This post has been updated with some budget details from Olympia.
1. As we’ve mentioned, public campaign financing activist Marcee Stone—running in the crowded field for Sharon Nelson’s open 34th District seat in the state House—has pledged not to take any corporate or PAC money. State legislature candidates who’ve taken that pledge in previous years (John Burbank, Gerry Pollet, and Dick Kelley, who also pledged not to take any contributions over $100) have one thing in common: They all lost.
Stone, who’s raised a little over $7,500 in contributions, says she isn’t worried. Former 36th District candidate John Burbank, she notes, “raised enough money to run a viable campaign” despite his no-corporate-money pledge, losing to Reuven Carlyle “more because of his messaging than money.” Stone says that by “taking as many individual contributions as I can and not limiting myself, in terms of what people can contribute, I think I can do just fine.”
2. Remeber all the huffing and puffing the Democrats did in late March about GOP Attorney General Rob McKenna’s decision to join the 13-state lawsuit against President Obama’s health care plan. One concrete thing the Democrats threatened to actually do was put a proviso in the state budget that would prohibit the AG’s office from spending any money on the lawsuit.
Wondering what became of that idea, we called Senate House Ways & Means Chair Rep. Kelli Linville (D-42, Western Whatcom County) yesterday. Looks like the Democrats are gonna let it slide. Linville, who told the Olympian back in March that McKenna did not have the right to spend state money counter to the wishes of the legislature, told us yesterday that the budget will not include a proviso to prevent McKenna from working on the lawsuit.
3. UPDATE: Some budget details here.
Speaking of the budget: The state legislature is getting closer to a budget deal. They will announce the details of a revenue package this morning. The Senate’s original insistence on increasing the sales tax—first to 0.3 percent then to 0.2 percent and then to 0.1 percent—had caused the budget standoff. The House and the governor did not want any sales tax increase, and today’s proposal will not include one.
We are curious, however, to see how some other disagreements will be resolved: Will the House get its way on eliminating a $50 million exemption for big banks? Will the Senate get its way on keeping the sales tax exemption for out-of-state shoppers?
Will environmentalists get some big wins with an increase in the hazardous substance tax and Rep. Hans Dunshee’s (D-44, Southwest Snohomish County) green jobs bond?
And what about the tax on soda that the governor proposed over two months ago (which the House and Senate ignored all session). Did the legislature shake off threats from the soda industry and finally put that back in the mix?
4. If you don’t want to wait all week for the Slog to serial-publish the transcripts of the voice mails that Charles Alan Wilson—the Selah, Washington man arrested for threatening to kill Sen. Patty Murray—allegedly left for Murray, you’re in luck!
As Talking Points Memo, USA Today, Gawker, and others reported earlier this week, a transcript of all Wilson’s alleged ranting and raving is available in one court document (PDF) here.
