… that you can find real gold in our State Capitol? 

(To be fair though, there’s so little of it that I used to tell tour groups there is more gold in my grandma’s teeth than in the capitol!)

In the State Reception room hang six red French velvet curtains with a gold State Seal in the center.  Each seal was hand stitched by a different woman back in the 1920’s, so each of the seals are unique.  The thread used to write “The Seal of the Great State of Washington 1889” is 14 karat gold.

What can you find in the State Archives? You may be surprised… Our Archives team was going through former Governor Albert Rosellini’s papers and spotted this:

Sunday is the 46th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas.  

Secretary of State Sam Reed has been honored by Governing magazine as one of the country’s best public officials.

Reed, a three-term statewide official who also spent more than 20 years as Thurston County’s Auditor, was lauded at a dinner in Washington, D.C., Thursday night for his even-handed role in the nation’s closest gubernatorial election in 2004 and for forcefully following up with an election reform package.  Reed and Maryland’s Gov. Martin O’Malley were the only two statewide elected officials on the panel of eight leaders who were tapped for the “public official of the year” honor.

In prepared comments, Reed said the 2004 experience and the praise that has followed are “a powerful reminder of how hungry people are for post-partisanship, leaving party politics at water’s edge when it comes to even-handed treatment of everyone, and adherence to fair play and the rule of law.  He added:

“One big lesson from that watershed moment was that people crave transparency and integrity in their government and in their leaders. They want a little humility and a lot of openness.”

Secretary of State Reed is ramping up efforts to persuade the national political parties to reform the country’s “dysfunctional” system of picking our White House nominees.

Reed and the National Association of Secretaries of State are hoping the parties will replace the current free-for-all system of increasingly early primaries with a more rational system of rotating regional primaries. Reed, a former NASS president and a senior member of its committee on primary reform,  made the case to a study committee of the Republican National Committee in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.

At the very least, Reed said, the American voters and the campaigns themselves would greatly appreciate it if the parties would agree to start the 2012 primaries later in the winter. continue reading

It’s true that the state and national economy are finally recovering, but consumers aren’t spending and unemployment keeps edging upward.  That odd situation, dubbed a “revenue-less recovery,” today led the state Economic and Revenue Forecast Council to slash another $760 million from the expected tax revenue for the next two-year period.

State budget Director Victor Moore says the grim development means the Legislature and Governor Gregoire now have a budget hole of $2.6 billion to fill, just months after fixing a $9 billion spending gap.  He and other Democrats on the forecast panel immediately raised the prospect of at least some tax hikes to accompany a new round of spending cuts.  Republicans warned against that, saying it would hit businesses and consumers when they’re already hurting. House Revenue Chairman Ross Hunter said any tax package should be adopted in Olympia, since routing it through the November ballot would delay the fix by nearly a year.

Moore said the budget gap is “numbing” in sheer scope, and added, “Everything is on the table (including taxes) — I just now need a bigger table.”  He said the $2.6 billion gap is $100 million worse than the governor’s office had expected. continue reading

Governor Gregoire and the Washington Legislature are cringing at the thought of a projected $2 billion budget gap this winter, and that number is expected to rise a bunch more in Thursday’s revenue forecast update.  This after closing a $9 billion gap in April.

Does misery love company? Then take note that our sister states of Oregon and California are facing dire straits. Today’s LA Times says the fresh deficit of $21 billion is looming for the not-so-Golden State, even after the budget nightmare of ‘09 was temporarily dealt with.  California is at the top of an “endangered” states list compiled by the Pew Center on the States. And according to former Oregon journo and J School professor Floyd McKay, Oregon is in a heap of trouble, too, particularly with a statewide vote skedded for January on a $733 million tax rollback. Oregon already cut $2 billion in spending and boosted taxes by $1 billion.

Oregon, too, is on the most endangered list.  Washington’s mess isn’t bad enough to make the cut, and the report gives the state top marks in managing its finances.

Media celeb Sarah Palin, busy promoting her new best-seller campaign recap/memoir, “Going Rogue,” reportedly will celebrate Thanksgiving with her family at “Aunt Katie’s house” in the Tri-Cities.

The Tri-City Herald reports that the former veep candidate and former Alaska governor is expected to break bread with Katie Johnson, Palin’s mother’s sister.  Palin, who went to college in Idaho and has a number of friends in Washington, including Dino Rossi, is the granddaughter of Hanford workers. Her mother, Sally, graduated from Columbia High, now Richland High, home of the Bombers, and her father, Chuck, went to Columbia Basin College.

Two questions Palin-watchers may wonder about: Will her nudie almost son-in-law Levi really be welcome, as Palin told Oprah this week?  And will Palin ever live down that video clip of her being interviewed while a turkey butchery was going on behind her?

Remember the holiday First Amendment mess at the state Capitol last year? The quirky, I’ll-do-you-one-better battle of the displays that made THIS Washington the laughingstock for once?

The story starts pretty simply: for 20 years, the Association of Washington Business puts up a gorgeous gi-normous lighted tree in the Rotunda and raised money for needy families.  In 2006, the governor lights a menorah.  Then comes a Nativity scene (no live animals, at least). Then the atheists put up a bah-on-Christmas, anti-religion placard. Then come the nuttier requests — How about a “Festivus” pole like on TV’s “Seinfeld”?  How about a sign from a fundamentalist that “Santa will take you to Hell”? (Presumably toasting those sweet little reindeer?) How about the creationists who wanted to depict a “Flying Spaghetti Monster” as master of the universe?  We are not making this up.

Anyway, the sensible folks over at the Department of  General Administration have announced  an ingenious solution that any mom or dad could have suggested: Hey, nobody gets a display of any kind. continue reading

Legislative Building staffers and visitors alike received a musical treat Tuesday when The Ugandan Orphans Choir performed during the noon hour in the Capitol Rotunda. The choir’s five girls and five boys are touring the Western U.S. to bring awareness of poverty stricken children across the world to America.

Prior to the concert, the choir met Secretary of State Sam Reed and our executive office staff and sang a song for us. Their smiles and voices brightened everyone’s day here.

The Ugandan Orphans Choir is part of the ministry of Childcare Worldwide, based in Bellingham.

The politically sensitive issue of how to re-draw Washington’s congressional and legislative boundaries will be turned over to an independent citizen commission after the 2010 Census — but work is already under way.  The Secretary of State’s redistricting office — a grand name for two staffers! — has just launched a terrific new website that spells it all out.

This political art-and-science, much beloved by government and election techno-geeks, is called “redistricting.”  Every 10 years, the Constitution requires that our districts be redrawn so they’re of basically equal population — nine U.S. House districts and 49 legislative districts. (This photo, provided by Howard E. McCurdy, shows Gov. Dan Evans and others reviewing a redistricting map in the 1960s.) 

Over the course of a decade, population shifts greatly in some parts of the state.  For instance, the 8th and 3rd congressional districts have surged in population and will be shedding some of their voters in the next round of redistricting.  Some of our legislative districts, such as in Southwest Washington’s 17th and 18th, and King County’s 5th and the 2nd in King, Pierce and Thurston, are way too big. continue reading