Opposing gun initiatives vying for support

Two competing gun initiatives are attracting money from interests out of state, with both sides saying the other initiative is shooting blanks.

State initiative 591 (I-591) is touted as protection for gun and firearms rights.

State initiative 594 (I-594) is described by its supporters as expanded background checks for gun sales and transfers.

Both initiatives add sections to Revised Code of Washington (RCW) 9.41.

Both initiatives are in conflict with each other.

If both are approved by voters, it is uncertain what will happen, however, it is likely the state Supreme Court will decide how to proceed.

I-591

I-591 aims to restrict the confiscation of firearms and to limit the requirement of background checks unless federally mandated.

(The initiative can be read in full at http://sos.wa.gov/_assets/elections/initiatives/FinalText_471.pdf.)

I-591 is supported by the following organizations: Protect Our Gun Rights (campaign sponsor), Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Gun Owners Action League of Washington, Washington State Rifle and Pistol Association, Washington Arms Collectors, Washington State Law Enforcement Firearms Instructor Association, Hunters Heritage Council, Ferry County Tea Party and Walla Walla Tea Party Patriots.

Funds related to supporting I-591 have been reported to the Public Disclosure Commission by:

• Protect Our Gun Rights — $1,230,030.86 (all figures are current as of Oct. 20).

Donations were made by Washington Arms Collectors (more than $750,000), Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms ($305,000), and Gun Owners Action League ($120,000).

• National Rifle Association of America Washingtonians Opposed to I-594 — $486,631.49.

More than $485,000 was donated by parent organization National Rifle Association of Fairfax, Va.

• Washington Citizens Against Regulatory Excess — $112,933.62.

Donations of more than $6,500 were made by Daniel Solie of Olympia.

I-594

I-594 will put background checks on gun purchases, whether through a dealer or privately, including gun show and online sales, and prevent the transfer of firearms between individuals unless specifically stated as an exception.

(The initiative can be read in full at http://sos.wa.gov/_assets/elections/initiatives/FinalText_483.pdf.)

Some exceptions to I-594 include transfers as a gift between immediate family members (defined as spouses, domestic partners, parents, children, siblings, grandparents, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, first cousins, aunts and uncles), antique firearms, or temporary transfer to prevent “imminent death or great bodily harm” to the recipient.

Additional exceptions apply to circumstances at gun ranges and while hunting.

I-594 is supported by: Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility (campaign sponsor), Washington Cease Fire, United Methodist Church, Faith Action Network, Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center, and Washington State Catholic Conference.

Funds related to supporting I-594 have been reported to the Public Disclosure Commission by:

• Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund for I-594 — $650,305.07.

More than $430,000 was donated by parent organization Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund of New York.

• Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility — $9,436,620.54.

Donations were made by Everytown for Gun Safety ($1.95 million), venture capitalist Nicolas Hanauer (more than $1.33 million), and Bill and Melinda Gates (more than $1 million).

The debate

While said to be drafted to close a background check loophole, some opponents to I-594 worry the initiative has much broader implications

“If it was just a background check law, I wouldn’t be as upset with it as I am now — I don’t have a problem with background checks,” said Chuck Laier of Aberdeen.

“They’re just trying to hinder somebody with a legally owned firearm any way they can. The law will make it as impossible as they can for the law abiding to have a weapon.”

Laier says laws requiring background checks already exist, they simply need to be enforced.

Additionally, Laier worries that law-abiding citizens will unwittingly violate the law if the initiative passes.

“No matter what you and I do as gun owners, it will make a criminal out of you,” Laier said.

As for limiting illegal possession of firearms, Laier doesn’t believe I-594 will be effective.

“Law abiding means law abiding, illegal means illegal … it wouldn’t make a bit of difference to a criminal,” he said.

While local officials are shying away from commenting on either initiative, legislators from the 19th District banded together in a letter to the editor encouraging voters to vote no on I-594.

“I-594 is not designed to reduce gun violence, but was drafted to take advantage of recent tragedies where (in all but one case) the perpetrators passed one or more of the background checks offered as a solution to gun-related violence in I-594. In our opinion, more of what is already not working is not a solution,” the legislators wrote. “The vote this November is yours and we ask that you carefully read the 18 pages of I-594 and vote no.”

The letter was signed by State Sen. Brian Hatfield of Raymond, and State Reps Dean Takko of Longview and Brian Blake of Aberdeen, all Democrats.

Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility representative Geoff Potter says I-594 will work and that worries of law-abiding citizens becoming criminals by default is misleading.

“In states that have closed the background check loophole, dramatically fewer women and police officers are killed with handguns,” Potter said in an email interview. “Our background check system has helped block more than 40,000 gun sales to prohibited purchasers since 1998, which shows how background checks can help keep guns out of dangerous hands. There’s absolutely no evidence of any of the scenarios raised by 594 opponents coming true in any of the other states that have laws like 594.”

Potter says groups stepping out in support of I-594 have also stepped out to oppose I-591, including the League of Women Voters and the Washington State PTA.

“Every major newspaper in Washington State has also opposed Initiative 591, including the Olympian,” Potter said. “They have done so because 591 was sponsored to block Initiative 594, preventing Washington from closing the background check loophole. It will also roll back Washington’s existing gun laws, making it harder for law enforcement officers to keep guns out of dangerous hands.”

Opponents to I-594 have continually pointed to transfers between law-abiding citizens as a way I-594 will make criminals out of otherwise upstanding individuals.

“Opponents are using the issue of ‘transfers’ to confuse voters,” Potter said. “The simple fact is that 594 will help keep guns out of the hands of criminals and other prohibited individuals, while also respecting the Second Amendment rights of Washington gun owners.”

Joyce Smith of Aberdeen is in favor of I-594.

“It seems so obvious to me to not have guns available to people with mental health problems or a history of domestic violence,” Smith said.

Gun violence remains an ongoing concern throughout the country, Smith says, and concerns that I-594 would somehow impede a citizen’s Second Amendment rights are far fetched.

“I think they’ve gone beyond reason with that,” Smith said. “In my estimation, the Second Amendment wasn’t meant for arming every citizen.”

And some citizens, not fit to benefit from the Second Amendment would be kept from access through expanded background checks.

“It would tell people if the person had a record of mental health issues or a history of domestic violence,” she said.

Registered voters will receive their ballots by Oct. 21. The general election will take place Nov. 4.

Keith Olson: Logger, teacher, now candidate for county commission

About four years ago, Keith Olson hung up his dress shirts and slacks and put on his flannels and jeans again.

Olson had been a teacher and coach at Lake Quinault for nine years. The Marine Corps veteran had worked out in the woods off and on his whole life and said he was just missing it — the feel of the forest beneath his feet, even the smell. Despite being 64 years old, when most might consider just retiring, he still feels the call of being a tree faller.

Now, Olson, running as a Republican, has his eye on a whole new job and is hoping to be the next county commissioner.

He remembers going to his dad John and just putting it all on the line: “I remember telling him, ‘Dad, you’ve been fighting this and complaining for 60 years and I’ve been complaining for 40. It’s time to put up or shut up. Maybe from a county seat, we can have a louder voice on issues at the state and federal level.’ And here we are today.”

Olson managed to hold on, just barely, in the primary election, securing a position on the General Election Ballot by just 10 votes over Democrat Al Smith. Olson managed to get 26.12 percent of the vote. Now, Smith says he has endorsed Olson and is trying to get his friends to vote for him.

Cosmopolis Mayor Vickie Raines placed first in the primary with 33 percent of the vote. The primary election was just for voters in District 3, which includes Hoquiam and the North Beach and the Quinault area. Now, the election goes countywide with voters in East County and the Aberdeen area getting to chime in for the first time.

Olson has spent most of his life in the Lake Quinault area and is the fourth generation to call it home. He’s also seen a lot of change over the years and says the population has shrunk from hundreds, if not thousands, to about 150 people today. He’s seen new regulations from logging come in and take away the shake mills that used to dot Highway 101 between Hoquiam and Amanda Park. He’s also seen the Park Service and Forest Service purchase up much of the property on the north shore of the lake.

Granted, most of what he’s seen is direct consequences of federal policies, but he thinks a position on the county commission will give him a vocal presence to fight for the people.

“I don’t think we’re on an island here,” Olson said. “I think we have issues here that are issues all over the county. There are shoreline issues. The Forest Service is eliminating roads, plus Wild Olympics, which, granted, doesn’t affect Aberdeen and Hoquiam directly, but it’s going to affect our tourism industry.”

In 1968, he was drafted into the Marine Corps.

“They don’t usually draft into the Marines, but I still remember sitting in this gym with 500 to 600 other guys and this guy says they needed seven volunteers for the Marine Corps. Nobody stood up and he just pointed out to the crowd. As it happened I was laughing a little bit and he said, ‘Don’t laugh, blondie, I mean, you.’”

He was deployed to Vietnam soon after.

By odd coincidence, he says he still remembers the name of the lady who sent him his draft notice — and he came upon her house in Hoquiam as he was doorbelling. “So, I got to meet her,” Olson said. “I told her everything worked out fine, I just never forgot her name.”

He’s been a timber faller, off and on, for three decades. He taught at Lake Quinault High School for nine years. He’s also coached basketball, football and track at Lake Quinault, Hoquiam, Aberdeen and Grays Harbor College for about 25 years.

“The best part of being a coach was the relationship with the kids,” Olson said. “I remember playing football for Grays Harbor College and then I got to be a coach with my old coach later in life.”

As a county commissioner, Olson says he would follow the example Republican County Commissioner Wes Cormier has set for the commissioners.

He says there are some decisions he would likely have sided with Cormier on this past year.

When the commissioners debated to approve a 20-year garbage contract with LeMay’s, Cormier argued the terms were too long and the process should have gone out for a bid. Olson says that logic makes sense and he likely would have supported him. Cormier was outvoted 2-1.

When the hospital officials at Summit Pacific Medical Center asked to reduce the boundaries to the hospital district to benefit Grays Harbor Community Hospital, Cormier agreed with the Summit Pacific officials and asked for the hospital boundaries to shrink. His fellow commissioners approved the boundaries as-is on a 2-1 vote. “As I saw it, the residents of the area did want the boundaries changed,” Olson said.

Olson said he would also side with Cormier on making changes to ensure that all job positions, including internships, are posted for everybody — and said he was encouraged when Cormier led the county commissioners to approve changes in the permit requirements for the construction of out buildings so long as it doesn’t exceed an 800-square foot size.

“I don’t think there should be a permit for something like that, if it’s even bigger,” Olson said.

Olson cites an 84-year-old friend who was building an unattached carport — with no walls and just a roof.

“For county permits and fees, it cost her $5,000 in fees,” Olson said. “There was an earthquake test, a flood plain check and they checked her septic tank. It was functioning perfectly but they made her pump it and it cost her $230 for that. She was putting in a car port, not an expanded roof. Why did it need to cost $5,000 in permits and fees? That’s’ unnecessary.”

Olson says he would disagree with Cormier on the issue of needle exchanges, which Cormier opposes.

“If some inconsiderate drug user doesn’t have the needle exchange, they throw their needles around where kids will have contact with them — and that’s not right,” Olson said.

Olson says he is vehemently opposed to eminent domain, coming out against a plan to rebuild the SouthShore Road at Lake Quinault further away from the lake — which would likely mean buying private property.

“But what if people don’t want to sell? They’d have to because the road would be halfway in their yard. And, on that particular project, when you read the documents, they talk about stakeholders, citizens and residents. They mention it over 100 times and not a soul was informed of it until I made copies and distributed the papers.”

Looking to next year, Olson and Raines both say they would vote against any talk of a road levy shift — which takes money from the road fund and props up the county’s general fund, causing residents in the cities to pay a little more in property taxes.

“It’s also frightening to realize the county doesn’t have a balanced budget and needs to use reserves to keep going,” Olson said. “There may be a revenue shortfall next year — and even more coming down the line.”

Olson criticizes all three of the county commissioners for recently approving raises for the administrators of the Sheriff’s Office, saying it sets a precedent where the other workers will now want the same raises. “And, if it doesn’t play out, there will be a major morale problem there,” Olson said. “I can understand being a member of the road crew and looking at someone getting a 10 percent pay increase and then they’ll wonder, ‘Why don’t we get that?’ That’s the real troubling issue for me. I wouldn’t say I won’t give anybody a raise, there’s just going to have to be a lot of discussion.”

Olson says he would have voted for Republican County Commissioner Herb Welch if he would have run for re-election, but Welch bowed out, citing health issues.

At one point, Olson was considering supporting Raines, he acknowledges, when both he and his wife went out to dinner with Raines at the Lake Quinault Lodge. She had already declared herself as a candidate. “Not really understanding what you should or shouldn’t do, I just went and filed,” he said.

The issue of party politics has been in the spotlight in this particular county commissioner race, in part, because Raines has chosen not to run with a party affiliation. And, this is the first time there hasn’t been a Democrat running in the General Election in, perhaps, decades.

For two out of the past three elections, the county Republicans have won seats on the county commission — and it’s the first time in more than 50 years the Republicans hold the majority on the commission, although Welch has taken some heat for voting with Democrat Frank Gordon more regularly in the past two years.

Olson says he had never been a partisan person, choosing to vote for the person, not the party affiliation. He lauds the work made by former state Rep. Lynn Kessler and current state Rep. Brian Blake. Both are Democrats. But, he said, he also appreciates the work done by former state Rep. Jim Buck, as well as Cormier and Welch. The three are Republicans.

“When we started talking about making a run, I started talking to several people,” Olson said. “I don’t know how to run a campaign. I talked to people at the Evergreen Freedom Foundation and got information on how to run a campaign. Well, I learned I needed help. I wanted party support. And the Republicans asked me to be their candidate and I said I’d do it.”

Last month, Olson attended and spoke to members of the Grays Harbor Democrats. Jim Eddy, who supports Raines, asked Olson point blank: “What if the Democrats would have asked you first?”

Olson says now, “There was a long silence there because in this campaign I’ve misspoken. I just thought about it. And, I told, them ‘Yes, I probably would have.’ And I still stand by that if the Democrats would have asked me first. I was just honored that the Republicans did ask me when they did. I would have been honored if the Democrats would have.”

Does that really make Olson a Republican then?

“I’m not a party person and besides, the Republicans asked me first,” Olson said. “I didn’t think the Republicans would be interested in some goofball from Quinault, but they asked me and I said, ‘Sure I will.’ ”

On the Web

http://www.keithforcommissioner.com

https://www.facebook.com/KeithOlson forcounty commissioner

Vickie Raines: Mayor, financial expert, now candidate for county commission

Cosmopolis Mayor Vickie Raines thought about running for county commissioner before.

The timing just never worked out. Her family and job had come first. And, when Cosmopolis faced some of its deepest financial challenges following the mill closure back in 2006, Raines said she felt compelled to help out.

“I owed it to the people to help steer the course,” said Raines, who has served as mayor of Cosmopolis since 2002.

In 2011, Raines started really exploring the idea. Months later, on a 2-1 vote, the county commissioners re-drew the political boundaries as part of its once-a-decade redistricting process and moved the entire city of Cosmopolis from District 2, based in Aberdeen, to District 3, linked with Hoquiam and Ocean Shores. That meant even if Raines had been interested in running for county commissioner in 2012, the Democratic county commissioners took that choice away from her. Raines called the process “politics at its worse.”

Today, Raines is the frontrunner in her campaign to be county commissioner, garnering about a third of the votes in a four-way primary contest in August. The General Election goes countywide now, with Aberdeen and East County voters having a say. She faces Republican Keith Olson, a former teacher and logger from Lake Quinault. Both are running for the seat of Herb Welch, who chose not to file for re-election.

Raines says she has more time to devote to the county because her children are older — with her son on a recent mission for their church in Louisiana.

Raines says she’s become soured on party politics, one of the reasons she has chosen not to file for any party affiliation. She wanted to file as non-partisan, but County Auditor Vern Spatz said he was prepared to challenge that wording because he thought it would confuse voters. Filing without any party affiliation at all was the compromise, allowed under state law.

The issue of partisanship could be particularly important in this election as both Olson and Raines try to convince people, who typically vote party line Democrat, that they could be the best candidate for the position. It’s the first time in decades that a Democrat hasn’t appeared on the General Election ballot for county commissioner.

“This office shouldn’t be a partisan office,” Raines said. “A county commissioner’s position is very similar to a mayor’s position — and yet a county commissioner is asked to declare a political party, while a mayor runs as non-partisan. That doesn’t make sense to me.”

Jim Eddy, a devout Democrat, says as far as he’s concerned Raines is a Democrat — even if she’s not running as one.

Eddy even has a shirt that says, he’s voting for “Vickie ‘I’m a Democrat I’ve always been a Democrat’ Raines.”

But Raines is quick to point out that her co-campaign managers are from different parties. The campaign is co-led by Tami Garrow, the retired CEO of Satsop Business Park whom Raines described as a Democrat; and Kellie Daniels, a former staffer for Republican U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton. Daniels has helped on numerous Republican campaigns over the years for those interested in state and federal office, including Dino Rossi and Rob McKenna.

When she first announced for her candidacy, Raines said, “President John F. Kennedy once said, ‘Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer.’”

“I have some very Democratic values and some very conservative beliefs on the other end,” Raines added in a recent interview. “I consider myself a centrist. I was raised in an all Democrat family but you have to admit the Democrats today are not the same as the Democrats of the 1950s and 1960s — and, in fact, both parties have changed. My whole issue is that there is no place for partisan politics at the county at all. Does the coroner go to a scene and say, ‘Is that person a Democrat?’ Of course not.”

If she wins, she says she’ll be the first county commissioner without a party affiliation — and maybe even the first county commissioner to call Cosmopolis home.

Besides her duties as mayor, she also serves as chair of the Chehalis Basin Flood Authority and participates in a separate flooding work group convened first by Gov. Chris Gregoire and now Gov. Jay Inslee.

Her full-time job is a practice manager with Lindley Financial Services in Montesano, a background she says has helped her understand finances.

Raines said she’s been a union member and also negotiated union contracts. However, at a time of financial distress for the city of Cosmopolis, she also supported her police officers when they disbanded their union.

When Weyerhaeuser shuttered the Cosmopolis Pulp Mill in 2006, the city of Cosmopolis lost hundreds of thousands of dollars and was forced to do massive cutbacks.

In 2010, Raines recalls asking the voters for an additional $138,000 a year to prop up the crippled city budget — and the voters soundly rejected the plan by 65 percent. The good news is that Cosmo Specialty Fibers bought the mill again — and the city is slowly, and carefully, adding back services and awarding raises to employees who didn’t see them for years, Raines said.

“So, no, we didn’t go back to the voters again and delay our cuts,” Raines said. “We cut. We found a way. We had less services. The voters had their say and said ‘no.’ So, when I see the way the county did its budget — by doing a road levy shift for the past three years in order to prop up its own budget, to make the residents of our city and other cities pay more without even going to the voters and asking them, that angers me.”

Raines and Olson both have said they won’t support the road levy shift, which takes money from the county’s road budget and shifts it to the operating fund as a way to generate more money in that fund. Along with opposition from County Commissioner Wes Cormier, it leaves this year as the last potential year for the county to pursue the extra revenue, which County Commissioner Frank Gordon says he’ll request in this year’s county budget.

“Whatever we’ve been doing we haven’t been doing it right and we haven’t been doing right for a very long time,” Raines said. “So, these past few years, the county has built up a reserve. But it’s been built on a budget that depended on the use of this road levy shift. The county should have been building its budget without it. Now, if the budget is going to be $2 million in the hole, it’s not going to be fun. It’s a hornet’s nest — but I have the experience to make the hard decisions on this one and it doesn’t mean, come January, that Wes and I can’t go in there and make the changes we need to make. I’d just say Commissioner Gordon better scrape and get everything he can because it will be the last year.”

During a recent door belling trip to Elma, Raines encountered residents worried about finances, tax increases and some who had no idea what a county commissioner actually does.

“You’d be surprised how often I get asked to explain the job,” Raines said.

Brian Schweitzer of Elma told her that he had been hurt in a logging accident some years ago and his wife recently lost her dog grooming business.

“Things are tight,” he told her. “It’s life. It’s a battle, but it’s doing good.”

Schweitzer was asked what kind of candidate he was looking for.

“I want someone who is positive and looking to make a change, like yourself,” he told Raines. “You look legit. You don’t look like someone who, when I turn around, will put a knife in my back.”

“You have to remember as a county official, it’s people like you I work for and I’ll keep you in my prayers,” Raines replied.

Raines said that besides the economy, she gets consistent questions about the potential for oil trains coming to the Harbor and the export facilities proposed to go at the Port of Grays Harbor.

While Olson says he is opposed to the oil trains and favors an oil pipeline instead, Raines has been careful not to come down too heavily one way or another on the issue. This has not generated many fans among the opposition to the proposals.

“It’s so divided,” Raines said. “I get people who live right next to the railroad tracks concerned about the train traffic and other people who say, ‘We need jobs. We need jobs.’ And my response has been — and I’m just getting hammered by the oil train opponents — that as a county commissioner, we won’t make the decision and I’m not advocating for it or opposing the trains, but if oil is to come here, we need to make sure the regulations and guidelines are in compliance and people remain safe. Sure, I have concerns. We don’t know how many jobs it will really bring. I’ve heard a dozen to 200 jobs. One spill could — just one along the waterway — and you look at all of the tourism, commercial fishing and shellfish — all of those jobs would be lost.”

Raines said she believes Puget Sound &Pacific Railroad will upgrade its tracks as promised.

If elected, Raines admits she may have more of a challenge working with Commissioner Gordon, who actively has campaigned against her, questioning her temperament to be a commissioner. But she feels she can work with Commissioner Cormier and actually supports some of his ideas — including no building permits for 800-square foot outbuildings.

She says that she would have supported Cormier’s idea to remove East County from the proposed hospital district benefiting Grays Harbor Community Hospital. Officials at Summit Pacific Medical Center had made the request.

“Montesano, for sure, should have been given a chance to be part of Summit Pacific Medical Center’s hospital district,” Raines said. “Frankly, I don’t understand why we need two hospital districts and think, some day, there might just be one in this county.”

On a 2-1 vote, Montesano and other parts of East County were left intact with the larger boundaries to support Community Hospital. The people ultimately approved the district.

Raines said she would not take as hard a line against eminent domain as Cormier, though. Cormier says he would never vote to condemn a private landowner’s property and take it for public use.

Raines views it as a last resort option.

“I think the eminent domain process can be a useful one when it’s used properly,” Raines said, noting that the city of Cosmopolis had taken a look at using eminent domain when Weyerhaeuser had abandoned the pulp mill, but rejected the option when the city would have been on the hook for the clean up.

“To go in and take someone’s property, I think you negotiate until the end,” she said. “At some point the use of eminent domain is appropriate as long as the process is used appropriately.”

On the Web

http://vickieraines.com/

https://www.facebook.com/votevickieraines

East Hoquiam Fire Station renovation nearing completion

Renovation under way on the East Hoquiam Fire Station will streamline operations for the department and better provide services to the public, according to Hoquiam Fire Chief Paul Dean.

Work on the station, located at 517 Ontario St., began in early June and is projected to be finished by mid-November. The renovation was made possible by a $900,000 Community Development Block Grant provided to the department.

Block grant programs are run by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and are meant to fund local community development, affordable housing and infrastructure development, among other things.

The grant money was split, with $750,000 used for remodeling the station and $150,000 set aside to purchase one new Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus (SCBA), a device worn by firefighters that provides breathable air when fighting fires.

“That was a great asset in itself,” said Dean, referring to the SCBA. “Our equipment was getting really old and inadequate.”

Aside from the new piece of equipment, renovating the station will also mean that firefighters will be able to be on both the west and east sides of the Hoquiam River when the Simpson Avenue Bridge goes up, allowing them to more effectively respond to calls.

When the renovation is complete, five on-duty firefighters will work from the main station on the west side of the river at 628 8th St., while two will be housed at the new location.

Another benefit of the renovation is the installment of a housing bay for the department’s foam tender truck.

The truck was supplied to the department by Westway Terminals, which stores methanol, a highly flammable chemical, less than a mile from the east station.

In the event of a fire at Westway, firefighters could respond much quicker from the new station than they could from their westside location.

“When the Simpson Avenue Bridge is up, no one can respond, especially during the fishing season and summer boating. That’s why we have the station over here,” said Dean.

A fire engine and ambulance will be stored at the east station alongside the foam tender truck when the renovation is complete.

On top of being beneficial in terms of safety, the new location will also save taxpayers money, Chief Dean said.

Before the renovation, the department needed to buy shorter fire trucks in order for them to fit into the available housing space at the east station. These trucks were more expensive due to their custom length. The newly redone station provides housing bays that can fit regulation-sized fire trucks.

“It was a win-win for everybody. The industries on this side of town have a foam tender that’s closer to their facilities, the firefighters have a nicer station and there are no extra taxes put on the citizens,” said Dean.

Clam digs continue on Twin Harbors beaches through Tuesday

The second razor clam dig of the fall season started Wednesday and will continue on Twin Harbors beaches through next Tuesday. As in the previous opening, all digs are scheduled on evening tides. No digging will be allowed on any beach before noon.

Low tides

• Oct. 23 - 7:07 p.m. -0. ft.

• Oct. 24 - 7:44 p.m. -0.4 ft.

• Oct. 25 - 8:22 p.m. -0.6 ft.

• Oct. 26 - 9:03 p.m. -0.6 ft.

• Oct. 27 - 9:47 p.m. -0.4 ft.

• Oct. 28 - 10:36 p.m. -0.2 ft.

Other digs are tentatively scheduled for Nov. 4-11; Nov. 20-26; Dec. 3-9 and Dec. 19-31.

Rules &regs

Under state law, diggers can take 15 razor clams per day and are required to keep the first 15 they dig. Each digger’s clams must be kept in a separate container. Diggers may not harvest any part of another person’s daily limit, unless they possess a designated harvester card.

Razor clam diggers age 15 or older must have an applicable 2014-15 fishing license to harvest razor clams on state beaches. Fishing licenses of various kinds are available on the department’s website at https://fishhunt.dfw.wa.gov and from license vendors around the state.

Ben Bradlee, Washington Post editor who led Watergate coverage, dies at 93

More than 40 years ago, two young Washington Post reporters began digging into a local burglary that would have roused little interest except for one odd fact: One of the five men arrested at the Democratic Party’s national headquarters worked for the re-election campaign of President Richard M. Nixon.

The reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, chased every lead, encouraged by the Post’s editor, Benjamin C. Bradlee, but they couldn’t make sense of it all.

“We were … finding what looked like pieces of the puzzle but unable to see where — or even if — these pieces fit,” Bradlee later recalled.

Despite mounting pressure from other Post editors to take the increasingly sensitive story away from the rookies, Bradlee stuck with his “boys.”

Bradlee “didn’t have a foot on the brakes,” Woodward told PBS 30 years later. The Post’s reporting on the bungled 1972 burglary at the Watergate office complex ultimately brought down a president.

Bradlee, who led the Post from 1968 to 1991 and became the best-known newspaper editor of his generation, has died. He was 93.

Bradlee died Tuesday at his home in Washington, the newspaper reported.

His wife, Sally Quinn, said in an interview with C-SPAN last month that he had been in hospice care suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.

Under his leadership, the Post won 18 Pulitzer Prizes, including the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for public service for its reporting on Watergate. His steadfastness in the face of unrelenting White House pressure to drop the Watergate investigation made him a hero of “All the President’s Men,” the 1976 film based on Woodward and Bernstein’s best-selling account of one of the most dramatic chapters in American journalism history. It won four Oscars — including one for Jason Robards as the hard-charging editor — and made Bradlee a household name.

“As executive editor, Ben was the classic leader at whose desk the buck of responsibility stopped. He set the ground rules — pushing, pushing, pushing, not so subtly asking everyone to take one more step, relentlessly pursuing the story in the face of persistent accusations against us and a concerted campaign of intimidation,” Post Publisher Katharine Graham wrote in her 1997 memoir, “Personal History.”

A Boston Brahmin with a brash personality, Bradlee is widely credited with transforming the Post from a locally oriented newspaper into a lively, well-written daily that competed with the New York Times in its national reputation. He hired a slew of talented journalists and rethought the news and feature pages, including creating the Post’s much-copied Style section, which replaced the traditional “soft” women’s section with one that had humor, flash and bite.

“I like a nice rowdy metropolitan paper,” Bradlee once said of the institution that, under his leadership, became one of the two or three top newspapers in the country.

Bradlee viewed Style as his lasting legacy.

“Watergate was a story,” he once said. “This was a way of interpreting society.”

But there were low points. The worst involved Janet Cooke, a reporter who had won a Pulitzer in 1981 for her story about an 8-year-old heroin addict that she later admitted was a fabrication. Bradlee took responsibility for the debacle, and the Pulitzer was returned.

Despite this embarrassment, he remained a revered figure for his contributions to journalism. The White House called him “one of the most respected newsmen of his generation” last year when President Barack Obama awarded him the Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor.

In 2005, Bradlee, Woodward and Bernstein confirmed the identity of “Deep Throat,” the newspaper’s legendary anonymous source for many of its stories about the Watergate scandal.

By outing himself, the source — W. Mark Felt, the No. 2 official at the FBI at the time — freed Bradlee and the two reporters to talk publicly about the man who had guided the newspaper to the heart of Watergate. Felt died in 2008.

Bradlee had been executive editor of the Post for four years when the Watergate break-in occurred on June 17, 1972. One of the suspects was James W. McCord Jr., a retired security agent who was working for Nixon’s re-election committee.

Woodward and Bernstein uncovered evidence that the highest levels of the Nixon administration covered up a massive use of campaign funds aimed at disrupting the Democratic Party. Their stories drew fierce rebukes from top Nixon aides, including White House press secretary Ron Ziegler, who accused the paper of “shabby journalism.”

But the Post’s investigation — immeasurably aided by Woodward’s highly placed “Deep Throat” — drew Nixon into its net. The president denied knowing about the cover-up until tapes of secretly recorded White House conversations were released, confirming all that had been alleged.

On Aug. 8, 1974 — two years and seven weeks after Woodward and Bernstein’s first story on Watergate — Nixon resigned in disgrace. Many others went to prison or were ruined by the scandal.

When Bradlee was asked how the Post withstood constant White House pressure to bury the story, he replied that he knew his reporters were right because they had checked and rechecked their information.

“There aren’t many Bradlees around,” Bernstein told PBS decades later of the tenacious editor who stuck by his reporters.

Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee was born Aug. 26, 1921, in Boston, the son of Frederick Josiah Bradlee, and Josephine deGersdorff. Their comfortable life ended with the Depression, when his father lost his job as an investment banker. Only the charity of relatives kept Bradlee in private school.

In 1936, when he was 14, Bradlee contracted polio and was paralyzed. He learned to walk again but was too weak for sports when he returned to school and focused instead on debating and editing. His first job in newspapers was as a copy boy on the Beverly (Mass.) Evening Times.

A long line of Bradlee men dating to the 1700s went to Harvard, including Bradlee’s father and grandfather, and in 1939 Bradlee followed their path. On Aug. 8, 1942, he graduated from Harvard at 10 a.m., was commissioned into the Naval Reserve at noon and four hours later married Jean Saltonstall, whose family was even more Boston Brahmin than his. He spent three years on destroyers in the Pacific theater.

He returned to the States in 1945 and joined in starting a newspaper in Manchester, N.H. When the paper was sold in 1948, he became a reporter at the Post but left within a few years for a job as press attache in Paris for the United States Information Service.

He viewed Paris as an adventure, but his wife did not, and the two drifted apart. They divorced after he fell in love with Antoinette Pinchot Pittman, a mother of four and wife of a Washington lawyer. Bradlee gave up Paris for a job in Newsweek’s Washington bureau and married Pittman in 1956.

They settled in Georgetown, down the street from a house where U.S. Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts and his wife, Jacqueline, were soon to move. The couples became close friends.

After Kennedy was elected president in 1960, he fed Bradlee a number of scoops, including one in 1962 concerning the swap of captured CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers for a Russian spy.

Much later, Bradlee’s friendship with Kennedy would put him in a difficult spot. When, in 1975, his flattering memoir of the friendship, “Conversations With Kennedy,” was published, Bradlee was criticized for not mentioning the assassinated president’s numerous extramarital liaisons. Bradlee said he didn’t know about them.

Bradlee had played another hand well when Newsweek came up for sale. Concerned about its future, Bradlee wrote a memo urging Washington Post Publisher Philip Graham to buy the magazine. In 1961, Newsweek became part of the Post company, and Bradlee became Newsweek’s Washington bureau chief.

When Phil Graham committed suicide in 1963, his shy widow, Katharine, became publisher. Although she did not like Bradlee at first, she took him to lunch to see what his career plans might be. With typical bluntness, Bradlee told her, “I’d give my left one to be managing editor of the Post.”

Graham decided that his feverish ambition might be just what the hidebound Post needed. In 1965, she installed Bradlee as assistant managing editor and, within a few months, made him managing editor.

Thus began one of the newspaper industry’s strongest partnerships.

The Post’s rise to prominence had begun before Watergate, in 1971.

That June, the Post watched helplessly as the New York Times published an exclusive based on the classified Pentagon Papers leaked by Daniel Ellsberg, a former government employee. The 7,000-page history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam — and the government’s efforts to hide the information from the public — helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War.

When the government enjoined the New York Times from publishing further articles on the papers, however, the Post obtained a copy from Ellsberg, and despite the grave misgivings of Post attorneys, published its own story within a day. It was one of Bradlee’s proudest moments.

“Watergate cast a bigger shadow,” Bradlee told the Los Angeles Times 20 years later when he announced that he was retiring. “But there was no time in Watergate when we had to tear everything apart and make a single decision that was fraught with such consequence. The Pentagon Papers was the crucible for us that formed our team, and gave everyone confidence in each other.”

That confidence would come in handy when the Post was faced with the Watergate story. But Bradlee resisted the idea of himself as a swashbuckling newspaper editor. As he told the American Journalism Review in 1995, “I came along at the right time with the right job and I didn’t screw it up.”

Bradlee, divorced twice, is survived by Quinn, a Washington Post columnist whom he married in 1978; sons Ben Jr., Dino and Quinn; daughter Marina; 10 grandchildren and a great-grandchild.

Aberdeen swimmers soar past Eatonville, 138-41

An altered lineup didn’t alter Aberdeen’s victory celebration in its final home girls swimming meet.

Winning every event, the Bobcats cruised to a 138-41 rout of Eatonville in a non-league meet Wednesday at the YMCA of Grays Harbor.

Bobcat coach Jan Simons did her share of lineup juggling in an attempt to qualify additional swimmers for district and state.

While the Cats, in her estimation, did not match their performance from last week’s meet against the Centralia-Chehlis combine, she was generally happy with the results.

“Mostly, they swam to the competition,” Simons said. “If they were comfortably ahead, they swam their race. But they swam really well. It was a good meet overall.”

Aberdeen senior Taylor Jones, sophomore Emily May and freshman Karli Heikkila had a hand in four victories apiece.

Jones won the 100-yard butterfly and 100-yard breaststroke, May captured the 200 individual medley and 100 backstroke and Heikkila prevailed in the 100 and 200-yard freestyles. The trio also shared in two relay victories apiece.

The Bobcats (5-2) swept the top three places in five events. Most of their event wins were lopsided — including Linnea Davison’s triumph in the 500 free by some 45 seconds.

Bobcat senior Danielle Rowe barely out-touched Eatonville’s Jayla Thirtyacre at the finish of a highly competitive 50-yard freestyle. May and teammates Mackayla Waltee and Amelia Davison swam together for the opening lap of the 100 back before May pulled away to win relatively comfortably.

Senior diver Naomi Wolfenberger was Aberdeen’s other individual winner. While Wolfenberger fell short of the school-record 257 points she established last week, she again cracked the 220-point barrier.

Hannah Mellon-Jackson, Hoquiam’s lone representative on the Bobcats, met district-qualifying standards in the butterfly and backstroke.

May was commended by Simons for a strong showing. The Bobcat coach also cited her four seniors (Jones, Rowe, Wolfenberger and Christina Rosche), who were making their final home appearances.

The Bobcats will compete in the all-classification Southwest Washington Championships at Mark Morris High School in Longview on Saturday.

200 medley relay — 2:03.95 — Aberdeen (Waltee, Jones, May, D. Rowe), Aberdeen, Eatonville. 200 free — 2:13.82 — Heikkila (A), L. Davison (A), Bunnell (A), Thirtyacre (E), Gacke (E). 200 IM — 2:27.99 — May (A), Rabung (A), Dawson (A). 50 free — 27.8 — D. Rowe (A), Jayla Thirtyacre (E), A. Davison (A), Litzenberger (E), Boyce (E). Diving — 220.15 — Wolfenberger (A), Cournoyer (A). 100 fly — 1:09.24 — Jones (A), Dawson (A), Mellon-Jackson (A), Smith (E), Raffensberger (E).

100 free — 1:00.95 — Heikkila (A), Jayla Thirtyacre (E), D. Rowe (A), Boyce (E), Waltee (A). 500 free — 6:35.24 — L. Davison (A), Bunnell (A), B. Rowe (A), Golding (E). 200 free relay — 1:55.95 — Aberdeen (Heikkila, Wolfenberger, L. Davison, Jones), Eatonville, Aberdeen. 100 back — 1:08.8 — May (A), Waltee (A), A. Davison (A), Nacnac (E), Janelle Thirtyacre (E), Gacke (E). 100 breast — 1:16.40 — Jones (A), Rabung (A), Raffensberger (E), Cournoyer (A), Boyce (E). 400 free relay — 4:22.6 — Aberdeen (L. Davison, Heikkila, D. Rowe, May), Eatonville, Aberdeen.