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520 Working Group Meeting 9/22/09
Today I’m attending a meeting of the 520 Legislative Workgroup, trying to work out an agreed upon design for west end of the 520 bridge and a financing plan. You can look at the official documents at the website the state maintains for the project. I’ll provide some links to interesting ones in the middle…
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Fun things you get to do as a legislator
In August I attended a picnic put on by Alpha Supported Living for their residents. They held the picnic at Crossroads Community Park (a fabulous place behind Crossroads mall.) The main activity at this annual event is provided by a group called Outdoors for All. Their mission is to enrich the quality of life for…
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Economic and Revenue Forecast
(Originally posted 9/17/09) I serve on the Economic and Revenue Forecast Council for Washington, and today we had our quarterly “Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors” meeting. The state economist makes some projects and the economists in the room argue about it for a couple of hours. This is more fascinating than you might think, or…
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Information Services Board
I serve on the Information Services Board, (ISB) a group of high-level state and private sector people who review and approve the state’s investment in information technology. Specific projects that are high risk get a lot of attention from the group. It’s interesting to me, and one of the few things I do that’s directly…
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Interesting Presentation on California’s Education Funding Issues
California’s issues are in many ways similar to Washington’s. Doing a constitutional re-write to allow the locals to carry the costs of education would be interesting, and his solution would probably result in more funding across the board. I would have to play with some numbers (a lot) to see if met my fairness bar,…
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2009 Session Notes – Tax Policy
(I orginally posted this on a different blog in April 2009. I am consolidating into a single presence and am re-posting here. ) A number of key tax policy bills were passed this year. These are interesting to me because I chair the Finance committee and am responsible for making sure the system works. I…