This morning Washington Senator Patty Murray showed up at the Wallingford Tutta Bella to talk business with a handful of small business owners. At the top of the agenda: how to get community banks to start lending them money again.
The business owners—including Joe Fugere of Tutta Bella, Hanna McElroy of Magus Books, and Dani Kone of Fuel Coffee—all told Murray about how much trouble they've been having getting the credit necessary to operate in a difficult economy. The senator listened sympathetically, talked about her proposal to transfer $30 billion in Wall Street bailout money over to community banks in order to un-stick local credit, and then, afterward, sat for a brief interview with The Stranger:
