Members of a city board charged with reviewing ethics complaints against Tacoma’s top managers and elected officials are seeking subpoena power to help them in their cause.

“In order to conduct our duties, we feel that (subpoena power) is something that would be necessary,” Sean Armentrout, chairman of the city’s Board of Ethics, told Tacoma City Council members last week.

The recommendation to empower the five-member ethics panel with special legal authority to command subjects or witnesses of an investigation to testify or disclose records is among a host of proposed revisions to the city’s ethics code.

The City Council is expected to consider the board’s recommendations at its regular meeting Tuesday.

Among its suggestions, the board wants to revise the code’s section on “prohibited conduct” for city officials and employees. It wants to remove “an appearance of impropriety” from the list of barred conduct, because it’s “too vague and subjective,” Armentrout said.

The board also wants to broaden a definition for city officials’ conflicts of interest to include financial relationships beyond just contractual ones now cited in the code, he added.
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Starting Tuesday, low-income workers who want state help paying for day care will have to get in line.

For the first time in more than 20 years, Washington will put some applicants for child-care subsidies on a waiting list, according to the Department of Early Learning.

Officials will aim to keep enrollment at or below 35,200 families. Applicants beyond that cap will go on a waiting list. Enrollment stood a little over 36,000 in January.

But families with special-needs children or who are poor enough to be eligible for welfare will be exempted, and no one will be kicked …

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The state Legislature took one step closer to counting military experience toward licensing requirements in some medical professions today with a 46-0 Senate vote to pass Senate Bill 5307.

The measure, sponsored by Sen. Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor, would count military training toward licenses for opticians, physicians’ assistants, and physical therapists, among other medical professions, a move supporters say would cut back redundant training for Washington veterans taking up civilian careers.

“Military professionals often have very, very relevant training and they should not have to start from scratch when pursuing a professional license,” said Kilmer. “As a state we …

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Good morning on the 50th day of session. From the weekend: Redistricting speculation has begun, with most of it focusing on the possibility of a new Congressional district (perhaps centered on Olympia or on northeast King County).

This week: Both the House and Senate will dedicate most of their time to floor sessions as they move toward the March 7 deadline for voting on bills in their house of origin.

Today on the Capitol campus, Planned Parenthood and abortion-rights advocacy group NARAL are holding a reproductive-rights lobby day and rally.

Both the House and the Senate have scheduled floor sessions today. Here are a few examples of bills that could come up for a vote: Read more »

We knew a while ago that Washington was due to get stimulus money for high speed rail, but the Gregoire administration warned that money was threatened by U.S. House Republicans’ budget proposal.

Now the money appears to be secure with the announcement today from Sen. Patty Murray’s office that a contract has been signed on the $590 million in stimulus funds. 

Murray said in a news release the agreement was reached Friday night between the Federal Rail Administration, the state Department of Transportation and BNSF railways, which operates large parts of the track between the Canadian border and Portland. Projects will start soon along that line, Murray said.

Now that the $590 million has been contractually obligated, officials will try to do the same with $161 million in stimulus money redistributed to Washington after Wisconsin and Ohio’s new GOP governors turned it down.

Read full news release: Read more »

The House is holding a Saturday floor session at 9 a.m. The many bills on the House calendar that could get a vote include HB 1079, which would require Pierce County to vote entirely by mail.

Others that could come up: HB 1003, which would establish efficiency standards for DVD and CD players,  and HB 1172, which would allow beer and wine tasting at farmers markets.

The conservative Freedom Foundation and liberal MoveOn.org are staging competing rallies at the capitol in support of and in condemnation of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s efforts to strip most collective bargaining rights from state …

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Three bills to change the struggling Washington ferry system made it out of the Senate Transportation Committee Thursday, a move lawmakers said was their answer to ferry reforms the governor suggested earlier this year.

Senate Bill 5742, by Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, would add a $0.25 charge to ferry fares to pay for a new vessels and would exempt ferry fuel from state sales tax. Senate bills 5405 and 5406, also by Haugen, would limit who can participate in ferry-worker unions and the kinds of benefits unions can negotiate with the state.

“The governor challenged …

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Collective bargaining supporters and opponents plan to rally at the Capitol Saturday, reacting to a proposal by the governor of Wisconsin to cut costs by making union members pay more for their benefits and limiting their bargaining rights.

Two advocacy groups, the Freedom Foundation and MoveOn.org, have scheduled competing rallies on the Capitol campus in Olympia, with one side applauding Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker for reigning in state spending and the other calling his proposal an attack on workers’ rights.

The Wisconsin proposal that the events are centered around would strip most collective bargaining rights from state workers in an effort to address the state’s budget shortfall, which amounts to $137 million for the current fiscal year and $3.6 billion over the next biennium. The measure passed the Wisconsin Assembly early this morning, but has yet to pass the Senate.

The Freedom Foundation’s event, which is in support of Walker’s proposal, will begin at 11 a.m. on the north steps of the Legislative Building, and the MoveOn.org event, against the proposal, will start at noon at the Tivoli Fountain.

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