deficit. Seattle's projected deficit is now $67 million. The state of Washington, $520 million. Reports Bloomberg: "Washington has reduced spending by $5.1 billion in the past three years, Gregoire said last month. Yesterday, she said the state faces a deficit of almost $4.5 billion in the two-year budget cycle that begins in July." The cuts will come from social services, corrections, and community colleges.

KIRO quotes Arun Raha, the state's chief economist, saying, "In Washington, the job recovery this time around has been slower than in any of the previous four recessions. If you compound that with the fact that the hole we're in is the largest in living memory, you begin to comprehend the magnitude of the problem."

The irony, of course, is that the city, county, and state don't spend that much, proportionally, on social services to begin with. When Constantine zeroes out social services spending--sorry, battered women and anyone who has been raped--he's addressed about one-third of the problem.

But the state is pushing ahead with a plan for a larger replacement of SR 520's floating bridge--work is underway, despite there being $2 billion in funding missing from the $4.65 billion project. (How much larger? "The current SR 520 is 60 ft. wide through Foster Island in the Arboretum. The plan calls for an 133 ft. wide structure," wrote Mayor McGinn in a letter to a group protesting the new bridge's size.)... (more)

Governor Gregoire

That's right, whitehouse.gov is the base URL for Governor Gregoire's blog post about dealing with health insurance rate increases. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is giving 45 states and D.C. (not a state) $1 million apiece to keep an eye on health insurance premiums, and keep customers apprised of the results.

Washington state's insurance commissioners generally do the people proud in the watchdog department, pressing for regulation until the insurance company executives cry out from their day spas in annoyance. But you can't nap for a second: "rates for some individual health plans in Washington increased by up to 40 percent until we stepped in to impose stiffer premium oversight," writes Gregoire.

To let people know about changes in premiums, Gregoire says, the state will "create a web based consumer website called 'Consumer Care' to provide information about the cost and quality of health care."

"basking away" courtesy of our Flickr pool's :MPG:

It's funny, at one time, the conventional wisdom was the deep-bore tunnel funding bill wouldn't have passed without that "You can barely even see it" cost overrun provision, and people took pride in their sausage-making. Now, on the heels of a poll that showed Seattleites do worry about deep-bore tunnel cost overruns, the City Council and Governor Gregoire made sharp about-faces this week, with the Council adding some heretofore "unnecessary" protective language to its end of the agreement, and Gregoire saying the original cost overrun provision didn't come from her office.

Also, the Seattle Times endorsed I-1053, the initiative requiring a super-majority (or a state-wide vote) on any tax increases. (Ironically, simple majority passage of the initiative is good enough for I-1053 backer Tim Eyman--you'd think he'd insist on a two-thirds majority, out of principle.) In this the Times is partners with BP, who still have enough money left over from working on cleaning up the Gulf to fund initiative campaigns.

BREAKING: Popular sentiment is rising to trade the Seattle Times editorial board for the Sacramento Kings.

On our Capitol Hill, crews were trying out a new kind of sidewalk repair. CD News traced the impact of segregation on Seattle neighborhoods. Eastlake Ave. blog noted, ruefully, that repairs are ongoing for the I-5 Ship Canal bridge. Queen Anne View reported that the TV tower climber has been told to STOP DOING THAT.... (more)

A hazy Mount Rainier

Coal, you may be surprised to learn, here in the cradle of hydroelectric power, supplies about eight to ten percent of Washington's electricity. That's thanks to a single coal-fired plant in Centralia, owned since 2000 by Canada's TransAlta, proponents of "the greening of power generation." Not coincidentally, the plant was also responsible for "11 percent of the state’s 99 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (MMT CO2e) in 2008."

(Speaking of green, Seattle can feel smug about the fact that Seattle City Light gets over twice as much electricity from wind power as from coal.)

This week, after months of negotiation, the Department of Ecology and TransAlta announced an Agreement and Consent Decree that will govern the plant's emission of smog-producing pollutants and mercury vapor. Essentially, Ecology (as the department troublingly synechdochizes itself) argues that it got the best voluntary deal from TransAlta it could, and on a faster implementation timeline, than if it instituted mandatory requirements. Sightline sighs in exasperation at this, along with a host of conservation and environmental groups.

Mercury emissions are to be reduced by half by 2012. (Half of what? The Ecology staffer I spoke with didn't have the precise numbers in front of him, but elsewhere in the agreement documentation there's reference to cutting mercury emissions by 200 pounds--indicating 400 pounds of mercury are released annually. [See UPDATE below.]) To be fair, TransAlta thinks they may achieve 70 percent--they just wanted some regulatory cushion, apparently.

TransAlta's existing controls for haze-causing pollutants will be deemed "good enough." TransAlta says they've invested $300 million in pollution controls since they took over the plant, reducing sulfur dioxide emissions by up to 90 percent. (They've also stopped burning Centralia coal and switched to cleaner-burning stuff from Powder River Basin.)... (more)

What? I'm just saying. If the Governor is impressed with their getting the tunnel on time and on budget, surely she must be impressed with their foresight in putting light rail in it, too? Otherwise it'd just be...tunnel-vision.