On Sunday, Democrats adjourned the session having accomplished much of what they set out to do, including passage of a number of sweeping bills that Gov. Jay Inslee, in a statement, called “historic” in nature.Read More
The Washington House has approved a bill to institute a seven percent tax on capital gains over $250,000 from the sale of such things as stocks and bonds. The 52 to 46 vote followed an hours-long debate that spanned two days. Read More
On Wednesday, the Seattle Times reported former Republican gubernatorial candidate Loren Culp filed paperwork to run against incumbent Rep. Dan Newhouse. Along with his fellow Washington Republican Jaime Herrera Beutler, Newhouse was among 10 House GOP members who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump in January. Read More
The two states are both led by strong Democratic majorities and face similar issues. Only one of them is successfully passing legislation.Read More
A new state capital gains tax. An expanded and fully funded tax credit for lower-income families. Fresh investments in disaster preparation and foundational public health. And significant new spending in early learning and child care. Those are among the elements of a proposed $59.2 billion, two-year budget Washington Senate Democrats unveiled on Thursday.Read More
When Rep. Dan Newhouse broke with his party to vote to impeach President Trump, critics started to question his Conservative credentials. The state GOP condemned the impeachment vote, and Republican Party chairs in Grant, Benton, Franklin, Yakima, Adams, and Douglas counties demanded his resignation.Read More
Washington’s 105-day legislative session has crossed the halfway point and a key deadline for policy (non-budget) bills to clear their chamber of origin has passed. Majority Democrats are moving swiftly to enact a pandemic-era agenda focused on issues like tax reform, police accountability, racial equity and global climate change. Minority Republicans, meanwhile, are Read More
Even as the state of Washington’s revenue picture improves, majority Democrats in the Legislature appear committed to a course that will, one way or another, involve raising taxes this year. Not necessarily to balance a recession-era budget, but instead to reform a tax code they view as regressive and to address gaps and inequities exposed by the global pandemic.Read More
As majority Democrats in the Washington Legislature lay the groundwork for tax increases to fund the next two-year budget, minority Republicans are jumping out ahead by releasing their own tax-averse budget blueprints.Read More
Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler thrust herself into the national spotlight on Friday when the Washington Republican came out with a stunning account of Donald Trump's actions on the day of the Capitol insurrection. In a statement put out on the eve of the vote in Trump's Senate impeachment trial, Herrera Beutler said that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told her that in a Read More
Groups representing women and sexual assault survivors are denouncing the appointment of former state Sen. Joe Fain to the state redistricting commission, a body that will shape Washington state politics for the next decade. Fain, 40, narrowly lost his reelection bid in November 2018, after being accused of raping a woman years earlier. The former Republican state senator Read More
Most of the Republican county leaders in U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse’s congressional district on Monday called for the lawmaker to resign for being one of 10 GOP members of the House to vote for the impeachment of former President Donald Trump. Newhouse said he will not resign.Read More
Observers say the votes to impeach from U.S. Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler and Dan Newhouse signal a ‘civil war’ playing out within the GOP nationwide.Read More
Amid the ongoing pandemic and threats by far-right protesters to "occupy" the Capitol, Washington lawmakers will convene Monday for what will ultimately be a mostly remote 2021 session with a focus on the ongoing response to COVID-19, police reform, addressing climate change and writing a two-year state budget.Read More
The COVID-19 pandemic is a recurring theme as Washington state lawmakers prepare to convene their 2021 legislative session. Some legislators are raring to get started and have already drafted and filed the proposals they plan to formally introduce once the opening gavel falls on January 11.Read More
Even in a county that generally supports Democrats for governor and president, Republican Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers won. In fact, she got more votes in Whitman County than Jay Inslee did for governor. Read More
Washington Republicans say the Legislature should immediately meet in special session to address the economic fallout from Gov. Jay Inslee’s latest Covid-19 orders – and even consider tapping the state’s “rainy day” fund.Read More
Predictions of a possible “Blue Wave” in Washington state did not materialize last week, despite President Trump’s unpopularity among the electorate. As of Monday, he had received just under 39 percent of the vote to President-elect Joe Biden’s 58 percent.Read More
After losing the governor’s race last week, Loren Culp announced that his police chief job had been eliminated — a move he said felt like a “knife in the back” by the city council in Republic. He’s not actually out of work — and the city of Republic didn’t exactly 'defund' its police department, as the Republican candidate claimed.Read More
In a year that seems all about the presidential election, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s happening down the ballot. In Washington, all nine statewide elected positions are up this year. But some of the fiercest action, and biggest spending, is happening in state legislative races.Read More
Back in May, Culp was one of three dozen candidates running for Washington governor. A first-time candidate, he lacked the statewide name recognition of Tim Eyman, the anti-tax initiative promoter who was also running. But the police chief of Republic, population 1,100, in the northeast corner of the state seemed to have something the other candidates didn’t: a fired-up Read More
Washington state leaders say the earliest they would hold a emergency session at this point would most likely be after the November election, if they convene at all. It’s quite possible legislators won’t meet again until January, when their regular 105-day session is scheduled to begin.Read More
Chris Armitage issued a statement Friday in which he said his mental health had declined during the last few months. “That trend continued until I reached a point where I knew that I could no longer be here for myself let alone our community.” He also said he recently learned about an allegation about a relationship he thought was consensual, but which the woman involved Read More
A lawsuit filed in 2017 claims that Loren Culp and two other law enforcement officers didn’t properly investigate the claims of a 17-year-old girl, who said she’d been molested by a relative since she was five.Read More
Saying that it’s time for the legislative branch to “intervene” in the state’s COVID-19 response, Republican leaders in the Washington Legislature on Thursday called for a special session of the Legislature to begin in June.Read More
As Washington Gov. Jay Inslee exerts his emergency powers to battle COVID-19, behind the scenes legislative leaders are exploring the idea of a special session of the Legislature, perhaps as early as next month. Read More
It’s long been known in eastern Washington that Matt Shea is not your typical politician. Now, he won’t be on the ballot for the upcoming August primary. The 4 p.m. candidate filing deadline on Friday came and went with no sign of Shea. Read More
In recent weeks, legislative Republicans have been fiercely critical of Inslee for not moving more aggressively to reopen the economy. They’ve criticized him on social media, joined protests at the Capitol and even filed a lawsuit challenging his emergency powers.Read More
The four Republican lawmakers who are suing are state Reps. Drew MacEwen, Andrew Barkis, Chris Corry and Brandon Vick. Four Washington residents are also part of the lawsuit.Read More
In an exclusive interview with public radio's Northwest News Network, an upbeat Shea -- "I'm doing great" -- said he plans to fight any effort to expel him from the House chamber and called the allegations against him a "flat out lie." Read More
Buried in the report are a number of details and revelations that give readers an inside look at how Rep. Matt Shea reportedly operates behind the scenes. It’s a world of code names, encrypted communications and military-style directives.Read More
Newly leaked emails show that conservative state Rep. Matt Shea has had close ties with a group that trained children and young men for religious combat in Washington state. The Spokesman-Review newspaper reported that the emails were first revealed in The Guardian on Wednesday, while Shea's ties with Team Rugged also showed up in a video on Shea's public Facebook page.Read More
Washington lawmakers just wrapped up an action-packed, 105-day session with passage of the first state budget to exceed $50 billion and a bundle of tax hikes to fund it.Read More
Washington lawmakers adjourned at midnight Sunday after majority Democrats approved an initiative to restore affirmative action and passed a $52.4 billion, two-year state operating budget. The budget relies on an array of tax increases, including on businesses and real estate transactions, but doesn't impose a new capital gains tax as had been proposed. Read More
Washington Senate Democrats on Friday proposed a capital gains tax that would fund a suite of tax reductions for low-income families, small businesses and senior citizen homeowners. The tax proposal was rolled out in conjunction with the Senate Democrats' unveiling of a $52 billion two-year state spending plan, which followed a House Democratic budget presentation earlier Read More
Washington House Democrats on Monday unveiled a proposed $1.4 billion tax package, including a new capital gains tax, to fund a two-year budget with ongoing commitments to public schools, boosted spending for people with mental illness and increased reimbursement rates for a wide-range of social service providers.Read More
