Category: Thurston County (Page 6 of 16)

Sue Gunn reconnected the ends of the Cascadian political spectrum

November 7, 2013 / Emmett O'Connell / 2 Comments

I’ve been toying with this idea of there being a special sort of political spectrum in Cascadia. It would be along the lines the circle political spectrums you see from time to time, where the conservative and liberal wings join at the top and bottom, implying there are two political centers.

Flat spectrum:

Circle spectrum:

I’ll try to explain this later, but the moderate middle right join would include elements of suburban, government and business friendly themes. Everyone works together to make a happy life.

And, where the ends meet at the bottom, the more extremes of the standard left to right spectrum would join together with elements of traditional Cascadian anti-corporate, anti-oppressive government themes. Anti-corporatism on the left and the right is actually a long held position in Cascadia. It was one of the original fights in founding Oregon.

So, while its fun to sketch out little theories like that, its even better to find real world examples. Right now, Sue Gunn is leading Jeff Davis in a tight Olympia port commission race here in Thurston County. Even though its the Olympia port, the elections is held county wide.

Over the course of the race, some political observers have had a hard time putting their finger on Gunn’s position in the political world. If she was a liberal, why is she against a tax supported county-wide port? If she’s a conservative, why is she such an environmentalist?

From a letter to the Olympian:

This year, Red Sue is a hardheaded fiscal conservative, preoccupied
with lowering taxes and running the Port of Olympia at a profit — or so
she says in Works in Progress and on her campaign website.

But on an environmentalist website, she’s Green Sue, claiming
that she’ll refuse all timber and proppant contracts because they’re bad
for the environment — thus depriving the port of several of its most
lucrative sources of revenue. This would cost quite a few jobs and
increase our taxes, the very thing Red Sue deplores. But not to worry,
Green Sue proposes to close down the marine terminal entirely and turn
it into a park.

This certainly would be true if we were on a flat spectrum, but in a round one, Gunn could find a comfortable spot near the bottom, where the libertarian left and right join together.

Coincidentally for us, its also easy to find this mapped out in the early results. The most traditionally conservative (Republican) areas of Thurston County are in the south of the county. The most traditionally liberal (Democratic and left of Democratic) areas are in urban Olympia and the west side.

So, this map showing Gunn winning in both rural south county and urban Olympia illustrates here campaign bringing together these camps. This is not a traditional election map in Thurston County, by the way.

When you zoom in on Olympia, you really see the detail of her victory. You can see a band of Jeff Davis areas surrounding Gunn’s urban vote. But, in turn, surrounding those suburban neighborhoods, you see much more conservative rural areas.

In her apparent victory, Gunn was able to move the political center from the typical moderates the lean both left and right on a political spectrum, way to the other side of the circle. Her victory was based on liberals who didn’t like the direction of the port using public money to support private interests and conservatives who felt the same way.

Read more here: http://www.theolympian.com/2013/10/14/2775183/gunns-chameleon-ruse-is-hiding.html#storylink=cpy

The recent law change that gives you a beauty contest ballot and lets the candidates raise more money

August 1, 2013 / Emmett O'Connell / 0 Comments

If you live in Olympia, go take a look at your ballot. Looks pretty empty. There’s only one raced listed on this summer’s primary ballot in Olympia and that is for county auditor. The interesting part is that it really isn’t a primary election, in the traditional sense, since only two candidates appear on the ballot.

If not for a change in state law (embodied in HB 1195) that went into effect two months ago, the ballot sitting in your kitchen wouldn’t be there. The legislature only changed the law this last session that requires a primary in the case of an election to fill a local partisan office “of an unexpired term in an odd-numbered year if no more than two candidates have filed for the office.”

It makes perfect sense for there to be no primary if only two candidates are on the ballot, right? Well, not really, at least from the perspective of the legislature.

It is worth noting here that the election in this case, county auditor, is for the office that is responsible for executing the very law I’m writing about.

It is also worth noting that one candidate for county auditor (Republican Gary Alexander) serves in the legislature and on the committee in which this bill was originally considered. He voted against the bill to make this change when it was in committee, but voted for it when it was in the full house.

So anyway, why require a primary when it is essentially meaningless? Both candidates will be in the general election in November anyway, so why waste the money printing and counting ballots?

Because money.

The way state election financing rules are written, candidates can raise separate amounts for primary and general elections. If you want to give money to a candidate, you’re limited to $900 per election. But, primary and general elections are counted as sepereate, so in a typical race, you could give up to $1,8000.

This exchange from a committee meeting gives you a good idea of the context of this kind of law.

Rep. Manweller: Could they raise two checks or would they be limited to just one?

Legislative staff: Under the current system (no primary needed) they would be limited to half, one $900 check, or whatever that is.

Manweller: So they would only have one election.

Staff: That’s right. Under current law, under these circumstances. If the bill is changed, then they would have two elections.

So, essentially, the only reason for the change in the law that’s forcing Thurston County to print, mail and count extra meaningless ballots is so candidates can raise more money.

The paywall to public records in Thurston County (Part 2)

June 17, 2013 / Emmett O'Connell / 0 Comments

Read part one here. But, just in short court records are somewhat public in Washington State. Protected if not by written law, but by legal tradition. Also, they’re expensive in Thurston County. To the point that they might be providing more revenue to the Clerk’s office than they cost to provide.

So, here’s some additional additional thoughts about how to change and what to change:

1. Other portions of Thurston County provide public records in a similar fashion at no direct cost to the user. For example, the Board of County commissioners provides records going back through the early 20th century online for free.

2. Possibly provide non-certified court documents for free. Currently, there are two types of documents provided by the Clerk’s E-commerce system: certified (which are mailed) and non-certified (which can be downloaded. Certification is important to legal professionals, because it means the document is a true copy of the original. I suppose non-certified would be more important to folks like me, who are curious and would only read the documents as reference.

I also suspect that this wouldn’t cost much to implement. Because of the high barrier to access right now, most likely the bulk of the revenue from the E-commerce system comes from lawyers seeking certified copies.

3. If not on the open internet, make non-certified copies available through the library. Timberland Regional Library (of which I am currently a trustee, so full disclosure there) provides access to closed databases.

4. Apparently, the Clerk’s office has digitized documents going back to 1847. I cannot imagine the wealth of historic value locked up there. Currently though, you can only access documents back to 2000.

But, because the database in only usable on one browser (which is used by less than a third of internet users) and you can only search by case number, the historians use of this system is seriously limited.

5. There is hope.

The County Clerk is an elected position. And, the current clerk is retiring. Her former deputy (Linda Enlow, no website) and current deputy (Yvonne L. Pettus) are both running for the position.

It is possible that our access to public records of the local courts could become a campaign issue. And, modernizing our access and making the system more usable could be possible under a new clerk.

The paywall to public records in Thurston County (Part 1)

June 13, 2013 / Emmett O'Connell / 0 Comments

Should it cost almost $30 to save a digital version of a 16 page public document?

While court records aren’t specifically referenced in Washington State’s public record laws (and here), there is a fairly well understood common law provided access to court filings. So, in short, there’s a public access right that predates Washington’s PRA. But, since courts aren’t cited in the PRA, they can set down pretty strict rules about what we have access to.

Now, let’s backtrack a little bit. Back in 2009, the Thurston County Clerk (the county-wide elected administrator of the courts) started a project to make court records available online. Horribly named the “E-Commerce” system, it only works (sometimes) on one browser (Microsoft Explorer), has only limited search options and it prohibitively expensive for anyone not willing to plunk down hundreds of dollars to access public records.

When I made a search back in February for records about a case concerning the legalization of marijuana, one 16 page filing would have cost me almost $30 just to view. This seems absurd for a transaction with minimal costs.

And, let’s be blunt. Even if court records are exempt from the PRA, the courts are an essential part of our government. So, if “(t)he people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies that serve them,” this should include the courts.

But, this Thurston County isn’t at all unique in asking for inordinate sums for courts records. In fact, the federal court system (using a tool call PACER on the web since 2001) that has been similarly criticized for its cost to the user and arcane interface.

From Reason Magazine in 2012:

Not everyone, however, is so pleased with PACER, which is an Internet-based service that allows attorneys, litigants, and other interested parties to access docket sheets, judicial opinions, and other documents related to federal cases. “Its user interface sucks,” says Carl Malamud, an open government gadfly and founder of public.resource.org. “Browsers aren’t supported properly. There’s no API. There’s no batch access.”

But perhaps what galls Malamud and other PACER critics most is the system’s access fees. For the last several years, Malamud and various others, including Steve Schultze, associate director of Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy, have been insisting that the government is spending way too much to develop and maintain PACER given its limited functionality, while charging users way too much to access it.

The same Reason article points out what a cash cow PACER has become for the federal courts, bringing in millions of each year. Ironically, a significant portion of that is from Justice Department lawyers, making the PACER system a defacto tax payer supported system.

In a similar vein, Thurston County’s E-commerce system (despite the high costs to access) could apparently be paying for itself. From a 2013 budget document, the total cost of records keeping in the Clerk’s office is about $60,000. According from an answer emailed to me by the Clerk’s office, the total revenue from the E-commerce system has grown slowly from about $41,000 in 2010 (its first full year) to $48,000 in 2012 (the last full year).

Now, it occurs to me that the E-commerce system is just a small portion of the records keeping system at the Clerk’s office. This graph from another budget document would seem to back up the split between the E-commerce documents and other documents provided by the Clerk.

While the number of documents provided dropped off significantly in 2011, the number of E-commerce documents has stayed steady. Despite this, E-commerce documents only make up less than a third of the overall load. This would seem to indicate that the system providing less than a third of the load is paying for more than two-thirds of the budget.

I could be wrong, but that’s what it looks like to me.

Three geologic features in Thurston County that are more awesome than Mima Mounds

June 3, 2013 / Emmett O'Connell / 9 Comments

Mima Mounds? Over rated! They aren’t special!

Much of Thurston County’s landscape was shaped by glaciers, melting or otherwise. So, while the Mima Mounds may be cool, there are other totally awesome features that you should take notice of.

1. For example, did you even see before that southeast Olympia is basically full of small lakes that were created by massive chunks of broken off piece of glacier? Lakes, created by massive pieces of ice.

Some Kettles from Southeast Olympia (from Geodata):

Can you imagine the block of ice that created Ward Lake?

How Kettles form:

2. So, in addition to dropping massive pieces of ice making massive holes in the ground, melting glaciers also created rivers that don’t exist anymore. And, if you look closely, you can find out where these old river channels are. Probably the easiest to spot is Spurgeon Creek just south of Lacey.

You can see exactly what I’m talking about on Spurgeon Creek Road, just south of the intersection with Fox Ridge Lane. To the west, you can see the Spurgeon Creek valley. But modern Spurgeon Creek is much too small for its creek valley. After the last time glaciers retreated from here, they created a massive meltwater river that carved the valley, eventually meeting up with the glacier swollen Chehalis River.

This detail of this map show exactly how the water flowed in the ancient Spurgeon Creek.

The Washington Landscape Blog has a great explanation of how these glacier meltwater rivers were different than today’s:

One is the lower Chehalis occupies a valley that it did not carve. The Chehalis follows the former valley of a much larger river. During the maximum ice extent during the last glacial period melt water from the Puget lobe ice sheet drained to the ocean via what is now the Chehalis River. The river that carved that valley was a much bigger river than the Chehalis.

3. Lastly, there is at least one massive rock that was brought to Thurston County by a freaking massive sheet of ice. Glacial erratics are pretty awesome on their own, and there seems to be plenty in the Puget Sound area.

So, I don’t know if it’s just me, but I think it’s pretty cool that we have one here.

The massive rock brought here by a sheet of ice is pretty far out of town on 153rd Avenue off of Vail Road.

It’s a Massive Rock brought here by a Massive Sheet of Ice!


An old photo of the erratic from “	The Natural History of Puget Sound Country”	by Arthur R. Kruckeberg

One last shot of the erratic, from “Ground Water in the Yelm Area Thurston and Pierce Counties Washington,” USGS, 1955.

And, here, as an extra special bonus is a tour of the three geologic features that are more awesome that Mima Mounds.

The past and future are right now (Tacoma newspapers and Joint Base Lewis McCord)

May 5, 2013 / Emmett O'Connell / 0 Comments

A Swarner Communications arts and entertainment (and some news) publication folds back into the mothership, as noted by Mathias:

The Weekly Volcano, a alternative newspaper serving the Tacoma, WA and
the greater South Sound, including my little city Olympia, folded this
week.

…

With the growth of the JBLM military base, it’ll be interesting to watch how our area will change over the next few years.

1. It isn’t all that surprising that Swarner Communications (the owners of the Ranger and the Airlifter) folded the Volcano back further into their main publications. They made the decision in 2009 to take what was the stand-alone Volcano and revert it back into an insert of their main publications. When the Volcano launched in 2001 as an insert, it was actually the re-branded Tacoma City Paper.

2. And, to say Joint Base Lewis McCord will grow is to be saying something true in 2000. JBLM has grown, and its influence has obviously grown (past tense) in Thurston County.

Just for reference, here’s a map of the 33 minute driving distances from the JBLM main gate, which brings in much of north Thurston County.

Here’s also some old stuff where I point out at least our congressional political world will probably have a lot to do with JBLM politics. Our congressman’s tour of post sequester life focused unsurprisingly on the impacts of federal spending cuts on the military.

But, when it comes to actual numbers, I’m not actually sure if JBLM has made that much of an impact on Thurston County. Here’s my working spreadsheet and charts.

Sure, Thurston County is in the top five of above average counties in terms of percent of military population:

Island 8.13
Kitsap 5.5
Pierce 3.48
Thurston 2.04
Spokane 1.04
Wash. 1.03

And, the Old Navy at the Capital Mall has a large sign announcing special 10 percent off for active duty military families. I’d use those facts and anecdote to say that we are already a military community, at least in part. And, the growth of the military population has been largely consistent, with no real drops since for over two decades.

But, in terms of real number, the military population in Thurston County is so small compared to that of Piece (28,000 to only 5,000). So, maybe I wouldn’t be so brave as to say we’re really a military county, but you’d have to recognize that JBLM’s growth has been happening for a long time.

3. Extra bonus thought: yesterday I was driving through town (after I saw the Welcome Military Families sign at Old Navy) and was thinking of intersections between military folks and typical progressive Olympia folks. I could think of very few on the car ride. But here’s one from Berd (who probably represents one extreme of the equation).

Berd (A story from the Peace Vigil):

I went to look at the fire that had broken out in the area of West Bay Marina, and struck up a conversation with an Army Ranger veteran who had toured Iraq and Afghanistan.

He was initially quite aggravated and offended by the sign I was carrying, but once I explained in my own words what I thought the sign meant, he was in complete agreement.

Low turnout, voter confusion drove the Wolfe vs. Rogers election result

November 9, 2012 / Emmett O'Connell / 0 Comments

You can find the data here.

If you look at the basic results of the county commission race between Democrat Cathy Wolfe and Democrat Karen Rogers, you can see a huge difference in the vote totals compared to other county races. About 7,000 voters did not vote in this contest between candidates from the same party.

What I did was look at how Wolfe and Rogers did compared to a composite Democratic and Republican candidate in five groups of precincts. I made the composite from the results of the Thurston county level presidential and gubernatorial elections and the results of the other county commission race. I then ranked the precinct groups from most Republican to most Democratic.

Here are two lessons I toook from this race:

1. Republicans won’t vote for a Democrat, no matter how conservative they are. Rogers made some waves by getting endorsements from traditionally Republican allies and by taking some conservative stands, especially on land use. That didn’t garner her Republican votes though.

2. Democrats got confused. When the race moved into more liberal areas, Rogers well outperformed a composite Republican, indicating she was taking otherwise Democratic votes away from Wolfe.

Southern California taste for sale on Johnson Point

September 29, 2012 / Emmett O'Connell / 0 Comments

Holy freaking best kept secrets of Thurston County! Can you believe this even exists around here?

And, that at least according to the public information on the house, it was built in 1911? Well, not this house really. It probably looked a lot different back then.

The story of how this house came to be apparently begins in the early 1990s when California entertainment executive Charles Brack (who died in 2010) bought the house. Because Brack had some legal issues with his neighbors involving his bulkhead, we’re able to read a little bit about what changes the house underwent:

The Bracks purchased the property at the tip of Johnson Point, immediately adjacent to Grundy’s property, in 1991.

…

The Bracks extensively renovated and expanded the existing house on their property between 1993 and 1998.

Calvin Brack’s son-in-law, Keith Gibson, testified that the Bracks have invested approximately $8 million in remodeling the home and structures on their property.

The Bracks’ property included four separate tax parcels when they purchased it. Grundy asserts the Bracks raised the bulkhead to create dry land for building sites.

…

The Bracks contend it was necessary to raise the bulkhead in order to complete planned landscaping.

What I was most interested in was what the house looked like before the Californians got their crack at it. From the state Department of Ecology’s shoreline photography program, I was able to find these two shots (from 1992 and 1970):

Here’s a zoom of the 1992 image:

Significantly different than the post-Californian version.

And, in terms of the owners (the Bracks), they seem to be pretty interesting themselves. Charles Brack, until 2006, was involved in running KDOC, an independent television station in Orange County. He was listed as CEO of the station when it was sold.

What’s going on with a home rule charter in Thurston County right now

June 15, 2011 / Emmett O'Connell / 0 Comments

Last year, the Thurston County League of Women Voters updated their historic study on county-wide governance and made the case for a more responsive and financially stable county government through a home rule charter. The study is worth the read, by the way.

More recently, a group formed around the league started getting together to talk about the possibility of a home rule charter campaign. Here are the notes from their April meeting. While the notes indicate they were meeting again, no other meeting notes or notices are available.

The local Sustainability Roundtable seems to involved, making some moves in this direction as well. Here is a proposed position paper on local governance, which builds off the effort by the league.

Here is a version of the notes above from the April meeting, but with more references on the back end.

Here is where the roundtable will be putting their sustainable governance information.

So, it seems there is a new born effort between the League of Women Voters and the Sustainable Roundtable to create a home rule campaign. Nothing since the April meeting has happened, but I’m still poking around, seeing what I can find.

Thurston County home rule, STOP Thurston County and diluting political influence

June 15, 2011 / Emmett O'Connell / 0 Comments

One thing I’ve been wondering about STOP Thurston County, a local franchise of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, is why they’ve focused with such laser intensity on particular environmental rules. I’d assume that if these rules were up for a county wide vote, they’d pass.

I mean, across the entire county, Thurston County is pretty liberal. And, the reason isn’t necessarily that Thurston is liberal to the core. It literally matters how you carve up the county.

If Thurston County were to pass a home rule charter and create more elective districts, you could see how the balance of power in the county could change. Currently, all three seats on the Thurston County commission are held by Democrats. And they were elected by an average vote percentage of 56 percent.

Using Dave’s Redistricting Tool (which has a county level redistricting option based on 2010 census data) you can start coming up with options. Here is what a five seat county council might look like:

Five seat original .drf file

Here is the Democratic vote in the 2010 U.S. Senate election (Murray-Rossi):

Olympia 70 percent
West Thurston 52
North Lacey 54
South Lacey 54
Yelm/Tenino 49

So, the geographically small urban district is still largely Democratic, but every single other district is balanced. If Republicans did everything right, you could easily see a 4-1 advantage on a county council.

Here is what a seven district option looks like:

Seven seat original .drf file

Again, the Democratic percentage in 2010:

Northwest Thurston 65
Olympia 68
West Lacey 58
North Lacey 52
South Lacey 50
Yelm Tenino 48
Rochester 46

So, in this option, you have three strong Democratic districts and then four which are balanced, with an equal number of those leaning Democratic or Republican. So, in a “Republicans do everything right” scenario, you could have a 4-3 advantage on a county council. On the other hand, in a Democrats do everything right, you have a 6-1 or 7-0 advantage.

I made a couple of assumptions that could be played with with these maps:

I will admit to trying to game the map by a little by keeping Olympia as whole as possible, thereby not spreading Democratic influence across the northern districts. But, I was just trying to illustrate how home rule would spread influence. You can download the .drf files I linked to under the maps to change my assumptions.
I also assume that the way county leaders are elected would change from a in-district vote in the primary and a county-wide vote in the general to in-district all the way

Either way, both scenarios show how creating more representation on the county level (more than our three current commissioners), you dilute the Democratic influence across the county. If STOP Thurston (arguably the most vibrant county level conservative movement in a decade) worked on governance issues, they could change the rules to make it more likely they could change the rules.