BAINBRIDGE ISLAND – An activist group has sued the state in an effort to force people who live aboard boats to leave Eagle Harbor.
In the lawsuit filed in early April in Kitsap County Superior Court, Bainbridge Citizens United argued that live-aboards are violating a law that gave them a year to move while an open-water marina proposal was under consideration.
“We want the Department of Natural Resources to follow its own regulations,” spokesman Gary Tripp said. “They’re not.”
Jane Chavey, a spokeswoman for the state agency, said officials hoped to avoid using “a heavy hand” while a long-range plan to assure boater safety and water quality is under consideration.
The harbor currently has about 75 to 100 permanently moored vessels, including about 25 with live-aboards.
Associated Press
Olympia: Man gets six years for fatal crash
A man with three drunken-driving convictions has been sentenced to six years and three months in prison for a crash in which his girlfriend died east of Olympia.
Thurston County Superior Court Judge Chris Wickham ordered the maximum term under state guidelines Tuesday for Thomas Peters, 36, of Tacoma, who pleaded guilty earlier to vehicular homicide.
Investigators said Peters had a blood alcohol level more than twice the legal limit when he missed a curve on Highway 510 in his minivan and smashed into a tree. His passenger, Judith Quill, 22, his girlfriend of seven years and the mother of his two children, died in the crash.
Peters’ driver’s license had been suspended for the past four years.
Associated Press
Gregoire names her new spokeswoman
Gov. Christine Gregoire on Thursday chose a Seattle Times executive as her communications director and chief spokeswoman.
Kerry Coughlin, corporate communications manager for The Times for the past eight years, will join the governor’s inner staff on June 20. The appointment completes Gregoire’s senior staff and cabinet. Since the governor’s inauguration in January, the post has been filled on an acting basis by loaned communications executives from state agencies.
Associated Press
Former GOP leader ‘Gummie’ Johnson dies
C. Montgomery Johnson, a longtime political strategist and former Washington state GOP chairman, has died at 81.
Johnson, who was widely known as “Gummie,” helped elect a little-known state legislator, Daniel Evans, as governor in 1964. Later, as state party chairman, he ran the John Birch Society and other right-wing organizations out of the party with Evans’ blessing.
A longtime supporter of equal rights for women, he also advised the campaign that elected the state’s first woman governor, conservative Democrat Dixy Lee Ray, in 1976.
Friends and family remembered him as brash, opinionated, profane and progressive, and a lover of cigars and a good story.
Associated Press
Shelton: Three found shot to death in house
A man and two women were found shot to death in an apparent case of domestic violence at a house about a mile southeast of town, Mason County sheriff’s officers said.
The dead were believed to be a man, his estranged wife and her mother. A gun was found near the man’s body, and legal papers related to the couple’s divorce were on a countertop.
Associated Press
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
