Blaine Confidential

Why did Kari Mar publish the clash between the Whatcom County Planning Commission and Blaine Community Development Services over Urban Growth Area infrastructure costs to taxpayers and rate payers in her obscure publication, Salish Current , and not in The Northern Light? Who is Mar protecting? Certainly not the citizens of Blaine who held city officials accountable for misconduct. Mar hasn't yet begun to make amends for what the newspaper she recently bought did to Blaine 2023-25. Apparently, the real estate ads she relies on are more important to her than democracy and the rule of law.

The Northern Light's new publisher, Kari Mar, is asking readers to donate $29.  If Mar was covering the Criminal Justice Training Commission certification complaints against Blaine PD, now being investigated by the CJTC, I might be inclined to do so.  Or if Mar was covering the Birch Point wetland maps fraud by Blaine Community Development Services, or the lack of enforcement of the Shoreline Management Plan by Blaine Code Enforcement, or the self-dealing by former Blaine officials Sam Randhawa and Mike Hill.  Mar, however, is covering none of this.  Mar has all the documentation to cover these issues, but hasn't. Apparently, nothing has changed at The Northern Light. Even the dishonest reporters Grace McCarthy and Nolan Baker who defamed Water Planning Matters advocates are still there. And Mar wants our money to pay them? If Mar had integrity, she would have published a front page apology from her to Geoffrey Baker (aka Otto Pointer) for allowing Nolan Baker to def...

On February 23, 2026, Whatcom County Sheriff Donnell Tanksley--former Blaine Chief of Police --wrote an   op-ed   suggesting that voters recall chiefs of police and sheriffs found by the Washington Criminal Justice Training Commission (CJTC) to have violated the law in their duties, rather than have them step down immediately upon being decertified by the CJTC as law enforcement officers. Current Blaine Chief of Police Rodger Funk is presently being investigated by the CJTC . That is not the way to handle serious breaches of duty that violate the U.S. constitutional rights to equal protection under the law. When police are used to intimidate citizens for political purposes, it's wrongheaded to ask communities to vote on whether they support denying protection to minorities and advocates opposed to those in power. This makes me think Tanksley has Funk's back . Tanksley's department declined to charge Blaine City Councilman Mike Hill when he  accosted open government ...

Rather than allow constituents to ask questions directly at the so-called 42nd District town hall for state legislators Sharon Shewmake, Alicia Rule, and Joe Timmons, the February 21 event was controlled by a gatekeeper who reviewed written questions to decide which were easy to answer and not embarrassing for the legislators. At real town halls, government officials are held accountable by their constituents. What the 42nd District legislators did was a dog-and-pony show. Avoiding accountability by manipulating the public process--in town halls, city council meetings, and public hearings--is what these legislators have in common with the City of Blaine. Their disdain toward public participation is only overshadowed by their devotion to the real estate industry.

Planning commission, cities clash over urban growth -- Salish Current , February 16, 2026   “They have not identified any source of wetlands mitigation, what it’s going to cost, how much is involved, who’s going to pay for it and whether the cost actually makes the land affordable or unaffordable at the end of it,” Browne said. “Blaine has to be held to account for saying how is this economically viable, how is it going to be funded?”  -- Rud Browne,  Whatcom County Planning Commission  “Our land capacity analysis has already accounted for all wetlands and their maximum buffers remove that area from our land capacity analysis so we can accommodate 20 years of industrial and commercial job growth and not impact any wetlands whatsoever,” he said in an interview. “There is zero wetland mitigation required to meet our employment allocations, and it will cost us that same figure, zero.” -- Alex Wenger, Blaine Community Development Services

February 18 letter to Whatcom County: Blaine Community Development Services is the posterchild for Growth Management fraud. (See  Blaine Case Study  in the September 2025 issue of  Whatcom Watch .)  The City of Blaine never held a single Growth Management orientation for the community to participate in setting priorities for civic center redevelopment, Critical Aquifer Recharge Area and wetlands protection, or the proposed expansion of the city at Birch Point. Instead, the city met behind closed doors with developers to come up with their vision, and after they passed ordinances enacting the developers vision, they sold it to the public.  Part of that sales job was by Ocean Farms LLC, the Birch Point developer who pushed for expanding the Blaine city limits at Birch Point so he could develop under the city's environmental standards, which are significantly lower than those of Whatcom County. Ocean Farms LLC paid for the public relations campaign to influence Bla...