After a two-week break to refresh and hear from constituents, state lawmakers will return to the Capitol Campus on Monday to finish the work they couldn’t accomplish in 105 days: passing a budget. We hope legislators used this time to step back from party politics and return next week with a single-minded focus to do what is best for all people in the state of Washington.

When I graduated from high school, my future opened to many possibilities via a college degree, I just had to decide which one I wanted. I had saved my money through high school years working as a babysitter, at the Woodland Park Zoo and McDonalds. So I started taking general university requirements while working and commuting from my parent's home. The first crisis I encountered was my forty-hour a week work schedule interfered with school because I would get off work sometimes as late as four a.m. in the morning then have to turn around and drive an hour to the University of Washington for classes at eight a.m. I managed to negotiate three days of closing on the weekend instead of midweek but my exhaustion level was high and then I would come home to study and find too much noise.

Hawaii Pacific University has named Matthew Liao-Troth its first provost to help manage and oversee the 7,500-student private university. Liao-Troth is interim provost and vice president of academic affairs at Georgia College & State University, a public liberal arts university. He will join HPU July 15.

In early March, I spent some time in Bellingham, Washington, about two hours north of Seatac airport. While riding the Airporter bus north, I met a man who said he'd lived in the city for twenty years. I asked him what had changed, and what was still the same. This is a question I am always interested to find out -- what's different, and what's new?