Gov. Jay Inslee used a veto yesterday to send a clear message to legislators about the Columbia River Crossing (CRC) project: this bridge, this design, this year, and no other options will be considered.

While signing the state transportation budget, Inslee vetoed $81 million in funding for the state's CRC planning office. Those funds were inserted by the Senate Majority Coalition to keep the planning office open while taking more of a wait-and-see approach on the entire project. The Columbian reports:

When lawmakers added $81 million for the CRC in the transportation budget, several legislators said the expense would help keep the lights on at the CRC's offices.

During the bill-writing process, state Sen. Don Benton, R-Vancouver, successfully added language to the transportation budget to withhold most of the $81 million until the U.S. Coast Guard approves a crucial permit for the CRC. That language, which was wiped out by Inslee's veto, would have required CRC planners to put that money toward a bridge redesign if the Coast Guard rejected the CRC's permit application.

The $3.4 billion project, which would replace the current Interstate 5 link between Vancouver and Portland, has been mired in controversy for years. Much of it revolves around the inclusion of light rail, a must-have for Oregon but a prospect that is less popular with residents on the Washington side of the bridge. Many in Clark County object to the high proposed tolls to cross the bridge, and to their tax dollars going to help operate Portland's Tri-Met light rail system. The Coast Guard must approve the bridge's height to protect river freight mobility.

Gov. Inslee has said repeatedly that a CRC project that does not include light rail will not be built, but the Senate majority has remained skeptical. By making his veto, Inslee is putting pressure on lawmakers to pass a 10-cent hike in the gas tax to raise an additional $8.4 billion for transportation projects. The current package would also give local governments more flexibility to raise taxes and fees to fund mass transit.

Erik Smith at the Washington State Wire summed up the issue well:

Inslee's veto Monday puts the state in a do-or-die position: If lawmakers don't pass the transportation-tax increase this year, providing $450 million for the project, the $3.4 billion bridge project could fizzle for lack of funds. Inslee's point is that the bridge project would fizzle anyway. If lawmakers don't say yes to a transportation tax this year, he says the state likely will lose $800 million in federal funding.

"The reality is starting to come home, and I think this veto may sharpen legislators' minds about the current state of reality," the governor said. "We have to have a reality-based plan across the Columbia River, and if this veto helps them awaken to the reality, that would be great."

Inslee told the Senate in a letter regarding his veto, "If the Coast Guard permit is not issued, there is no need for the waste of $81 million since no other option is viable." The question remains, if one of the many "what-ifs" in the project does occur - if the Coast Guard requires a taller bridge, if that meant light rail wasn't feasible and Oregon balked, if the Legislature didn't appropriate the required $450 million this year, if the transportation package instead went to the ballot and was rejected by voters - would Inslee still say that "no other option is viable"? With his veto, Inslee has increased the likelihood that if the project does fail, he's going to own some of that failure.

The Snohomish County Council is moving forward with appointing a successor to scandal-scarred County Executive Reardon, despite the fact that Reardon has yet to formally resign.

KIRO Radio's Tim Haeck has the story.:

The council voted unanimously Monday to consider Reardon's speech in February, in which he declared he would step down, as his formal resignation.

"We were advised that the statutes don't really say 'written' resignation, they say 'tender' resignation and he did that verbally and we finally decided it was time to move the process along," said county council vice-chairman Dave Somers.

Reardon plans to resign May 31. Under state law, the council will choose a new Executive from a list of three names submitted by the Snohomish County Democratic Party. The party's precinct committee officers will meet to select the three finalists. Former Democratic state legislator and current Sheriff John Lovick is the acknowledged favorite to succeed Reardon.

What's notable about the council's new legal theory regarding "tendered resignations" is that they waited until after the candidate filing period to pass before announcing it, thereby avoiding a special election this fall. Had the council moved forward with their idea before the candidate filing period, the citizens of Snohomish County could have voted for their new county executive this fall. Instead, the replacement Executive chosen by the council will serve until the results of the November 2014 election are certified.

It's unlikely their legal theory was cooked up over the weekend. Most likely this option had been considered for some time. Now the council gets the best of both worlds - they get to move forward with replacing Reardon, with whom they have had less-than-cordial relations during his three terms, and they avoid a pesky special election this fall in which the voters would have their say. Apparently the political class will do anything to avoid that.

Maybe the voice from the corn was wrong. What if you build it, and hardly anybody is interested?

That's a question the state's Health Benefit Exchange (HBE) board is pondering about the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP), the small business health insurance exchange being set up under Obamacare. Only one provider, Kaiser Permanente, wants to participate in SHOP, and it only operates in Southwest Washington.

Washington was supposed to be a shining example of the power of the insurance exchanges in Obamacare. Some states took a slow, wait-and-see approach to setting up their exchanges. Others flat-out refused to implement the exchanges and left the task to the federal government.

But Washington embraced the task early and vigorously. While many insurance providers are lined up to participate in the individual exchange that goes live in October, the soundtrack of the small business exchange is chirping crickets. Some have suggested that too few small businesses will buy through the exchange, making it unattractive to insurance providers, but Oregon has attracted eight providers to its SHOP despite its much smaller market.

For most small businesses in Washington, this means they won't receive the tax credits for covering low- and middle-income workers they were promised in the run-up to Obamacare's passing. That's because the law was written to allow those tax credits only for plans purchased through exchanges, not small business plans bought outside of the exchange. Small businesses that aren't in Southwest Washington, or ones that are but don't like Kaiser Permanente's plan, will be out of luck.

While small businesses will miss out on the tax credits, they could keep their employees in an exchange plan by just buying them coverage in the individual exchange, right? No, because Obamacare specifically bans this. As the HBE staff noted in their report, "Employers cannot sponsor an employee's participation in the Individual Exchange."

Faced with the unpalatable options of moving forward with one geographically-limited provider or delaying SHOP altogether, the HBE board voted for the former. HBE staff, meanwhile, pledge to work with small employers on "the SHOP value proposition."

What happens when a much-analyzed minor legal dispute - one fraught with political implications and covered extensively by the state's political reporters - concludes long after anyone cares about the politics of the story?

Well, almost no one writes about it. At least, that's the case with Public Utility District No. 1 v. State of Washington and Peter Goldmark, et al. Only the nearest daily newspaper, the Wenatchee World, covered the case's conclusion in their print edition.

And that's too bad, because it's a pretty good example of a statewide elected official - Peter Goldmark, an environmentalist first elected as state Commissioner of Public Lands in 2008 - wasting taxpayer resources on a dubious legal strategy, all to please a major political backer (an aspect of the story I'll cover in another post soon).

Jim Camden of the Spokesman-Review had a good rundown of the dispute in 2010:

The fight over a proposed power line in the Methow Valley pits Lands Commissioner Peter Goldmark against Attorney General Rob McKenna.

Goldmark gets a chance later this year to persuade the Supreme Court to order McKenna to continue representing him in an ongoing legal battle over the proposed route for an Okanogan Public Utilities District transmission line.

McKenna says the legal work to appeal a case the state lost in May isn't worth the time and energy it would take. Goldmark says McKenna's office has the duty as the state's legal counsel to continue the fight.

With each accusing the other of politicizing the case, the Supreme Court this week ordered attorneys for Goldmark and McKenna to file legal briefs this fall and to argue in November whether they should issue McKenna a writ of mandamus - an order from a court to a government official to do something because it's his or her legal duty.

In that dispute, McKenna declined to file an appeal in the case because, he said, the trial court judge had not made any legal errors and the appeal was not likely to succeed. Despite McKenna's legal advice, Goldmark wanted to appeal anyway and asked the state Supreme Court to force the state Attorney General's Office to file the appeal. McKenna argued that, as the attorney for all of state government, he should have the power to decline to appeal on behalf of a client, in this case Goldmark's Department of Natural Resources, because the legal outcome that one agency wants may not be what's best for all of state government, and because the appeal was unlikely to succeed.

With McKenna, a Republican, expected to run for governor in 2012, Goldmark sought to make as much political hay as he could, arguing that McKenna was playing politics and shortchanging public schools (what political advantage this was supposed to give McKenna was left unclear). Goldmark said in a news release, "By refusing to represent the Common School Trust and the non-tax revenue it generates, Mr. McKenna is choosing to allow the inappropriate use of eminent domain over Washington's schools. Mr. McKenna is choosing to play politics with our state's heritage." Goldmark won that case, and an outside attorney was hired to act as a special Assistant Attorney General and file Goldmark's appeal.

So let's review:

1) McKenna's attorneys told Goldmark that an appeal wouldn't succeed because the trial court judge hadn't made any legal mistakes and because state law supported the PUD's argument that it could use eminent domain on state lands to complete its power lines project.
2) Goldmark was determined to appeal the case anyway, and after a state Supreme Court argument, won the right continue the case and file his appeal.
3) An outside law firm was hired to represent Goldmark and, after almost three years and much expense, a state appeals court has ruled in the case.

And what did they decide? The three-judge appeals court panel signed a unanimous decision against Goldmark, using a scant 20 pages to refute all of his legal claims. The tone of the decision makes clear that the court did not consider this a close case in any way. To pluck a few fun examples from the decision ("the State," here, being Goldmark):

1) "The State's argument is not persuasive." (p. 10)

2) "...the State's argument ignores Washington Supreme Court precedent." (p. 11)

3) Goldmark's legal argument "would create an absurd result." (p. 17)

4) "The State misinterprets several precedents in making this assertion." (p. 18)

It almost makes you think this appeal was a bad idea in the first place...kinda like Rob McKenna told Goldmark three years ago. But Peter Goldmark is happy to waste your taxpayer dollars on a useless appeal, so long as it pleases his political funders. That's a topic I'll cover soon.

Mine is a name you're going to see more frequently on Sound Politics going forward, so I'd like to take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Adam Faber, and last year I served as policy director of Rob McKenna's gubernatorial campaign. I have been active in the King County Republican Party for many years and have worked on and for various campaigns and causes in the past.

I am contributing to Sound Politics because I believe it's important for government's actions and decisions to receive proper scrutiny, and that regular citizens have a role in this. The Olympia press corps has shrunk significantly over the years, so there are a lot less "watchers" examining government performance and questioning its rationales. While that is unfortunate, it is not something we have to just accept. You and I can do something about it.

So you'll see more posts from me going forward, covering whatever topics catch my eye - from state government to health care reform, transportation planning to ballot initiatives. I hope it will be fun, and I hope to add a little sunlight, which we've all been told is the best disinfectant.