Democrats in Olympia must have gotten used to working without reporters looking over their shoulders during COVID-era lockdowns, as it appears that some sketchy mistakes were made with public money that normally they would have hidden better.  That’s the takeaway from a lengthy Crosscut investigation into how a lobbyist connected to former House Speaker Frank Chopp could get state money for a pilot project that he had no experience doing and why one homeless activist had “an ‘icky’ feeling came over her” when she saw what taxpayers paid for.

Readers know that Shift has long followed the financial shenanigans that followed the Democrats’ long-serving Speaker Chopp. And in the Olympia scheme of things, $750,000 is not much, leading Rep. Chopp to brusquely conclude, “It’s a pilot project. If it’s not working out, they don’t have to continue it.” Yet, the scandal that is emerging is not the meager work being delivered to the state but rather how this particular project got into the public trough in the first place.

Just consider the contrast of how the state bureaucrat in charge of the project can say, “In my view, this is going well,” when, according to investigators, “At the end of September, Lifeline could not provide up-to-date numbers on clients and outcomes.” You can read on to see how even the lobbyist involved admits that “from the outside looking in, of course, it can look like a little bit of a conflict of interest” here… Crosscut, Shift.

Democrats are confusing even themselves when demanding that we need “radical transparency” to find out why our gas prices have been soaring on the one hand and, on the other hand, shutting out the public from finding out who is bidding to send gas prices soaring. That’s the take from a Capital Press investigation into the Washington State Department of Ecology’s “decisions cloaked in secrecy by the cap-and-trade law’s extensive exemptions from the public records law.”

The bureaucrats at Jay Inslee’s Ecology Department have been on the front lines of failing to implement the new carbon tax. Read on to find out why one state senator “remains concerned that not enough information is being disclosed about a program that is raising the cost of fuel and other goods” here… Capital Press.

Liberals pushing drug legalization often portray public drug use as being a “victimless crime” and smear anyone who disagrees with them as wanting a “war on drugs.” Even Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat is ready to put those falsehoods to rest after reviewing what happened when “Seattle police started enforcing the new, hotly contested ordinance against the public use of drugs.”

The good news for the Left is that “(N)obody who was just using drugs got booked into jail” under the law the liberals fought so hard to kill. However, of the 29 people who were arrested for smoking outside, “12 were booked into jail because they had outstanding felony warrants,” which sort of proves the point that arresting drug users helps solve other crimes. Read on to understand why one activist points out, “We could have been doing this all along” here… Seattle Times.

Spokane is learning what comes with having the state’s most expensive campaign this year – local elections have gone negative. That’s the lesson learned from the extensive review in the Spokesman-Review of the “attack ads and misleading accusations (at) full blast in a largely proxy battle between Mayor Nadine Woodward and challenger Lisa Brown.”

The paper notes that “the candidates haven’t been running these ads themselves, with independent political committees doing the dirty work of issuing ominous warnings superimposed over unflattering photos of the candidates.” A semi-complete listing of the attacks is here… Spokesman-Review.

The scariest pre-Halloween public safety trend seemingly sweeping Seattle is the targeted attack on students walking near school (and that doesn’t even count the drive-by gang shooting last month at an Everett bus stop). The latest from KOMO News is that a Blanchet High “student was assaulted and robbed while walking to their car about a block away from campus,” seemingly as part of “one of three robberies Seattle police responded to within 30 minutes” in the neighborhood.

This distressing news comes on the heels of “(L)ast week, the SPD said detectives were investigating recent armed robberies near Ballard High School and Whitman Middle School.” Read on why authorities are advising parents “to talk to your students about maintaining heightened awareness when in our neighborhood and throughout the city” here… KOMO News.

If you think that Democrat legislators would want to make it easier for agricultural workers to earn more money, you may not have been reading Shift very closely. That’s because we’ve highlighted, as Center Square does again on its pages, that farm wage laws passed by the Democrat-controlled legislature are often intended more for their urban labor audience than their rural workers, who tell State Rep. Alex Ybarra “they don’t make as much money due to the overtime threshold and that it impacts them more than their bosses.”

This so-called unintended consequence of the wage law – which Democrats very much intended – happened because, according to State Representative Tom Dent, “the law (was) shoved down our throats. I’m here because I care [and] because this law is bad – it’s wrong, and it hurts everybody.” Read on to understand why “Washington state farmers are rallying for changes to an overtime threshold that would limit workers to 40 hours of work before qualifying for overtime starting next year” here… Shift, Center Square.

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