“Washingtonians need a permanent Hirst fix this year,” a letter to the Seattle Times has once again iterated the feelings of many rural citizens in our state. “The state Senate has taken a stand for rural Washington, passing a permanent Hirst fix four times. The House of Representatives did not bring a single Hirst bill to the floor for a vote in the 2017 session.”

Jason Mercier, of the Washington Policy Center, has reminded us that for eight decades the Washington state Supreme Court has established that an income tax is unconstitutional. Despite Seattle’s attempt at deploying a city-wide income tax, the reality remains that it is illegal. (Read more here)

Socialist Seattle Councilmember Kshama Sawant is being sued for defaming  two Seattle area police officers. Officer Scott Miller and Detective Michael Spaulding filed a lawsuit against Sawant after she ruined their reputations for political gain. “Having never spoken to the officers, their attorney, the department, and with the investigation still incomplete, Kshama Sawant was publicly pronouncing these officers ‘murderers’ and referring to the shooting as a product of ‘racial profiling’,” the filing explained.

The City Attorney’s Office has declared two proposals to add taxes into the Seattle housing market as illegal after recommendations by Seattle Mayoral candidate Cary Moon were made to tax nonresident homebuyers and vacant homes. King County Assessor John Wilson also criticized a request to unveil identities of home buyers, saying, he “would not support any policy response that could lead to racial bias or anything that smacks of the Chinese Exclusion laws from two centuries ago.”

Seattle City Council candidate Jon Grant wants to increase the gun tax in Seattle, despite the tax’s colossal failure to meet targets set by proponents in the past.

Everett police are “using targeted enforcement” to crack down on ‘Tweakerville’, a crime-rich area that recently gained national attention from a live stream of the location started by a local business owner.

Spokane City Council will consider sending a resolution to legislators in Olympia next week to encourage the House and Senate to pass a state capital budget. Sen. Michael Baumgartner (R-Spokane) is disappointed the council wants to urge passage of a budget when liberals in Olympia have yet to show a willingness to solve the Hirst issue. “Our Senate Republican position has been clear, that if individual citizens can’t build, then the government isn’t going to get to build either,” Baumgartner said.

Five new buildings will be opening in the Central Valley School District with one of them opening this week. Courtesy of a $121.9 million construction bond passed in 2015, building construction, and renovation projects are beginning to see completion and will allow the district to house the growing population of students in the area.

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