My version of a stimulus plan

Published 1:07 pm Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Federal, state and local officials are looking for “shovel ready” projects on which to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to employ displaced workers building needed roads, bridges, power facilities and other projects.

“Shovel ready” means workers can start right away on projects already designed.

These are the kinds of projects that put thousands of people to work during the 1930s. During those Depression years, workers hired with federal money built the Golden Gate Bridge and other major highways and buildings.

I have a stimulus plan that doesn’t involve shovels.

Give some of the stimulus money to colleges and universities to hire temporary and part-time faculty members. This would restore needed instructors to teach the thousands of students being turned away as our universities and community colleges are hit by budget cuts at while they get record numbers of applicants.

We have lots of people qualified to teach the classes that prospective students want.

This plan would both provide income for these instructors and help build an educated citizenry.

Spending money on infrastructure will provide jobs for construction workers and give us the next great roads and bridges. Spending it on education will provide jobs for instructors and give us the next generation of engineers to design roads and bridges.

Domestic partnership bill makes sense

The bill in the Legislature to enhance Washington’s domestic-partnership law is a logical move.

Two years ago, the Legislature passed the law allowing gay and lesbian couples and certain senior heterosexual couples to register as domestic partners, something almost 5,000 couples have done.

The bill gave legal recognition to same-sex relationships, meaning their children grow up in legally recognized monogamous relationships. It also gave same-sex couples a list of rights, including hospital-visitation and inheritance.

Last year, the Legislature enhanced the law to give same-sex couples rights that had been left out of the first law, including probate and guardianship rights.

So, this year, legislators hope to complete the process with a bill that simply would provide same-sex couples all the rights and responsibilities that married couples have.

It strikes me as a good compromise between denying these couples protections that their families need and calling their relationship “marriage.”

My guess is that most people are willing to recognize domestic partnerships and give those partners all the rights of husbands and wives, but they are not ready to give those partners the term “marriage.”

We hear many gay activists say that they want nothing short of full marriage rights, but that isn’t a universal opinion among gays and lesbians. One gay man who spoke out three years ago against the State’s ban on gay marriage told me he wanted the full legal rights of marriage but wasn’t “married to the word ‘marriage.’” When I attended a commitment ceremony, the two lesbian women insisted on using the term “life partnership” instead of “marriage.”

Evan Smith is the Enterprise Forum editor. Send comments to entopinion@heraldnet.com.