Caffeinated News & Gossip. Your daily Morning Fizz.

1. A quick note on evidently unconvincing  GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who stumbled yet again last night, bombing in three conservative primary contests (he came in a distant third in Minnesota): The reason he can’t connect with conservative voters is because he can’t get their soundbites right.

Here he is yesterday denouncing the federal court ruling in California on gay marriage.

“Today, unelected judges cast aside the will of the people of California who voted to protect traditional marriage.”

Okay, he got the first part right. But then listen:

“This decision does not end this fight.  I expect it to go to the Supreme Court.  That prospect underscores the vital importance of this election and the movement to preserve our values.”

Hmmm. Judges bad. Judges good.

2. Yesterday, Fizz was trying to get a bead on state Sen. Ed Murray’s (D-43) tax proposal. We wanted to know how much money his mix of new taxes and ending some tax loopholes would generate for the state budget, which is currently facing about a $1.5 billion shortfall. Answer: About $225 million.

To help stave of planned cuts to K-12, Murray’s plan would: reduce the sales tax break for cars purchased from auto dealers for $94.3 million; eliminate the first mortgage B&O exemption for big banks for $18 million; and increase some preferential B&O rates for $71 million. Grand total: $183.6 million this year (and more than $200 million in subsequent years.) Additionally, to fund rural hospitals, Harborview’s trauma center, and public and mental health services, Murray’s plan would increase cigarette taxes by $1.00 and extend expiring beer taxes for a total of $42 million this year (and $100 million a year in following years).

Murray’s plan would also ask voters to approve about $500 million through a half-cent sales tax that eventually phases down to about $220 million (and to zero by 2016) and transitions into a capital gains tax for about $560 million to $680 million.

The capital gains proposal would be earmarked to K-12 education.

With an eye on the GOP call to fund education and critical services first, an internal Murray memo on his plan states:

Taking this step will require Republican support, but we are hopeful that we can find agreement. These programs are vital to the lives of Washingtonians in every corner of the state. This is a common sense approach that we can move forward. …

Given the makeup of the Senate, the only way this education-funding proposal will pass is with votes from both Democrats and Republicans. Finding agreement will be difficult, but it is not impossible. Some of our Republican colleagues have expressed interest in solving some of the state’s budget crisis by reducing or eliminating some tax exemptions. We remain committed to working with them.

Fizz wasn’t able to get the GOP on the record, but we will say this: The Republicans are skeptical of Murray’s plan to dedicate the revenue to specific budget line items such as health care and education. Taxes don’t work that way without a constitutional amendment. Otherwise, the dollars go to the general fund, and Republicans simply view that exactly the way Murray’s Republican budget counterpart Sen. Joe Zarelli (R-18) does: as “a bunch of taxes,” as Zarelli told the AP

3. Democratic gubernatorial candidate US Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA, 1) passed PubliCola’s pop quiz at his big jobs speech on Monday.

Inslee has been criticized (by Democrats) as a weak candidate for not being up on state issues. Evidently, he’s taken the criticism to heart and done his homework. After, Inlsee gave a flowery speech about “innovation” and “destiny,” we asked him if he supported the jobs bill currently in play in Olympia.

Not only did Inslee say he agreed with the direction of the bill (it would fund about $1 billion in bonds by redirecting existing revenue streams in the capital budget to a list of specific construction projects), but he was dialed in to the specifics of the bill, noting that it didn’t tap the general fund and that the projects generated long-term jobs, not just quick fixes—key elements of the proposal.

4. However, major criticism of Inslee’s plan: His proposal relies on a series of tax breaks (such as a B&O tax credit for small businesses for hiring workers or B&O tax relief for new biotechnology, biomedicine, clean energy technology and information technology companies) which he said he would fund by …. getting rid of  tax breaks for other companies.

5. The “civil marriage equality” bill (which passed the senate last Wednesday) is coming up for a house debate and vote today at 1 pm. It is expected to pass the house, where the Democrats have a 56-42 majority, without much problem.

In anticipation of the vote, this morning, the Secretary of State’s office sent out this primer on the pending gay marriage referendum:

FYI: Backers of Washington’s gay-marriage legislation, Senate Bill 6239, expect the House to pass it and send it to Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday — and challengers already are making plans for a ballot challenge.

How would that work? What’s the timeline? What does the filing of a referendum mean to people who were thinking about a summertime wedding?

Here is a look at how a referendum would work:

Q. When would the legislation ordinarily take effect?

A. 90 days after adjournment of the regular session, or June 7 this year.

Q. When can a referendum be filed?

A. After Gov. Chris Gregoire has taken action on the bill. She has five working days to act, once the bill is actually delivered to her desk. She has said she will sign the bill, although it is possible she could veto sections or amendments that were attached. The referendum measure must include the text of the bill as passed by the Legislature and acted upon by the governor.

Q. How long does it take for a referendum to be processed and ready for signature-gathering?

A. Roughly three weeks. The measure is sent to the Attorney General’s Office for preparation of a ballot title, concise description and ballot summary. The AG has five working days to complete this. Within five working days, anyone dissatisfied with the ballot title or summary may petition the Thurston County Superior Court for changes. The court is required to “expeditiously review” the request(s) and render a decision within five days. The decision of the court is final. After that, sponsors can print petitions and begin collecting signatures.

Q. What is the deadline for turning in signatures?

A. June 6.

Q. How many signatures are required?

A. The bare minimum is 120,577, or 4 percent of all votes cast in the 2008 election for governor. The state Elections Division suggests turning in 150,000 or more, to cover invalid and duplicate signatures. The average error rate is 18 percent.

Q. How long does the signature check take?

A. If sponsors submit a large enough pad, a random sample can be checked in about two weeks; a full every-signature check can take a month. Crews will be checking to make sure the signer is a properly registered Washington voter, that the signature matches the one of file, and that the person didn’t sign more than once. Both sides are welcome to have a small number of observers whenever the signature-verification is underway.

Q. What happens to the gay-marriage law in the meantime?

A. The filing of the signatures suspends the effective date. If the signature-verification process shows an insufficient number of signatures, then the law goes into effect right away. If the referendum is qualified for the ballot, then the law remains on hold until the voters make their decision in November and the General Election results are certified on Dec. 6.

Q. Is there a “window” in which same-sex couples can marry, between the bill being approved by the Legislature and Governor and a vote in November?

A. No.

Q. What is the question posed to voters by the referendum?

A. The referendum places the text of the bill before them. An affirmative vote is to uphold the law as it passed the Legislature and was signed by the governor. A vote to reject wipes out the measure and it does not take effect. As with 2009 vote on Referendum 71, the “everything but marriage” law, the sponsors who mount the effort to get the measure on the ballot will be asking for a “reject” vote on their own referendum. Bottom line: a vote to “approve” upholds the new law, a vote to “reject” abolishes the bill.

Q. Does the referendum require a simple majority or a supermajority?

A. A referendum takes a simple majority to pass.

Today’s Winners: State Sen. Rodney Tom (D-48) and Rep. Eric Pettigrew (D-37)

After Sen. Tom’s teacher evaluation bill, which would tie student achievement to teacher evaluations, was killed in the education committee last week at the policy bill cutoff deadline, ways and means committee chair Sen. Ed Murray (D-43), a cosponsor of Tom’s bill, resurrected it in his committee today.

Tom’s bill (Pettigrew is sponsoring the companion ed reform bill in the house), goes a step further than both Gov. Chris Gregoire’s bill and another evaluation bill that don’t specify the mandated components of teacher evaluations nor allow evaluations to trump seniority and/or play a role in tenure, probation, and layoffs.

Theory: Murray, who’s trying to get conservative votes for his new tax package, is giving their pet cause—education reform—a friendly jolt in exchange for votes.

Indeed, nine of the 18 cosponsors on Tom’s bill are Republicans. And most of the Democrats on the bill—such as Sens. Steve Hobbs, Paull Shin, and Jim Kastama—are part of the conservative Democratic ad hoc caucus, the powerful Roadkill Caucus, whose votes Murray needs.

Today’s loser: The Cascade Neighborhood Council

The Cascade Neighborhood Council, which represents residents of the Cascade neighborhood in South Lake Union, lost its entire executive board today when all four members resigned to protest what they called, in a letter forwarded to PubliCola, “obstruction” by “a very small number of vocal people [that] has inhibited our ability to move forward in a productive manner. Hoping to resolve the issue and help each person maximize their place in the context of our community, we offered mediation. It was declined.”

The four executive board members—Kim Justice, LaJeanne Jones, Kyoko Yoshimi, and Molly Franklin—each offered separate resignation statements. The resignations represent a rift between the board members and and the old guard on the council.

As Amazon headquarters and high-rises have replaced the low-income housing that used to fill South Lake Union, two factions have emerged: An old guard, suspicious of development, that fought the Commons and now hopes to protect what affordable housing remains in Cascade and keep the neighborhood from losing its “soul,” and a new guard that represents the majority of the neighborhood’s residents who now live in condos and work in the local new economy firms.

The immediate result is that CNC will hold its next meeting without any CNC leadership.

Although legislators, small and big business, and city officials and representatives claimed to be close to a compromise on Gov. Chris Gregoire’s controversial proposal to consolidate all business and occupation tax collections at the state level, there was no sign of mutual understanding at today’s senate ways and means committee meeting, where big business and the governor’s office squared off against small businesses and cities for and against the proposal.

“I put this on the agenda because it was my understanding that the executive and the cities were moving closer together, but … the sign-in sheet indicates no movement,” committee chair Ed Murray said. “I’m not interested in moving this forward unless we see movement on both sides of the issue.”

Seattle council member Richard Conlin responded: “We feel that we’ve eliminated some of the worst aspects of the initial draft … but I don’t think we’re anywhere near the point where we’ve reached a” solution.

Murray shot back: “I was told by your council president that you all and the governor’s office were coming closer together, yet your testimony wouldn’t indicate any movement at all.” (It wasn’t the first time Murray and Conlin had exchanged words over the city’s relationship with Olympia).

The cities’ main complaint has been that centralizing B&O tax collections will cause them to lose revenue—in Seattle, as much as $43 million, according to the city’s finance department.

The latest version of the bill would still create a centralized system (through a special committee to be formed in the future), but it would still allow cities, like Seattle, that already have a B&O tax to continue to collect it under their existing system. However, the proposal would give preferential treatment to cities with the new, centrally collected B&O tax when providing all kinds of state tax assistance.

And the bill, by creating a centralized tax-collection system, would open the door for legislators to both force cities like Seattle to centralize their B&O collections and give cities that don’t collect B&O taxes an easy way to start doing so.

Opponents of the bill argued today that, rather than creating a more streamlined B&O tax, the proposal would add another layer to the state’s already complicated tax system.

“The legislation simply does not achieve the very laudable objective of a simpler, less complex tax system,” Seattle council Richard Conlin told the committee. “The bill will actually add complexity by creating an additional option for B&O taxes for cities.”

In a speech on the US Senate floor today, Sen. Patty Murray said that despite the victory in the battle to get the Susan G. Komen Foundation to restore funding for Planned Parenthood, the war over women’s reproductive autonomy isn’t over. Murray was one of 25 senators who signed a letter demanding that Komen reverse its politically motivated decision.

Pointing to Republican efforts in the US House to eliminate women’s health care—including bills that would have eliminated all Title X funding for family planning and defunded Planned Parenthood, banned federal funds for all abortions without exceptions to save the health of the woman, and rewritten the health-care bill to allow companies to deny coverage to pregnant women and taken away contraceptive coverage—Murray said:

Contraceptive coverage shouldn’t be a controversial issue, it’s supported by the vast majority of Americans who understand how important it is for women and families.

I also want to note that the affordable contraceptive policy we put in place preserves the freedoms of conscience and religion for every American: Churches and other religious institutions are exempt, and no doctor would ever have to dispense contraceptives if that’s at odds with his or her religious view.

But it also protects the rights of the millions of Americans who do use contraceptives—who believe that family planning is the right choice for them— and who don’t deserve to have politics or an extreme minority’s ideology prevent them from getting the coverage they deserve.

President Obama, incidentally, may go even further in conceding to churches’ demands that they be exempt from the contraception requirement in the federal health-care law. According to the New York Times, WHAT’S THE NYT? I’VE NEVER HEARD OF THE NYT? Obama is considering amending the rules even more to allow religious charities, nonprofits, hospitals, and other institutions to refuse to provide contraception under the law. Although the provision is popular among Catholics (98 percent of Catholic women use some form of birth control other than the rhythm method at some point in their lives), it’s unpopular with the conservative Conference of Catholic Bishops—who are, incidentally, all men.

To quote Grist’s David Roberts, “Imagine a Muslim charity that receives federal tax breaks demanding exemptions from federal rules on health insurance. How would that go?”

At a Seattle Public Library briefing yesterday, library leaders, including library director Marcellus Turner, told city council members that library users, especially those who use branch libraries, were suffering because of ongoing cuts to library hours and the library’s collections budget. The council is debating whether to put a property-tax levy to fund library operations on the August ballot.

Fifteen branches are now closed on Fridays and Sundays, and many libraries don’t open until 1 pm on some weekdays. The loss of 190 service hours a week, library officials said, is the equivalent of completely shutting down four branch libraries.

“When we began to reduce our hours, you also saw a reduction in the public’s ability to access their library,” library CFO Marilynne Gardner said.

Meanwhile, the budgets for collections (new books and other materials), technology, and maintenance have not kept up with demand.

“When you reduce the funding over time, it’s hard to catch up with those years that you were not really able to invest in library collections,” Gardner said.

The council’s library committee plans to decide by early April whether to put a library levy on the ballot.

UPDATE:

State Sen. Ed Murray (D-43), the sponsor of the marriage equality legislation that passed the state senate last week, issued the following statement about the decision in California to overturn Proposition 8, the citizens’ measure that specifically banned same-sex marriage in the state constitution.

“Today’s ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinforces a simple truth: that discrimination against lesbians and gays is incompatible with the fundamental American value of fairness. Fairness is the guiding light of our Constitution. It is the principle that Washington has embraced as it advances marriage equality legislation. And it is that value that I believe will one day allow all gay and lesbian families in our country to experience true equality.”

ORIGINAL POST
During last week’s gay marriage debate, supporters of Sen. Ed Murray’s “civil marriage equality” bill shot down an amendment that would have put the legislation to a public vote. (The public vote is likely to happen anyway after opponents of gay marriage collect 120,000 signatures by June 6.)

Supporters of gay marriage who opposed the amendment, such as Sen. Lisa Brown (D-3, Spokane),  argued that the rights of a minority shouldn’t be subject to the whims of the majority.

However, Republicans such as Sen. Don Benton (R-17) and Sen. Mike Padden (R-4), who supported the referendum amendment, argued that “the institution of marriage predates the constitution.” Benton then asked: “Something like that—can we even have the legal authority to change it?”

Given today’s big news (the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals threw out California’s vote to outlaw same-sex marriage), it makes sense that gay marriage opponents tried to step outside the constitution. Because, it turns out,  when you go by constitutional rights, public opinion can get it wrong.

As Brown noted in her floor speech, “From the framework of equal rights under the law, this is not something that you ask folks to vote on. … There are many sad times in our history where the people would have voted for something that would be tragically wrong. Fortunately, we have a nation of laws and rights.”

The Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals court took the same view today in California, throwing out 2008′s Proposition 8, which famously put a specific prohibition against same-sex marriage in California’s constitution. The judges wrote:

“Although the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they believe to be desirable, it requires that there be at least a legitimate reason for the passage of a law that treats different people differently,” Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote in the decision. “There was no such reason that Proposition 8 could have been enacted.”

“All that Proposition 8 accomplished was to take away from same sex-couples the right to be granted marriage licenses and thus legally to use the designation ‘marriage,” the judge wrote, adding: “Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gay men and lesbians in California.”

The full house will discuss and vote on Washington State’s gay-marriage bill tomorrow at 1:00.

Anti-choice Komen vice president Karen Handel has resigned under massive public pressure from supporters of Planned Parenthood, after Komen announced it would no longer fund breast cancer screenings to Planned Parenthood under newly adopted rules last week.

It was one of the quickest about-faces in recent political memory.

Just one week ago, Komen announced that under a new rule excluding groups under congressional investigation from Komen funding (Florida Tea Party Republican Congressman Cliff Stearns launched an investigation of Planned Parenthood last year, accusing the group of spending federal dollars on abortions), Komen would no longer fund breast cancer screenings and mammogram referrals at Planned Parenthood’s clinic.

The backlash came quickly, with Planned Parenthood supporters organizing online and donating millions of dollars to the group in just a few days. More than two dozen senators—all Democrats—signed a letter to Komen president Nancy Brinker asking her to reverse the decision, which she did the following day.

But the backlash wasn’t over. Many wondered: Why haven’t any heads rolled at Komen? Specifically, why hasn’t the group fired Handel, whose anti-choice politics obviously influenced the group’s original decision to yank Planned Parenthood’s funding? (Although Komen initially insisted that politics played absolutely no role in the decision, and that it was all about “efficiency,” emails from Handel came to light this week revealing that she lobbied tirelessly to ax funding for Planned Parenthood.)

Now Handel’s gone. But her resignation, and Komen’s swift reversal, aren’t a clear-cut victory for Planned Parenthood. Although their funding is guaranteed this year, Komen could yank Planned Parenthood’s grants next year. Still, the public backlash to Komen’s decision represents a victory for women, even if it’s ultimately a Phyrric one.

The Transportation Choices Coalition issued a point-by-point response today to an incendiary report by the conservative Washington Policy Center that claimed Washington State spends a “remarkable” amount of money on transit.

The WPC report, titled “Public Transit Is Not Underfunded in Washington,” claims that transit agencies across Washington collected as much in taxes last year as the state did for all transportation purposes; that transit carries only a tiny fraction, 2.4 percent, of trips statewide; that sales taxes aren’t volatile at all and have grown 150 percent in the last 10 years; and that ridership has dropped as operating costs have increased.

Of the four claims, TCC says, only the last one is (partly) true: Ridership has indeed dropped, as the recession has put people out of work. No job: No commute. And costs have increased as gas prices have gone up—paralleling the cost of the WPC’s preferred mode of transportation, driving.

But the other claims, TCC says, are either wildly misleading or simply false.

First, the approximately $2 billion the state’s 31 transit agencies collect (mostly in sales tax) is a mere fraction of the more than $9 billion the state spends on its transportation budget. “Ennis is cherry picking just state gas tax and fees to make his number, while comparing it to the totality of all sources of revenue for transit including federal, local and all other sources.”

Second, TCC says, the WPC’s “only 2.4 percent of all trips” claim is extrapolated from the number of trips taken by transit locally and the number of total trips the “average” American household takes. The “average” US household, of course, takes far more trips by car than the average household in a large, urbanized area like Seattle; in fact, 40 percent of people who commute to downtown Seattle ride the bus.

Finally, sales tax is volatile—just ask any of the regional transit agencies, like Community Transit (or Federal Way) that have had to reduce or postpone service because of shortfalls in sales-tax revenues. Between 2008 and 2010, local sales tax collections dropped 11.6 percent statewide. Moreover, WPC’s report ignores the fact that the value of money decreases over time, comparing 2001 dollars directly to 2010 dollars and ignoring the existence of inflation.

Caffeinated News & Gossip. Your daily Morning Fizz.

1. The city’s $20 million Community Power Works program, which provides energy-efficiency upgrades to houses and commercial buildings, updated the council yesterday on its progress since last year when an underwhelming report showed it had created just 14 of the 2,000 “green jobs” it promised.

Last year’s limp numbers were coincidentally in the news again yesterday when Republicans pointed to them to ridicule US Rep. Jay Inslee who unveiled his jobs plan yesterday with a focus on green “clean tech” jobs.

The new numbers for the city’s green jobs program offer more fodder for the Republicans’ attack. So far, just 226 people have received a paycheck from the program, CPW program director Joshua Curtis said, and the majority of those have been part-time or contract workers, not people entering new careers.

Curtis said the next update on the program will show that another 200 folks have “gotten paychecks” working on retrofits, but those, again, are mostly short-term or part-time gigs. Initially, council member Richard Conlin said, “there was too much optimism about how easy it would be to roll this out.” Curtis said the city spends between $300,000 and $400,000 a year on marketing—”a little light,” he said, compared to similar programs in other cities.

2. Fizz talked to Seattle city council member Nick Licata yesterday about plans to bring the NBA back to Seattle, and potentially build a replacement for KeyArena south of CenturyLink and Safeco Fields. Licata, who successfully opposed public funding for an NBA-style Key Arena revamp if there wasn’t a guaranteed city profit (the voters seconded him by passing I-91 in 2006), became briefly notorious after he told Sports Illustrated that NBA teams, like the now-departed Sonics, added nothing to the cultural and economic life of the city.

After talking a bit about the prospects for a new team (Licata thinks the odds are pretty even at this point), we asked him: What will you say if Sports Illustrated asks you the same question this time? “I’d say [NBA teams] are critical to the cultural life of the city!” he told us, laughing.

3. After his big bipartisan win on gay marriage last week, Democratic state Sen. Ed Murray (D-43, Capitol Hill) is now trying to get Republicans to vote for taxes.

Yesterday, Sen. Murray, the ways and means committee chair, proposed closing tax loopholes, including the controversial break for big banks for interest earned on first mortgage loans while also increasing some business and occupation tax rates, increasing cigarette taxes, extending the beer tax, reducing a tax break for cars purchased from auto dealers, and instituting a capital gains tax.

That money—we’ve asked Murray how much that would raise toward the current $1.5 billion shortfall—would stave off Gov. Chris Gregoire’s cuts to education and basics like critical health care funding which she has proposed buying back by asking voters to approve a temporary half-cent sales tax increase.

Murray also wants to ask voters for the half-penny increase, but not to buy back the basics. He says the legislature should not leave something as fundamental as K-12 funding up to the politics of a ballot campaign; rather, the voters would approve or disapprove buying back other, non-basic cuts with the half penny. Murray’s proposal would also shift the temporary sales tax into a capital gains tax in 2016 to pay for education.

Murray’s proposal meets both house ways and means chair Rep. Ross Hunter’s (D-48, Medina) demand, and the Republicans’ demand—that core government functions such as education funding not be on any list the legislature sends to the public for “buy backs.” The buy back list should consider more “optional” programs such as the Disability Lifeline for the unemployed or services for undocumented immigrants, Sen. Joe Zarelli (R-18, Ridgefield), the ranking Republican on Murray’s ways and means committee, told PubliCola.

Sen. Murray, though, will need a two-thirds vote to raise taxes and close loopholes and Zarelli told the AP that’s not going to happen: “I would say it’s highly unlikely they would muster two-thirds to do all of the above. It’s solving a problem by raising a bunch of taxes.”

If anyone can find the votes, though, it’s Murray. As one wowed GOP senator (who voted against the gay marriage bill, which Murray sponsored) told PubliCola late last week, “He [Murray] is a real statesman.”

Standing in the fab lab of MacDonald-Miller, a manufacturing shop off Martin Luther King Way S. that specializes in green and efficient building materials, US Congressman Jay Inslee (D-WA, 1), the Democrats’ candidate for governor, gave a jobs speech Monday afternoon pitching a bevy of tax breaks for research and development and small business hires to tap Washington State’s “spirit of innovation.” [full plan here]

(Note: McDonald-Miller President Derrick Simonds has contributed $1000 to Inslee’s campaign; the company’s VP, Perry England has contributed $1250; and an engineer has given $99.)

Inslee came on strong with his longtime theme—”clean technology”—as one of the industry “clusters” (the others being aerospace, life sciences, military, agriculture, and information technology) that will be the “cylinders of job creation in the state.” Hyping Washington as the place that led the aerospace revolution and the internet revolution, Inslee said: “We’re going to get our state working again. We’re going to return Washington to the forefront of technological development. We’ve done this before, haven’t we? We led the first technological revolution in aerospace. We led the second in computers and Internet. Now we will lead yet another technological revolution when I’m governor in clean energy technology.”

Inslee himself has been here before too; he’s been pushing clean energy as a Congressman for years and wrote a book in 2007—Apollo’s fire: Igniting America’s Clean Energy Economy—all about it.

Inslee said clean tech comes with the added bonus of being “an industry that can unite both sides of the Cascade mountains. The farmers in Colfax, the welders in South Seattle, are equal partners, with the wind from the east that will power the skyscrapers in the west. I believe it is our destiny to do this.”

Inslee was undeterred by the recent doubts about green “Solyndra” jobs; the Republicans put out a memo as Inslee began his speech with stats such as: “$500 million in economic stimulus money spent on green jobs— [only] 52,762 have been trained out of the 124,893 promised.” They also ridiculed Seattle’s own lackluster weatherization jobs project.

Asked by a reporter to defend the green jobs elixir, Inslee said that “for those who think clean technology has been oversold, we in Washington understand the power of innovation … innovation is tough … of course there are failures … Thomas Edison made 300 light bulbs that didn’t work before he made the one that did. Why would we give up on finding the next Microsoft? For those that don’t understand, let them go to Marysville and talk to Silicon Energy [which is] producing the best solar cells in the world. The problem with the naysayers is they haven’t walked around and talked to Washingtonians” who are creating green-energy jobs.

Inslee was asked how he would pay for the R&D tax breaks (the state is already groping to cover its costs with a $2 billion shortfall) saying only that the breaks would “payback starting as soon as you hire that first worker.”

Pressed on how he would pay for it up front, Inslee said he would close tax loopholes, pledging, as he has before, that he would close the loophole for “out-of-state Wall Street banks.” That tax break—as current Gov. Chris Gregoire has noted—is only worth about $18 million.

Pressed on closing tax breaks—did he have a list of others?—Inslee (sounding a bit like Seattle state Rep. Reuven Carlyle), said “the problem with exemptions is that they don’t have a sunset provision … once the lobbyists get them on the books they never have to make the case for themselves to be renewed. When I’m governor that will change.”

Inslee noted that he’s stood up to corporate lobbyists before boasting that he defied Wall Street lobbyists (and his own party’s president, Bill Clinton) by voting against dismantling the Glass-Steagall Act which erased the bright line between commercial and investment banking—one of the culprits in the 2008 Wall Street crash. (I’d add that Inslee also voted against the bank bailouts.)

Inslee eventually turned the tables on the his opponent Rob McKenna, whose centerpiece proposal to increase funding for education doesn’t appear to pencil out. “This is not based on fairy dust as the AP and others have reported,” he said about McKenna’s bad math on cutting state workers’ pay.

There’s another problem, though, with Inslee’s pitch on repealing tax breaks: You need a two-thirds vote in Washington State to repeal loopholes, a tall order. I asked Inslee about this as he was getting into his car after his speech. He smiled, tapped his chest, and said, “When I’m governor, when I’m governor.”

King County Council member Pete von Reichbauer (R-7), who lives in Federal Way, along with several other Sound Transit board members and state Sen. Tracey Eide, who also lives in Federal Way, proposed adding $24 million to the county’s 2012 budget to complete full environmental planning for light rail all the way to Federal Way, as opposed to its previous plan, which would have only completed an environmental impact statement for a line to S. 200th St. in Kent.

The plan proposed today does not include any funding for actual construction. Officials at today’s briefing, including Sound Transit CEO Joni Earl and King County Executive Dow Constantine, said they hoped to fund the extension with a combination of federal funds, state money, and, potentially, new local revenues.

“My goal in offering this proposal now is to put the Federal Way area at the front of the line by getting this work done,” von Reichbauer said. Earl said there was enough money within Sound Transit’s existing budget to fund the plan.

Specifically, the proposal would provide funding to do planning, engineering, and environmental work to connect South 200th St. to the Federal Way Transit Center; technical work to choose an alignment to Federal Way; decisions on station locations; cost estimates; and the assurance that the project is “shovel ready” for funding from federal, state, and potentially local sources.

Federal Way Mayor Skip Priest threw a tantrum after Sound Transit announced that it would no longer be able to complete light rail to Federal Way on the adopted timeline because  revenues in South King County were falling short. Siding with Sound Transit, Eide refused to sign off on legislation proposed by Priest that would  allow cities to bail on regional transit authorities if their plans change, mandating that ballot titles state the exact duration of any tax, prohibiting capital and operation costs from being included in a single ballot measure, and ordering Sound Transit to do an annual audit and pay for it.

Although officials today were conciliatory toward Federal Way—as von Reichbauer put it, “our goal is to work with cities all along the [rail] alignment … we hope they will respond to this great opportunity”—an internal Q&A inadvertently including in my press materials today was much more candid about Sound Transit’s relationship with the city, “We certainly hope that Mr. Priest will support the process. It has not always been clear what Mr. Priest wants since he has promoted bills that would make it much more difficult to extend [light rail] service. … If Mayor Priest keeps this up, getting light rail to Federal Way will only happen despite of him rather than because of him.”

It gets better: “As of now, Federal Way has a hostile and unproductive stance toward Sound Transit. Unfortunately, Federal Way was the only South King County city in the [light rail] corridor that did not sign a letter of support for the [federal funding] grant proposal. … Despite this lack of cooperation, Sound Transit remains committed to working with Federal Way to make light rail a reality for that city and beyond.”

Von Reichbauer said he and Sen. Eide had meetings planned “in the very near future” with Federal Way city officials.

Sound Transit relies on sales taxes, and taxes collected in each of Sound Transit’s geographic “subareas” must be spent in that subarea. Although revenues have fallen short in all of Seattle’s subareas during the recession, South King County has been hit hardest, with revenues falling 32 percent short of projections—$894 million less than projected by 2023, the end of Sound Transit 2. The funding gap for the project is about $300 million.

At today’s press briefing, Constantine (after joking, “I don’t have to run for another year and a half”) indicated he would be open to getting rid of subarea equity, calling the policy “an artifact of an earlier day in Sound Transit’s history when we hadn’t established a track record of trust.” Subarea equity, he said, is “very much hobbling us in South King County, which simply does not have the infrastructure” to fund all the projects planned in the area during the recession.

However, Sound Transit CEO Earl noted that all of the agency’s subareas are suffering, and said, “Even if we didn’t have subarea equity, our revenues are down 25 percent, so there is not currently enough money to do the actual construction between Kent/Des Moines and S. 272nd [Federal Way] at this time.”

Under a rule that appears to only apply to Seattle’s Central Cinema—among all the places that serve liquor around the state—minors are allowed at “a cinema with a dinner theatre venue,” but only in areas where alcohol isn’t allowed—a provision that could kill Central Cinema, which has a single room for dining and watching movies.

“It seems that the Central Cinema poses no more threat to minors than many other restaurants and dinner theaters where families are allowed,” the city council and Mayor Mike McGinn wrote in a letter to the liquor board. “In fact, we understand that if the Central Cinema were offering live music, or large TV screens, or no entertainment, instead of movies, it would be fully lawful; it is simply the presence of the movie screen that invokes the prohibition” of minors.

The letter asks the liquor board to change the rule, and to stop enforcing the rule while it’s considering the changes.

The city of Seattle is asking the state legislature to change state law to allow the city to collect admissions taxes at CenturyLink Field while the Huskies are temporarily displaced from Husky Stadium, which is shut down for renovations, and one to allow the Central District’s Central Cinema to stay in business.

The city is asking the legislature to pass a bill—which the senate ways and means committee is discussing today—that would allow Seattle to levy its admissions tax on Husky games at CenturyLink Field. Currently, only King County is authorized to collect the tax at the stadium to help pay back bonds for its construction.

The taxes would offset the loss of admissions taxes at Husky Stadium. Council member Nick Licata, who testified in favor of the bill today, said the new tax would offset the $900,000 a year the city is losing from admissions taxes at Husky Stadium.

Licata says legislators seemed mostly receptive to the proposal, which he says “didn’t really come up until I was looking at it, and I was like, wow, that’s a lot of money!”

A three-cent city of Seattle-only gas tax could bring the city between $12.5 million and $13.5 million a year, the city’s lobbying department told city council members this morning. That revenue would help offset some of the cuts that are coming down from the state level, and would augment any vehicle-license fee or motor-vehicle excise tax the city or King County decided to implement under separate legislation that’s coming up for a hearing in the senate transportation committee later today. Tomorrow is the cutoff for bills to make it out of fiscal committees (transportation or ways and means) in their house of origin.

Gov. Chris Gregoire’s original transportation proposal would have raised $3.6 million over ten years—a fraction of the $20 billion package proposed by the Connecting Washington Task Force, a state-appointed group set up to suggest transportation funding options, late last year.  The latest proposal, staffers said, would cut that already-reduced amount down to more like $70 or $80 million a year, while giving cities and counties more options to raise revenues at the local level.

With gas prices already as high as they are, council member Mike O’Brien said, an additional three-cent tax “is just kind of noise. I see gas stations across the street from each other” with prices that vary by as much as five cents, he added.

One key aspect of the governor’s proposal, a $1.50-per-barrel fee on oil refined in Washington State, died after the oil industry lobbied legislators against it, Office of Intergovernmental Relations state legislative director Craig Engelking said. “The oil industry objected to the fee and that was enough to basically grind it to a halt.”

Nineteen states have laws requiring women seeking abortions to undergo ultrasounds (including invasive internal ultrasounds, which is about as much fun as it sounds)—and, in many cases, wait 24 hours after having the ultrasound before they can get an abortion.

The idea, pushed by anti-choicers from coast to coast (US Rep. Michelle Bachmann introduced a federal mandatory sonogram bill last year), is that if women only realize what an embryo looks like, they’ll choose not to go through with the abortion. In Texas, legislators went even further, requiring women to obtain a transvaginal sonogram, listen to an explanation of what the image shows (you can get out of that one if you somehow prove to your doctor that you were raped), listen to the sound of the fetal heartbeat, and then go home for 24 hours to “think about” what you’re about to do.

OK, leaving aside the unbelievable condescension underlying the notion that women seeking abortions are simply unaware of what abortion or pregnancy is (not to mention adding unnecessarily to the cost of a procedure that many women can barely afford as it is), it turns out, the anti-choicers’ sonogram strategy doesn’t work.

Take it away, science:

Tracy Weitz, assistant professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences at the University of California – San Francisco, is the director of a university project called Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH). Later this year, ANSIRH will publish findings from two studies that look at how women are affected by viewing an ultrasound before an abortion.

What the researchers have found so far is that viewing an abortion is not an indication that a woman will cancel her scheduled procedure, regardless of what emotional response the sonogram elicits, Weitz told The American Independent. And that response can vary. Some women are happy to see the ultrasound because it makes their decision to abort more real, she said. Other women are sad to see the image, and still others have no emotional response. [...]

In her August 2010 presentation, Weitz said, “Women do not have abortions because they believe the fetus is not a human or because they don’t know the truth.” She pointed out that 60 percent of abortion patients have already delivered a child, that most women have abortions because of the “material conditions of their lives.”

So, in short: People are different, emotions are complicated, sonograms don’t prevent abortions. Most importantly, women seeking abortions know what they’re doing. Isn’t it about time we started trusting them?