Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
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The mood heading into Washington state's 2025 legislative session Jan. 13 was not exactly hopeful. According to the Cascade PBS/Elway poll, a majority of voters feel the state is headed in the wrong direction. Many Democrats and Republicans agree, with more than half of those surveyed saying things are getting worse with high taxes, budget shortfalls and the rising cost of living. Voters want their pocketbooks prioritized. The poll found 66% of respondents preferred cutting government spending...
“Just as a leaking faucet results in the loss of water for no gain to the homeowner, concurrent enrollment results in additional costs to taxpayers without a benefit to the people served by Medicaid,” writes Democrat Pat McCarthy, Washington state’s auditor. She wrote it in a summary statement for an October report about wasteful spending in Medicaid that hurts both state and federal taxpayers. In an October report, “Examining Washington’s Concurrent Medicaid Enrollments,” the auditor’s office found millions of dollars of waste each year — a...
A state audit published Nov. 14 found that more than 2,000 people who tapped a fund that benefits only some workers with up to 18 weeks off work with pay — while harming the paychecks of most other workers, including those with low incomes — violated state law by taking money from the state’s unemployment insurance program at the same time. They had their Paid Family Medical Leave and ate up UI benefits, too. The Employment Security Department, which administers both programs, did not have a sys...
Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler is considering a change to the state’s recently adopted premium change transparency rule. A press release from the Office of the Insurance Commissioner says, “The change would be specific to Phase 2 of the rule — the automatic inclusion of reasons for premium increases in policy renewals — and would move the timing of that action from June 2027 to June 2029.” Goodish? The rule applies to auto and home insurance policies. (Insurers of health, disability, life and long-term care are exempt from complianc...
At their Aug. 15 meeting, members of Washington state’s ongoing Universal Health Care Commission talked about recommending further expansion of, and money for, a Medicaid-like program for low-income adults who are undocumented immigrants. The program, called Apple Health Expansion, is shouldered by Washington state taxpayers alone, unlike Medicaid. Medicaid is funded by a federal-state partnership and is not available to people who entered the U.S. unauthorized or who were lawfully admitted but whose status expired or was revoked. Becky C...
When Sen. Karen Keiser, D-Des Moines, opened a recent work session for the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee, she said that the state’s law on long-term care was passed by the Legislature on a “bipartisan basis.” As Inigo Montoya said in “The Princess Bride,” “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” The law that created WA Cares, proposed in House Bill 1087, cannot be described as bipartisan legislation. By the time the bill made its way through the legislative process, it was passed on a party-line vo...
Who could have predicted this? A lot of us. The number of people tapping the taxpayer-provided Paid Family and Medical Leave fund is increasing every year. The paid-leave program, abbreviated PFML, was launched in 2020. It imposes a tax on employers and workers, whether or not the workers paying in ever use the program. The money collected is used to allow some workers taxpayer-paid time off of work if they have a serious health condition, need to care for people or want to bond with a new child...
