Tony Ventrella says he is dropping his run against longtime Republican Member of Congress Dave Reichert. In an email to supporters, the former sportscaster said he had held lengthy discussions with family members before deciding for “personal reasons” to withdraw.
City of Seattle Department of Transportation director Scott Kubly was found by an investigator with the city Ethics and Elections Commission to have violated the city’s ethics code, and will pay $10,000, the Seattle Times reports. The ethics investigation stems from the fact that Kubly was once president of bike sharing company Alta, and then went on to work on the city’s bike sharing program Pronto, which Alta has a financial interest in. The problem was that he should have either gotten a disclosure waiver for this, or removed himself from the project, but he didn’t. Kubly won’t have to pay the full $10,000 fine — only $5,000 as long as he doesn’t commit any more ethics violations in the next two years. Meanwhile, Mayor Ed Murray said in a statement that he still supports Kubly because what he did was an accidental, not a deliberate ethical offense.
In other transportation news, gas and electric cars in Washington are seeing more taxes and fees starting today to help pay for investment in transportation infrastructure around the state, KING 5 reports. As of today, gas in Washington will be taxed at an additional 4.9 cents per gallon, making the total gas tax for Washington 49.4 cents per gallon. The increase will help pick up the $16 billion dollar tab for Connecting Washington, a program to invest in Washington’s transportation that was passed by the Legislature in 2015. There will also be an increase in fees to renew electric cars' tabs, from $100 up to $150. About $1 million from this fund will help pay for building more electric car filling stations in Washington.
On Wednesday, cancer researchers around the country came together to discuss how to advance the field, KPLU reports. These summits were part of the federal government’s “moonshot” push to get 10 years of cancer research done in half the time. At the Seattle summit, a theme was data and the need for more of it. One researcher told KPLU that the federal government can help with sharing this data.
