KPLU News Staff

Been having a hard time finding a space at park-and-ride lots? Sound Transit feels your pain.

The transit agency says it's started to crack down on drivers who violate parking rules at Sounder train stations and park-and-rides. Transit riders are complaining that it's getting harder to find parking spaces, at least in part because of other drivers parking inconsiderately.

Sound Transit began giving warnings last week, but starting this week, cars violating Sound transit parking rules will be immediately towed.

At risk? Vehicles that are ...

Lawmakers face stark choices when it comes to the budget. Those choices were on display Monday as the House voted on a cost-cutting bill. Democrats and Republicans split over what to cut next: education or social services.

Making headlines this morning: 

• Feds Begin Seattle Police Review
• Details Emerge in Port Orchard Shooting
• Business Push Back on Seattle Parking Rate Hike
• Most Painful Education Cuts Yet

Kirby Wilbur is the new Republican Party chairman in Washington, unseating former state lawmaker Luke Esser over the weekend in a party's leadership vote. The former KVI talk radio host beat Esser by a vote of 69 to 36, with seven votes for Puyallup Republican Bill Rennie, according to The Seattle Times' Jim Bruener.

Despite GOP gains in the state, Wilbur told the Times the party's advances should have been bigger: 

Every winter we hear about skiers and snow boarders at nearby ski resorts who end up in dangerous situations after wandering into areas marked “off limits."  That often triggers expensive search and rescue operations.

Making headlines this morning:

• Investigation Begins into Port Orchard Shootings
• King County's 'Brightwater' Grinds Toward Completion
• All Aboard: Amtrak Ridership Gains in Northwest
  

Updated Monday, Jan. 24th, 7:01 a.m.

A man and a young woman were killed in a shooting incident outside a Walmart store in Port Orchard Sunday afternoon. Two Kitsap County Sheriff deputies were injured, and are reported in satisfactory condition late Sunday evening, according to the Kitsap Sun.

Making headlines this morning:

• Inquest of Woodcarver's Shooting Raises More Questions
• Everett to WSU: Shall We Dance?
• Here Come the High Tides
• Huskies Zap Arizona for Pac 10 Lead

Four of eight jurors in a coroner's inquest say woodcarver John T. Williams didn't have enough time to put down his knife before he was shot and killed by Seattle police Officer Ian Birk.

Only one juror found Williams had time to put down the knife. The other three answered "unknown." Thursday's conclusions are only findings of fact by the jury, which did not have to be unanimous. 

Washington would become an all vote-by-mail state under a bill being considered by a State Senate committee.

Pierce County is the last in the state that still allows polling places and some of the county’s voters want to keep it that way.

Lakewood resident Erika Cranmer testified that she has not missed an election since she became an American citizen in 1951. The German native told lawmakers she does not trust vote-by-mail:

Traffic congestion in the Seattle area is tied (with Atlanta) for tenth worst in the nation. 

A decade ago, traffic here made headlines for being second worst, in annual rankings by the Texas Transportation Institute.  But, researchers found more accurate ways of measuring congestion, and Seattle’s dubious ranking dropped, as Mike Lindstrom writes in The Seattle Times:

Making headlines this morning:

• Puget Sound Murky From Stormwater Runoff
• More Heavy Rains Coming, with Potential Flooding
• Tacoma Considers Closing a High School

A blast and fire at a natural-gas fired power plant in Chehalis was caused by a transformer explosion. No one was injured, according to a plant spokeswoman.

Jan Mitchell says the PacifiCorp-owned facility’s damage is limited to a large transformer on the edge of the property. 

The fire did not involve the plant itself or natural gas.

The FBI says a backpack bomb found along the Martin Luther King Day parade route in Spokane could have hurt many people. A bomb disposal unit safely defused the device Monday. Now the federal government has enlisted a joint terrorism task force to track down the would-be bomber.

These are uneasy times for the 56,000 Washingtonians on the Basic Health Plan. The state-subsidized health insurance program is tentatively slated to end March 1st. But House Democrats presented a Hail Mary proposal to possibly save it.

Washington's current two-year budget is still $600,000,000 out of whack. Finding hundreds of millions of dollars in savings between now and the end of the fiscal cycle in June is no easy task.