Regular Shift readers have had the opportunity to follow Jay Inslee’s “work” schedule throughout this year, thanks to our reporting on his daily calendar (thanks to information obtained using the state’s public disclosure act). Unfortunately, no mainstream media outlet has seen fit to do similar investigating, and inform the broader public about just how little Inslee does for his public salary.
Now, optimists might have thought that Inslee would step up his “official” schedule after he was relieved of the rigors of fundraising for his re-election campaign. However, their hopefulness would be misplaced at the start of December.
Today we provide an overview of two weeks of Jay’s activities, from Dec. 4 to 19, leading up to the week before Christmas. Perhaps Jay had a lot of last-minute shopping to do, because he certainly wasn’t burning the midnight oil in his office.
Consider that from Dec. 4 -11, Jay managed to avoid any official business on five of the eight days. He spent three of those days in New Orleans, on a junket with the dwindling number of Democrat governors still in place across the country.
Of the 19 hours that Inslee actually spent that week on what could be considered governing work – mainly meetings with staff – one quarter of it was spent going to a funeral service for a fallen police officer. That’s a task that our elected officials are regretfully far too often called upon to fit into their schedule.
However, it’s worth noting that even though Jay did little earn his taxpayer-funded salary, he did find time to pay back a big campaign contributor. On December 8, Jay made time for a leisurely 90-minute lunch with what was described as a special “stakeholder meeting” with union boss David Rolf. In fact, Inslee even spent 30 minutes the day before preparing with staff for his meeting with the SEIU 775 president. Perhaps he needed to learn some talking points to share with Rolf on how his union’s investment in Inslee’s re-election had paid off.
Inslee did pick up the work pace in the next week, as he spent much of the week learning about and then explaining his $4-billion-dollar tax-raising and budget-busting spending proposal to newspapers across the state. In fact, he almost put in a full-time week from Dec. 12-18, with just over 37 “official” hours on his calendar.
Even with that schedule, Inslee wasn’t exactly putting in a full working woman (or man)’s day. He didn’t make it into the office before 9 a.m. on any of his days, and padded the calendar with a couple of holiday reception that keep him out later than usual.
We can expect to see little from Jay in the last two weeks of the year, now that the media has moved on from his tax-raising plans. Maybe he‘s just resting up for what promises to be a busy legislative schedule (for the legislators and their staffs at least).
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