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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

WA Bill Would Enable Public Banking to Support Infrastructure Needs

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Wednesday, February 3, 2021   

OLYMPIA, Wash. - Public-banking advocates are at it again in the Washington Legislature.

State Sen. Bob Hasegawa, D-Seattle, has spent more than a decade presenting bills to create a public bank in Washington, and he's introduced another in 2021. Public banks are financial institutions owned and run by a state or municipality.

Dennis Ortblad, a board member in Washington state for the Public Banking Institute and a U.S. State Department Foreign Service retiree, said a public bank would help the state meet its underfunded infrastructure needs, noting that such institutions are common in other countries.

"We are losing ground to our competitors overseas - like Japan, Germany, Korea and of course, China - who all use public infrastructure banks to support a world-class infrastructure," he said.

Ortblad noted that the International Monetary Fund has said public banks could help countries meet the economic challenges of COVID-19. In 2019, California passed a bill allowing cities and counties to create public banks.

Ortblad said the Bank of North Dakota was established in 1919 and provides a good example of what public banking can look like. The state bank has been largely unfazed by financial crises such as the Great Recession of 2008. But Ortblad also noted that, like the California bill, cities are the aim of the Washington state legislation.

"The new bill is meant to attract the support of cities and counties," he said, "because the idea is to enable them with state lending to address their needs."

Hasegawa's effort this year, Senate Bill 5188, has 13 co-sponsors. A public hearing was held on the bill last week.


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