Gov. Chris Gregoire says there won't be action this year on a plan to renovate Key Arena as a way to keep the Sonics in town. In an interview taped for TVW, Gregoire said that there aren't the votes to pass what a would-be, in-state ownership group says is needed for a viable team.

Gregoire said that she asked Senate Democratic and Republican leaders to do a careful vote count. Shortly after noon Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown and Minority Leader Mike Hewitt told the governor there were not nearly enough votes to approve the plan for $150 million in taxpayer money.

Cooperation between Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire and Republican lawmakers from flood-ravaged Lewis County may be robbing Dino Rossi of a prime campaign issue.

Rossi has been critical of Gregoire’s plans for flood relief and prevention projects. Much of what he’s said has come during visits to Centralia, Chehalis and the surrounding areas. But as Rossi told me yesterday, he doesn’t like what he believes is Gregoire’s top-down approach to flood relief.

Are we putting together a bureaucratic model you can tout to people and get a headline from, or are we going to actually listen to the people on the ground who live it everyday?

But Republican lawmakers who live it everyday are celebrating today the passage of several pieces of flood relief legislation, including a $50 million bond authorization to build flood control projects. They say cooperation with Gregoire has been excellent through the 60-day legislative session set to end tonight.

The state Supreme Court today said that school districts cannot conduct searches on school grounds without some suspicion of wrongdoing or a warrant.

Justice Richard Sanders wrote:

The school district asks us to adopt a "special needs" exception to the warrant requirement to allow random and suspicionless drug testing. But we do not recognize such an exception and hold warrantless random and suspicionless drug testing of student athletes violates the Washington State Constitution.

Article I, section 7 of the Washington Constitution provides:

No person shall be disturbed in his private affairs, or his
home invaded, without authority of law.

The case comes from the Wahkiakum School District which has a policy of randomly testing student atheltes for drugs. Parents of students -- who were tested -- sued the district saying the policy violated the state Constitution. The Superior Court, though, sided with the district.

It is a unanimous decision, though with three concurrences, by Barbara Madsen, Tom Chambers, and James Johnson.