A second special session began June 12 - House and Senate leaders are meeting to find agreement on the 2013-15 operating budget.
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AGRICULTURE
BUDGET & TAXES
- Union Ad Campaign Offers Roaring Confirmation That End to Early Retirement is Sticking Point in Budget Talks (Washington State Wire)
- Senator sees savings in 1 big health insurance pool (The News Tribune)
- EDITORIAL: Consolidating public schools’ health coverage makes sense (The Daily News)
BUSINESS, INDUSTRY & ECONOMY
- Port of Seattle may build warehouse at Interbay site (Puget Sound Business Journal)
- Rising Chinese demand could mean coal export boom for West Coast (The Daily News)
- Boeing plans growth at South Carolina airport (Puget Sound Business Journal)
- Whatcom’s unemployment rate rises as more return to labor force (Bellingham Herald)
- BLOG: Thurston County’s jobless rate rises again (Rolf Boone/The Olympian)
- OPINION: No country for young (and undereducated, unemployable) men (Katie Baird, associate professor of economics at the University of Washington Tacoma/The News Tribune)
COURTS, CRIME & LAW ENFORCEMENT
- Pasco considers armed rangers for gang-infested parks (Everett Herald)
- Some justices seem open to saving parts of law (AP/Seattle Times)
EDUCATION (K-12) & SCHOOL SAFETY
- A dream deferred: Showdown nears over Seattle’s long-delayed World School (Crosscut)
- Oregon’s new education board approves achievement gauges for every level of schooling (Oregonian)
ENVIRONMENT & NATURAL RESOURCES
- Group wants moratorium on flood insurance (AP/The News Tribune)
- State officials track Columbia River sewage spills (AP/The Daily News)
- Gov. Gregoire gives Port Angeles in Rayonier cleanup effort (Peninsula Daily News)
- Planned takeover of Fort Worden State Park by Port Townsend authority scaled down (Peninsula Daily News)
FAMILY ISSUES
GAY RIGHTS
HEALTH CARE
- Washington headed for whooping cough record (The Daily News)
- Conservative justices question health care law; individual mandate appears in doubt (Oregonian)
- State knows well the many pitfalls of health care reform (Seattle Times/Yakima Herald-Republic)
- Washington’s ’93 health overhaul faltered with loss of mandates (Seattle Times)
- BLOG: McDermott, the Supremes and health care (Joel Connelly/Seattle P-I)
- BLOG: McKenna responds to protesters who want him to drop out of the health care lawsuit (Christina Salerno/TVW)
- COLUMN: Health-care freedom can be costly (Danny Westneat/Seattle Times)
HIGHER EDUCATION
- Faculty and students abhor community-college protest rules (Seattle Times)
- New scholarship aims to fan interest in high-tech careers (Seattle Times)
- First Lady Michelle Obama to deliver commencement speech at Oregon State (Oregonian)
HOUSING
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
- Pierce County to pay $850,000 to 3 Washam employees (The News Tribune)
- BLOG: Bellingham to pay traffic camera company $100k for option to end program (Jared Paben/Bellingham Herald)
MILITARY
LEGISLATURE
- Councilwoman seeks to unseat state Senate majority leader (Spokesman-Review)
- Stober drops out of state Senate race (The Columbian)
STATE
- Darcy Burner’s Twitter gripe: Obama is a Republican (Seattle Times)
- Trudi Inslee touts husband’s gay marriage view (The Columbian)
- Gregoire seeks sales tax deduction extension (Everett Herald)
- BLOG: Darcy Burner, in magazine, goes down home (Joel Connelly/Seattle P-I)
STATE GOVERNMENT
- Soap Lake name change troublesome (Columbia Basin Herald)
- BLOG: State may rename Soap Lake, several other geographic features (Christina Salerno/TVW)
TRANSPORTATION