Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
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In a backwards approach to helping tenants, the Federal Government is capping rent increases on subsidized housing at 10% in a bid to reduce the cost of rental properties. The result, should the measures be adopted, will be exactly the opposite and rents will go up. When you place caps on rent, instead of letting the market drive the pricing, the supply of rental property declines and the result is higher demand and higher prices for rent. There is a short-term impact to rental costs, but as...
House Bill 2114 (HB 2114), otherwise known as rent control, that passed the Washington State House of Representatives February 13 on a party line vote, appears to have died in the Senate and failed to pass out of committee. HB 2114 would have limited rent and fee increases to 7% and would have increased the notification period to 180 days for increases over 3%. The tenant would have been able to terminate a lease within 20 days and if the increase is over 7%, the tenant would have received damag...
If you have taken your kids to McDonalds (or indulged yourself) in the last 6 months, you will have noticed the prices have increased substantially. Washington is not the only state where prices are going up, and it’s partially because of increases to minimum wage. Zerohedge is reporting another price increase, driven primarily by increases to the minimum wage, that is going to hit California in April this year. California minimum wage is set to increase to $20 an hour for fast food workers, a...
In a mis-guided attempt to limit the amount a property owner could collect in a damage deposit for pets, lawmakers are proposing a pet deposit cap of $150, starting this July. Like much of the other legislation that has been proposed this year to reduce the cost of housing, Senate Bill (SB 6064), introduced by Senator Drew Hansen (D-23), will have exactly the opposite effect. Pet deposits are designed to cover the cost of either deliberate or accidental damage repairs to an rental property,...
The Puget Sound Regional Council has just released a report reviewing housing prices in Washington and no surprise, concludes housing costs too much. The basic rules of demand and supply drive the cost of homes, the less homes on the market, the more they will cost. Making it worse are high interest rates and recent inflationary pressure caused by the federal government’s reckless monetary policy during COVID. Homeowners are holding onto homes financed with low interest rate loans, the t...
The Interstate 405 and state Highway 167 toll lane experiment is losing money. Now, the state Transportation Commission is considering increasing tolls by up to 80% to $18 each way on I-405. The increase will cost an I-405 commuter, using the lanes at peak toll periods, around $720 per month or $8,640 per year. If you travel the entire Highway 167 and I-405 corridor you could see a toll of up to $54. The state Department of Transportation fiscal report for the tolling project shows a loss of...
In a strange twist of fate, within 30 days of the City of Spokane announcing Lime scooters are back in Spokane with a new scooter model that promises to be safer, better handling and cheaper to run, a scooter rider was hit and injured on-route to a Shania Twain concert. This, as Krem 2 reports, this was not the first time a scooter related accident has happened. In 2019 a man was killed on a Lime scooter; a women broke her jaw when the scooter un-expectantly engaged its brakes and in 2020 a man...
House Bill 1628 (HB 1628) creates a new property tax category of 4% on property valued at over $5 million. Proponents of HB 1628 argue that a property owner that sells property that is valued at over $5 million can afford to pay the additional tax rate. The majority of properties, however, that are sold that are valued over $5 million, are multi-unit housing, apartments, duplexes, retail and commercial properties which provide homes, products and services for every Washington resident. The...
The Washington State Auditor has completed a performance audit of the Employment Security Department and has found the agency still has not corrected its systemic performance and fraud problems uncovered during the COVID-19 pandemic. After the complete failure of the agency to handle pandemic unemployment claims, which culminated in the resignation of Commissioner Suzi LeVine in 2021, state lawmakers passed several key pieces of legislation to require the agency to reform many of its internal...
Former state senator and current state Director of Commerce Lisa Brown rightly describes the difficulties a small business startup faces in Washington. Brown says the state Department of Commerce is helping small business owners navigate the complicated array of regulations and mandates that the very same government agency had previously imposed. But Brown completely glosses over the underlying problem small businesses face when they first start; that is, over complex government regulations....
New COVID workplace restrictions, issued by Washington State Labor and Industries (L&I) on May 21, require employers to check employee vaccine documents before allowing relaxation of social distancing and mask requirements in the workplace. The new state rules require an employer to confirm, and have employees prove their vaccine medical status. The process used to verify vaccination, and the medical status of the employee's vaccination record, including the employee medical information must be...
The COVID-19 crisis and related economic shutdown has highlighted a number of failures of the state Employment Security Department. These failures in unemployment systems and department procedures resulted in managers being unable to meet basic levels of service and failing to pay benefits in a timely fashion when the number of claims increased. ESD systems were overwhelmed, allowing Nigerian scammers and other individuals to steal at least $350 million in benefits from state taxpayers....
Washington has one of the highest minimum wage levels in the U.S. For workers who have a job this sounds like a great deal, but as with all things the government mandates, there are some serious, negative consequences, primarily on young and entry level workers who are forced into joblessness. Nowhere is the harm imposed by a high minimum wage demonstrated more clearly than in Seattle, where the city council has aggressively increased the minimum wage over the last few years. The rash of...