1. Excellent announcement: Seattle’s top eco-urbanist blog, Dan Bertolet’s Hugeasscity, is becoming part of PubliCola.
Bertolet, who works at downtown Seattle urban planning and architecture firm GGLO, has been blogging through his “hugeasscity lens” (a reclamation of Seattle’s “World Class City” obsession?) since 2007, and will now be posting his reports about planning, transportation, the built environment, and climate change right here at PubliCola—as we go huge.
Please welcome Dan Bertolet and watch for his first huge-ass post later today.
2. Here are the names we’re hearing of people who are going to try and get West Seattle-area State Rep. Sharon Nelson’s (D-34) seat when and if she moves to the Senate when and if West Seattle-area State Sen. Joe McDermott (D-34) moves to the King County Council: Joe Fitzgibbon, Rep. Nelson’s legislative assistant; Josh Johnston, the Washington Bus mastermind who worked for King County Council Member Julia Patterson; Tim Nuse, current chair of the 34th; and Sabra Schneider, a computer guru who works for King County Executive Dow Constantine.
2. Seattle-area unemployment rose from 8.4 percent in November to 9.2 percent now. The Seattle Times has all the bad numbers:
“Last year was the worst in recent history for job losses in Washington, the state Employment Security Department confirmed Wednesday: 106,200 jobs, or 3.6 percent of payroll employment here, were eliminated in 2009.
Those figures blow past the recession at the start of the 2000s and the double-dip recession of 1981-82. The last comparable downturn was the “Boeing bust” of 1970, when the state lost 5.3 percent of its payroll jobs, or 58,900 positions in that era’s much smaller economy.”
3. Erica will be a judge at NARAL Pro-Choice Washington’s Chocolate for Choice fundraiser at Safeco Field’s First Base Terrace Club tonight at 7. The event marks the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
Morning Fizz is sponsored by Is That Jazz? 2010, Seattle’s avant-jazz music festival.
