1. Gov. Chris Gregoire has hired a new legislative director. The spot, formerly held by Marty Brown, has been vacant since March. The position is being filled by Jim Justin, the current Director of the Association of Washington Cities, the group that lobbies Olympia on behalf of Washington’s cities.
Does this mean we’ll be seeing a more pro-urban (ie, Seattle) agenda in Olympia?
2. Yesterday, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell formally introduced a much-anticipated amendment to the financial reform bill—an amendment she is co-sponsoring with U.S. Sen. John McCain. (The proposal got national attention when she first floated it late last year.)
Cantwell’s proposal would reinstate the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act which puts a firewall between investment banking and commercial banking. (Glass-Stegall was repealed in 1999 allowing Wall Street firms to use your deposits in Wall Street speculation.) It is a more stringent alternative to President Obama’s preferred fix, the so-called Volcker Rule which simply regulates proprietary trading with commerical deposits (rather than prohibiting it).
Also yesterday: The Senate passed one of Cantwell’s other amendments to the financial reform bill by a unanimous voice vote. The amendment lowers the standard for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to prove fraud or market manipulation in futures and derivatives markets.
3. PubliCola got its hands on a copy of former McGinn aide Chris Bushnell’s ethics hearing yesterday. Bushnell was charged with an ethics violation for failing to disclose that his wife worked for a company that was bidding to help design the new seawall.
During the hearing, ethics and elections director Wayne Barnett argued that Bushnell deserved a fine of at least $1,000, because anything less would create the impression that the city didn’t take seriously a 2009 ethics rule requiring that city employees disclose any apparent conflicts of interest. (An earlier, stricter law said that any appearance of a conflict was itself a violation of ethics law).
“This was not an inadvertent violation and it was not a minor violation,” Barnett said. “One of the issues when we amended the code last year was people were concerned that we were weakening the appearance standard. … If the penalty in this case is anything less than $1,000, employees will get the idea that this is not a meaningful law. … I urge you to pass a penalty that really creates an incentive for employees to comply with the law.”
Bushnell’s attorney, Jeff Grant, shot back that his client had suffered enough by being required to go through the ethics violation charging process. “If the idea is to send a message, I can tell you, the message has been sent,” Grant said. “The fact that Mr. Bushnell has been involved just in this process, long before I got here, and the time and energy that’s been spent in trying to address what happened is a significant deterrent to those who may be weighing, ‘Should I make a written disclosure … Is taking 10 or 15 minutes to fill out that document worth it to avoid what Chris Bushnell had to go through? I think it is.”
Ultimately, the commission fined Bushnell $500.
4. City residents have come up with some unique ideas for filling an estimated $56 million budget shortfall next year. Among those suggested to the city council so far: Hold salmon dinners in Victor Steinbrueck Park downtown with all proceeds going toward security in the park; put donation “meters” around the city for people to contribute to social and human services; and allow people to “adopt” parks by texting a number on their phones.
5. Josh will be on KUOW’s Weekday this morning at 10 to discuss the week’s news with Joni Balter, Knute Berger, and host Steve Scher.
