Salary Action
The city council’s budget committee may recommend creating a new city title for “certain top executive positions”—”executive 5″—that includes an impressive raise to a range of $62.14 to $102.53 an hour. Extrapolated over a year of 40-hour weeks (and not counting bonuses, health care, and holiday pay) that works out to a range of $129,512 to $213,262 a year. That’s about an 18 percent increase over what the highest-paid city executives currently make: between $109,532.80 and $180,731 a year. The new higher pay scale is intended for department heads with “unique market positions” for which the city wants to make sure salaries remain “competitive”; reportedly, these include the chiefs of fire, police, City Light, and Seattle Public Utilities. ERICA C. BARNETT
NASCAR Action
Chris Van Dyk, the man who sent the Sonics fleeing to Renton after they tried to get $250 million to renovate KeyArena, organized a rally on the capitol steps in Olympia on Tuesday, February 20, to demonstrate opposition to another corporate sports subsidy: $350 million for a NASCAR speedway on the Olympic Peninsula in Kitsap County. The rally coincided with a day of hearings in the state house and senate on bills that would use the state sales-tax credit to pay for $145 million in bonds to help build the track. Joining Van Dyk, who founded the anti-Sonics Citizens for More Important Things, were leaders from the Service Employees International Union and Kitsap-area legislators Representative Patricia Lantz (D-26, Gig Harbor) and Senator Phil Rockefeller (D-23, Kitsap County). “I don’t feel like the financial risk should be shifted to the back of the state taxpayer,” Rockefeller says. He adds: “I worry about the environment as well. I don’t want to further degrade the Hood Canal watershed [where the track will be sited].” JOSH FEIT
Climate Inaction
In the wake of Governor Christine Gregoire’s environmental Strategic Framework for Action [“Talk About Hot Air,” Feb 7, by Josh Feit], the awesomeness that is the Sightline Institute has a breakdown of West Coast states’ climate policies—and, surprise, Washington State falls far behind.
• In Oregon, Governor Ted Kulongoski has pledged to establish the toughest renewable-energy requirements in the nation and offer tax credits of 50 percent to companies that install or improve renewable energy systems.
• In California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law mandating caps on global-warming emissions.
• And in British Columbia, they just adopted a law stating that “all new and existing electricity produced in BC will be required to have net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions by 2016.”
Meanwhile, in Washington, we’re doing a yearlong review of the state’s climate policy to see if maybe we might eventually want to take some action. ERICA C. BARNETT
