It seems strange that a current statewide officeholder would find it necessary to fib when her falsehood is easily verified. Yet, Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz did just that in an announcement covered by Seattle Times that she would depart the governor’s race and run for Congress from where “said she lives in Grays Harbor County, which is in the 6th District,” even though “Franz had been listed as voting at a home she owns in Seattle’s Magnolia neighborhood, according to registration records.”

Commissioner Franz was seemingly forced into filing a quick change of address by Congressman Derek Kilmer’s surprise (but clearly not to her) announcement he would not run for re-election and by the reality that “since announcing her gubernatorial campaign in May, Franz had struggled to gain momentum.” You can read on to see how “despite the effort by Kilmer to line up an orderly line of succession in the race to succeed him,” voters might actually get to choose a candidate for themselves here… Seattle Times.

With the 2023 elections concluded, we here at Shift WA are initiating our 2024 election coverage by highlighting former Congressman Dave Reichert, the GOP candidate vying for the position of Governor in Washington State. Having previously served as King County Sheriff and secured seven terms as the 8th District Congressman, Reichert aims to break the Republican Party’s four-decade absence from the Governor’s Mansion. In our Newsmaker Interview, he addresses key issues such as public safety, the state’s drug overdose crisis, soaring fuel prices attributed to Democratic policies, homelessness, and Governor Inslee’s perceived misuse of emergency powers, concluding with a mention of his favorite book, an award-winning biography of a Republican president. Read more.

Budgets are so tight all over government that we don’t have enough money to pay for obvious priorities, or so we hear every time another liberal politician wants to raise some taxes. That’s why Shift will leave with a little comment on this public radio story about how “(D)epending on who you ask, Police Chief Adrian Diaz’s cooking series at a high-end grocery store in south Seattle could be viewed as community building — or a drain on the police department’s overspent budget” here… KUOW.

The Puget Sound area has been operating under a homelessness emergency since it was declared in 2015 by since-disgraced Seattle Mayor Ed Murray and soon-to-retire King County Executive Dow Constantine. Yet, the policy failures remain the same as covered by KING 5 – liberal government bureaucrats pretend they are serving the needs of the homeless by offering free services, and “for the most part, people wanted to stay with their vehicles” and refuse the help.

In this case, the sad routine was played out in “unincorporated King County on Green River Road, (where) cleanup is in day two where between 70 to 100 RV’s and cars are now gone.” You can read that now the homeless have moved on, “excavators are cleaning up more than just leaves on the road” here… KING 5.

Our region’s major transit agency is providing yet another example of how government bureaucrats think much differently than the rest of us, even when it comes to something as simple as charging people to ride. Just consider the rationale provided in this Seattle Times editorial that “Sound Transit officials said the stepped-up enforcement (asking people if they have paid transit fares) isn’t being done to make money for the agency, but rather to ‘normalize’ revenue.”

The bureaucrats claim that “55% of passengers pay their fares, which includes those who don’t have to pay.” Think about that line of reasoning – people who don’t have to pay are counted as paying so that the bureaucrats can claim a majority of the people riding the public vehicles are doing so legally. Read on to understand how that is false, as Sound Transit really doesn’t want to be bothered with collecting fares from riders; they just want more state tax dollars here… Seattle Times.

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