Same-sex marriage ruling expected in Washington

The Oregonian (Portland, Oregon)

March 20, 2006 Monday
Sunrise Edition

KAYLA WEBLEY
The Oregonian

OLYMPIA –State Rep. Ed Murray expects a much quicker resolution to the debate about same-sex marriage in Washington than the 30 years it took for lawmakers to approve civil rights protections for gay people.

“It will take time, but not decades,” said the Seattle Democrat, an openly gay lawmaker who has been a longtime champion for gay rights. “We as a culture in Washington state are moving ahead in our understanding of who lesbian and gay people are. Some of the myths have faded away.”

The state Supreme Court is expected to release a decision any day on Washington’s Defense of Marriage Act passed by the Legislature in 1998. The law says marriage must be between a man and a woman.

Two Superior Court judges have found the law unconstitutional. Now, the state’s highest court will decide whether Washington will become the second state to start issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Massachusetts became the first state in 2004.

If the court sends the issue back to lawmakers to decide, Murray said he’ll introduce legislation next year that would allow same-sex marriage. If the court permits the law to stand, Murray said he would introduce legislation to offer same-sex couples the same rights that marriage guarantees other couples.
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The state considers proposal to mandate alternative fuel

The Sunday Oregonian (Portland, Oregon)

February 5, 2006 Sunday
Sunrise Edition

KAYLA WEBLEY
The Oregonian

OLYMPIA –No one has invented a car that runs on Starbucks coffee –yet –but state Rep. Janea Holmquist is hoping for the next best thing: Cornering the Northwest market on an alternative fuel made with vegetable oil.

Holmquist has introduced an ambitious package of legislation that’s making its way through the Washington Legislature with bipartisan support. It would require all diesel sold in the state to contain 2 percent biodiesel by Dec. 1, 2008.

“We can provide the market to jump-start the biofuels industry in Washington –using Washington renewable fuels instead of bringing them in from somewhere else,” said Holmquist, R-Moses Lake.

Biodiesel is refined from vegetable oil, derived from soybeans, rapeseed and canola or used cooking oil, then blended with diesel fuel. The fuel can be used in conventional diesel engines, and biodiesel emits 48 percent less carbon monoxide than regular diesel.

The Washington State Ferries system started using a 20 percent biodiesel blend in its fleet in 2004, and King County Metro in the Seattle area will make the transition to all-biodiesel fuel in their buses by the end of this year.
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Washington wants tougher meth laws

The Sunday Oregonian (Portland, Oregon)

January 22, 2006 Sunday
Sunrise Edition

The Northwest | Olympia

KAYLA WEBLEY
The Oregonian

Washington state lawmakers want to put more time, money and cops on the case of methamphetamine cooks and abusers, but they aren’t ready yet to follow Oregon’s lead in requiring prescriptions for cold and allergy medicines that contain a key ingredient used to make the drug.

As the legislative session opened two weeks ago in Olympia, party leaders put fighting methamphetamine near the top of their agenda and rolled out a series of bills that would increase sentences, provide more effective treatment for users while in prison and help local law officers target distribution.

“We want to see fewer addicts getting out and going right back to their old behaviors,” Attorney General Rob McKenna said. “This would keep some of the worst offenders in prison . . . and make them think twice before risking the stronger penalties.”

Washington has recorded a drop in clandestine meth labs for the third year in a row: 806 reported in 2005, down 30 percent from 2004, according to the Washington State Patrol. The state patrol also recorded a 20 percent increase last year in the number of people seeking publicly funded help for their addiction.

But none of the Washington bills puts further restrictions on medicines containing pseudoephedrine, found in common decongestants such as Sudafed. Last year, Washington legislators passed a law requiring stores to put such cold medicines behind a counter and keep a log of customers who buy them.
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Detoxifying the Duwamish

The Sunday Oregonian (Portland, Oregon)

March 19, 2006 Sunday
Sunrise Edition

KAYLA WEBLEY
The Oregonian

SEATTLE –Huge puffs of steam rise from the Lafarge North America cement plant. A barge at a nearby shipping yard gets packed with building supplies, food and cars bound for Alaska. Trucks rumble by on muddy roads hauling wares in and out of the working waterfront on Seattle’ extreme south end.

Just a few blocks away, the small South Park neighborhood –one of the city’s poorest areas –holds its own in what has become an industrial wasteland on the bank of the lower Duwamish River.

Some houses are just feet from the river’s edge. When the weather gets warmer, children play in the dirty sand or pile in inner tubes and head to the water.

This is the kind of place that Gov. Chris Gregoire is targeting in a wide-ranging plan to clean up Puget Sound, the 90-mile inner arm of the Pacific that encompasses four of Washington state’s largest cities.

Work on the Duwamish –in the heart of Seattle’s industrial core –is under way and serves as an example of what state leaders hope will happen elsewhere around the Sound.
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Crews mine the muck to obtain a pollution profile

The Sunday Oregonian (Portland, Oregon)

March 19, 2006 Sunday
Sunrise Edition

Kayla Webley, The Oregonian

SEATTLE –A boat pulls forward and then reverses several times to zero in on the spot plotted by a global positioning system. Crew members raise a long tube called a vibracore into place and plunge it through the murky waters and into layers of sediment below.

The workers are taking samples along a 5.5-mile stretch of the lower Duwamish River in Seattle to pinpoint pollution and figure out what to clean up next. They’re from Windward Environmental, a contracting company hired by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The crew members pull the tube out of the water after a few minutes and spray the outside to wash off the mud and get rid of any contaminants before bringing it aboard. They lay the tube flat, cap off the end to keep all the sediment inside and then load it into a truck for a trip to a makeshift lab in an old warehouse a few miles away.

At the lab, other workers, wearing yellow and orange rubber suits and tall boots, cut open the tube from end-to-end and discard mud that touched the inside to make sure they get accurate readings.

They use sterling silver spoons to dig out chunks of sediment at various intervals and mix them in a bowl to get a broad sample. They note the color, smell, composition and consistency and put it into jars to be processed elsewhere.
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Session ends with boost for Clark County

The Oregonian (Portland, Oregon)

March 15, 2006 Wednesday
Sunrise Edition

KAYLA WEBLEY
The Oregonian

OLYMPIA –State lawmakers say Southwest Washington fared better in this year’s legislative session than in years past, pointing to funding for the Vancouver crime lab and the Columbia River Initiative as major victories for the region.

Bipartisan maneuvers and last-minute deals kept projects alive and in the budget, legislators from both houses said.

“We didn’t think we were going to get everything, but we pulled a lot off at the eleventh hour,” said Rep. Bill Fromhold, D-Vancouver. “I don’t think we can complain at all.”

The highlights:

Columbia River: The Legislature passed what’s being called a historic compromise to balance fish protections with commerce in the Columbia River Basin. The $200 million, 10-year bond package will be used to increase water storage in the basin by building new reservoirs. Two-thirds of the extra water will go for out-of-stream uses such as industry, agriculture and commerce, and one-third to enhance in-stream flows, said Rep. Daniel Newhouse, R-Sunnyside.

The river’s management will have implications for Southwest Washington as it continues to expand, Newhouse said. “As the population grows there is more demand on the river, water is an essential part of any kind of growth,” he said.
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Bill on drivers using cell phones likely to die with session

The Oregonian (Portland, Oregon)

March 7, 2006 Tuesday
Sunrise Edition

KAYLA WEBLEY, The Oregonian

OLYMPIA –A bill to force Washington motorists to “hang up and drive” has advanced further in the Legislature than before, but it’s likely to wind up on hold for another year.

Sen. Tracey Eide said she introduced the bill after reading a New England Journal of Medicine report that equated talking on a cell phone in the car to drunken driving.

It would require people to use headsets or other hands-free alternatives when talking on their cell phones while driving. Violations would become a “secondary infraction,” meaning police couldn’t pull over drivers for the offense, but could cite people and issue $101 fines if they were stopped for other reasons.

Exceptions include people using a handheld cell phone to make emergency calls or people driving emergency vehicles.

The bill passed the Senate 28-18 and is now in the House Rules Committee waiting to be scheduled for a floor vote. It made it out of the House Transportation Committee, where an identical bill stalled last year.
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Washington idea reduces techno trash

The Oregonian (Portland, Oregon)

February 21, 2006 Tuesday
Sunrise Edition

KAYLA WEBLEY
The Oregonian

OLYMPIA –Philip Whiley says he picks up computers that look barely used, some a year old or newer.

Even though he’s in the trash business, the owner of Happy Haulers in the Seattle area says he wishes people weren’t always so eager to toss out some of their techno gadgets.

“It’s amazing to see what people will put in the trash bin when you think of other people in the community, around the country and the world that would maximize the potential of the wasted product,” he said.

The Washington Department of Ecology estimates that people will discard 2.8 million computers and 900,000 televisions in the next five years. By 2010, 9 million computers will be running in Washington homes –more than one computer per person, the department estimates.

The mounting pile of e-waste captured the attention of Washington lawmakers, who voted for a bill that establishes a statewide recycling program for people to unload their outdated computers, TVs and other electronic gear.
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Assisted Suicide Bill Offered in Olympia

A Seattle senator’s proposal, like Oregon’s law, allows doctors to prescribe lethal doses of drugs.

KAYLA WEBLEY
The Oregonian

February 8, 2006

OLYMPIA — Sen. Pat Thibaudeau knows what it’s like to watch someone die in terrible pain. Her husband, Roger, suffered from congestive heart failure, kidney failure and other ailments for more than six years before he died in 2004.

Thibaudeau, D-Seattle, said the two discussed what type of care they would want at the end of their lives, but they didn’t talk about doctor-assisted suicide.

That’s one reason why she’s raising the issue in the Washington Legislature. “I think people ought to have a choice in this matter,” Thibaudeau said, though she noted that her husband probably wouldn’t have taken that route.

She introduced a bill this session similar to Oregon’s one-of-a-kind law, allowing physicians to prescribe lethal doses of medication to patients who request it in writing. Two doctors would have to agree independently that the patient had fewer than six months to live and was of sound mind to make the decision.

The bill failed to make much headway, but Thibaudeau said she didn’t expect it would. She simply wanted to restart the discussion.
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Democrats ask GOP for apology over ads

The Oregonian (Portland, Oregon)

January 31, 2006 Tuesday
Sunrise Edition

KAYLA WEBLEY
The Oregonian

OLYMPIA –Rep. Deb Wallace, D-Vancouver, and six other House Democrats have asked for an apology from Republican leaders for a series of ads that claim they refused to impose life sentences for violent sex offenders.

The postcards, automated phone calls and radio and television ads have scared some people who have mistaken them for announcements that sex offenders are moving into their communities, Wallace and others said in a letter to Minority Leader Richard DeBolt, R-Chehalis.

“Fear-mongering, exploiting children for political gain, lying to the public –these are the kinds of stunts that should not be acceptable here in Washington state,” the letter reads.

DeBolt doesn’t plan to apologize for the advertisements because he wasn’t directly involved in the campaign, said John Rothlin, spokesman for the House Republican Caucus. The ads were sponsored by the Speakers Roundtable, a Republican political action committee.

Wallace and the other Democrats all are in swing districts and face re-election this year. The others are Assistant Majority Whip Tami Green of University Place; Bill Grant of Walla Walla, Derek Kilmer and Pat Lantz, both of Gig Harbor; and Geoff Simpson and Pat Sullivan, both of Covington.
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