OLYMPIA — The number of vacant seats in the Legislature continues to grow, as Sen. Cheryl Pflug accepted a gubernatorial appointment Monday to the Growth Management Hearings Board.

Pflug, R-Maple Valley, represents the suburban King County 5th Legislative District, first elected to the House in 1998, then appointed to the Senate in 2004 when Dino Rossi resigned to run for governor. (Those with really long memories might recall that the 5th District used to be located in Spokane County prior to 1992.)

Gov. Chris Gregoire announced this afternoon she was appointing Pflug to a six-year term on the board, which settles disputes over planning and development issues in cities and counties around the state, and two representatives each from Eastern Washington, Central Puget Sound, and the rest of the state West of the Cascades.

Pflug filed for re-election last week, listing her party preference as “Independent GOP Party.” She will have to withdraw from that race because she can't serve on the board and in the Legislature. That leaves the seat to a race between Democrat Mark Mullet and Republican Brad Toft.

It's also at least the third surprise departure from the Senate this month. Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, announced May 3 that she was retiring and Sen. Joe Zarelli of Ridgefield, the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee and a key player in this year's budget negotiations, announced last Friday that he'd had enough, too.

The Spokane County Republican Party plans to go to court this week in an effort to block the county commissioner campaign of Democrat John Roskelley.

The county GOP filed a challenge to Roskelley's current voter registration on Friday, and asked Auditor Vicky Dalton to remove his name from the ballot for the District 1 commissioner race, where he is challenging incumbent Republican Commissioner Todd Mielke. But an auditor has no authority to strike a name from the ballot, Dalton said, and the party will have to convince a Superior Court judge to take  him off the ballot.

“This is a very clear-cut case,” Matthew Pederson, county GOP chairman said, contending Roskelley is trying to “deceive voters” with the address.

“It's just politics,” said Roskelley.

To read the rest of this item, or to comment, click here to go inside the blog.

Attached to this post are the two proposed citizen intiatives filed recently with the city of Spokane clerk's office. The supporters of each initiative still need to gather signatures in order to force the issues onto the city ballot.

Here is the story about the proposals.

Finally, I apologize to anyone who tried to find them on Spin Control earlier today, as the print version of the story directs interested readers to do.

Documents:

Washington’s Top 2 primary doesn’t just bring out a wealth of candidates. It brings out the creativity in some of those candidates as they list which party they “prefer.” Preference is a key part of the Top 2, because it doesn’t limit the general election field to one Democrat and one Republican, so no matter what party is listed on the ballot, if a candidate finishes first or second, he or she goes on to November. Finish third or worse and it’s “Later, gator.”
This year we have a candidate from the Human Rights Party running for secretary of state, candidates from the FDR Democratic Party, the Progressive Independent Party, the Employmentwealth Party and the 99% Party running for various Congressional seats (on the West Side, of course.) Lieutenant governor attracted the most creativity, with candidates inventing an Indep Republican Party, a Democracy Indep. Party and a Neopopulist Party. And there is the usual schism for between candidates who want to list Republican Party and others who want to list the GOP Party. The latter ignore the redundancy because spelling out the acronym would mean they prefer the Grand Old Party Party.
Or they just really like to party.
  

When the dust from candidate filing week settled at the close of business Friday, there were a few surprises in who is running for what. But the biggest surprise was who isn’t running.
For the first time since 1996, a Spokane primary election ballot will be printed without Barbara Lampert’s name on it.
The retired nurse’s aide said after that first campaign 16 years ago she planned to run every year for something until she got elected or turned 70. In that span, she has run for almost every office short of president in that span, from U.S. Senate down to city council member. She is such a fixture that some political reporters joked recently about betting on which race it would be.
Joke’s on us. Lampert, at 66, is shy of her self-imposed age limit and hasn’t wound up with the most votes in a general election. But Friday she said she’s getting spoiled in retirement and isn’t up to a run this year. “I was just too busy with other things,” she said. “There’s no sense to kill myself.”
To read the rest of this item, go inside the blog

OLYMPIA – Washington’s primary ballot got longer and more interesting before elections offices closed for filing Friday afternoon.

Spokane-area ballots will have nine candidates for governor, eight for U.S. Senate, seven for secretary of state, six for lieutenant governor, five for a Spokane legislative seat, four for Eastern Washington’s 5th District congressional seats. No partridges or pear trees, though.

Many of the candidates for major offices are well-known, and have been campaigning for months. Some entering the field this week are perennial candidates who regularly file for something, but rarely make it past a primary. Mike the Mover, owner of a Seattle area moving company who legally changed his name to reflect his occupation, filed this year for Senate, as did Will Baker of Tacoma and Glen Stockwell, a Ritzville resident who has tried legislative campaigns in the past.

The Aug. 7 election is a Top 2 primary, which means the candidates with the most, and second most votes move on to the general, regardless of party. Candidates say which party the prefer, but that doesn’t signify party support, or even recognition.

That means some races in November could match two Democrats or two Republicans. It also means candidates are free to describe their party preference in creative ways, to make up parties, or say they have no party preference at all.

For a list of candidates appearing on Spokane-area ballots in the primary, and their stated party preference, go inside the blog.

Downtown Spokane businessman John Waite said Friday that he has decided not to run for the state House afterall.

Waite said earlier this month that he would run as a Democrat for the seat held by state Rep. Andy Billig, who is giving up his seat to run for state Senate.

With five candidates who have filed for the seat, Waite said he decided this afternoon that it already was too crowded and that the entry of former City Councilman Bob Apple would make the race more difficult because he was hoping for strong support in Apple's former council district in Northeast Spokane. Waite ran for Apple's seat last year.

Waite said he will support City Councilman Jon Snyder in the race because of Snyder's experience in small business and his work promoting sustainability.

“He fits my agenda as well as anybody,” he said.

OK candidates, it's down to the wire. You have until 5 p.m to file for statewide office, and 4 p.m. to file for an office with a district that is solely within Spokane County.

As we approach the deadline, the field for one of the races got smaller. Spokane businessman John Waite posted on Facebook that he was dropping out of the 3rd District primary for an open state House of Representatives position. Waite said he was throwing his support behind Spokane City Councilman Jon Snyder.

That leaves three Democrats — Bob Apple, Marcus Riccelli and Snyder — as well as Republicans Tim Benn and Morgan Oyler, in that race.

For a list of all candidates filed for offices on Spokane-area ballots as of 3 p.m., go inside the blog.

Gregoire on the need to raise taxes

Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire told the state’s largest teachers union that she will work to increase taxes to help the state meet its mandate to provide quality education.

“I am traveling the state to send the message to legislators and taxpayers that we must have a new source of revenue because we cannot have money in the good times and no money in the bad times,” Gregoire said. “We have to have money all the time to meet our obligation to ensure the education of our children.”

Gregoire spoke Thursday evening at Spokane Convention Center during the annual convention of the Washington Education Association. About 1,000 members are attending the weekend event.

The governor, who opted not to run for a third term, won’t be governor when the Legislature convenes in January to consider the next two-year budget cycle and if tax increases will be part of that budget. Even so, she said she will remain active on the issue of education funding.

“It is time for us to step up to the responsibility that we as citizens in the state have and that is a long-term sustainable revenue source,” she said.

Washington's congressional delegation is a diverse group that doesn't agree on much, whether it's who's waging a “war on women” or what's the right policy on taxes, budget cuts, health care reform or immigration.

But they managed to rally around one favorite topic this morning: Putting the first new KC-46A tankers at Fairchild Air Force Base.

OK, so it's kind of a no-brainer that planes assembled in the state at a Boeing plant would stay in the state at Fairchild. Still, all nine representatives and both senators signed on to a letter today to Air Force Secretary Mike Donley and various generals that Fairchild would be a really great spot for the first '46As because it has both Active Duty and Air National Guard units that fly tankers, an improved runway, and is close to the Asia-Pacific theater. That plus the federal government has spent about $400 million on a wide range of improvements over the last few decades. (Stuff that we assume the secretary and the generals already know, but hey, they're busy guys so it probably doesn't hurt to remind them.)

A copy of the full letter is inside the blog.

Changes to the way citizens can sidestep elected leaders to pass their own laws received the endorsement on Wednesday of Mayor David Condon.

But there will be more steps before the new rules become law if some citizens have their way.

Ian Moody, a marijuana reform advocate and candidate for Congress filed a referendum in hopes of preventing the ordinance, which was approved by City Council on April 30, from becoming law.

Supporters of the referendum will have until June 14 to collect 6,262 signatures of registered voters in the City of Spokane – 10 percent of the number of people who voted in the last city election – to prevent the rules from becoming law on June 15. If enough signatures are verified, the City Council will reconsider the ordinance. If the council upholds its decision, voters would have the final say in November 2013 election – though the City Council could opt to hold the election sooner.

OLYMPIA — The middle of filing week, as usual, brings some familiar names to the primary ballot and at least one newcomer: Mike the Mover has filed for governor. John Adams has filed for state insurance commissioner.

Ian Moody of Spokane has filed for the U.S. House in Eastern Washington's 5th District.

The Mover runs for some major political office every two years. In 2010 and 2006 it was U.S. Senate. In 2004 it was governor. In 2000, insurance commissioner. He seemed to be ready to sit out 2008 and didn't show up anywhere during fililng week, but later filed to run for governor as a write-in candidate.

As his name (which was legally changed years ago from Michael Shanks), he runs a moving company in the Seattle area.

John Adams, who has a presidential-sounding name, has run for insurance commissioner in 2004 and 2008, capturing the Republican nomination both times, then spending small sums — $1,346 in '08 and $997 in '04 — on his campaign. He got about 41 percent of the vote the first time and about 39 percent the second, which is a pretty good vote-to-dollar-spent ratio, in a “statistics are for losers” kind of metric.

Moody is active in efforts to legalize marijuana and the Sensible Spokane Alliance. His congressional campaign will dovetail with marijuana intiative efforts, and bring attention to problems with federal marijuana laws, he said. He's running with no party preference and describes himself as a social progressive and fiscal conservative.

For the latest list of candidate filings for offices on Spokane-area ballots, go inside the blog.

OLYMPIA — Attorney General Rob McKenna says state residents shouldn't be taking advice from Kim Kardashian, at least not about shoes that supposedly help build you up without a trip to the gym.

The state got a piece of the settlement between Skechers shoe manufacturers for several models of “Shape Up” footwear that don't deliver what Kardashian promises in the above ad.

“Advertising materials claimed that consumers may ‘get in shape without setting foot in a gym’ even though there’s no good evidence to show the shoes work as advertised,” McKenna said in a press release. “Don’t cancel your gym membership. File these sketchy footwear claims under ‘too good to be true.’”

The state gets about $117,000 in the settlement, which will go for legal costs and education programs for health and fitness for women and girls. Consumers who bought Shape Ups, Tone Ups or Resistance Runners can apply for a partial refund by going on the Federal Trade Commission site.

A spokesman for McKenna's office says the refund is about $20, because the shoes weren't completely worthless. They still covered your feet, they just didn't work as advertised.

OLYMPIA — With Memorial Day around the corner, the state Department of Enterprise Services is doing its annual maintenance and restoration of the Capitol Campus grounds and monuments.

On Tuesday, Larry Tate of FS Ltd., a company that specializes in art restoration and conservation work, did a cleaning job on Winged Victory, the monument to World War I veterans at the northeast entrance to the Capitol Building. Heat, cold, rain, snow and salt air from nearby Budd Inlet are hard on the sculpture

FS Ltd. did a major restoration work on Winged Victory, cleaning off the gold paint that had been applied by someone previous administration that thought  the1938 sculpture needed to be a brighter color, and restored it to the color it was when Alonzo Lewis finished it. 

From his vantage point, Tate got to see Winged Victory from an angle most people don't. How's it looking from up there?

“It looks good,” he said.

As previously mentioned in Spin Control, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers has been given command of GOP forces counterattacking Democrats on the “War on Women.”

Along with her appearance yesterday on Chris Matthews, she also appeared on CNN's John King U.S.A. show.

The message is essentially the same, as it has been for more than a month, that the war is a “Democratic myth” designed to capture women's votes in 2012 after losing them in 2010, and that women really care about the economy.  Compare the two clips, if you are so inclined, to see which matchup she handled better.

Inslee gives a campaign speech on the Capitol steps after filing for office.

OLYMPIA — In front of a crowd that included babies in arms, senior citizens and union members in hard hats, Democrat Jay Inslee tried to energize his gubernatorial campaign after making it official.
One of a handful of candidates to file paperwork and pay his fee Tuesday, Inslee gave a campaign speech on the Capitol steps after completing the process inside the building to run for governor.
State Republicans were quick with a counterpunch, saying voters shouldn’t choose Inslee to be governor after he decided he couldn’t serve out his congressional term and run for office at the same time. Inslee resigned his seat earlier this year to campaign full time.
“Ex-Congressman Inslee is obviously not concerned about the welfare of (Congressional) District One, so how can he be concerned about the welfare of the state?” State GOP Chairman Kirby Wilbur said in a prepared statement a few hours after Inslee filed.
After his speech, Inslee talked with reporters about plans for education improvements  that would build on successes around the state and pay bonuses to the best teachers willing to be mentors to new teachers. He shied away from the term charter schools, saying at one point it has different meanings to different people, and for some signifies a lack of control by locally elected school boards. Changes under his plan would be controlled by school boards, and possibly funded by state grants, he said.
Inslee also disagreed with fellow Democrat and retiring Gov. Chris Gregoire, who said he and Republican candidate Rob McKenna need to acknowledge the fact that the state faces a new source of revenue — that is to say, a tax increase — to cover a $1 billion jump in spending to comply with a recent state Supreme Court ruling on fully funded basic education. No new taxes are needed, he said, if the economy gets back on track, more people get back to work, and the state finds savings elsewhere in the budget, like reducing health care costs.

For the 5 p.m. update on the list of candidate filings, click here to go inside the blog.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Spokane, was put on the defensive Monday by Chris Matthews of MSNBC's Hardball.

McMorris Rodgers, who has become the GOP's chief spokeswoman against attacks on the party related to women's issues, defended the House leadership's position against adding protections for lesbians and others in the Violence Against Women Act, which expired last year and is under consideration for reauthorization by Congress.

She said the House GOP leadership is committed to the act but not as the reauthorization has been approved by the Senate. The version approved by the Senate includes the protections as well as extra visas for female immigrants facing abuse.

OLYMPIA — Filing week continues today for all the political offices on the Aug. 7 Top 2 primary ballot. Unlike Monday, when there was the traditional rush into the elections offices by anxious candidates, Tuesday started slower.

Sen. Mark Schoesler and Rep. Joe Schmick, Republican incumbents in southeast Washington's 9th Legislative District, filed this morning. Overnight, Republican Art Coday filed electronically for U.S. Senate.

Yes, you actually can avoid the trip to the county elections office or Secretary of State's office, save time and gasoline, by filing online. (Click here for details.) You can sell yourself as the sensible, efficient, environmentally friendly, tech savvy candidate. But you miss the chance to turn your filing, which is really just a clerical exercise, into a campaign event.

Speaking of which, former U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee, the leading Democratic candidate for governor, will be chatting with reporters on the north steps of the Capitol this morning after filing his forms and paying the fee.

For the latest list of candidates for offices on Spokane-area ballots, click here to go inside the blog.

Testimony at Monday’s Spokane City Council meeting included the sounds of William Cruz on guitar and trumpet as some downtown buskers argued against proposed noise restrictions.

But Spokane City Council members said the new rules, which they approved 6-1, protect free speech while making the law easier to enforce when buskers or other sound makers infringe on other peoples’ rights.

The ordinance will replace a law that was approved in 2010 that required an officer to take a decibel reading of the noise in order to issue a violation. It bases most noise limits on how far away the sound can be heard, a standard that many other Washington cities use.

Performers or anyone else making sound on public rights-of-way such as sidewalks will be barred from making noise that is “plainly audible” 100 feet away if other factors are at play, such as if the noise is rattling windows or includes “heavy bass frequencies.” If a performer were playing between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. they also can't make noise that is “plainly audible” on adjacent private property. The distance limit for noise from private property was set at 50 feet or the property line, which ever is shorter.

Spokane City Councilman Steve Salvatori, who co-sponsored the ordinance with Councilman Mike Allen, said the 100-feet distance may the longest distance that any city in Washington allows for noise. He also stressed that the new law, unlike the old one, requires police officers to give offenders a chance to stop making the noise before issuing a citation.

“This is a kinder, gentler ordinance,” Salvatori said.

After his brief, amplified performance Cruz called the 100-foot limit “a joke.”

He and others argued that the standard is less subjective than using decibel readings and could open the city to lawsuits for infringing on people’s free speech rights.

Gonzaga law professor George Critchlow likened the ability of police to issue noise violations without a decibel reading to issuing speeding tickets without using a radar gun.

The Air Force released the criteria today for deciding which of its bases will get the first new air refueling tankers, and Fairchild will be among about 60 bases being considered.

That means the Air Force won't limit those first KC-46As to a base that already serves as a current home for tankers, but will look at most facilities in the continental United States. The main criteria for making this first list for consideration?

“A runway,” a spokeswoman for the officer of the Secretary of the Air Force said after a short description of the criteria was released. That's essentially all bases with airplanes, although not every Air Force base has planes, Ann Stefanek said.

From that most basic of necessities for a jet patterned after the Boeing 767 commercial airliner, the Air Force will consider other important details, such as the capacity of the fueling system, available space on the runway, size of hangars, proximity to planes needing to be refueled, airspace availability, environmental considerations and costs.

The Air Force expects to have scores for all the potential bases sometime this summer, Stefanek said, and narrow the list further to a small group of top scorers from which the preferred site and reasonable alternatives will be chosen late this year.

The Air Force began briefing members of Congress and posted the criteria briefly on its website this afternoon. It later removed the criteria, even though it kept a link with a picture of a prototype of the new tanker refueling a cargo plane that promised information about the criteria.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, said she believes the criteria puts Fairchild Air Force Base in a ” very competitive position” to be an early home for the new planes, which will be built in Everett: “I'm confident that Fairchild's long tanker history, strong community support and joint operations between the Active Duty and Guard place it in an ideal position to succeed.”

The West Plains base has a new runway and a new wing headquarters under construction, Murray said in an e-mail. A letter from the state's congressional delegation to Air Force leaders on how the base stacks up to the criteria could be sent as soon as Tuesday.

To read the Air Force announcement of criteria for the first two new tanker bases, and the tanker “formal training unit, click here to go inside the blog.