There was a line snaking through the hall outside the City Council chambers today as homeless advocates and downtown business leaders signed up to offer comment on Tim Burgess’ anti-aggressive panhandling proposal.
The marathon public comment session went for over two hours, as homeless advocates and downtown business leaders brought up familiar points—that the proposal Read more…

Yes, there was an election yesterday. It was for a seat on the five-member King Conservation District which oversees land use in rural King  County.

The candidate favored by lefty greens at the Sierra Club and King County Conservation Voters, Max Prinsen, won. By 282 votes.

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Re: Unionizing Seattle City Light.

It might be a good idea.  Check out this story from  San Fracisco:

Emotions ranged from disbelief to despair to downright anger Friday as 15,000 San Francisco city workers received pink slips. But Mayor Gavin Newsom reiterated that his controversial plan to rehire them under shortened workweeks would wind up saving thousands of jobs.

Newsom ordered the layoff notices be sent to most of the city’s 26,000 workers and said the overwhelming majority of them will be hired back within two weeks to work 37.5 hours a week instead of their current 40 – meaning they’ll see a 6.25 percent cut to their paychecks.

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Apparently turnout is heavy in the low-profile but important King Conservation District vote. According to a Cola reader who just stopped by the downtown library to vote—they’re temporarily out of ballots.

State Rep. Hans Dunshee’s (D-44) bill to float $861 million in bonds is taking center stage in this week’s special session.

Earlier this afternoon, the House passed Dunshee’s “Jobs Act of 2010” by a vote of 54-39—the first bill the House passed during this special session. It had also been the first bill passed by the House during regular session,  but it remained in limbo in the Senate for the next two months.

The House passed it again today more confident that it will have traction because jobs is the governor’s mantra during the special session.

“I think a lot of people looked at the [regular] session and said: ‘Oh, we haven’t done anything about jobs,’” said Rep. Dunshee. ““We got our heads a little deep in the budget disseminations, and now we’ve got to do something about jobs.”

Rep. Hans Dunshee in Olympia after today’s vote, Photo Camden Swita

Dunshee believes his bill could create up to 38,000 jobs throughout the state by retrofitting public facilities to make them more energy efficient, thus saving an estimated $190 million in energy costs to taxpayers. $861 million in general obligation bonds would be sold to jumpstart the projects, which would be carried out by private businesses.

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Warning: This article is 2000 words long. Are online articles allowed to be that long?

Josh Cohen and Camden Swita contributed to this report.

With the special session to resolve the budget standoff under way in Olympia this week (Nay Sales Tax vs. Yea Sales Tax), some of the non-budget policy stuff the legislature worked on during the regular session is getting ignored.

PubliCola’s Oly team (me, Josh Cohen, Teodora Popescu, and our new newsie Camden Swita) tried to keep up with the maelstrom of policy bills all session. Here’s a wrap up on some of  the bills we followed as the official session came to a close last week.

First up—civil liberties issues.

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Tim Burgess’ aggressive panhandling law, up in council committee this Wednesday, has taken a beating from civil liberties activists and advocates for the homeless, who say it will unfairly target low-income people and violate the Constitution. The proposal, among other restrictions, prohibits panhandlers from following people down the street, using abusive language, panhandling from people using ATMs, and otherwise heckling people who refuse to give them money.

The latest debate, raised by Real Change director Tim Harris, centers on a supposed “15-foot bubble” that Harris says protects people using ATMS and parking meters  from panhandling even after they’ve left the meter. Harris wrote a scathing editorial last week accusing Burgess of “lying” by claiming his legislation would only apply to people during or immediately after they use an ATM or a parking pay station.

“[S]ay someone uses the Bank of America ATM at Westlake Center, exits right and walks, cash in hand, past the street kids that hang out near the sculpture on the way to the Starbucks across the street.. A kid asks for money.  Does s/he get a ticket?  Probably depends.  That’s a bad law,” Harris wrote. Read more…

The city of Seattle’s HR Department just sent out a memo seeking applications for a new director of the city’s Human Services Department. Alan Painter, the former HSD director, was the first department director to be fired by then-mayor elect Mike McGinn, back in December.

That answers the question of whether McGinn plans to keep the Human Services Department. The search for a new HSD director also makes it less likely that McGinn will ditch City Light director Jorge Carrasco, whose reconfirmation is scheduled for 2012. McGinn has been silent on whether he plans to keep Carrasco. Read more…

We’ve been pretty focused on the education reform bill this session, so we should certainly mention that it passed both the House and Senate last night and is now on its way to the governor’s desk.

There was a lot of noise about the bill, both because education reform—or upgrading the quality of teachers, really—has turned into a cover story issue this year (e.g., the latest New York Times Magazine and Newsweek). The bill has also been getting attention because there was a skirmish between reformers and the teachers union over a few amendments that would have mandated stricter teacher evaluations—and better positioned Washington state for President Obama’s Race to the Top money. Read more…

As we reported in Fizz this morning, more than 140 city City Light strategic advisors and managers have filed an intent to unionize with the state’s Public Employees Relation Commission (PERC) in response to Mayor Mike McGinn’s proposal to cut 200 strategic advisor and “senior-level” positions.

More than 70 percent of employees in four job classifications have signed on to the union petition, which went to PERC late last month. (The city will provide the names of the people who are in the organizing unit to PERC on Monday).

David Bracilano, director of the city’s labor relations division, says that once PERC confirms that 70 percent of employees in a bargaining unit have signed union cards, the agency will certify their union without an election. Read more…