Veteran political reporter and broadcaster Anita Kissée will join TVW as the new host and executive producer of The Impact, our weekly public affairs news show.

Kissée, who succeeds Jessica Gao, will join the network in June and begin hosting The Impact starting this fall. Sabrina Register will continue to guest host the program this summer through the conclusion of the current season.

Here’s more from the announcement released today:

Kissée, who joins TVW after seven years as a reporter and fill-in anchor at KATU-TV in Portland, has over 15 years of experience in television news, and specializes in politics and public affairs reporting.  In 2009, she earned a master’s degree from the Columbia University School of Journalism, focused on politics.  For three years, Kissée also moderated Viewpoint, the weekly public affairs program produced by KTVB-TV in Boise, ID.

“Anita’s experience and style fit very well with TVW,” said Greg Lane, President of Washington’s independent and non-profit state public affairs television network.  “In addition to being an exceptional reporter and talented anchor, Anita has an extensive background covering state and local governments, as well as a strong personal passion for politics and public policy.  Her reporting is thorough, balanced, creative and engaging, and under her leadership, viewers can count on The Impact being an engrossing and informative program.”

“I’m very excited to be joining TVW,” said Kissée.  “Citizens have very few resources to get in-depth, balanced and unbiased information about the issues being debated in the state and TVW is a national leader among public affairs networks.  With The Impact, my goal is to produce a program that helps viewers understand the policies being debated and how the decisions being made by their elected officials will impact their lives.  I can’t wait to get started.”

Tax collections in the state are coming in as expected, according to a monthly economic report released today.

Over the last three months, the state collected about $9.6 million more in tax revenue than estimated by the Economic Revenue and Forecast Council. That’s out of about $3 billion in collections, marking a mere 0.3 percent difference than what was predicted.

Nationwide, job growth over the last two months has been slower than expected. Yet at the same time, more people are buying cars and houses, and personal incomes are rising — which sends “mixed signals” about the state of the U.S. economy.

In Washington state, the economic picture is also “mixed.” Employment figures had been slowly growing over the last few months, but the current level is still slightly lower than expected. And although houses have been selling, the prices have been weak.

From the report:

“The risks to a continued recovery in Washington are still high. While oil and gasoline prices have receded somewhat, a European financial crisis remains a real possibility. … We are suffering from fiscal drag from state and local government budget cuts and a construction sector which has stopped declining but is not yet adding to growth.”

Looking ahead, the beginning of 2013 could bring a “severe fiscal contraction” when the Bush tax cuts expire and extended unemployment benefits end, it warned.

Tags: economic forecast

Host Austin Jenkins interviews the state’s chief information officer and former Microsoft executive Bharat Shyam about modernizing the state’s technology.  Jenkins also checks in with Capitol press corps on the governor’s race and more.

The U.S. House voted Wednesday to extend the Export-Import Bank’s authority for three more years — a moved watched closely here in Washington, one of the most trade-dependent states in the nation.

The bank’s charter was set to expire May 31st. It provides financing and insurance for American companies that sell goods overseas, protecting them against losses in case an international customer doesn’t pay up — which is exactly what happened about to one manufacturing firm in Fife about five years ago.

Pexco is a plastics manufacturer that makes road bumps and other traffic safety equipment in a 110,000-square foot warehouse in Fife. Peter Speer, the VP of sales, said that before the company started using the Ex-Im Bank, they shipped a container full of traffic equipment to Turkey on good faith.

The customer in Turkey never paid, and Pexco never got their product back.

“We still haven’t recovered in terms of establishing a market there, but we’re working on that now,” Speer said. “Once we do that, we’ll have the Export-Import Bank from preventing that kind of financial loss in the future.”

The Ex-Im Bank has insured about $300,000 in sales for Pexco, which distributes its products to 25 countries worldwide. Speer said without that federal guarantee, his company would be less likely to take on new international customers.

“We wouldn’t be able to compete with China or Vietnam or India,” he said. “They may not have a better product, but they are willing to take credit risks.”

Critics of the Ex-Im Bank in Congress have said that the federal program amounts to corporate welfare, and point to the bank’s biggest beneficiary: Boeing. The bank supported about $32 billion in exports last year, with about $11 billion of that in sales for Boeing.

The bill passed by the House on Wednesday extends the bank’s charter to September 2014 and raises the lending cap from $100 billion to $140 billion. The U.S. Senate could take it up next week.

For more on the issue, we have a segment on the latest edition of The Impact below.

Tags: Export-Import bank

In case anyone noticed the emergency crews surrounding TVW today, don’t worry — everyone is OK. A driver in his mid-80s crashed his car into the side of the building, smashing through to the station’s break room on the other side. Thankfully no one was in the break room at the time, and the driver didn’t suffer serious injuries. Here’s The Olympian story about it, and a few pictures below.

TVW break room

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Host Austin Jenkins talks in depth with Department of Ecology director Ted Sturdevant about the state’s biggest environmental issues on the latest Inside Olympia.

A group of more than 50 Washington women filed a lawsuit against state Attorney General Rob McKenna on Thursday, alleging that the Republican gubernatorial candidate violated his ethical duty when he signed on to a multi-state lawsuit to overturn President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule in June on a lawsuit brought by 26 attorneys general — including McKenna — that challenges Obama’s federal health care overhaul. McKenna has previously said he doesn’t oppose the entire act, only the individual mandate that requires everyone to have health insurance.

The group of women is seeking a court order that would force McKenna to ask the Supreme Court to uphold the Affordable Care Act’s protections for women’s health care. They say the Affordable Care Act provides extensive protections for women’s health care, including a prohibition on lifetime coverage caps and access to preventive care, such as breast and cervical cancer screenings.

McKenna’s campaign manager Randy Pepple issued a statement calling the lawsuit “frivolous,” saying that rival candidate Democrat Jay Inslee was attempting to distract voters using “health issues of innocent women to try to score political points.”

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Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, announced today that she won’t be seeking re-election in the fall. Brown was elected to the state Senate in 1996, and has held the position of majority leader for the last eight years. Prior to that, she served four years in the House.

Brown said in a statement that she took stock of her 20 years in the Legislature in the weeks following the end of special session.

“I decided that, though it is still immensely gratifying to serve Spokane and the state of Washington in this capacity, I am ready for new challenges,” she said.

Brown cited same-sex marriage legislation and tougher human trafficking laws among highlights of her career. And she said that despite the economic recession and budget cuts proposed by Senate Republicans this year, she was “particularly pleased” with the final budget adopted by the Legislature, which makes no cuts to education and preserves the social safety net.

You can read her full letter here.

Tags: Lisa Brown

On this week’s edition of The Impact, we take a closer look at the K-12 health insurance bill that drove the Legislature into double overtime. We talk with a school employee who can’t afford to insure her family, as well as the bill’s prime sponsor, Sen. Steve Hobbs, D-Lake Stevens.

We also take a look at a number of tax changes that were adopted during session, with input from Rep. Gary Alexander (R) and Rep. Chris Reykdal (D), both of Olympia.

Tags: healthcare, insurance

Gov. Chris Gregoire signed the final operating budget of her career Wednesday, saying she was pleased that it makes no cuts to education — a feat achieved “by the skin of our teeth.”

But that won’t be possible in the future without a new revenue source, Gregoire warned. It will cost about $1 billion to meet constitutional and “moral” obligations to the K-12 education system alone, she said at the bill signing.

“If anyone understands the harsh reality of the future, it’s me,” she said. “We cannot properly fund education in this state without more money.”

Gregoire said she was disappointed the Legislature didn’t eliminate more tax breaks after she gave them a list of options “as long as the room.” In the end, the Legislature ended a tax deduction that big banks can claim on first-time mortgages. That’s expected to generate about $15 million a year in new revenue, and another $12 million is expected to come from taxes added to roll-your-own cigarettes.

Many lawmakers opposed the roll-your-own measure, saying that it would put store owners out of business who have invested as much as $30,000 in the machines. But Gregoire said it is only right that people pay taxes on the product because “in the end, taxpayers pay the health care costs.”

The budget included several partial vetoes that will bring the ending fund balance down to $311 million. The original budget left about $320 in reserves.

Watch the full bill signing ceremony here.

Tags: Budget