Seattle Post Intelligencer
The eight City Councilmembers who support the tunnel replacement for the Alaskan Way Viaduct will wait for a judge’s ruling Friday to see whether Seattle voters will get to weigh in on the project. “We have no idea what she’s going to do,” Council President Richard Conlin told seattlepi.com Tuesday, shortly after he cancelled a special meeting at which the Council was going to consider a tunnel resolution. Conlin said his colleagues decided the resolution wasn’t the best approach. However he said tunnel proponents still have options, including putting a competing measure on the ballot.
The Public Disclosure Commission will hear arguments from backers of Referendum 71 on Aug. 27 as to why donors to the effort to repeal Washington state’s gay partnership law should remain secret. Protect Marriage Washington last week asked the PDC to hold an emergency hearing because it said their had been violent threats against churches, property and supporters of the campaign. The group said such threats had been forwarded to the FBI.
A trade group representing plastic manufacturers has given $500,000 to the effort to defeat an Aug. 18 ballot measure that would impost a 20-cent tax on disposable plastic and paper grocery bags. The July 17 contribution from the American Chemistry Council to the Coalition to Stop the Seattle Bag Tax was reported in monthly disclosure reports released recently by the Seattle Ehtics and Elections Commission.
It’s looking more and more like people in Seattle will just say ‘no’ to the idea of a 20-cent fee on disposable plastic and paper grocery bags. A new KING5/Survey USA poll shows that the Aug. 18 ballot measure is opposed by 51 percent of the voters. Forty-two percent say they’ll vote yes. More troublesome for supporters of the bag fee is the fact that the survey shows that older people - who vote in bigger numbers in primaries - are really opposed the the bag tax. Fifty-seven percent of people 50 and older are opposed to the idea.
Washington state officials are ready to verify signatures for the only initiative that might appear on this fall’s ballot. Secretary of State Sam Reed says Initiative 1033 has turned in 315,444 signatures, not counting petitions that weren’t properly formatted.