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Four business owners in the West were indicted by a federal jury last month for allegedly smuggling illegal devices meant to skirt federal emissions standards across the border and distributing them across the U.S., in violation of the Clean Air Act.

John Wesley Owens from Manson, Washington, and Joshua Wesley Owens from Mapleton, Utah, were charged along with their companies Diesel Truck Products, Inc., DPF Delete Shop Inc. and Fulfillment Solutions & More, LLC.

Two Canadians were also among the indicted. Kevin Paul Dodd from Maple Ridge, British Columbia, his companies Evolution Auto Performance and Evo Tunes Inc. and Philip John Sweeney, of Coquitlam, British Columbia, and his company KX Wheels were also charged.

The indictment alleges the men conspired to smuggle and distribute hardware designed to disable controls on diesel trucks that would otherwise decrease dangerous emissions and pollutants across the border. From 2015 to 2023, the Owenses bought over $33 million in those devices from Dodd and Sweeney and brought them into Eastern Washington, according to a  news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Eastern Washington.

Joshua Owens also allegedly told Dodd in an email he was “on borrowed time with the EPA” and started a new business addressed in the Cayman Islands. The indictment says the Owenses and their businesses received around $74 million in revenue for selling the devices online.

The devices violate the Clean Air Act, enacted in 1963 and further amended to regulate air emissions and protect the environment from pollutants.

In a news conference Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Vanessa Waldref stood alongside FBI, EPA and IRS investigators condemning those who want to pollute the environment and launder money to do it. Her office has filed eight environmental protection cases since 2022.

“Air quality is critical for thriving communities. Exposure to diesel exhaust can lead to serious health conditions like asthma. Respiratory illnesses can also worsen existing heart and lung disease, especially in children and the elderly,” she said. “We need to protect our air.”

Waldref’s office started the Environmental Task Force, meant to protect public health, in March. It brings together federal, state and local agencies to focus on environmental enforcement, Waldref said.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp, D-Skamania, has introduced a proposal to establish a bipartisan select committee to consider electoral reforms.

On Tuesday, Gluesenkamp Perez joined Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, in introducing the Electoral Reform Select Committee Act. If passed, the lawmakers say the committee would consider multi-member districts with proportional representation, increasing the number of members in the House of Representatives and establishing independent redistricting commissions, among other proposals.

“Regardless of party or ideology, more and more Americans feel that our democracy isn’t working for them,” Gluesenkamp Perez said in a statement. “Voters feel unrepresented and are losing faith in a government that they view as unreflective of their communities and values. As members of Congress, we need to take a step back, reexamine how we got here, and work toward what we can do to fix it. This bipartisan select committee will look at the role our electoral system plays in exacerbating the hyper-partisanship, cynicism, and obstruction that has taken over today’s politics. It’s past time for Congress to set aside the conflict and chaos of clickbait politics and get back to work governing on behalf of the American people.”

According to the lawmakers, the proposal has the support of more than 170 political scientists, who wrote that Congress should “take this step towards reversing today’s dangerous levels of polarization and dysfunction and to strengthen itself as the fulcrum of our democracy.”

Earlier this year, Gluesenkamp Perez and Golden joined Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pennsylvania, and Andrew Garbarino, R-New York, in introducing the Let America Vote Act of 2024.

If approved, the legislation would:

• Require states to permit access to unaffiliated voters to vote in primary elections for federal office

• Withhold federal funds if a state does not permit access to unaffiliated voters to vote in primary elections for state and local office

• Provide additional funds for states to transition to access to primary elections for unaffiliated voters

• Restrict the use of voter data for nonaffiliated voters

• Prohibit states from permitting non-citizens to vote in elections for federal office

• Withhold federal funds if a state permits non-citizens to vote in elections for state and local office

Sal Mungia, a Tacoma trial attorney, has defeated Dave Larson, a Federal Way Municipal Court judge, in a razor-close race for an open state Supreme Court seat.

Mungia led with just over 50% of the vote Tuesday afternoon, to 49.4% for Larson, a difference of about 21,000 votes out of more than 3.2 million counted. The Seattle Times is calling the race because, while counting continues, the Secretary of State's office estimates only about 24,000 ballots remain to be counted.

Larson led by about 1,000 votes in ballots counted on election night, two weeks ago, but Mungia took a narrow lead the next day as more ballots were counted. He has maintained or grown that lead every day since.

Supreme Court races are nonpartisan, but Mungia has the endorsement of a wide array of Democrats, while Larson has the endorsement of the state Republican Party.

It's the first time since 2012 that Washington has had a contested race for an open Supreme Court seat.

Five of the nine current justices were appointed to fill open seats and subsequently won elections to keep those seats. Three of the nine were appointed by Gov. Jay Inslee. Two justices on the ballot this year, Chief Justice Steven González and Justice Sheryl Gordon McCloud, ran unopposed.

Mungia will replace Justice Susan Owens, who is stepping down after nearly 25 years on the court because she reached the mandatory retirement age of 75.

Mungia was recruited to run by González and was endorsed by eight of the nine current justices. Larson ran for the state Supreme Court in 2000, when he lost in the primary, and in 2016 and 2020, when he advanced to the general election but lost to incumbents.

The state Supreme Court, in recent years, has been one of the most aggressive judiciaries in the country in pushing to address issues of institutional racism it sees as long-standing in the courts.

Mungia is fully on board with the effort, while Larson is a little uneasy with some of the court's methods.

Mungia, a graduate of Pacific Lutheran University and Georgetown University Law School, clerked for a state Supreme Court justice and a federal judge immediately after law school, but other than that has worked in private practice his entire 40-year career.

A partner at the Tacoma firm Gordon Thomas Honeywell, he focuses on civil lawsuits, largely personal injury work. He is a past president of the Washington State Bar Association, the Western States Bar Conference and Legal Aid of Washington. He has argued cases in both the state Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Larson is a graduate of the University of Puget Sound and Seattle University Law School, and worked in private practice on civil litigation, largely representing insurance companies, for about 20 years. In 2008, he was appointed a judge in Federal Way Municipal Court, and has served as that court's presiding judge since 2009.

What began as a “side hustle” for educator Rebecca Williams’ own wedding in 1999 has now blossomed into a successful floral bouquet design business.

The Centralia resident just celebrated the second year of Fern Ridge Floral & Design operating out of a brick-and-mortar location, and the business accolades are beginning to stack up.

On top of winning 2023 and 2024 KMNT Country Listeners’ Choice awards, Fern Ridge Floral & Design just won The Chronicle’s 2024 Best of Lewis County Best Florist award last month.

“I was literally shocked. I was not expecting it at all. I was hopeful, because when you’re a business you want to make a name and reputation for yourself, and our No. 1 focus is pushing out quality products and making sure our customers are exceedingly happy,” Williams said. “So when I won that, I was like, ‘Ah! It’s working!’”

Accolades aside, Williams has been running Fern Ridge Floral for as long as she has been married, as her own wedding was her first foray into floral design.

“I just had my 25th wedding anniversary. We got married in 1999 and that’s actually what started my whole floral journey,” Williams said. “I knew I wanted the flowers at my wedding to be kind of a standout thing, but I had no idea how much they cost. So when I went to get an estimate, I had a little bit of what I would call sticker shock.”

Given the popularity of television personality and designer Martha Stewart at the time — who promoted many do-it-yourself design projects — she decided to try her own hand at floral design to save some money.

While she was successful, she also learned why wedding flowers typically cost more.

“I think it’s a little bit of a misconception. They say that as soon as florists see a bride coming they double the price, but that’s not true. Weddings just take so much more planning and organizing. You have to have extra staff and vehicles, all that stuff goes into it. That’s why it costs more,” Williams said.

She also discovered she loved doing it, but only in her spare time at first as she worked full time as the librarian at Grand Mound Elementary School before working as the registrar at Rochester Middle School.

It wasn’t until October 2022 that she finally decided to open a brick-and-mortar location for Fern Ridge Floral and work full time at bouquet design. The business was first located next to the original location of the Sweet Dough Cookie Co. on Main Street in Centralia.

When Sweet Dough Cookie Co. moved to Chehalis for a larger location earlier this year, Williams also decided to move.

“We were kind of down there by ourselves, and there weren’t really a lot of other walkable businesses down there, so we decided to see what was closer to Tower (Avenue),” Williams said. “This ended up coming open the same exact time that Ashlee was moving.”

Still located on Main Street just west of Tower Avenue in downtown Centralia, Fern Ridge Floral focuses on working with clients to design custom bouquets and flower arrangements for everything from weddings and other events to providing a custom flower bouquet subscription service — where clients can have fresh flowers delivered on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis.

Williams’ goal is to provide her clients with unique bouquet designs while also sourcing as many flowers as she can locally.

“If I can buy from a local grower, I absolutely will buy from a local grower, hands down,” Williams said.

While she wishes she could source 100% of her flowers locally, not all the flowers she gets requests for grow in this region or climate, so in some cases she has no choice but to purchase them through a wholesaler importing flowers. 

Any local flower farmers in the area who haven’t sold to Williams before are invited to contact her to discuss business.

With the average wedding ceremony and reception now costing around $35,000, according to a recent survey of newly married couples by theknot.com, Williams likes to try to keep things as affordable as possible for her clients.

“I wouldn’t say that I’m cheap by any stretch of the imagination, but I still try to keep in mind 22-year-old Rebecca when I’m going over pricing with brides, because I know that is a big factor for a lot of people,” Williams said. “... I’m really a minimalist when it comes to things. I’m not the type of florist that’s going to push you to get a ton of stuff, because most of my business for brides comes from referrals. I don’t want people to remember me as that lady that pushed them to buy a whole bunch of stuff that they didn’t really think they needed.”

She used to be shy about talking about budgets with her clients, but now it’s usually one of the starting points of the conversation as it helps Williams still be able to choose unique flowers to craft bouquets while keeping things affordable.

It’s not just flowers that she sells, either, as Williams also sells items including custom made clothing, soaps, lotions and more at Fern Ridge Floral.

“The majority of the products that I carry in my shop are either locally made or made by a small business. Women-owned, minority-owned, those businesses I’m really drawn to because I know how hard it is to get started and build yourself from the ground up,” Williams said.

Located at 107 W. Main St. in downtown Centralia, Fern Ridge Floral & Design is open Monday through Friday from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 10:10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., though the business might be closed on Saturdays over the winter months, Williams added.

To contact Fern Ridge Floral about floral arrangement estimates or selling flowers wholesale, call the business at 360-669-5979 or message it on its Facebook page at https://tinyurl.com/yfeaxm3b. 

For more information, visit Fern Ridge Floral’s website at https://fernridgefloral.com/. 

• CARL E. GRIFFITH SR., 78, Randle, died Nov. 15 at his residence. A funeral service will be held at 11 a.m on Saturday, Nov. 23, at Reconciled Christian Fellowship in Randle with a graveside to follow at Silver Creek Cemetery. Arrangements are under the care of Cattermole Funeral Home.

• GERALD O. ROSS, 61, Chehalis, died Nov. 15 at Providence Centralia Hospital. Arrangements are under the care of Cattermole Funeral Home.

• GERALD DALE GLAZE, 85, Olympia, died Nov. 14 at Brookdale — Olympia East. Arrangements are under the care of Funeral Alternatives of Washington.

The White Pass Ski Area is preparing to open for winter sports enthusiasts this weekend.

Conditions permitting, it will be open for skiers and snowboarders on Friday, Nov. 22, for season pass-holders only, before beginning regular lift ticket sales on Saturday and Sunday.

Lift ticket sales for Saturday and Sunday are expected to start online on Wednesday, Nov. 20.

“Once we are open, be aware that early season conditions exist. That means rocks, stumps and more lay just below the surface. Ride with great care. See you soon!” the White Pass Ski Area website stated.

As of Wednesday, the snow’s base depth at White Pass’ summit was 61 inches, while it was 18 inches at the base area near the ski lodge. The mountain had received 18 inches of new snowfall within the past 24 hours as of Wednesday.

Skiers and snowboarders are also advised to check the ski area’s website to see which ski lifts are running.

Following this opening weekend, White Pass Ski Area will be closed throughout Thanksgiving week before reopening on Friday, Nov. 29.

To stay up to date on weather and snow conditions for this possible opening weekend at the White Pass Ski Area, visit its website at https://skiwhitepass.com/the-mountain/snow-report. 

For lift ticket sales, lessons, equipment rentals and more, visit https://estore.skiwhitepass.com/. 

The White Pass Ski Area is located at 48935 U.S. Highway 12.