WAITSBURG… As ordered by President Donald Trump in mid-June, efforts to revisit the plan for operating the four lower Snake River dams have now been halted. This week the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation withdrew their intent to prepare a supplemental environmental impact statement,...

Around 100 people gave up part of a recent Saturday afternoon to attend a post-session town hall with the delegations from the neighboring 8th Legislative District and our 16th Legislative District. Keep reading for more details! Dear Neighbor, In a guest column published during this year’s legislative session I speculated...

Dear Neighbor, This year’s regular legislative session will end no later than midnight this coming Sunday. Our state constitution says so, because the regular sessions in odd-numbered years are limited to 105 days — and Sunday is day 105. If the Legislature still has work to do, it can go...

Dear Neighbor, When legislators talk about the obstacles to increasing the supply of affordable housing in our state, the list always includes — at least for Republicans — the government regulations that make property development more complicated and costly than it needs to be. But there are forces outside government...

  Chief Rocky Eastman headed the delegation from Walla Walla Fire District #4 that came by this past week. If you expect to be anywhere near the state Capitol between now and the March 7 end of this year’s session, I hope you will contact my office and arrange to...

OLYMPIA… While raking in more than $1 billion from the carbon-pricing program that is behind Washington’s crushingly high fuel prices, the state Department of Ecology isn’t being fully open about who is buying and holding the carbon credits. A state senator says that has to change. The state’s Climate Commitment...

September 2023 Dear Neighbor, Greetings from here at the ranch! Legislators refer to the months between our annual sessions as “interim,” and if you look at when the 2023 session ended (late April) and when the 2024 session begins (early January), we’re not much past the halfway point of this...

OLYMPIA… Agricultural-policy leaders from the Senate Republican Caucus are weighing in on attempts to gaslight the public on why Washington’s gas prices remain highest in the nation. While Gov. Jay Inslee and other Democratic elected officials tried to lay blame on the oil and gas industry during a news conference...

At the edge of the Senate chamber with Sen. Nikki Torres of Pasco, foreground, and Sen. Lynda Wilson of Vancouver. Dear Neighbor, Greetings from Olympia! As if there weren’t enough important decisions left for legislators to make, with just eight days remaining in our time at the Capitol, there is...