Time for a Lake Forest Park public utility district

Published 12:44 pm Thursday, July 3, 2008

For decades, power customers in Lake Forest Park, east Shoreline and much of King County outside Seattle have bought their electricity from Puget Sound Energy or its predecessor, Puget Sound Power and Light.

This is the largest area in the state served by a private power company rather than a public entity.

Now that a foreign owned company has bought PSE, it may be time to organize a public utility district for the area.

With the sale, we’ll see a locally owned corporation be replaced by one that sends money to stockholders in Australia and Canada.

Parts of other counties served by PSE are organizing public utility districts. So, it might be time for Lake Forest Park and other parts of the county to form a King County Public Utility District.

Prepare for four more months of ugly campaigning

The general election is four months away, and already we’re hearing ads from the Building Industry Association of Washington attacking Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire and from Democrats and a labor-backed political action committee attacking rival Dino Rosssi.

Just wait until after the primary when they’ll officially be running against each other.

A Republican running unaffiliated

Curtis Fackler, Spokane County’s Republican chairman, is a candidate for state insurance commissioner.

He didn’t list his party preference as “Republican” or even “GOP,” an identification that many candidates use.

Fackler says that he chose not to list his party preference because there are 30 percent of voters in the state who will vote against a Republican “no matter what.”

All this comes from an official of the Republican Party, a party that fought the top-two primary because it wanted to control the party name. Now, party members are hiding their party affiliation using rules adopted under the system they fought.

I think Fackler is wrong. Despite Washington’s reputation as a blue state, Republican Dino Rossi finished in a virtual tie with Gov. Christine Gregoire four years ago, when we elected three Republican statewide officials. Maybe there are people who won’t vote for a Republican, but I think there are more who won’t vote for an unaffiliated candidate. When we had the blanket primary, independent candidates often rarely got more than 1 percent of the vote.

Fackler’s opinion and mine will get a test in August when both Fackler and a Republican named John Adams, who actually uses the party name, will challenge incumbent Democrat Mike Kreidler. I don’t think either challenger stands much chance in November against Kreidler, who has held the position for two terms after serving earlier in Congress. The test will be which little-known challenger survives the primary, the one who uses the Republican name or the one who runs away from the name.

Evan Smith is Enterprise forum editor. Send comments to him at entopinion@heraldnet.com.