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Founded in January 2009, PubliCola is a blog about Seattle written by journalists who are dedicated to non-partisan, original daily reporting that prioritizes a balanced approach to news. Started by longtime local editor and award-winning reporter Josh Feit, PubliCola is the first online-only news site in state history to get media credentials to cover the state capitol.

PubliCola was off and running. In June 2009, PubliCola hired another award-winning journalist, super-sourced Seattle city hall reporter Erica C. Barnett.

People were afraid that blogging would change journalism. Instead, we believe journalism can change blogging. Twenty-first century journalism may look and feel different, and yes Erica isn't afraid to get cranky, but we're committed to making sure online news still delivers independent, reliable, even-keeled coverage. And most of all, we're committed to making sure the coverage sparks honest civic debate.

Bringing you cola for the people, PubliCola is named after Publius Valerius PubliCola, the alias for the authors of the Federalist Papers—the original bloggers.

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The first online-only news site in state history to get media credentials to cover the state capitol and Seattle city hall, PubliCola has been called a “must-read” by the Seattle Post Intelligencer and a hot “New Media Mover and Shaker” by Seattle Magazine—which also cited our own Erica C. Barnett as the city's No. 1 news nerd.

It Wasn’t Supposed to be a Recorded Vote

Morning Fizz   July 19, 2010 at 9:02 am Josh Feit

1. The campaign to defeat the high earners income tax initiative, “Defeat 1098,” has hired a campaign manager, Scott Stanzel. Stanzel worked in the Bush administration as a press secretary in both terms. Stanzel has also worked in communications for Microsoft.

Defeat 1098 has raised nearly a half million dollars with big contributions from donors including Bartell Drugs, John Nordstrom, Jon Runstad, Howard Behar, and John Stanton.

The pro-campaign has raised about $1 million with big contributions from SEIU, state employees, and William Gates, Sr.

2. The City Council’s viaduct replacement committee meets today at 2:30 to possibly refer the tunnel agreement to the full council. The replacement committee itself is made up of the entire council.

Will “the Seattle Six”—the  six Seattle-area state reps that PubliCola famously caught voting for the overrun provision in 2009 (it wasn’t supposed to be a recorded vote)—be joined by a new group of Seattle legislators who are willing to sign off on the anti-Seattle provision in 2010?

Probably. In case you missed it on Friday afternoon, we had a story on key (and overlooked) testimony from an earlier meeting of the council committee that pro-tunnel legislators like Sally Bagshaw and Tim Burgess point to as the reason they think Mayor Mike McGinn’s overrun provision is unnecessary. Namely, Seattle isn’t a party to the tunnel contract.

3. And in case you missed this story on Sunday: The Seattle Times ran a lengthy feature on influential city hall agitator—restaurant and music entrepreneur David Meinert.

4. After reporting a $1.4 million take in the most recent fund raising quarter, Dino Rossi already has a series of high dollar events lined up in D.C. next week, including one being sponsored by U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn).

All the shindigs—two of them at Charlie Palmer’s Steak House on Capitol Hill—cost $2,000 for PAC hosts or $1,000 for individual hosts.




  • http://www.joeszilagyi.com/ Joe Szilagyi

    Re #1,

    http://www.wrightrunstad.com/about/leadership/h…
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Behar
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Stanton

    The Bartell Drugs opposing it; is that a surprise? Are they usually in line with this sort of thing politically?

  • Nyconven

    Seattle isn't a party to that contract mentioned above but isn't it a party to a contract with the state and thru that agreement directly with the state agrees to reimburse the overruns? Think Bagshaw, Burgess and the state person need to look at all documents and relationships.

  • Law > contracts duh!

    News flash:

    law doesn't have to be in a contract for you to have rights!

    Here's a little legal 101. There are things called statutes, andyou can have rights under them! Yes, when a statute says “no electrical work can be performed without a permit” and then your contract with the contractor does not say “oh btw no electrical work can be performed without a permit” that provision of law STILL APPLIES TO YOU and your worker doesn't have permission to ignore the law.

    Similarly if your state law says in a statute ” a city has to pay for your permit costs” you may be able to sue that city even though the city does not have a contract with you!

    This happens all the time. There is a state law saying “cities are liable for torts, we waive sovereign immunity” and guess what, if the city runs you over in its city car — you can sue the city and not have a contract!

    You need to be very cautious about taking legal advice from people telling you “oh see this language here in the statute/mortgage/waiver from/contract whatev — it doesn't count!”

    Believing that it doesn't count is a recipe for being a fool. At a minimum, you're buying into a huge can of worms and at worse the court is going to look at you and laugh.

    By the way what the pro DBT folks are supposed to be saying is “the language is unenfocreable because it's unconstitutional.” When they're saying “oh it's not in the contract” they're kind of backing off the argument it's unconstitutional.

    See, if it's unconstitutional then anyone who says that and voted for deliberately broke their oath of office and should be impeached.

    Cuz, um, they're not supposed to violate the constitution, they're like supposed to uphold it? So admitting what they voted for was illegal, why, that means they're just manipulative crooks, really. they're supposed to be lawmakers not law breakers!

  • Nindid

    If it is so unnecessary then why not just pass McGinn's provision and call it done. The unwillingness to do so might clue people in to the fact that it does have a little more significance than portrayed by Bagshaw.

  • Jakers

    Legislature makes the laws, judges decide if those laws are constitutional only after the fact if it is brought to them through legal proceedings. So all laws by default are constitutional until deemed unconstitutional by a court.

    It just like a lot of these initiatives (current and past), we get them on a ballot and vote for them, many of them are unconstitutional, but they become law until challenge in court. So by your logic, if you sign a petition or vote for a initiative that is unconstitutional (and I'm pretty sure that both 1100 and 1005 are unconstitutional on the grounds of breaking the single-subject rule), then I am unfit for office.

  • hobgoblin

    No.

  • http://www.joeszilagyi.com/ Joe Szilagyi

    That would be handing McGinn a win, even if only a fraction of a percentage of a win. That's against the City Council code of conduct.

  • Jakers

    What is a one-trick pony without his one trick? The city Council knows that that the tunnel is going forward and so they are enjoying sticking it to Mcginn in the meantime.

  • http://manywordsforrain.blogspot.com/ Mr. Baker

    This is going to surprise a few people but, Seattle is a customer of the tunnel and not the supplier.

  • http://manywordsforrain.blogspot.com/ Mr. Baker

    I am no lawyer, but the law says “area” and not “city”.
    Does it matter if the responsible party is not defined?

  • http://twitter.com/VoteSizemore Scott Sizemore

    I'm certainly glad we're all adults in this situation. Heaven forbid we just admit what we really want. Mayor McGinn doesn't want the tunnel. Well, neither do I. Easy. The council doesn't want to look weak. That's fine, we all know it's true, let's start from there and move forward. I feel like I'm in high school every time a voter brings this up with me. It's aggravating.

  • Jakers

    Seattle AREA PROPERTY OWNERS and McGinn need to direct their anger (or applause, if any) towards their state representatives, not the city council.

  • Jakers

    I think I recall hearing the argument once that it would take additional legislation to define the Seattle Area Property Owner Who Benefit (SAPOWB??) and set up a the manner in which the funds would be extracted from this group, which is the duty of the state, not the city.

  • Jakers

    And many in the state don't care how the state viaduct is replaced, they just know that they don't want to take 20 years voting on it waiting for it to fall down. So let's start from there…okay, you, McGinn and many Seattle residents don't want a tunnel, and some from that group prefer a surface/transit/I-5 hybrid, others from that same group want a viaduct rebuild, and some from that group want a waterfront tunnel, other from that group would prefer a viaduct retrofit, and others would prefer no new roads at all, other still would prefer that we eliminate most SOV altogether. A large majority of those in the state don't care. And then their are some that prefer the current tunnel.

    So when you were in high school, some kid (McGinn) ran for class president and made promises and talked about issues that he had no control over but the other kids had no idea that he was powerless on those issues but still voted for him for what ever the reason. Then this kid became class president and realized that the adults (the state) made all of the important decisions.

    So yeah, you're probably right, this is a lot like high school.

  • giffy

    I am not sure you can form what you said to the tunnel contractor going after “Seattle area property owners” for cost overruns. It is one thing to have statutory language incorporated into contracts as happens all the time with say the UCC, its another to render an ill-defined group of people liable for a contract they did not enter into. This is not a restriction on conduct or a some thing like that. It is making a group of people party to a contract they did not sign.

    Now if it said “The City of Seattle” then, potentially, the contractor could claim reliance on that and make the argument that it was part of the bargain. But that is not what it says, so the claim that the language is not in the contract and that the City and “Seattle area property owners” are not party to it is a perfectly fine one.

    By the way it would be rather difficult for the state to impose a tax on a specific subset of property owners given the Constitution requirement of uniformity within the jurisdiction levying the tax and the same levy limitations that the County is currently running up against.