A few weeks ago the Seattle City Auditor issued a new evaluation report on the city’s Sweetened Beverage Tax, the latest (and perhaps the...

Newspapers have seen their traditional ad-supported business models fray and fall apart, while Google, Insta, Facebook et al have grown fat and sassy. And news publishers look at Google & Co.’s pots of money and cry “foul – you’ve stolen our ad dollars.” Surely reparations are in order.

Transparency is the first step towards accountability and that is a key component of improvement. Otherwise, how can you tell when improvements are made?

The legal protections Seattle affords its trees are minimal compared to other American cities. For instance, New York and Boston aggressively protect their urban forests.  New York has 7 million trees, and it’s not clear to me that Seattle even knows how many it has. 

Characteristically, whether she was Kay Muller or Kay Bullitt, she preferred the “second row.” Certainly she could occupy the spotlight, and effectively, but Kay did not need and did not seek prominence.