“The Legislature places little value on our efforts to hold government accountable for its use of public resources, and that is disheartening”
Great things are happening in our local health care system, WhidbeyHealth.
I am prompted to write this email as I watch the comments in the paper, on social media and my own conversations with people in our community. The negativity surrounding the name change to WhidbeyHealth is, in my opinion, misplaced.
Question of the Week: How are you celebrating Easter this year?
Time to catch up on a couple pieces of unfinished business around here.
Let’s begin with Attorney General Bob Ferguson.
For those of us who work at the newspaper, it’s easy to forget that it isn’t always obvious to readers how things get into the paper, and who decides where things go.
Question of the Week: What should be done with the land between Pioneer Way and Bayshore Drive near downtown Oak Harbor?
Violations of the Open Public Meetings Act are continually flouted by public servants. For some reason, they sometimes believe it more important to keep their actions secret than to be fully transparent.
I hesitate to say that this winter’s rain has set a record here on the Rock. Somebody out there would surely arm-wrestle me over that. Until recently, weather gauges — even the good ones — were not always reliable. So I will politely avoid an argument over this being the wettest winter ever. It just feels like it.
The Public Records Act is not broken. It works fine when agencies actually follow the rules and implement the tools already available to them under the law to manage their records request workload. Agencies need to stop complaining, do what the law already allows and move on.
What do you think of Whidbey General Hospital changing its name to WhidbeyHealth Medical Center?
Island County Prosecutor Greg Banks is again wasting County tax payer dollars, this time over one-quarter million dollars. Banks claims commissioners cannot hire counsel without his approval. He’s wrong.
These past few months, the Whidbey News-Times and its sister newspaper, The South Whidbey Record, saw unprecedented subscriber growth at a time when many newspapers across the country are battling just to hang on to subscribers.
Even though the first day of spring is officially a long ways away, you don’t want to wait much longer to set this year’s vegetable garden plans in motion. That’s because our mild climate makes late February the perfect time to sow snow peas, fava bean and many varieties of carrots, radishes and onions directly in the ground.