www.houserepublicans.wa.gov
AGRICULTURE & WATER
Supporters to push for Yakima water plan funding again next year (Daily Record)
Doubling down: Washington wine production headed higher (Union-Bulletin)
Whatcom asks state to pay for pilot program to offset well water use (The Bellingham Herald)
Officials: No gypsy moth spraying planned in 2017 (AP/The Olympian)
BORDER STATES
Thinning project pitched to save pines in Oregon forest (Mail Tribune/The Everett Herald)
BUDGET & TAXES
COLUMN: Lifting some heavy tax hikes (Tracy Warner/The Wenatchee World)
EDITORIAL: Voices from across state must be heard on tax plan (Union-Bulletin)
EDITORIAL: Inslee budget is honest start to a long negotiation (The Olympian)
BUSINESS, LABOR & ECONOMY
Methanol company launching jobs skills program (The Daily News)
OPINION: Minimum wage increase will hit child care businesses hard (Lawrence Fournier/Yakima Herald)
COMMUNITY & FAMILY ISSUES
State program helps put teen parents on path to success (The Columbian)
East Bremerton child care center to fill unmet demand (Kitsap Sun)
CONGRESS & FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
EDITORIAL: Halt cash flow to ‘What’s Upstream’ (Daily Sun)
EDITORIAL: Don’t mess with Washington water and fish, California (The News Tribune)
COURTS, CRIME & LAW ENFORCEMENT
Wounded Mount Vernon officer remains critical but stable (The Seattle Times)
Washington police departments sending support to injured Mount Vernon officer (The Bellingham Herald)
Thurston County Sheriff Snaza to return to work in January (The Olympian)
Police from throughout the Northwest burn drugs, guns at Waste-to-Energy Plant (The Spokesman-Review)
At the mercy of the courts (Skagit Valley Herald)
Commissioners appoint replacement district court judge (Skagit Valley Herald)
Protester disputes story of troopers barricaded in restroom (The Olympian)
EDUCATION (K-12) & SCHOOL SAFETY
‘Push is coming to shove’ on school-funding plan, but task force needs more time (The Olympian)
EDITORIAL: Finally, an education plan to debate (The Spokesman-Review)
EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS & SERVICES
Agencies release ‘learning review’ after fatal Twisp fire (The Wenatchee World)
ENERGY & UTILITIES
Company behind $1 billion plant proposal plans hiring effort (AP/The News Tribune)
ENVIRONMENT & NATURAL RESOURCES
Beutler anti-invasive species initiative gets into president's act (The Daily World)
Salmon carcasses aid Tucannon River’s health (Union-Bulletin)
State grants fund vital salmon and steelhead habitat projects (The Olympian)
State drains Capitol Lake to help fight invasive mud snails (The Olympian)
EDITORIAL: Focus climate change efforts locally, beyond reach of Trump (The Everett Herald)
GUN RIGHTS
State’s gun database has a 2-year backlog of transactions (The Everett Herald)
OPINION: Keep NRA’s gun politics out of legislation that would protect victims of sexual assault (Mary Ellen Stone, executive director for the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center, and Dan Satterberg, King County prosecuting attorney/The Seattle Times)
HANFORD
Energy Department raises price tag to $16B for Hanford plant (AP/The Columbian)
Northwest's only nuclear plant shuts down unexpectedly (AP/The News Tribune)
HEALTH CARE
Medicare outpatients pay higher bills for some procedures (The Oregonian)
Albertsons, Safeway recalling some bakery products (The Bellingham Herald)
HIGHER EDUCATION
UW, WSU brace for speech by Breitbart editor banned from Twitter (The Seattle Times)
HOMELESSNESS
Centralia cleans out homeless encampments, removes 21 tons of trash (The Chronicle)
‘I can’t even walk past the park without crying,' says homeless man of friend's death due to hypothermia (The Chronicle)
From adults to a baby, Centralia shelter seeks to serve a growing homeless population (The Chronicle)
IMMIGRATION
COLUMN: Should Tacoma follow Olympia’s lead and declare itself a sanctuary city? (Matt Driscoll/The News Tribune)
EDITORIAL: There is a means to help Dreamers (The Wenatchee World)
LEGISLATURE
BLOG: Lawmakers offer plan to satisfy feds on driver’s license fight (Jim Camden/The Spokesman-Review)
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
City sets aside $550,000 to defend claims by former employees (The Spokesman-Review)
What does it mean to have an independent Thurston County Commission? (The Olympian)
MARIJUANA
Walla Walla County to consider ban on medical pot operations (Union-Bulletin)
MENTAL HEALTH
How failure of Pierce County’s ‘mental health tax’ impacts proposed psychiatric hospital (The News Tribune)
OPINION: A bipartisan plan to tackle broken mental-health system (U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor, and U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Camas/The Seattle Times)
COLUMN: Did ‘Pierce County’s Tim Eyman’ help kill the behavioral health tax? (Matt Driscoll/The News Tribune)
EDITORIAL: Pierce County Council stumbles in dark on mental health (The News Tribune)
POLITICS
ELECTIONS
EDITORIAL: Honor Nov. 8 results (The Columbian)
EDITORIAL: Gap found in campaign disclosure law (Tri-City Herald)
LOCAL
Electoral College wasn’t done deal in 1976. Will it be in 2016? (The Spokesman-Review)
Yakima vigil attendees make plea to Electoral College voters (Yakima Herald)
STATE
Puget Sound really is a political bubble, and it’s getting worse (Crosscut)
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers: I was never offered the Interior job (The Spokesman-Review)
COLUMN: Lewd, rude politicians? These young girls are working to fix that (Jerry Large/The Seattle Times)
COLUMN: Maybe Washington state needs its own electoral college (Sue Lani Madsen/The Spokesman-Review)
NATIONAL
Electoral College meets amid effort to deny Trump presidency (The Seattle Times)
GOP electors cite rural voice in Electoral College (AP/The Everett Herald)
SECURITY
It is time for Washington to make its ID real (Union-Bulletin)
STATE GOVERNMENT
$6,000 flight to BC? Outgoing Lands Commissioner defends use of air charters (NW News Network)
Expensive chartered flights a favorite for outgoing Lands Commissioner Goldmark (The Olympian)
TRANSPORTATION
Seattle tunnel delay costs now expected to be $149 million (AP/Seattle P-I)
Taxpayers, rejoice: Bertha’s progress cuts into cost overruns (The Seattle Times)
County continues to look into electric ferry (Skagit Valley Herald)
COLUMN: Can motorized wheelchairs use bike lanes? Legislators have some legal cleanup to do (Doug Dahl/The Bellingham Herald)
EDITORIAL: New taxation structure to fund state roads is needed (Union-Bulletin)
WOLVES
Two cattle dead, wolves under investigation (The Wenatchee World)
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Washington State House Republican Communications
461 John L. O'Brien Building
P.O. Box 40600
Olympia, WA 98504-0600
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