Garage sale may have political deals

The Richmond Beach garage sale is usually a quiet community event, but this year it has two political camps fighting for the future of Shoreline.

Beth O’Neil, a long-time garage-sale maven turned political activist, is using her garage sale to raise money for the open-meetings lawsuit against Shoreline Mayor Bob Ransom, Deputy Mayor Maggie Fimia, Councilwoman Janet Way and former Councilman John Chang.

Near O’Neill’s Richmond Beach home, 32nd Legislative District Democratic Chairwoman Lila Smith has invited other party activists to an event at the house she owns. It’s the one that has brought protests from neighbors over an apartment above the garage that they say hurts the neighborhood.

While O’Neill admits that her purpose is to raise money for the open-meetings suit, Smith, who has endorsed Fimia for re-election, claims no political purpose to her sale.

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.