A chance to keep a valuable official

The news that Snohomish County Councilman Kirke Sievers may seek to run for County treasurer would give voters a chance to keep a valuable public servant.

Sievers was county treasurer in the last years before the county adopted its charter. He continued in the position under the charter from 1983 to 1995, when the charter’s term-limits provisions prevented him from running for a fourth consecutive term. Then, he won election to an Everett-area seat on the county council. Now, term limits prevent him from seeking a fourth term on the Council; so he’s thinking of seeking to return to the treasurer’s position.

Electing Sievers would give the county something it needs – institutional memory. He was highly respected during his 21 years as County treasurer. Before that, his father, Verne, had held the office for nearly 30 years.

A referendum on the state frog

Do we really need a state frog? If we don’t act by July 21, the Pacific chorus frog will become Washington’s official State amphibian.

It’s time to put a stop to this nonsense.

The frog bill passed the House 90-3 and the Senate 44-0.

Students at an Olympia elementary school wrote the bill, their local representatives introduced it, colleagues who might want help on other legislation approved it, and the governor, who didn’t want to make enemies over an issue of little substance, signed it.

So, it’s time for voters to act. We need to teach the kids another political lesson by collecting signatures for a referendum on the frog bill. You can learn how at the state elections web site (www.secstate.wa.gov/elections). Once you get a ballot title, you need to gather 112,440 signatures by July 21 – 90 days after the close of the legislative session.

This would not only put the law on the November ballot but it would suspend the law until the election.

We’ve just added the state frog, a state onion and a state ship to the state marine mammal, the state dance, the state tartan, the state grass and the state insect.

That ship has sailed

I wrote in April that the Legislature had given us a second state ship — the Lady Washington of Aberdeen.

Some records show that a container ship called the President Washington got that designation in 1983, but Darlene Fairley, chairwoman of the State Senate government operations committee, tells me that the naming of the President Washington was unofficial because the House floor resolution recognizing it never became law and that it lost whatever status it had when a Honolulu company bought it and changed its name.