The rise and downfall of the Democrats’ favorite 2022 megadonor – Sam Bankman-Fried – has been much covered on the business pages, and you may recall from Shift’s pages the unexplained linkage between SBF (as he was known to his liberal buddies) and Senator Patty Murray’s last re-election campaign. The media’s lack of interest in Sen. Murray’s curious connection to the multi-million-dollar scammer came to mind when reading a story in the Spokesman-Review about how the “sentencing of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried to 25 years in prison was the bookend of a legal case in New York. But the case also had implications for Eastern Washington: it helped kill a community bank.”

Thanks to Senator Murray’s friend SBF, Farmington State Bank, “one of the few businesses still operating in the Whitman County farming town (of Farmington), sent its customers a letter in August 2023 that their deposits and bank accounts have been sold to the Bank of Eastern Oregon, which has a branch in Colfax.” Perhaps the death of this local institution which “was founded in 1897” and “served as the only banking institution in a town of about 150 residents” is a topic that could be raised with Senator Murray, if any reporter was allowed to ask her questions that are not pre-approved by staff.

Read on to see if you’d like to hear from the Senator herself on her role in this scandal… Shift, Spokesman-Review.

Governor Jay Inslee has been enjoying the extra attention he’s receiving as the only politician left in Olympia, signing bills and otherwise reminding people of his relevance for a few more months. That’s why it was no surprise to see in the Washington State Standard that when Inslee was signing “the last transportation spending plan of his 12-year tenure Thursday, he described the bumpy road ahead for lawmakers and his successor.”

Of course, Gov. Inslee created the divots in that road through his severe mismanagement of the state Department of Transportation, and his insistence on copying California’s radical environmental policies to the detriment of state taxpayers. You can read on to see how, despite record-setting tax revenues flowing into the state that “(R)evenues are going to be strained for building roadways, preservation and maintenance, and improving highway infrastructure.”

Nothing important there for the green governor, though, so he is not that bothered that after his 12 years he is “recognizing ‘additional solutions will be necessary’ in future sessions” to deal with the problems he created… Washington State Standard.

The unelected “leaders” of Sound Transit, from King County Executive Dow Constantine on down, never seem to run out of ways to blow through taxpayer dollars. The latest example just came with the Seattle Times reporting that the beleaguered transit agency had “hired Terri Mestas, who is leading the expansion of Los Angeles International Airport, to a new $600,000 position setting Seattle-area megaprojects back on track” despite taxpayers still being on the hook for paying the last two CEO’s to go away.

That’s right, Sound Transit is doubling her public salary to well over a half-million a year (plus benefits, of course) to be the #2 person at Sound Transit, because the desperate bunglers over at Sound Transit have “an open wallet and an immediate need by 18 nonspecialist members of the transit board for a leader capable of steering the nation’s biggest transit expansion, already running years late, through relentless geographic and political obstacles.” Of course, many of the “obstacles” have been placed there by the Sound Transit officials themselves as the story notes, for “unrealistic campaign promises, prolonged public outreach, construction or design errors” among other things.

You can see that this costly executive brings such expertise that among her first jobs is to get more help as “Mestas is expected to recruit a second executive who will manage future Sound Transit 3 rail to Ballard.” You can read on to see if you think that this new executive will do better than any of the past three Sound Transit CEO’s at being “tasked with preventing further cost overruns and delays, while building efficient relationships with construction teams, to deliver projects currently trending two to five years late.” Good luck with that! … Seattle Times.

The teachers in Yakima have a great learning opportunity available to them, teaching their students about the economic consequences of spending money you do not have on things you want. That was apparent from the comical Yakima-Herald coverage that “(H)undreds of Yakima high school students staged protests around town Thursday to support Yakima School District staff members who will lose jobs as part of budget cuts.”

Teachers will be able to tell students that the reason for these cuts is because their union pressured the school board to blow through federal pandemic money like it was candy, and the adults didn’t remember not to spend one-time money on all-time expenses, as the school district “plan will cut the district’s budget by about $20 million to address declines in student enrollment and the end of pandemic relief funding.” You can read on to decide for yourself whether the union teachers in Yakima will use this opportunity to teach their students about how the teachers’ union kept schools closed far too long during COVID, meaning reductions in school enrollment – and budgets – here… Yakima-Herald.

Shift will leave with little comment the latest in the homelessness controversy out of Burien, other than to note that two people have died on its streets since King County stopped enforcing Burien’s laws, leading (according to the Jason Rantz show) to a lawsuit from Burien “alleging the county breached its Interlocal Agreement (IA) for refusing to enforce a lawfully adopted homeless camping ban.”

You can read on to see how King County Executive Dow Constantine demands that his county officers only enforce laws which he approves of, and that “a political appointment of Executive Dow Constantine, secretly informed deputies not to enforce the ordinance. She never informed city leaders.” … Jason Rantz show.

Shift is pleased to end this briefing with the positive note that Gov. Inslee put aside his usual hyper-partisan tendencies earlier this week, for a moment. That’s when, according to the Capital Press, “Gov. Jay Inslee signed a wolf bill Tuesday and saluted the sponsor, Rep. Joel Kretz, an Okanogan County Republican who’s retiring from the Legislature and is poles apart politically from the governor.”

The bill itself “directs the state Department of Fish and Wildlife to consult with the Colville tribe on managing wolves in northeast Washington”, which the representative hopes will mean “state wildlife managers can learn from their tribal counterparts.” It was made more noteworthy when “the governor asked Kretz and his wife, Lucka, to pose with him for a picture to mark Kretz’s last bill ‘in a storied career as a legislator’.” Read on for more on this nice gesture here… Capital Press.

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