Legislative news:

►  In today's News Tribune -- Tax increase step closer to vote -- Voters could be asked this fall to raise the sales tax by 0.3 percentage points for three years to “buy back” some of the cuts planned for health care programs. HB 2377 also would pay for the Working Families Tax Rebate, a program approved but not funded last year, that would give low- and moderate-income families a tax rebate for some of the money they pay in state sales taxes.

►  In today's Everett Herald -- Voters may be asked to hike state sales tax -- The bill amounts to a  three-cent tax on every $10 purchase. The $483 million raised would go to hospitals, nursing homes, public health clinics and medical care for children of low-income families.

►  At WFSE.org -- Governor wants both Green Hill School, Naselle Youth Camp to stay open -- Gov. Chris Gregoire has weighed in on the House and Senate budget proposals and has identified an alternative to closing either Green Hill or Naselle.

►  In today's Seattle Times -- Melodramatic legislature botches smart decisions (Rep. Brendan Williams op-ed) -- Even amid the nation's epic financial crisis, the Washington Legislature, quite unlike Congress, still adheres to its self-congratulatory rituals, glacial pace and budget-cuts-above-leadership customs. After wasting time on dramas like filing a false police report on a lobbyist, passing myriad floor resolutions ("we support Miss Washington!"), and squandering a day's worth of potential floor action honoring its own dead in a candlelit ceremony, the Legislature produced its first proposed two-year budget on Day 78 of the scheduled 105-day session. And despite bold talk of "no sacred cows," there are clearly some fatted bovines no one will sacrifice, including more than 580 tax loopholes.

►  In today's Everett Herald -- House grants more rights for gay couples -- The "everything but marriage" legislation would grant same-sex domestic partners' new rights would range from labor and employment to pensions and employee benefits. Gov. Chris Gregoire says she will sign the bill, but it could land on November's ballot for possible repeal. 

►  In today's News Tribune -- Legislature should put public safety above budget cuts (Sen. Mike Carrell op-ed) -- Some want to save money by reducing offender sentences, and others want to reduce the level of supervision of released offenders. The issue is not which of these many cuts to make, but instead whether the majority party should make any of them. 

Tea-bagging news:

►  In today's Olympian -- "Tea party" protest draws thousands to Capitol -- A raucous crowd of "tea party" tax protesters take over the Capitol steps, dangling tea bags from their eyeglasses in an effort to send a message to the other Washington about the federal financial bailout.

►  In today's Washington Post -- Americans' tax burden near historic low -- As thousands of anti-tax protesters rallied across the nation yesterday, new data showed that the federal income tax burden is already hovering near its lowest level in three decades. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the average family forked over barely 9% of its earnings to the IRS in 2006.

►  In today's LA Times -- Republicans stage "tea party" protests against Obama -- Demonstrators demand lower taxes and less government spending, but some GOP pollsters worry the tactic could backfire. With half a million jobs vanishing each month, many are less concerned about how much is deducted from their paychecks than whether they will have a paycheck at all.

►  At Huffington Post -- Faux-populist "tea parties" ignore tax breaks for CEOs (Art Levine op-ed) -- While the Fox News-fueled coverage of the "tea parties" has hoodwinked major media outlets into believing it's just a spontaneous protest against high taxes, it's actually been a well-orchestrated campaign driven by lobbyists and right-wing corporate front groups that are seeking to keep taxes low and preserve loopholes for wealthy CEOs and corporations. 

►  At SeattlePI.com -- The illogic of tea party protesters (David Horsey op-ed) --  Who would benefit most from a tax cut? Not the tea party protesters. They may be struggling to pay taxes right now, but that is likely because they are struggling to pay for everything, thanks to an economic system that, over the last couple of decades, has been skewed in favor of the wealthy.

Local news:

►  In the Kitsap Sun -- Kitsap County offices to close Fridays in cost-cutting move -- The county administration building will be closed on Fridays beginning in May and no sheriff's deputies will be laid off, for now, after a tentative budget agreement was reached by county commissioners.

►  In The Stranger -- The State of the Unions (by Eli Sanders) -- In recent decades, the businesses that defined the new Seattle economy -- Starbucks, Amazon, McCaw Cellular, Microsoft, the biotech companies, the Google branches  -- have been able to grow huge sums of money out of the labor of nonunionized workforces. In addition to non-union-produced lattes and non-union-produced web browsers, a major product of this new Seattle is an increased number of citizens who have only an abstract awareness that this is, or used to be, a union town.

National news:

►  In the Tri-City Herald -- Workers should be able to decide on union (op-ed by Fred Rumsey) -- Unions fight for all workers in this country whether they are members or not. An example of this would be the unions' efforts for a 40-hour work week, which is now a law that affects every worker in America. A local example: the nonbargaining personnel at Hanford who get the same health insurance benefits that HAMTC negotiates. So it is not hard to understand why the corporations are dead set to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act. It's money and corporate greed. Corporations do not want to have to pay fair wages and benefits to their workers.

►  At Slate -- Card Check 2.0: A better fix than EFCA (Harvard prof's op-ed) -- To address the labor-business impasse, I suggest two alternatives. The first borrows from the early-voting model in U.S. political elections, allowing workers to cast union ballots by mail, or at a polling place in the weeks leading up to election day. The second is to use new voting technology. Workers get a confidential ID number and vote in their homes by either phone or the Internet.

►  In today's NY Times -- In Ohio, lenders thwart law to curb interest on payday loans -- A state law intended to cap interest rates on payday loans at 28% has been thwarted by lenders who have found ways to charge up to 680%. Lawmakers are preparing a second round of legislation.

►  From Reuters -- U.S. again declines to brand China currency manipulator -- The Treasury Dept. retreats from tough talk last year when Obama said Beijing kept its exchange rate unfairly low.

►  In today's Las Vegas Sun -- Has labor visionary crossed the line? -- Some labor experts say Andy Stern’s ambition is reaching new heights, which could ultimately hurt the SEIU and the broader labor movement. His push last month to cut into the membership and turf of Culinary parent Unite Here, the long-standing union of hotel and casino workers, is the latest in a series of controversial moves aimed at increasing membership and consolidating power.