By Bill Lucia | Editor
The U.S. men’s national soccer team bested Bosnia and Herzegovina last night in Santa Clara, California, meaning the U.S. will return to Seattle on Monday to face off with Belgium in the round of 16. Belgium played in Seattle yesterday, defeating Senegal in a dramatic late-game comeback in front of a packed crowd of more than 60,000 fans. Monday’s game is at 5 p.m. Thinking about going? Tickets were in the $2,000-$3,000 range as of Wednesday night.
A packed crowd at the World Cup round Of 32 match between Belgium and Senegal at Seattle Stadium (AKA Lumen Field) yesterday. (Photo by Emilee Chinn/Getty Images)
In today’s edition…
Pay raises for state elected officials.
The effort to speed up the release of public records.
And, safety concerns with Oregon’s psilocybin program.
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By Jerry Cornfield
Gov. Bob Ferguson, Attorney General Nick Brown and state legislators received 7% pay raises yesterday. State officials do not approve their own salaries in Washington. The Washington Citizens’ Commission on Salaries for Elected Officials, a panel established by voters in 1987, sets their pay. The unelected panel of individuals from across the state approved a new two-year salary schedule in March 2025. Combined with a similar-sized pay bump a year ago, Ferguson’s annual salary is now $234,275, up about $30,000 from the time he took office. Lawmakers now earn $72,494, and the attorney general $221,614. Other officeholders received smaller raises.
By Jake Goldstein-Street
Washington officials are pressing ahead with an effort that aims to speed up how quickly government agencies release documents and other information in response to public records requests. The state attorney general’s office is overseeing the rewrite of the state’s rules for how agencies comply with the Public Records Act.
This comes as the time taken to fulfill requests has been rising, and local government staff are crunched under the weight of increasing demand for records. A recent survey of 236 entities subject to the law found they received 484,000 requests for records in 2024, up from 383,000 in 2019.
A significant shift with the newly proposed rules has to do with how officials prioritize requests. The rules call for simple requests to be processed ahead of ones that are more time-consuming to fulfill, instead of dealing with them first-come, first-served. Media organizations, transparency advocates, and government officials have all weighed in with further suggestions for fine-tuning the rules before they’re finalized.
By Shaanth Nanguneri
Oregon’s landmark effort allowing adults older than 21 to access psilocybin has evolved beyond “strictly medical uses” and may be allowing more people to enroll in the program than is safe, according to a new study from researchers at Johns Hopkins University. Oregon is the only state to use a “supported adult use” model for psilocybin access, meaning individuals only have to be supervised by a licensed facilitator at a service center and can access the drug for their own personal reasons.
The study notes that most patients in Oregon’s program come from high-income backgrounds and outside of Oregon. They found that few people had an adverse reaction to the psychedelic drug, but that a significant proportion of clients in Oregon reported using psilocybin services for general health and wellness. The other top two reasons for participation in the service last year were a change in perspective and “expanded consciousness,” according to state data.
ICYMI
Nation’s first state-run long-term care insurance program about to launch in WA | by Jerry Cornfield
Work zone speed camera fines in WA rise to $125 on July 1 | by Jake Goldstein-Street
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