Housing leaders speak in front of an audience Tuesday during “The Columbian Conversations: Innovative Housing Solutions” at Kiggins Theatre. As Vancouver’s population grows, developers and housing experts are looking to innovative solutions and each other to ensure a supply of affordable housing. (Taylor Balkom/The Columbian)
A bill in the works that would greatly support and strengthen local newsrooms across the state advanced to a hearing on Tuesday in the Senate Ways & Means Committee. From my perspective, the hearing went well. Most of those who testified voiced support for the bill.
Senate Bill 5400, sponsored by Sen. Marko Liias, D-Mukilteo, would create a 1.22 percent tax on for-profit search engine and social media companies, including Facebook and Google, which use newsrooms’ articles to attract and retain customers to their sites. And they get a lot of advertising dollars because of it. In summary, the money would be distributed to local newsrooms based on the number of hours worked by journalists.
The bill still needs to be voted through the Ways & Means Committee and then the Rules Committee before hopefully going in front of the Senate and House for a vote. It’s a long road. We won’t hear back about this bill’s progress until the end of April.
Photography win
The Columbian’s photo editor, Amanda Cowan, was accepted into a highly competitive photography workshop in New York, which attracted applicants worldwide. It will allow Amanda and her cohort to photograph New York City and find their own unique vision.
“Meryl Streep to acting is like what Alex Webb is to photography,” she told me. “This is literally what dreams look like when they come true.”
She will be gone for about a week in May, and I am excited to see her photos. The skills she’ll learn will be applied to her work here.
We will also feature photos by Amanda and staff photographer Taylor Balkom in December at our annual Behind the Lens event, where they share the stories behind their work. More information on that will come soon, including the date and time.
Housing event
Last week, I hosted a presentation as part of our Columbian Conversations series that creates a live news article on stage. This one was about innovative housing solutions. A panel of development and housing experts spoke about why we aren’t building enough housing to keep up with demand, causing rent and prices to soar.
Federal cuts to development and housing programs, including the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, along with tariffs that will drive up the cost of building materials, are causing issues, stalls, stress, and uncertainty for local builders and housing programs.
I’d encourage you to come to our next Conversations event, which we will announce in the next few months.
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