In the Media
While 10 new solar panels on a roof at Bremerton High School won't come close to powering the school, they've sparked the interest of dozens of students in a class focused on sustainable design and energy.
Teacher Emily Wise launched the class last year as a combination hands-on science and career education course created with the help of a grant.
Gov. Chris Gregoire just released a list of possible budget reductions. And education, especially higher education, is taking quite a hit.
Gregoire’s budget cut list includes about $4.2 billion in cuts for the rest of the 2011-13 biennium. However, about $2 billion of those cuts are what Gregoire plans to include in her 2012 supplemental budget request to the Legislature in November when the special session starts.
Facing another crippling budget deficit, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Thursday outlined $2 billion in reductions in state spending she says will cut painfully "through the muscle and into the bone" of public services.
Now, in the days leading up to next month's special legislative session, she'll consider ways of raising revenue to ease the pain without damaging the fragile economy. But she insisted she may not commit to any ideas, including putting a tax package on the ballot next year as desired by some Democratic lawmakers.
Having cut $10.5 billion in state spending over just the last three years, there was no doubt that lopping another $2 billion or so would be painful. Yet it was hard to avoid a sense of shock Thursday when Gov. Chris Gregoire outlined the stark choices legislators will face to align the budget with plummeting revenue.
Citing a looming budget shortfall, Gov. Chris Gregoire's office on Wednesday asked union-represented government workers to consider cutting their health-care benefits to save the state money.
The initial reaction from the largest state-employee union? Fat chance.
"We think she needs to look elsewhere," said Tim Welch, a spokesman for the Washington Federation of State Employees, which represents about 40,000 government workers who get state health-care benefits.
Occupy Bellingham protesters will march through downtown again Friday afternoon, Oct. 28, and say they plan to camp out at Maritime Heritage Park afterward.
Protesters will gather at 4 p.m. in front of the Federal Building at Magnolia Street and Cornwall Avenue before marching to the park on Holly Street.
Officials at Western Washington University are gravely concerned about deep cuts to education in Governor Chris Gregoire’s supplemental budget proposal.
The Governor has suggested cuts of 15 to 20 percent to higher education which would equate to about ten to 13 million dollars.
The Gateway Pacific Terminal project at Cherry Point could create more than 1,200 permanent jobs when indirect impacts are factored in, three local economists said Thursday, Oct. 27, at a Bellingham-Whatcom Chamber of Commerce and Industry breakfast presentation.
The economists - Hart Hodges and David Nelson of Western Washington University and Jed Brewer, a private consultant - said they were hired by SSA Marine to review an earlier jobs analysis provided for the company by Martin Associates of Pennsylvania.
For the fourth year in a row, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Thursday outlined more than $1.5 billion in state cuts to health care, social services, prisons and education.
The latest round would increase public-school class sizes, eliminate subsidized health care for the working poor and release hundreds of inmates early.
"These are pretty much the very shocking things we've been trying to avoid for the last three years," Senate Ways and Means Chairman Ed Murray, D-Seattle, said of the governor's proposal.
"There are no choices left," he added.
Karen Copetas, the admissions director at Western Washington University, has been removed from her job and placed on paid administrative leave after a finding by the school's Equal Opportunity Office that she retaliated against an employee for filing a discrimination complaint.
Copetas disputes the findings, and is fighting for her job.