"As you know, the rent is high... the wages are still low," said Hertz employee Abdirahmen Abudalli after yesterday's court ruling. HG

Airport Workers Will Get $15 an Hour: This is a big deal. The Washington State Supreme Court ruled yesterday that airport workers in SeaTac should be paid the $15-an-hour minimum wage voters there approved in 2013. The decision came after a lengthy legal battle in which Alaska Airlines and the Washington Restaurant Association argued that the Port of Seattle has exclusive control over the airport.

"This Is a Big Win for Workers." Those were the words of Abdirahmen Abudalli, a Somali refugee who works at Hertz and spoke at a press conference at the airport yesterday. Other workers described how stressful it's been to wait for a court to decide once and for all whether they should be covered by the new minimum wage. Roxan Seibel, a 30-year airport employee, said: "Finally it came to the point where the Supreme Court heard us and they didn't side with corporations. It's about time."

But Will Workers Get Back Pay? That's the question now. Dmitri Iglitzen, the lawyer who argued this case on behalf of the workers, said he believes workers are owed back pay dating back to January of 2014 and that their employers should expect to be sued if they don't pay those back wages.

The Seawall Replacement Won't Be Done Until 2017: This spring, it was expected to be done by mid-2016. "The new Alaskan Way Seawall will not be done on time nor on budget," KING 5 reports. "That's the word from the Seattle Department of Transportation, which, for months, had hailed the project as a shining example of how it can handle major projects. It was scheduled to be completed by 2016, on time and on budget, leaders said. But SDOT Director Scott Kubly admits the department underestimated the true cost and time needed to make the repair."

In Response, the Mayor Says He's Working on It: “Today I am initiating an outside review of the budget and operation of the seawall project so that we can get an expert opinion to validate our new cost estimates and advise the city on how to proceed," Mayor Ed Murray said in a statement. "We must do better moving forward. Additionally, we will defer the start of the next phase of the project—replacing the seawall from Pike Street to Virginia Street. We are doing this to both ensure proper completion of the current phase and to give us time to look for potential savings in the final phase. That means completion of the entire project will be delayed by a year."

Wildfires are burning across more than 400,000 acres in Washington.
Wildfires are burning across more than 400,000 acres in Washington. Andrew Orlemann/Shutterstock

The State Is "Understaffed and Underequipped" to Fight All These Wildfires: “We don’t have the full staffing that the commanders need to put the fire out as quickly as possible,” Peter Goldmark, Washington State lands commissioner, told KUOW.

For the First Time in History, Washington Is Accepting Volunteers to Fight Wildfires: "With firestorms raging through the eastern half of Washington," KOMO reports, "[the] state Department of Natural Resources is for the first time in state history setting up support centers for those who want to volunteer to join the firefight. Officials say they've been inundated with offers from volunteers to help the firefighting efforts."

Want to See a Map of All the Wildfires Burning in the State Right Now? There's one right here. "By Thursday, the Okanogan complex fires had exploded over bone-dry terrain in the North Cascades, tripling in size, consuming or threatening dozens of homes and outbuildings and displacing hundreds of people," the Seattle Times reports. "Incident commander Nathan Rabe fought back tears as he considered the loss of life and described the overwhelming intensity of the battle. 'We’re seeing fires and fire growth that I have not seen much of in 35 years of doing this,' he said."

Want to Know How You Can Help? That's right here.

Local Activist Wants the Seattle City Council to Acknowledge the Trauma of American Indian Boarding Schools: "Brett Lee Shelton, a staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund and a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, believes that Seattle could be the first city to recognize this legacy [of boarding schools]," Sydney reports. "'[To] the best of my knowledge this is indeed very likely the first time an American city would acknowledge the trauma stemming from the federal Indian boarding school era and support a federal policy to study and take responsibility for the consequences,' he wrote in an e-mail."

Those who attended Council Member Kshama Sawants housing town hall earlier this year were very into rent control. Housing experts surveyed by Zillow are not.
Those who attended Council Member Kshama Sawant's housing town hall earlier this year were very into rent control. Housing experts surveyed by Zillow are not. City of Seattle

Zillow Survey Shows Skepticism of Rent Control: The Seattle-based real-estate site "said it asked 107 economists and housing-industry professionals from across the country about rent control as part of its quarterly home-price expectations survey, conducted between July 27 and Aug. 7," the Seattle Times reports. Sixty-three percent of them "said rent-control ordinances create more problems than they solve and an additional 33 percent said such ordinances may be effective in a crisis but should be a last resort."

Seattle Police Department Admits It Mishandled ACLU's Black Lives Matter Records Request: The SPD delivered an incomplete batch of records to the ACLU, Ansel reports. Then, the SPD "missed its own deadline to furnish more records by last week, then pledged to deliver the records by September 9."

The Challenge to the Title of the Move Seattle Levy Has Been Withdrawn: Opponents of the levy argued it shouldn't be allowed to be called a "replacement" for the previous Bridging the Gap levy. They withdrew that when they realized they'd filed it too late.

Dan Feels Bad for Everyone Who Had Their Ashley Madison Data Leaked: Everyone except Josh Duggar.