POLICE DISCIPLINE Seattle and Portland both have an issue, apparently, with making discipline of police officers stick. In Seattle, the police chief is complaining that the city attorney isn’t moving on complaints against an officer. In Portland, a second case of an attempt by the chief to discipline an officer ran into the brick wall of an arbitrator. (The second of those, the Oregonian said, involved “an officer who smoked marijuana off-duty, gave one of his prescription pills to a fellow officer and then drove drunk while under investigation.”) The system as is seems to allow little possibility for discipline of those officers who should experience (a situation that doubtless aggravates too most of the better-behaving officers). The day will come when stronger measures will emerge from the public, if this keeps up.

BRIDGE TOLLING Counterpart stories too on bridge tolling. In Seattle, a citizen movement based on Mercer Island against tolling on I-90 (it would hit many residents there directly); they now have a website up. And opposition seems to be growing rather than fading on the Columbia River Crossing I-5 bridge at Portland-Vancouver. Suggestion: Sunset the tolls when the bridge renovation is paid for.

HURLOCK DEFEAT A Dan Popkey blog post on the Senate floor defeat 19-16 of Joan Hurlock notes something of a rural-urban divide in the vote. (Hurlock was gigged as insufficiently enthusiastic as hunting, which may or may not be true, and may or may not be the reason for the defeat for appointer Governor Otter.) The post notes a gutsy acknowledgement from Senator Patti Anne Lodge of Nampa: “She’s given up hunting, and likes to see deer, quail, pheasants, ducks and geese roaming her land on Sunnyslope near the Snake River. She added a reminder for what she called the “great white hunters”: many citizens see critters as more than just meat.” She is correct, and that number, in increasingly suburban Idaho, is growing.