Eastern Adams County's Only Independent Voice Since 1887
Eastern Adams County's Only Independent Voice Since 1887
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While this year’s election season is over, as I mentioned in last week’s commentary, the general election itself isn’t wrapped up quite yet. As of yesterday the outcome of elections for two Senate positions was still up in the air. Hopefully things will be settled well before November 27, which is the deadline for county election offices to certify and turn in their results to the state. As Senate Republican leader I look forward to knowing exactly how many members will be on our side of the aisle. In the meantime, we are g...
Cell phones have their place, but it can be nice to step back in time by going to a place where my phone simply won’t work. Recently I let my legislative staff know that I would be out of range for a few days, and headed for the Blue Mountains and some elk hunting with good friends. Whether I bring home some meat or not, being out in the field surrounded by God’s creation is one of the things I enjoy most about this time of year (and Colt, my faithful hunting dog, is always up for chasing some birds). Hunting season isn...
I’ll start with a good word for our regional Department of Transportation folks and the contractor who got the overpass at the Tokio interchange on Interstate 90 repaired and back open this week, ahead of schedule. The bridge that was damaged (in July, by an oversize load) takes Danekas Road over I-90 east of Ritzville. The timing was bad because the vehicles that were forced to take turns going across included trucks hauling commodities from our local farms. But on the bright side, once DOT closed the bridge completely on O...
Knowing Cougar Nation, it was no surprise that the highway detour on State Route 26 east of Othello had zero effect on turnout for this past Saturday’s WSU-Oregon football game. And once the ESPN network announced its popular “Gameday” show would be beaming from Pullman and Martin Stadium that morning, wild horses couldn’t have kept fans away. Fall is a great time of year to be in the Palouse, even more when the Cougs are winning. The Cougars’ football season has at least another month to go, but our state’s election se...
I like a “win-win” idea as much as anyone, and its all the better when the idea has to do with farming, and the source of the idea is WSU. So I was happy to see the recent write-up in the Spokesman-Review featuring longtime WSU faculty member Tim Murray and the research he’s doing in south Spokane County on using fly ash to improve soil quality. I’ve known Tim for a long time, at least back to when he was doing work on perennial wheat. His project, which is another example of the world-class thinking coming out of our sta...
While it’s still summer according to the calendar, the football schedule had the WSU Cougars playing their first home game of the season on Sept. 8; a sure sign that fall is not far off. Several weeks ago it looked like members of Cougar Nation who use State Route 26 would have to contend with a significant detour on their way to and from Pullman, while the highway bridge over the railroad tracks about 15 miles east of Othello undergoes major repairs. WSDOT says that project is now on hold until later in September, so h...
A lot of folks take advantage of the Labor Day holiday to make one more late-summer trip, but for me Labor Day weekend means staying around Ritzville and taking part in our Wheat Land Communities’ Fair, which started Thursday and ran through Sunday. Besides taking a turn working the gate, I also participated in the parade and livestock auction. I’m also looking forward to being at the Palouse Empire Fair on its opening day Thursday, Sept. 6, as one of several elected officials who will cook food and serve it to senior cit...
There’s so much to do during harvest that my legislator duties naturally shift to the back burner. But sometimes farming and being a state senator simply have to overlap, and that’s when the cab of a combine can be a pretty good place to meet and visit, like this past week, when Japan’s consul general for our region came to town. Consul General Yoichiro Yamada had arrived at his new posting in Seattle last summer, coming from his nation’s embassy in Belgium, and following other postings in Russia, Poland, New York and Ken...
Wheat harvest got under way on the Schoesler farm this week, after we finished up with the canola. It presented the familiar mix of rewards and challenges, as we tried to work at maximum efficiency and keep all of our machines going. Things look encouraging so far, but either way I can’t complain, not after seeing how fire destroyed thousands of acres of wheat in north central Oregon in a matter of days. Let’s hope no more crops are lost to fire this year. As I’m wearing my farmer hat, I’ll focus this commentary on two of...
A year ago today the longest legislative session in state history finally ended. It was no fun being away from the farm during the run-up to harvest, but at least the heavy lifting we did in 2017 had much to do with the 2018 session ending on schedule. This year’s wheat harvests are already under way, with asparagus and cherry harvests winding down, and the talk I’m hearing so far is positive from the areas that usually come in earlier. By the time you read this my own harvest may be going, hopefully a safe and fire-free har...
Driving around our legislative district on Senate business takes me away from my farm, but it also means I’m driving past someone else’s farm a fair amount of the time. I’ve been on the road to Pasco and Pullman quite a bit lately, and whether it’s wine grapes here or wheat there, the crops are looking better than average to my eye at this point in the season. The garbanzo beans (chickpeas) are looking especially good in Whitman County, which just happens to be the nation’s leading producer of that particular legume. I...
When Thursday arrived, bringing the official start of summer, I was reminded how at this time a year ago the Legislature was still in session with no firm end in sight. In fact, June 21 of last year was both the final day of the second overtime session and the first day of the third overtime. It would be another 30 days before the 2017 session finally fizzled to a halt, in one of the most bizarre ways imaginable: majority Democrats literally walking out of the House chamber so Republicans couldn’t force a vote on the ...
Recently I mentioned how one of the state Supreme Court justices, from Seattle, had attended a political rally put on in Spokane by the largest teachers’ union in the state. She did so shortly before she was to hear arguments in a lawsuit brought by that union and others against the state’s charter schools, and her appearance rightfully had people wondering if she could be impartial about that case. Part of Justice Mary Yu’s public excuse for speaking at the political event was that she wanted to encourage teachers to have...
The legislative session ended late Thursday night, on schedule. Unfortunately, wrapping up on time was about the only good thing I can say about our entire final week in Olympia. We saw the new Senate majority ignore the state constitution, starve the state’s rainy-day fund, and refuse to roll back the school-tax increase that has caused a property-tax spike statewide, and that was just in the final two days of the session. I’m glad it is over, and I am looking back to getting home and onto a tractor. In what is probably my...
It isn’t every day that I am able to talk about Harrington and Washtucna to my Senate colleagues, but today House Bill 1209 gave me a reason. Without going into great detail, the bill would lift the limit on deposits of public funds from rural counties into credit unions that are exempt from the business and occupation tax (banks aren’t exempt). To me this isn’t really about credit unions versus banks. It’s more about causing even more capital to be exported from rural Washington into big-city money centers, at a time wh...
The end of the 2018 legislative session is less than two weeks away. The session hasn’t produced a lot of positive things for the people of our state, but being an eternal optimist, I can point to one. Olympia’s new ruling party has less than two weeks left to impose its liberal special-interest agenda on the families and employers of our state, before we adjourn for the year. My favorite visitors for the week were my three grandchildren, for the Senate’s observance of Children’s Day. It snowed more than once at the Capitol t...
Much has been happening at the Capitol, but before commenting on some of the key decisions I’ll point out that today is day 40 of our 60-day session. We’re at the stage where the Senate committees are considering bills passed by the House, and vice versa. More significantly, the first state revenue forecast of 2018 was released Thursday – and it’s an absolute game-changer in my book, as I’ll explain. The Senate and House budget writers will use the forecast to fine-tune their budget proposals, which should emerge next week...
When we’re on the floor of the Senate chamber debating and voting on legislation, it’s known as “floor action.” At this point in the session, when the full Senate is working through bills that were moved forward by the various committees, the floor action can last all day, and then some. Our first day of floor action this past week had us in the Senate chamber until early the next morning. We spent the better part of the final two hours on two pieces of legislation that sure look like an attempt by a powerful labor union t...
It looked like the House Democrats’ introduction of a capital gains tax bill might qualify as the worst tax news of this past week in the Legislature. That was until the Senate Energy, Environment and Technology Committee met Thursday evening for the sole purpose of advancing the massive tax on energy that the governor proudly called “America’s first carbon tax” last month during another climate-related jaunt to Europe. The policy committees wrapped up their work on Senate bills last week, but the fiscal committees had until...
The legislative session in Olympia has reached the one-third mark already. The dozen Senate policy committees have one more week to take action on bills, then those of us serving on budget committees (I’m continuing to serve on Ways and Means) will have four additional days to finish working through the legislation referred to us. The bills we see will include proposals forwarded by the policy committees because they include costs that would affect the budget. The Senate’s new Democrat majority continues to move heavy-handed...
Even though the pace of the “short” legislative sessions is always faster anyway, the Senate’s new Democrat majority seems to be in a particular rush to get certain bills through the process this year. With two notable exceptions, the long-overdue fix for the Hirst court decision and the new capital budget, the major bills Democrats have brought up for votes seem to be more about specific interest groups. Their emphasis on social issues is a big change from the jobs-education-budget focus our Republican-led coalition broug...
One of the more recent traditions in Olympia is a forum, hosted by The Associated Press, which brings news reporters and legislative leaders together a few days ahead of each new legislative session. This year, during the part where I and the other Senate and House caucus leaders took questions, I raised some eyebrows by suggesting that there are legislators who want to work for all of Washington, and then there are legislators who seem to forget that Washington includes places like our legislative district. Sure enough, the...
As leader of one of the Legislature’s four caucuses I’ve been crisscrossing our state lately, talking with groups about the challenges we expect to face in 2018. From the Othello Rotary and Pullman City Council to Greater Spokane Incorporated and Spokane Rotary, as well as the Washington Roundtable in Seattle, there’s a lot of interest in what our scheduled 60-day session will produce. The governor’s budget proposal has only added to the questions since its release this past week. I hope the holidays were peaceful and saf...
Earlier this week I was in Spokane to speak at the eastern Washington part of the “Farm Hall” series sponsored by the Washington Policy Center. It gave me an opportunity to share a favorite quote about the intersection of government and agriculture: something President Eisenhower said when he was campaigning for re-election in September 1956: “Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.” For the past five years, the Senate has been led by a coalition of senators...
It’s been a little more than three months since the 2017 session finally ended, and we’re already less than three months from the start of the 2018 session. This “interim” period has been a busy one, between legislative issues that are still making headlines and some recent activities in the economic-development arena. There’s also a special election coming Nov. 7 that involves three of the Senate seats held by our majority. The ballot includes advisory votes related to the new state budget and education-funding plan. I l...