County Commissioners Endorsing Democrat Campaign Strategy!

Today, Tuesday June 7, 2005 at 9:00 AM Cowlitz County Commissioners: Jeff Rasmussen (R), George Raiter (D), and Kathleen Johnson (D) will approve a resolution allowing Auditor Kristina Swanson (D) to conduct all future elections by mail-in ballot only...

Now I must say that since 2001 I have voted entirely by mail. I have done this because I spend much of my time in Seattle, Olympia, or Washington, D.C. but maintain my residency in Longview.

However, I am against ALL mail-in voting because without ensuring that only legal United States citizens are able to register to vote, by way of requiring a valid photo identification and proof of citizenship, our state will continue to hold fraudulent elections.

I have sent a letter to the Commissioners outlining my position, but I doubt they will even read it. It may be a little late to do so, but I suggest others do as well.

Trial Outcome...

If Machiavelli was alive today, he may have written these words regarding the attitude taken by Gov. Gregoire following the courts decision in the gubenatorial election challenge:

Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared. Niccolo Machiavelli

I feel the 2004 election, and the fallout thereof, has angered and offended the people of Washington. This offense should be directed towards the legislative and local races in 2006. I say local races because the Republican party has utterly failed at developing a "farm team" for the future leadership in Washington state. The Democrats are great at looking ten years into the future, as far as who they want to hold which offices. We must improve at this. When you consider a candidate for local office, the first question should be in reference to their qualifications and platform. Your second question should be a consideration of this persons electability to higher office, ie. County Offices, State House/Senate, or any statewide office. What we have been doing for the last 20 years has not worked. Period. I am not content to imagine that my state is going to forever be a Democrat stronghold. I will not accept the status quo regarding education, business, government accountability, civil defense, and all values, being set by the Democrats. Let's work to find good (electable) people to represent us in our city council's, county offices and state legislature.

Cross posted on Lewis County Politics

Commissioners lay out thriftier meth battle plan

Week after week went by as I continued to write many letters to these bootlickers about their bright idea to improve the local economy by increasing government payrolls and subsequently increasing a local retail sales tax.

Finally, all that hard work is paying off as they begin to realize that if the 2/10 % sales tax increases gets placed on the November ballot, it better be for something more than employing a few more pedophile-like drug counselors, or they may face some difficulty getting it passed.


Longview Daily News
Sally Ousley
05/26/05

Cowlitz County commissioners Tuesday proposed their own plan to fight the county's meth epidemic, shearing about $640,000 from a proposal a committee had made to them two weeks ago.The commissioners plan also puts proportionately heavier emphasis on law enforcement and less on treatment, education and prevention than the earlier plan.Cuts were necessary, commissioners said, because the $2.9 million plan submitted by the County Meth Initiative Planning Committee would cost more than a proposed 0.2 percent sales tax would raise. The tax --- 2 cents on a $10 purchase -- would raise a projected $2.3 million annually if voters approve it in September.Commissioners are proposing a total of $2.26 million in meth programs."It's always been the intent that a final plan would come from the commissioners," Commissioner Jeff Rasmussen said Wednesday. "The plan from the committee had more expenditures than revenue. This is based on what I saw, read and heard and what the other commissioners heard and saw."Commissioners will share the plan with area city councils at a public meeting Tuesday. Because cities would share in the revenue the new tax would generate, city officials would have to agree to share their portion with the county to fund the entire meth plan."We want to send a clear message that the plan is truly a working plan and we will continue to take public response on it," Rasmussen said.The commissioners' plan would fund $1.07 million for drug enforcement and "court enhancements" to deal with added drug caseloads, such as establishing a family dependency court and hiring additional court clerks.By comparison, the committee plan proposed $1.23 million for increased law enforcement.Rasmussen said the commissioners propose combining the Cowlitz-Wahkiakum Narcotics Task Force and Cowlitz Meth Enforcement Team. It's the best response to dwindling state money and would add two officers to the combined force, he said.The commissioners' plan would put $480,000 into treatment programs, short of the $640,000 proposed by the committee.In addition, the commissioners propose $714,000 in prevention and education programs, down from $1.04 million proposed by the committee.One of two leaders of the meth committee, County Sheriff Bill Mahoney, was unavailable for comment Wednesday. The other, Ramona Leber of the Cowlitz Substance Abuse Coalition, said she wasn't prepared to comment on the commissioners' proposal "because I've just gotten it and haven't had time to really analyze it."Commissioner George Raiter said he's still tweaking the proposal on his own. For example, he'd like to fund a monitoring system to make sure the plan is working to reduce drugs and crime.Commissioner Kathleen Johnson said the commissioners' proposal is a starting point and that she wants to hear what city officials have to add."I think this will get the conversation going," she said."This is not a final plan," Rasmussen emphasized. "We still have 11 town meetings and we want response from the city councils on Tuesday."The commissioners' draft will be on the county Web site, www.co.cowlitz.wa.us, and copies also will be available at the commissioners' office, Cowlitz County Administration Building, 207 North Fourth Ave., Kelso. For more information, call (360) 577-3020.

Trouble brewing between county, Longview

Interestingly Cowlitz County Commissioner Jeff Rasmussen, President of the Board of Commissioners, Republican, and former Longview City Councilman, did not give a comment for the following article by the Snooze that illustrates the incompetence of our local government.

Longview Daily News
Tony Lystra
05/22/2005

Longview officials say Cowlitz County owes the city more than a half million dollars because of an error in a tax formula that went undetected for nearly two decades.The matter appears to have all the makings of a political explosion. County officials are skeptical. One has accused the city's representatives of "bullying." And some Longview officials are clearly squeamish, saying they are reluctant to discuss the issue."I don't want to get involved in this," Longview Mayor Mark McCrady said Thursday. "I don't want to go elected official to elected official. Those contests never work very well."The problem stems from a 2.14 percent "privilege tax" that Cowlitz PUD pays to the state on its gross revenues. After collecting the funds, the state channels roughly 40 percent of the money back to county governments, said Dave Andrew, a PUD spokesman.
The counties, in turn, give the cities within their jurisdictions a portion of the revenues. How much money each city gets is determined by a formula provided by the PUD.But since at least 1980, Cowlitz PUD has been using the wrong formula to calculate how much of the tax proceeds Longview will receive, Andrew and Longview officials said. As a result, they said, the county has been underpaying Longview for decades. "The city didn't get as much revenue as it was entitled to," Andrew said Friday.PUD officials caught their error in 2003, he said, and have since been providing state and county officials with the correct data.Longview City Manager Bob Gregory called the mix-up "an honest mistake.""No one was trying to do anything wrong," he said Friday.Still, Longview officials say the county owes the city $570,000, which would compensate for seven years of being shorted. City officials examined only seven years of records, Gregory said, because those were most easily accessible."We could certainly go back farther than that and come up with some more," he said.On Friday, County Commissioner Kathleen Johnson accused the city of "bullying" and "playing hardball.""I'm kind of disappointed," she said. "This kind of situation feels unfriendly."Johnson argued that the error was not the county government's fault. County officials, she said, only distribute to cities exactly what the state and PUD tell them to pay. "We're just a pass-through mechanism," she said.Now that the PUD's error has been corrected, Johnson said, Longview officials should ensure they collect the correct revenues in the future, not demand payment retroactively."Bullying another government entity probably isn't the best thing," she said.County Commissioner George Raiter noted that 40 percent of the county's residents live in Longview. He argued that, as the county has spent money on programs and services, Longview residents have benefited."Is there any value to ... scraping that money up and transferring it over?" he asked.The money would be a windfall for a city that has been struggling to balance its budget and stave off cuts. Asked if the city's financial woes play into the city's decision to pursue the money, Gregory said, "Certainly it does. ... It's revenue that was not due the county. It was money that the city should have gotten and didn't. We certainly have a need for those revenues."Still, he said, "Even if we weren't in those financial struggles, there is a principle. ... We should at least get that satisfied."Officials first noticed that something was amiss in 2003, Gregory said. After the PUD rectified its error, the city began receiving more of the tax revenues. As they investigated the discrepancy, he said, Longview officials discovered that the city had been underpaid.Gregory said that city officials drafted a letter late last year notifying the county of the problem. Gregory also discussed the issue with county commissioners shortly after he became city manager in April.Longview City Attorney Dave Spencer, meanwhile, said he has commissioned a group of Seattle tax lawyers to research the matter. But Spencer said the issue is "not really something I'm prepared to discuss yet.""I don't want to do something prematurely and inappropriately," he said.Indeed, Gregory said the city hired the attorneys to "make sure that we're on solid legal ground regarding our position.""We will ask for a written opinion, share that with the county and see what happens," he said.At best, county officials appear skeptical."They have never showed any evidence," Johnson said of the Longview officials. "They're reaching pretty good. They're trying."Raiter said that before the county pays the city anything, it wants to verify that the Longview officials' figures are accurate."We're not going to automatically write a check," he said. "But we'll do what's right at the end of the day. We don't know exactly what that is right now."The city's contention comes at a time when, like so many other local governments in Washington, Cowlitz County is struggling financially. County officials cut roughly a dozen jobs late last year as part of an effort to balance the county's $32 million budget.If the county had to hand over the money in one large sum, Raiter said it would be "under a real high risk of running into a cash-flow deficit."The county, he said, collects property tax revenues in April and October. As a result, the county must keep a percentage of its budget in reserve to pay its bills and employees, Raiter said. The money that Longview officials want from the county amounts to nearly a quarter of those reserves, he said.Seeming to address the Longview officials, Johnson said: "If that's the way you want to do business, you would hurt your citizens. They would have to lose services. ... Do you want to hurt your citizens by taking those dollars away from them? We don't have any more money to give them."Gregory said Longview officials, who are enduring similar problems, are sympathetic."We're not asking them to come up with $570,000 right now," Gregory said.Instead, he said, the city would consider accepting the money as a sort of credit for the services it pays the county to provide, such as housing inmates in the county jail and operating the local 911 dispatch center."If they want to pay us $570,000, that would be fine, too," Gregory continued. "But we want to work with them."