Here’s something to contemplate during the Legislature’s version of spring break: the difficult job of finding $1 billion-plus in additional state money for public schools might be the easy part of meeting the state Supreme Court’s mandate in the McCleary decision.
State Farm insurance has committed to moving hundreds of workers into vacant downtown Tacoma office buildings, and nearly everyone is thrilled.
Want to see the future of downtown Tacoma?
With the 2013 regular session of the Legislature finishing without finishing, there are plenty of questions about what happened, what didn’t happen and how the Senate found time to commemorate National Day of the Cowboy and to honor Margaret Thatcher.
It’s a question nearly, but not entirely, as bizarre as it sounds:
I guess I hadn’t driven by the newly restored Murray Morgan Bridge for awhile, at least not since the most-recent weekend closure to finish up the work. So I was surprised — not drive-into-the-jersey-barrier surprised — but surprised still at what was painted on the concrete counterweight facing the city. "PORT OF TACOMA."
Back in January when it was first discussed, Senate Bill 5329 was labeled as another attempt to blame and shame public schools.
Everyone around the table had some connection to cancer, to the annual Relay for Life or both.
Much of the coverage and commentary about Marv Harshman focused, quite appropriately, on his career as a great college basketball coach.
A white tent marked something of a milestone for the long process of expanding the reach of Sound Transit’s Link light rail line in Tacoma.
Legislators got to legislate, governors got to govern.
Next time you’re bumping up or down one of Tacoma’s vintage cobblestone hills in your car, imagine what it would have been like in a horse-drawn carriage.
In his first three months in office, Gov. Jay Inslee hasn’t been especially active in the legislative process.
There was a time when the National Basketball Association wanted Seattle more than Seattle wanted the National Basketball Association.
No one intended to become a member of the Seattle Pilots cult. Maybe they attended a game during the team’s single season of existence as an American League expansion team. Maybe they came across a collectible on eBay that caught their eye, an ashtray or a bobblehead with the ship’s-wheel-sprouting-wings logo. Maybe they stumbled across a copy of the classic baseball book “Ball Four” and decided to give it another read.
Like many of those who attended Saturday's memorial service for Booth Gardner, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell was wearing an old Gardner campaign pin.
The board of the state’s third-largest school district will decide tonight whether Tacoma Public Schools will consider being a charter schools authorizer under last fall’s Initiative 1240.
When he was the director of the Washington State Association of Counties, Gary Lowe was one of my go-to guys for perspective on how things worked in the state Legislature … and why.
Back in December when 23 Republicans and two Democrats announced that something called the Majority Coalition Caucus would control the state Senate, its leaders said they wanted to concentrate on economics — jobs, education and a budget balanced with no increases in taxes.
It’s No. 51 on the “Jacobsen and Metcalf Laws of Parliamentary Democracy.”
During his presentation on preliminary designs for the city of Tacoma’s section of the Prairie Line trail, landscape architect Mauricio Villarreal stopped on one slide that demonstrated better than any other the importance of the project.
Elected officials, especially one as prominent as a governor, tend to accumulate enemies. Booth Gardner, who died Friday night, is the exception to the rule.
Furthering our commitment to confusion and a complete lack of clarity, we present another edition of 33 questions and zero answers.
Call this one “How a Bill Becomes a Joke.”
Spring forward, fall back. Spring forward, fall back.
Former Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire may still get asked to serve in President Obama’s administration. But if the call doesn’t come, she has no one to blame but herself.
Since Cynthia Davis Long disappeared in November 1980, four detectives have looked into the case, and all four came to the same conclusion:
The biggest surprise about last week’s state Supreme Court ruling on the two-thirds tax-hike initiative is how surprised so many people were – or pretended to be – about the outcome.
Real ID is one of those government marketing terms designed to make something burdensome seem exciting and innovative.
What do state Reps. Jason Overstreet of Bellingham and Sharon Tomiko Santos of South Seattle have in common?
How do you know when a politician is getting ready to restrict public access to government records? When they say how much they support public access to public records.
For a couple of guys named Hans (and a woman named Dawn) smaller is better – as in legislative districts.
It had to be an oh-oh moment for City of Tacoma staff who thought they were nearing the end of a nearly decadelong ordeal of wrestling with BNSF Railway for a narrow swath of land through downtown.
Should every Washington public school be assigned a letter grade, similar to the grades students past and present have been given by their teachers?
Some people do what they do for the money.
Sorry, Robert Pattison.
A lot of people will take credit for the reopening of the Murray Morgan Bridge in Tacoma during what has been proclaimed by the mayor as Bridge Week. Some will even deserve it.
I like TVW, I really do.
The turnaround is nearly complete.
What is the quickest way to get angry phone calls from readers of The News Tribune in print and online?
An urban trail, like a chain, is only as strong as its weakest link.
I'm usually cautious when someone asserts that less is more. In the case of the final design for the segment of the Prairie Line trail through the campus of the University of Washington Tacoma, though, it works. After initial designs for turning the abandoned but historic rail corridor into a trail and linear park were panned as fussy and too costly, university brass changed direction.
You’ve surely heard it said, maybe you’ve even said it yourself, amidst all the rumors, reports and rumors of reports that the Sacramento Kings will move to Seattle in time for next season.
The possibilities are limited only by the depth of our imaginations and our capacity for cynicism.
It would be easy to make the latest chapter in the Pam Roach story all about her. Certainly, that’s what the star of the bizarre but repetitive saga would like, as proved yet again by her hour-plus news “conference” last week.
