Republican Sen. Ann Rivers of La Center is earning a reputation in Olympia as the lawmaker determined to tame the state’s great weed experiment she’s dubbed the “wild, wild West” of pot.
One of her biggest priorities: giving local cities and counties a cut of the tax revenue from recreational marijuana sales to boost public safety efforts.
“They are playing the game, they should get a cut of the take, from my perspective,” Rivers said.
And some of the stories she’s shared to illustrate the need — an armed intruder in a home invasion who “pistol whipped” a woman in an attempt to steal marijuana — sound barbarous.
“We were promised time and time again it was going to be a tremendous savings to public safety,” Rivers said. “Jails would be empty, we wouldn’t have any more marijuana-related crime. We’ve found quite the opposite.”
Clark County Undersheriff Mike Cooke, who previously served as a commander of the Clark-Vancouver Regional Drug Task Force, said the premise that legalizing marijuana would free up law enforcement resources was flawed from the start.
“It presumed we were spending an inordinate amount of time on marijuana enforcement. … The bulk of our work was high-level drug trafficking involving meth, etc.,” he said.
Rivers’ measure has received support, but even local jurisdictions cannot point to a definitive uptick in crime since the legalization of recreational marijuana.
A Vancouver man who stormed shouting out of Tuesday’s meeting of the Board of County Councilors has filed a petition with Clark County requesting that his own variation on “In God We Trust” be displayed in the public hearing room.
George Thomas, a self-described “dissenter” of religion, filed the petition — with zero signatures other than his own — requesting that Clark County display “In Dissenters We Believe” in addition to “In God We Trust,” he said.
Thomas, 77, left Tuesday’s council meeting shortly before the council voted two to one to display the motto, shouting “sic semper tyrannis,” a Latin phrase that translates to “thus always to tyrants.”
“I believe myself and other excluded citizens whose efforts and importance to American history run as deeply throughout American history as those who trust in god are due equal historical status and equal representation under the law,” Thomas wrote in the petition. “And that the Council ought not to move forward with displaying the motto, IN GOD WE TRUST, until such time as Clark County’s dissenters are included in the design and/or the matter is adjudicated by higher authorities than the Clark County Commission.”
Thomas, who until this week had never been to a county council meeting, plans to attend next Tuesday’s to present his petition publicly. He also contacted the American Civil Liberties Union, and plans to contact a lawyer to see how much it may cost to file a lawsuit against the county.
“I’ve been a citizen my whole life,” Thomas said. “I was born here, and they’re excluding me from the motto, the American motto. That can’t stand.”
MARYHILL — The whole tilting, stratified, gold-and-green landscape of the Columbia River Gorge is one massive museum.
And then, already goggle-eyed, you approach the Maryhill Museum of Art itself, perched in such an unlikely spot on the north side of the canyon that you can’t help wondering if the concrete mansion, with its emerald grounds and sculpture park, was somehow airlifted here directly from some stylish boulevard in Paris.
“The site is whammo,” said museum executive director Colleen Schafroth, choosing her words carefully, and so is its odd history, which began with railroad executive, visionary road builder, world traveler and deep-pocketed Quaker eccentric Sam Hill.
Hill’s original idea, circa 1907, was a mansion anchoring a 5,300-acre utopian agricultural community jointly named for his wife and daughter — both Mary.
That vision was torpedoed partially by World War I, and Hill was eventually convinced by his good friend Loie Fuller, a famous American dancer who found even more fame after moving to Paris, to make his unfinished mansion into an art museum and pursue the “betterment of French art in the far Northwest of America.”
And if that seems like an odd mission in a remote corner of the world that’s populated by many more cattle than people — let alone lovers of French art — well, you’re just beginning to catch on to the remarkable flavor of this place and its patchwork of world-class treasures.
“We have so many fantastic things because of Sam Hill’s connections, all sorts of connections all over the world,” Schafroth said. “Museums are always wonderful things but this one is completely unique.”
It’s just over 100 miles from downtown Vancouver to the Maryhill Museum of Art, with plenty of opportunities along the way to stop for good food, panoramic views, wine tasting and hiking excursions up those alluring canyon walls. Is there any more beautiful picnic-lunch spot in the entire region than the breezy sculpture garden and sunny south-facing patio here?
“It’s the perfect day trip,” said curator Steven Grafe. “A lot of people in the Portland area seem to think the Gorge ends at Hood River, but they are missing out on so much.”
There’s never been a better time to finally satisfy your curiosity about the oddity that everybody seems to know about but few bother to visit, Schafroth said — because this is its 75th anniversary season.
The museum is always closed for the winter. Beginning at 2 p.m. Saturday, March 14, museum members can attend an exclusive opening reception with guided behind-the-scenes tours. Yes, Schafroth said, you can buy memberships that day. The tax-deductible cost is $50 per individual, $35 per young adult (age 17-25) or $75 per household (including all persons residing at an address plus all grandchildren of members). Once you’re a member, admission is free for the year and comes with various other perks, too.
Opening day for the general public is Sunday, March 15. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and admission is $9 per adult, $8 per senior, $3 per youth (ages 7 to 18) and $25 for a family of two adults and related children.
Children and youth are especially welcome, said Schafroth, who worries about kids whose only exposure to art is through tiny windows in cellphones.
The Great Clark County Seed Swap is the brainchild of Greg and Rose Smith, leaders of the La Center Grange, and their daughter, Megan Roth. It’s the first year of the event at the Grange, which was founded in 1874.
“I just hadn’t seen a lot of seed swaps in the area, and I thought it would be a great way to get seeds out to the community,” Roth said. “I wrote letters, asked for donations from several companies for our seed swap. Whatever we don’t swap will be used to start a new community garden here.”
Several companies responded with generous donations, including Irish Eyes Seeds, which donated about 1,000 packets of a broad array of organic, non-GMO seeds, Roth said.
“They have a great seed policy,” Roth said. “Seed that they didn’t sell the year before, or that they had too much of, it’s donated to lots of community organizations.”
Grange membership has been declining almost everywhere over the past few decades, but that didn’t appear to be a problem as dozens of visitors streamed through the building on a beautifully sunny and spring-like Saturday afternoon.
The national Grange system was founded in 1867 as a society for farmers and farm families to support one another. But as many areas have become more urban-focused, and traditional members have gotten older, it’s been hard to recruit new members, Greg and Rose Smith said.
The couple said they hope gardening events like the seed swap will invigorate the public and draw some newcomers into the organization.
“We have a lot of plans,” Rose Smith said. “It’s just that a lot of the grange people are elderly, and many have died. We want to make it more friendly for new people, turn it into a community hub.”
Among their plans for this year are to launch a community garden at the Grange, 328 W. Fifth St. They hope it will provide a place for apartment dwellers and the elderly to visit if they don’t have room for their own gardens.
A new statewide light bulb recycling program is enlisting everyone from consumers and retailers to manufacturers to join the cause of keeping mercury from used light bulbs out of the food chain.
Launched at the beginning of January, LightRecycle Washington charges consumers an extra 25 cents for every mercury-filled light they purchase. The proceeds pay for the program’s recycling, transportation and other expenses. The nonprofit PCA Product Stewardship runs the daily operations of LightRecycle, which is overseen by the state Department of Ecology.
Under the program, tied to a 2010 law that bans people from tossing depleted fluorescent bulbs into the garbage, retailers can choose to operate authorized collection sites. The sites are popping up across the state, with a total of 15 (including nine retailers) already established in Clark County. For retailers, the idea is three-pronged: enable consumers to protect human health and the environment by providing them with free, convenient drop-off locations; raise the green profile of participating stores; and win additional foot traffic for their businesses.
And the impact of mercury oozing into the food chain is no small matter.
A 2003 study by the Ecology department showed that fluorescent lights were the No. 1 source of mercury coming from products, accounting for the release of 437 to 505 pounds annually in Washington.
Mercury is “a very toxic chemical even at low levels, and it persists and builds up over time in the food chain,” said Andrew Wineke, a spokesman for Ecology. “That’s why in Washington we have a statewide fish advisory, because of the amount of mercury in fish.”
The LightRecycle program’s goal is to increase collection quantities by at least 5 percent annually, from 949,311 units this year to 1.15 million units in 2019, according to a stewardship plan submitted to Ecology by PCA Product Stewardship.
