So, who is actually reading these emails?
Sent to both Dino Rossi’s email form and that of the governor. See what happens now.
UPDATE: Rossi’s thanks me for sending my emails as says he looks forward to reading them. Lame.
Category: Washington Politics (Page 20 of 27)
I mean, an email form isn’t all that revolutionary. From Dino’s speech yesterday:
Starting today, if you and your neighbors see things that need to change… “tellDino.com”
And I plan to keep this website in place when I’m governor.
If you’re frustrated by poor customer service in state government – tellDino.com
Imagine how much better you would be treated by state agencies when everyone knows that you will have a direct line to the governor… and also share your ideas on how to make things better.
And you won’t have to register your e-mail address with me. So if state workers want to share their ideas, it can be anonymous.
Today, I know many hard-working state workers feel like they can’t be candid and open with their thoughts.
Now you can… tellDino.com
Imagine what a change just that little reform will bring.
The actual governor already has an email form that anyone can fill out.
Email forms for politicians or other powerful people types aren’t exactly new, and Dino’s framing of his as something special is troubling. He seems to want to have us think that he really is listening to us, but he isn’t doing anything new to actually do that.
Rich Roesler over at Eye on Olympia notices the same weird language over at Tell Your Uncle Dino. From what he’s saying on his new campaign website, it really does seem like Dino Rossi is thinking that the state government would come after any state employee that was associated (even in a small way) with his campaign.
Here’s more information on the actual Whistleblower Program, which is run by the State Auditor’s Office:
The law requires that whistleblower identities be kept confidential. It makes retaliation unlawful and provides remedies for retaliation. Reports of asserted retaliation are filed with the Washington State Human Rights Commission. The Commission will investigate the claim and take appropriate action. Civil penalties for retaliation may include a fine of up to $3,000 and suspension for 30 days without pay. At a minimum, a letter of reprimand is placed in the retaliator’s personnel file.
Does Dino think the auditor is doing a bad job?
For me, the most interesting part of Rossi’s one hour old campaign is his try at transferring the fun loving nature of his Idea Bank to his new campaign.
Guess what everyone, you can email Dino Rossi. About anything! Anything that’s on your mind, even if you’re a state employee, just type in your concern, hit submit and Dino might even read what you wrote.
Before I get on to the technical fun of this post, I have to point out that the Rossi campaign is implying that by asking Dino something in public, a state employee can face retribution. Are they serious?
I know there are many state employees and others out there who prefer this approach – and I respect their feelings.
This attempt at passing off an email form as some direct connection to the candidate is already lame, but it also looks like the form itself isn’t working. I’ve posted the entire code I pulled at 11:05 this morning below, but this is the interesting part:
<form id="form1" name="form1" method="post" action="">
From what I know about html code, if the “action” part is blank, the form doesn’t do anything. You’re literally sending your concerns to Dino into thin air. But, I could be wrong, so check out the code below and tell me if I’m wrong.
UPDATE: I hate probably not being right. My buddy with all the smarts just said the form “probably” works, as the form will just submit to itself (the homepage technically is telldino.com/index.asp).
Anyone else want to chime in on this one?
A follow up to earlier today, I was poking around trying to find out what the savings were when Thurston County went to vote by mail back in 2005. This is as close to a definitive answer that I could find:
There are obvious advantages to make the switch.
– Cost savings. Wyman estimates the county could save $400,000 in poll-site costs by going to an all-mail election.
So, if 100,000 people voted in Thurston County during each election, it would only cost $41,000 to pay for postage. This is of course assuming the county couldn’t get some kind of bulk mail rate, which is sort of obvious that they would.
Why are we even talking about this, why don’t they just do it?
When Keri and I voted on Sunday night, she wondered why we have to pay for stamps to vote. I repeated my fantasy “If I was running”: I’d mail stamps to likely voters before their ballots arrived.
What if we all just dropped our ballots in the mail without stamps. If we all lived in Thurston County (like I do), seems like they’d get delivered anyway and the county would eventually pay for our postage.
While I’m not totally sure that paying for postage is a “poll tax” (actually going somewhere to vote probably costs something too), the political wisdom of asking people to put a stamp on a ballot is distasteful at least. So says Rep. Williams:
Democratic state Rep. Brendan Williams of Olympia agrees with DeMucha, saying the postage requirement is a poll tax. Williams, who has suggested using state money for postage, also said he thinks county auditors might cover postage using the savings from going to vote-by-mail in 36 of the state’s 39 counties.
A story in the Puyallup Herald from back in May points to the cost, especially since we’re not talking about just once a year in November:
The auditor’s office and school districts are looking at ways to make it a non-issue for voters.
“We’d like to pay return postage,” Cook said, explaining the postage would be part of the election costs.
However the expense may be too great to make it a reality, said Pat McCarthy, Pierce County auditor.
The Puyallup and Sumner School Districts paid $156,000 combined for election costs for the February bond measures.
District officials think the cost of providing postage would be out-weighed by the voter response.
People don’t want to go to the grocery store to buy a book of stamps or go to the post office for a single stamp just to send in a ballot, Cook said.
So what would the postage cost? Assuming we’re talking about full postage, if the 2006 election were held in Thurston County this year, we’re talking about around 85,000 voters. Let’s just say 100,000 for the sake of arguing that free postage would boost turn out. That’s $41,000, which doesn’t sound like very much.
Statewide, the cost would have been just about $864,000 (not assuming a boost in turnout).
Here’s an important note from WINtegrated Solutions’s blog (hat tip to Fuse):
- The PDC wants to “not interfere with the free flow of political information via the internet, particularly when the information is provided at no or little cost.”
- The PDC recognizes the “internet is unique and evolving and warrants a restrained regulatory approach at this time.”
- Where possible, “state regulation of Internet activity will follow the Federal Election Commission approach” (which does not regulate or require disclosure for uncompensated bloggers, and only requires disclosure on expenditures by people buying ads or paying consultants).
Read the entire post, its a good read.
A lot of the conversation the PDC had earlier this fall about internet regulation seemed to fall around work already done by the Federal Election Commission (movie here).
Curt, or someone trying to be Curt, says he was asked to run against Baird:
Hmm.
I never said I’d run against Baird, or even addressed the issue except to respond to a request to do so…and I said “no.”
But thanks for the post anyway. 🙂
That was a comment to this post.
I was embarrassed when I opened up my ballot tonight that I hadn’t heard of SJR 8212, which would open up a larger prison labor program in our state. Here are some links.
Legislative history
Pro and con argument’s in voters pamphlet
It is worth noting that the two Republican lawmakers who wrote the against arguments for the voters pamphlet are from the 4th LD, close by where a company took advantage of prison labor:
In December 1995, the Redmond, Washington company laid off 30 workers earning $7 an hour plus benefits and moved to the Airway Heights Corrections Center near Spokane. There, five free employees supervise some 40 prisoners who earn $6 an hour. Omega Pacific owner Bert Atwater told the Spokane Spokesman Review that he moved to prison because of the rent-free quarters where “the workers are delighted with the pay; [where there are] no workers who don’t come in because of rush hour traffic or sick children at home; [and where] workers…don’t take vacations. Where would these guys go on vacation anyway?” Atwater was also pleased that he doesn’t “have to deal with employee benefits or workers’ compensation.”
Sarahjane46th over at Washblog writes a defense of 8212, but included this quote that argues against it:
“Although we understand the value for incarcerated people to earn more than 42 cents or $1.10 / hour and we acknowledge the benefits of providing work experience for incarcerated people, we see the prison industries as one of the main cogs in the “Perpetual Prisoner Machine” as described in the book by the same name authored by Joel Dyer. The bottom line is that in the long run, this change support[s] the continuation of mass incarceration in this country.”
A few newspaper endorsements in favor of it:
Put inmates to work for their benefit — and ours
Two ballot measures flashy but necessary
The Olympian’s half-hearted endorsement (Inmate labor program needs oversight) makes a great case:
By supporting SJR 8212 voters are trusting that the Department of Corrections will enforce the law to ensure that there is no unfair advantage to companies operating inside prisons. The Supreme Court record showed that 37 of the 58 inmates working for MicroJet were murderers. While some will be released some day, many others will never be released from prison. That shoots a hole in Sen. Hargrove’s argument about rehabilitation.
Nonetheless, with proper oversight from Corrections and assigning appropriate inmates to the tasks, this program can work.
Which is why I’m probably voting against it. The constitution of the state makes it illegal to use prison labor because of its built-in pitfalls. Prisoners by their nature aren’t employees. They can’t quit being prisoners, and they can be treated as slave labor. It’s better to just not open up a loop hole for abuse.
But, I’m willing to listen to anyone who can argue otherwise.
The Puget Sound Partnership, a new state agency, will be located in Tacoma. The only part of the division of state government that will actually be located in Olympia is the headquarters:
…Governor Chris Gregoire today announced that the Puget Sound Partnership will open an office in the City of Tacoma’s Urban Waters marine research center on Thea Foss Waterway. The satellite office will operate in close proximity to Tacoma’s environmental services division labs and UW-Tacoma research labs.
Satellite? Won’t the Tacoma office include the agency’s executive director, and some 30 people?
Yes and yes.
But it appears officials are tip-toeing around a provision of the state constitution that requires the headquarters of state agencies to locate in the capitol. That usually means Olympia, but Tumwater and Lacey qualify, too.
Thus, the “headquarters” of the Puget Sound Partnership will likely remain in Olympia. But only on paper. In this case, the satellite will be larger than the mother ship.
Why the location yoga? Historylink:
Some state agencies began simply drifting away from Olympia; as early as 1899 the Board of Health moved to Seattle. After World War II ended in 1945, the trend of agencies leaving Olympia accelerated. By the mid-1950s, 13 agencies had moved their headquarters to Seattle. Once again the matter ended up in front of the Washington Supreme Court. On August 3, 1954, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that state agencies must headquarter in Olympia. “The decision, a new and stunning climax to the century-long fight by Olympians to be the center of state government, was written by Justice Charles T. Donsworth” (The Daily Olympian). In a 33-page decision, the court wrote: “We feel certain it was the intention of the framers of our state constitution and the people … that the whole of the executive department should be located in the seat of government” (The Daily Olympian).
The case was controversial enough to generate a written dissent. The four dissenting justices argued that the capital question was one for the Legislature, not the court, to decide.
Good legal rundown here.
30 jobs worth suing over? Well, no.
But, what would stop state agencies from leaving northern Thurston County all-together and just keep a one office “headquarters” intact in the state capital? How much of the PSP’s work do you think will actually get done in Olympia?
Emmett O'Connell
@emmettoconnell@olympiatime.com
1,761 posts
21 followers