The numbers Tom Rasmussen quoted last week at the state Capitol were astounding: In 2004, he told senators, just 430 apartments were turned into condominiums in Seattle. But in the past two years, a total of 3,900 have been converted, leaving the city with a net loss of 167 rental units.

Rasmussen, chair of the Seattle City Council’s Housing Committee, was one of six people to testify before the Senate Housing Committee in favor of Senate Bill 5061, which would provide more protection for renters facing a condo conversion. The bill would give renters 120 days (instead of 90) to move and lift the state’s $500 cap on what developers can pay them in relocation assistance.

But the bill wouldn’t allow cities to set limits on condo conversions — a change that Rasmussen, who quoted figures from an unreleased city housing study, called for in the hearing, along with John Fox of the Seattle Displacement Coalition. In the House, Fox says, the news is better: Its Housing Committee, chaired Mark Miloscia (D-Federal Way), is drafting a companion bill that would allow cities to set annual limits on condo conversions.

“Just getting any bill out of the Senate and over to the House allows us to get it amended by [Speaker] Frank Chopp and Mark Miloscia, who are 100 percent behind us,” Fox says.

The city’s Office of Housing now expects to release its long-delayed housing inventory report in late February or early March, after an advisory committee that Fox sits on takes a final look.

— Cydney Gillis

Gimme 50 pushups

The 16 final recommendations that came out this month from the governor’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Health Care Costs and Access are imminently practical. But, given the incremental nature of each proposal, the end goals could be a bit of a leap:

By 2012, the report states, “All Washingtonians will have access to health coverage” and “Washington will be one of the top 10 healthiest states in the nation.”

The report notes that nearly 600,000 people in the state have no health coverage today. To correct that, the 14-member panel, which included Sen. Pat Thibaudeau, House Speak Frank Chopp, and Insurance Commissioner Mike Kriedler, advocates the state throw its weight around as Washington’s largest health care buyer. That would include tracking patient outcomes in state programs such as the Basic Health Plan and Medicaid and using only the doctors, clinics, and hospitals that do the best job.

It’s a new model that the industry calls “consumer-driven insurance,” and the panel expects it to help reduce costs among all providers. The panel would pair this with programs aimed at getting Basic Health and Medicaid recipients to lead heathier lives by losing weight or quitting smoking. (People with costly chronic conditions such as diabetes or heart disease would be required to follow such programs.)

The panel also says the state should allow low-income workers to use Medicaid funds or a state subsidy to buy into employer health plans, encourage insurers to offer lower-cost plans for those ages 19-34, and require carriers who cover dependents to raise the age limit to 25. The report also calls on doctors, hospitals and insurers to collaborate on reducing emergency-room visits by providing nurse hotlines or other after-hours assistance.

The report is online at www.leg.wa.gov/Joint/Committees/HCCA.

— Cydney Gillis

Franchise first

Thousands of former convicts may be on the verge of finally getting to vote in Washington state.

After years of trying, state Rep. Jeannie Darneille, D-Tacoma, has introduced what she calls her most aggressive bill to date to restore the franchise to ex-offenders: Once they’re out of prison, House Bill 1473, and its Senate counterpart, SB 5530, would allow ex-felons to vote whether or not they’ve finished paying restitution.

Under today’s system, ex-convicts are barred from voting until they’ve paid off all their fines and victim compensation. Then they have to petition the state for a certificate of debt payment that voting rights advocates say few ever get. Last March, in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of five homeless ex-offenders, a Superior Court judge ruled the debt is an unconstitutional voting barrier that affects only one class of citizens: the extremely poor.

Darneille believes her bill, which has 23 co-sponsors, will pass this year not so much because of publicity around the case, which is currently on appeal at the state Supreme Court, but because of the 2004 governor’s race and its hotly contested recounts, which revealed that many ex-felons had voted illegally.

When county auditors got together to fix the problem, Darnielle says they realized they had no way to check on the status of ex-felons, so they decided it would be easiest to register everyone who is free.

The bill wouldn’t cancel the debt, she says; it would merely return voting rights on release from prison. The idea of unpaid restitution “doesn’t sit well with people,” she adds, but many legislators agree that “our election system is more important than our concern that this right be withheld from a portion of our citizens.”

— Cydney Gillis