Dear Neighbors, As a longtime Waitsburg-area resident I’m very familiar with the Touchet River and how it’s changed over the years due to strong spring flows that have taken out vegetation and ruined fish habitat. Fortunately, the updates made to the state’s capital budget this year included adding another $500,000...

June 26, 2026 Dear Neighbors, When Governor Ferguson’s office phoned early this month to ask if I could meet him in Kennewick on June 11, I said sure. His assistant didn’t volunteer why, but I figured the governor had a good enough reason, so we simply agreed on a time...

I’m grateful that my fellow legislators have repeatedly backed our 16th District delegation’s requests for millions of dollars in capital-budget funding to help transform the old Kennewick General Hospital into the Columbia Valley Center for Recovery. This project is one of the good things happening in our area; hopefully it...

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...