NEWS ROUNDUP

Pay $9K to work | I-1631 signatures | Hannity’s desk

Wednesday, April 18, 2018

LOCAL

► From KUOW — Taxi drivers protest ultimatum at Sea-Tac Airport — Eastside for Hire, a Tukwila-based taxi business with a three-year exclusive contract for airport service, wants to eliminate 85 taxis from its 405-vehicle airport-taxi fleet — and make remaining drivers pay $9,000 to stay in the fleet.

ALSO at The Stand — Airport taxi drivers protest ‘pay-to-work’

► In today’s Seattle Times — Kids still living in shantytowns is the real shame of Seattle (by Danny Westneat) — The number of school-aged kids living on Seattle streets is surging, despite its supposedly being the easiest part of the homelessness problem to solve.

► In today’s Bellingham Herald — Bellingham shipyard files for bankruptcy — Puglia Engineering, a ship repair company with a major facility in Bellingham, has filed for bankruptcy reorganization that is not expected to impact day-to-day operations.

THIS WASHINGTON

► In the Snoqualmie Record — Activists begin collecting signatures for November carbon fee initiative — A kickoff meeting was held on April 9 in south Seattle by the Alliance for Jobs and Clean Energy in an effort to gather 260,000 signatures by July 6, which would place Initiative 1631 before voters in November… I-1631 is a fee instead of a tax that, while subtle, affects how revenue can be spent and restricts the state to using money generated only on carbon and pollution-related issues. Carbon reduction and clean air investments will receive 70 percent of the total revenue from the fee. Within that sum, a portion will go to workers and support for low-income households.

ALSO at The Stand — Volunteer to help collect signatures for Initiative 1631 — The Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO and a number of other unions are part of the Alliance for Jobs and Clean Energy, which is sponsoring the initiative.

► In today’s Spokesman-Review — State discloses how often it shared information with immigration authorities — The state Department of Licensing is offering a window into its information-sharing with immigration-enforcement agencies, saying it responded to federal requests on about 900 people in the months before a Seattle Times story revealed the practice. At that time, the licensing department was routinely handing over information on residents’ driver’s-license applications — including where they were born and whether they used foreign ID — just for the asking. A simple email was all it took.

► In today’s (Everett) Herald — Demonstrators: Stop giving immigrants’ info to ICE — Protesters chanted and paced in front of the Department of Licensing office Tuesday, criticizing the state agency for giving Washington residents’ information to immigration officers. Two dozen people demonstrated in front of the Everett licensing office and called for agency Director Pat Kohler’s resignation or removal and further efforts to protect privacy.

► In today’s Yakima H-R — Protesters in Union Gap call for state licensing director’s resignation over information shared with ICE

► From Crosscut — Seattle City Light provided customer information to ICE — On at least three separate occasions in 2017, Seattle City Light provided Immigration and Customs Enforcement detailed information on customers, including names, phone numbers, and Social Security numbers.

► In today’s News Tribune — Washington spends little to help the state’s 900,000 smokers quit – despite collecting $622M in tobacco revenue — Nearly 8,300 Washingtonians die from tobacco-related illness each year: more than car crashes, suicide, opioid overdoses and alcohol combined.

ELECTIONS

► In today’s Spokesman-Review — Money pouring into race between Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Lisa Brown — While McMorris Rodgers maintains a large lead in fundraising, Brown’s ability to raise a sizable campaign chest is another sign of what appears to be the closest race the district has seen in more than two decades.

ALSo at The Stand — WSLC endorses Lisa Brown for Congress

► From The Stranger — Brayden Olson withdraws from 8th CD race, slamming endorsement process — Kim Schrier pulled in early, large endorsements from EMILY’s List and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. She’s since picked up endorsements from Laborers’ International Union of North America, Washington and Northern Idaho District Council, a co-endorsement from Indivisible groups in the district.

► In today’s (Ellensburg) Daily Record — Rossi leads 8th District fundraising race

► In today’s Columbian — 3rd Congressional District race attracts big bucks

► From Politico — GOP fears rise over West Virginia Senate fiasco — First Roy Moore, now Don Blankenship. Washington Republicans are worried about another potential GOP Senate nominee, this time in West Virginia. Blankenship is the multimillionaire former Massey Energy CEO who served serving a year in prison for conspiring to violate mine safety violations. Twenty-nine miners died at his company’s Upper Big Branch mine in 2010.

THAT WASHINGTON

► From Politico — Gorsuch swings against Trump in deportation case — The ruling was the first in which Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch sided with the court’s liberal justices in a 5-4 decision, providing the swing vote for a result that could make it more difficult to deport immigrants who have committed violent crimes.

► From The Hill — Trump’s EPA quietly revamps rules for air pollution — The Trump administration has quietly reshaped enforcement of air pollution standards in recent months through a series of regulatory memos. The memos are fulfilling the top wishes of industry, which has long called for changes to how the Environmental Protection Agency oversees the nation’s factories, plants and other facilities. The EPA is now allowing certain facilities to be subject to less-stringent regulations and is letting companies use friendlier math in calculating their expected emissions.

► In the Seattle Times — The EPA has forgotten its one job: protecting the environment (editorial)

► In today’s NY Times — Scott Pruitt has become ridiculous (editorial) — Despite stiff competition, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt is by common consensus the worst of the ideologues and mediocrities President Trump chose to populate his cabinet. Policies aside — and they’re terrible, from an environmental perspective — Pruitt’s self-aggrandizing and borderline thuggish behavior has disgraced his office and demoralized his employees.

► From TPM — IRS gives taxpayers extra day to file after website issues — The agency’s website for making payments and gaining access to other key services was down due to what Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin later described as a “high-volume technical issue.”

► From Reuters — Trump contradicts himself over Comey firing — U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he did not fire James Comey “because of the phony Russia investigation,” contradicting his 2017 statement that he ousted the FBI director last year over the probe.

► In today’s Washington Post — Hannity’s rising role in Trump’s world: ‘He basically has a desk in the place’ — The phone calls between President Trump and Sean Hannity come early in the morning or late at night, after the Fox News host goes off the air. They discuss ideas for Hannity’s show, Trump’s frustration with the ongoing special counsel probe and even, at times, what the president should tweet, according to people familiar with the conversations. When he’s off the phone, Trump is known to cite Hannity when he talks with White House advisers.

► From The Onion — Hannity claims relationship with Cohen never went past payment for legal advice, defense strategy on criminal cases

NATIONAL

► In today’s Seattle Times — Southwest 737 accident kills passenger, raises engine concerns — A serious in-flight accident aboard a Southwest Airlines 737 killed a passenger Tuesday, a rare and traumatic event in the nation’s typically safe aviation system that raised concerns focused on the aircraft’s engine and the cowl surrounding the engine fan. It happened not on an old airplane but on a Boeing 737, the reliable mainstay of daily domestic flights around the country and the world.

► In today’s NY Times — Starbucks arrests, outrageous to some, are everyday life for others — The video of the police arresting two black men in a Starbucks, viewed more than 10 million times online, quickly prompted a full-blown crisis: accusations of racism, protests both in and around the cafe, and a corporate apology on “Good Morning America.” But to some black Philadelphia residents who venture into Rittenhouse Square, the neighborhood where it happened, the treatment depicted in the video was a frustrating reality of everyday life.

The Stand posts links to Washington state and national news of interest every weekday morning by 10 a.m.