This week, we dive into the heart of Olympia politics with a special guest: Jim Cooper, who is retiring after 14 impactful years on the Olympia City Council. We chat about his proudest achievements, the evolution of the council, the ongoing debate around minimum wage and worker rights, and what Olympia’s voters should be asking candidates as the city faces critical decisions about growth, housing, and walkable neighborhoods.

This week, I read an essay called “Exile Ourselves” I wrote last fall. It talks about how our current approach to housing and crime overlaps with our regional history.

Dirk Marler is a longtime advocate for unifying Washington’s fragmented court system. As a Yakima County District Court judge from 1988 to 2003, Marler experienced firsthand the confusion caused by the state’s patchwork of local courts. Later, as head of the court services division at the Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts, he participated in a major early-2000s initiative called “Justice in Jeopardy”, which aimed to modernize and regionalize the courts. Today, he help us parse the large issues in play as the City of Olympia and Thurston County negotiate how to combine our court systems.

InvestigateWest: ‘It’s an uphill battle’: Decades-long effort to unify Washington’s court system again falls short

Washington Courts: Justice in Jeopardy

On this episode, I read my blog post “Don’t think of an Olympia” from Olympia Time, revisiting one of my longest-running gripes: the use of “Olympia” as a lazy shorthand for state government. I explore why this rhetorical habit is more than just annoying, it shapes how people think about power, accountability, and democracy. Drawing on philosophy, civics, and the evolving nature of legislative work, I argue that language matters and urges journalists and political commentators to be more precise. Plus, there are some practical tips for anyone covering state government to avoid flattening complex realities, or alienating a whole town.

Want to change how people think about democracy? Start with how we talk about it.

In this episode of The Olympia Standard, we reflect on the life and impact of Gil Carbone. He was a key but often overlooked figure in Olympia’s history. Gil helped lead the transformation from a commission-style government to the council-manager system Olympia has today and served on the city council from 1982 to 1991, including two years as Mayor Pro Tem. We share a classic Gil story about his fiery stand against state interference in local parking enforcement, and we’re joined by his daughter, Carol Carbone, who paints a vivid picture of Gil as a driven, charismatic, and deeply engaged parent and community leader.

For more about Gil’s pivotal role in city government reform, check out Episode #41: City Government Structure

In this episode of The Olympia Standard, we dive into the city’s now-dormant effort to revise its Memorandum of Understanding with neighborhood associations and explore how representative those groups really are. We bring academic and personal insights into why public participation in local government remains so limited, from structural complexity and lack of access to the outsized influence of well-resourced voices. We also consider what it takes to make local democracy more inclusive, transparent, and effective.

I take a look back at a couple of blog posts I’ve written in the last couple of years about corporate home ownership in Thurston County and include some updates for this year.

This is a pretty short episode where I read you back some prewritten material. If you’re really into this topic, I appeared on the Nerd Farmer podcast just less than a year ago talking about the same topic: https://nerdfarmpod.com/2024/05/26/how-corporate-landlords-are-driving-up-rents-emmett-oconnell-olympia-time-219/

Here are the old posts where I’ve covered this issue in the past.

2021: https://olympiatime.com/2021/07/08/the-scale-of-out-of-town-real-estate-investment-in-thurston-county-is-small/

2024: https://olympiatime.com/2024/05/10/re-examining-the-out-of-town-or-just-corporate-real-estate-investment-in-thurston-county/

Hey! If you’re reading these show notes, I want to thank you a ton! We both got through 2024! And you in particular didn’t cull this podcast from your feed. This is a restart episode, so I take some time to explain what happened over the last year and what the plan is going forward.

I also read an interesting recent blog post I wrote at Olympia Time about our particular brand of racism in the Pacific Northwest and why it matters.

Olympia Time: What I’m doing here and how you can help

Olympia Time: The Ku Klux Klan in Olympia and what we should remember

We are joined by Senator Sam Hunt to review the legislative session just past and talk about what Olympia got from Olympia. We also delve into his political history and the history of our community as we look back on his year’s of service.

We have been slow rolling through a very large discussion on school closures since last summer. We sit down with three different community members on how we got here, where we’ve been before and what we need to do now.

Guests: Maria Flores, Olympia School Board

Kelcy Schaffer, OSD4ALL

Russ Lehman, former Olympia School Board

OSD School Efficiency Review page

OSD4All Closure Forum