It has been interesting to watch local media types dip their toes into the deep water that is the scandal surrounding Governor Jay Inslee, more than a decade after he first started blatantly exaggerating to Washington voters (who can forget “the wrong direction is new taxes” from 2012). The latest was another Seattle Times story slipped in over a weekend, which reveals next session, “lawmakers will face a surprise that will strain Washington’s transportation budget for years: an up to $4 billion increase in the cost of complying with a court order to improve salmon passage under state highways.”

The court order dating to 2013 was well known to the Democrats writing the state’s budgets as money was rolling in over the last decade, but they pretended not to notice while shoveling money out to big campaign donors. Now, according to the latest liberal writing transportation budgets, the latest cost estimate “sort of pops the bubble” that Democrats had any intention of following the law.

You can read about how, despite this train wreck being visible (and under-funded) for the last decade, Inslee administration “officials have only just broken the news to lawmakers in a series of one-on-one briefings over the past ten days, and a strategy for answering is still in its infancy” here… Shift, Seattle Times.

News is coming from Let’s Go Washington that the folks behind the effort to qualify six different initiatives to the legislature this year will provide its first public demonstration of success tomorrow when the Washington Observer reports that they have “a date at the Secretary of State’s office on Tuesday to turn in signatures for Initiative 2117, which would repeal the Climate Commitment Act.”

You can read on to see how this welcome news could be followed by much more, as Let’s Go Washington has “appointments with the Secretary of State to turn one in each of the next five weeks” here…. Let’s Go Washington, Washington Observer.

A first-ever (and last-ever) Pac-12 perfect record will be on the line in this weekend’s football Apple Cup. But even better is the news from AP that “Washington and Washington State have agreed in principle to a five-year extension of the Apple Cup, ensuring the in-state rivalry will continue through at least 2028.”

Shift can only hope that the college sports world can sort itself out in a way that benefits WSU (and Oregon State University) as they resurrect the venerable conference while this rivalry continues.  Read on to see where the Apple Cup goes after next year when it “will be played on Sept. 14 at Lumen Field” here… AP.

Telling people that they don’t have to worry about ballot security generally works better if the ballots they put in the mail are actually delivered to the vote counters (as Shift has noted).  Unfortunately for our underperforming Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, we are reminded of government incompetence again by the news from KIRO 7 that the “U.S. Postal Service delivered an additional 37 ballots in Pierce County that had been mistakenly dropped off in out-of-service mailboxes.”

Unfortunately, this news “comes just two days after 85 uncounted ballots were found inside a mailbox in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.” Read on to see how “all of these new ballots will still be counted” here… Shift, KIRO 7.

Shift has been keeping its eyes on those greedy toll-masters in the Inslee administration as they dream up ways to justify extracting more money from suburban commuters. That’s why it’s no surprise to learn from a KOMO 4 report that the “Washington Transportation Commission recently held the second of a handful of meetings before a vote on increasing express toll lane rates on I-405 and State Route 167” – and amazingly enough, the bureaucrats want to push “the maximum rate to $12 or $15” on the roadways.

The obvious did come up, as one driver understated that “(C)osts for individuals in the east King County region who often commute to cities between Bellevue and Renton could be disproportionately affected by a substantial increase in toll rates.” You can read how that doesn’t matter to the bureaucrats, who “said they need the money to offset inflation, a workforce shortage, and material cost increases” here… Shift, KOMO 4.

Conventional wisdom is that Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell was actually the big winner in this month’s elections, as the nine-member body will now feature a majority of candidates the mayor endorsed during the campaign. He is counting on a little more seriousness from the new group, telling KUOW he expects the “new council will have focused on the objective, not the performative.”

Of course, six new members do mean a lot of learning-as-you-go, hopefully featuring less Sawant-style posturing. However, one way to get on the council’s wrong side might be to insult them, suggesting as he did that “when you’re running for office in a $7 billion budget, I don’t know how much information they have is accurate.” Read on to see if they might agree with the deficit-running mayor on the need for fiscal accuracy here… KUOW.

Carmen Goers, a GOP candidate in the 8th Congressional District, joined us for last week’s Newsmaker Interview. Over the past 10 months, Goers has been actively engaging with grassroots activists in Chelan and Kittitas counties, as well as the Eastern portions of King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties. In her Newsmaker Interview, Goers outlined her reasons for running, emphasizing strong support for Israel, advocating for tax and regulation cuts to address the impacts of “Bidenomics,” and calling for a renewed focus on core subjects like reading, writing, and arithmetic in the U.S. Department of Education. Read more.

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