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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 11, 2013)
WWW . THESKANNER . COM D ECEMBER 11, 2013 S EATTLE , W ASHINGTON V OLUME XXXVI, N O . 10 25 CENTS For The Skanner news alerts Text "NEWS" to 503-715-0890 or scan this QR code C HALLENGING P EOPLE TO S HAPE A B ETTER F UTURE N OW URBAN LEAGUE Gay Marriage Statistics Officials say 17 percent of all weddings same-sex PHOTO BY SUSAN FRIED Donna Gordon Blankinship, Associated Press Urban League board member Nate Miles; Marc Morial, president and CEO of the national Urban League; Pastor Pat Wright, the 2013 recipient of the ULMS Lifetime Achievement Award; Pamela L. Banks, president and CEO of Urban League Metropolitan Seattle, and Urban League board member La Sonjia Jack pose for a picture during the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle’s 2013 Annual Breakfast Dec. 6, at the Westin Hotel. Liquor Store Owners Struggling Shopkeepers say state fees are driving them out of the business TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — Nineteen months after the state auctioned off its liquor stores to dozens of private entrepreneurs, more than 60 percent of the stores are out of business and many others are struggling to stay afloat. Nearly two dozen remaining stores are in danger of losing their licenses because they owe the state fees on liquor already sold, The News-Tribune report- ed Sunday. ``It’s just been a nightmare,’’ said Michelle Tate, a former state liquor store employee and ex-grocery store manager who, along with her dad, Teddy Ray- ford, bought the rights to the state’s former liquor store on Tacoma’s Sixth Avenue. Her father, who bankrolled the venture, says he has invested more than $500,000 in the store. That investment involves count- less hours of work offering a hard lesson in the reality of competitive business, a partially mothballed store and a stack of unpaid bills. The auctions brought the state INDEX News .....................2,3,6 Opinion .......................4 A&E ..........................2,8 Health .........................6 Bids/Classifieds............7 $31.9 million for the rights to open stores under 10,000 square feet in the same area where the state itself had stores. On aver- age, the new owners paid nearly $200,000 per store for the for- mer state store rights. Winning the auction rights supposedly gave the new state store owners a niche that under law couldn’t be entered by any of the other 1,100 new retailers selling liquor in Washington. That niche was stores under 10,000 square feet. In theory, that left the neigh- borhood market to the former state stores and contract sellers, but their theories about attract- ing a significant share of the state’s former volume did not meet reality. In Chelan, where Julian Mart and his business partner bought the sole liquor store, sales fell from $2.5 million under the state’s monopoly to $260,000 in the first year of business. In Tacoma’s Westgate area, David Cho’s Liquor Liquor store saw sales drop 85 percent. See LIQUOR on page 3 SEATTLE (AP) — Gay weddings made up 17 percent of marriages in Washington this past year, the first year gay marriages were legal in the state, state officials report- ed last week. About 7,071 same-sex couples got mar- ried in Washington between December 6, 2012, and the most recent complete month of data, September 2013. There were 42,408 total marriages in the state during that time, according to the Washington State Department of Health. So far, most of Washington state’s same- sex marriages, 62 percent, were between two women. Washington is one of 15 states plus the District of Columbia where gay marriage is legal, but few have the kind of detailed data Washington released this week, in part because gay marriage is so new in most places. According to the 2010 Census, there were about 152,335 same-sex married couples and 440,989 same-sex unmarried couples in the United States. According to the Massachusetts Depart- ment of Public Health, during the first year and a half after gay marriage became legal, 8,181 same-sex couples got married. Between May 2004 and the end of 2012, 22,406 gay couples got married in Massa- chusetts. Both Washington and Massachusetts warn that these numbers are close esti- mates, but not perfectly accurate, since gen- der information was not properly entered on every marriage certificate. In California, the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute estimated 18,000 gay couples married in 2008 when same-sex marriage was legal for four and a-half months. Those numbers are not based on marriage license information because Cali- fornia, like many states, does not request See GAY on page 3 1 in 5 Americans Reach Affluence New survey shines a light on the ‘haves’ versus the ‘have nots’ Hope Yen Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Fully 20 per- cent of U.S. adults become rich for parts of their lives, wielding extensive influence over America’s economy and politics, according to new survey data. These “new rich,” made up largely of older professionals, working married cou- ples and more educated singles, are becom- ing politically influential, and economists say their capacity to spend is key to the U.S. economic recovery. But their rise is also a sign of the nation’s continuing economic polarization. They extend well beyond the wealthiest 1 percent, a traditional group of super-rich millionaires and billionaires with long-held family assets. The new rich have household income of $250,000 or more at some point during their working lives, putting them — if sometimes temporarily — in the top 2 percent of earners. The new survey data on the affluent are being published in an upcoming book, and an analysis by The AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research provided additional See AFFLUENCE on page 3
