The new year is starting off much as the last one ended, with Attorney General Bob Ferguson under an ethical cloud for his sleazy campaign tactics (some of which Shift covered in 2023). Those diminished ethics allowed him to fill his gubernatorial campaign account with dark money from previous races, with Axios-Seattle reporting he has a big money lead heading into the election year, though despite his early cash haul his consultant is “preparing for a competitive, close race” – evidently expecting that no amount of money will keep voters from learning during the campaign just how partisan and spiteful Ferguson has been in office.

Clouding up his fundraising numbers further is the growing ethical scandal of his personal signature appearing on hundreds of thousands of state refund checks, including some (as KIRO radio reports) sent to people long dead. But you can be comforted by Bob’s excuse that “it’s not our list,” so any errors involving the program he is running at taxpayer expense must belong to others, just like the money which covers the checks Ferguson so proudly signed.

We probably have not heard the last about this, as Brandi Kruse noted on her podcast that the AG sure does get touchy when you question his ethics, so perhaps the mainstream media will ask about it again… Shift, Axios, KIRO radio, Brandi Kruse You Tube.

It can be expected that Governor Jay Inslee would want to hide as much as possible from the whistleblower scandal (which Shift helped break last year) over his precious carbon tax, since it calls into question Inslee’s basic honesty. However, Center Square is highlighting that the scandal won’t be quietly going away, as the attorney who brought the initial whistleblower forward has been “contacted by other state agency employees with similar concerns about pressure to cover things up.”

The attempt to cover up the true costs of Inslee’s carbon tax – and to avoid admitting that huge cost increases were expected all along — appears to be in shambles as other public employees have determined that the Inslee administration can’t bully all of them into silence. You can read on to see how the truth about how Inslee knowingly sent gas prices soaring last year may start seeping out… Shift, Center Square.

Democrats are fighting losing policy battles on many fronts in Washington state, from expensive environmental schemes to higher taxes on seemingly everything, but perhaps the most high profile lost cause is the party’s commitment to criminal rights over the rights of everyone else in society. The debate is heating up because, as State Representative Peter Abbarno writes in the Reflector, “(A)cross the board, crime is heating up in Washington while it’s cooling nationally.’

Rep. Abbarno notes that the problem is deep – and one-sided – as last year “House Democrats passed a bill to reduce the penalties for drug, firearm and gang-related crimes committed near schools, bus stops, hospitals, and other protected areas in our communities. House Democrats also introduced a measure to require local and tribal governments to help criminals vote from jail; and even repealed victim impact fees.” The list of poor policy choices is a long one, though you can read on to see why Abbarno is hopeful that in an election year perhaps his liberal colleagues can “bring back common sense, end this crime spree and restore the old bipartisan consensus of holding criminals accountable for their actions and protecting the lives and property of everyone in our state” here… The Reflector.

Publications across the state are providing overviews this week for the legislative session starting Monday, with Crosscut diving deep into the Democrats’ carbon tax, and the multiple proposed fixes which liberals are hoping will distract people from the higher fuel costs they are paying. Unfortunately for party unity, and in a rare display of honesty, one state senator admits that his fellow Democrats “have to make [the cap-and-invest program] more affordable [at the gas pump]. You need to fix it, or voters will overturn it.”

Of course, fixing what they have so proudly broken is not the progressive way, as instead “Gov. Jay Inslee and Democratic legislative leaders want to copy a fledgling California government agency to study and regulate the oil industry within Washington”, because copying California always seems like such a good idea (and allows them to avoid further questions about how broken their carbon tax is after one year). You can read on to see how the governor has been reduced to blaming staff for his oft-repeated lies about the carbon tax, as he thinks his staff “did their best job trying to predict what was going to happen,” here… Crosscut.

The folks who love transit – and who would really love it if more people would actually give up their cars and ride along with the rest of the non-paying public – are always looking to celebrate the wasting of taxpayer dollars. That is the main takeaway from a lengthy piece in The Urbanist featuring all of the Puget Sound transit projects which might actually appear this year, many years late and massively overbudget, as “long awaited-projects, many of which suffered delays and setbacks over the past few years, offer a chance for the region to finally move forward after a holding pattern that things had settled into in 2022 and 2023.”

By “move forward” the transit types mean things like a train to nowhere on the Eastside that is already being launched “to accommodate lower ridership than is expected” from what might be expected if Sound Transit ever figures out a way over the I-90 bridge, just so County Councilwoman Claudia Balducci can say that a train is running in her district. And then there is the debacle on the other side of the water, as “(D)ue to the shortage of train storage space, until light rail service across I-90 opens up access to the new train maintenance facility in Bellevue, Sound Transit will have a shortage of train capacity to meet expected demand” when the agency belatedly opens up its Lynnwood station. You can read on to see how running late, and overbudget, is the Sound Transit way here… The Urbanist.

Cities across the state are introducing their new political lineups, from Seattle’s revamped but not-quite-as-far-Left City Council to the extreme progressive takeover in Spokane. However, in the middle of the state the newbies made quick work of their city makeover, with the Yakima Herald reporting the “Yakima City Council on Tuesday voted to remove Bob Harrison as city manager. Patricia Byers was selected as the new mayor.”

The mayor is a largely ceremonial position, which is why the city is having to pay the outgoing city manager “a six-month buyout (which) would cost the city $115,936.98.” Read on to see why the new council majority thinks that is money well spent here… Yakima Herald.

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