Despite busting major crimes, leading a SWAT team and arresting serial killers, Neil McClanahan once was taunted for being a "hippie-kisser" and "bleeding-heart liberal" because he worried about homeless children and poverty-stricken families. Now, as the veteran Thurston County undersheriff retires after 34 years, McClanahan wears those taunts as badges of honor.

Almost every week, a reporter at The Olympian files a request to obtain material available under the Freedom of Information Act. This process is not limited to journalists. Anyone can request information, and the governing body is responsible for providing that information in a timely manner or citing the statute that specifically exempts it from public view.

Many Thurston County residents struggle with diets, pills and exercise — and some turn to surgery. THURSTON COUNTY - Debbie Riley doesn't mind that her bus driver's uniform hangs loosely on her body since she lost 45 pounds. "I have my eye on a pink leather motorcycle jacket," said Riley, 48, of Tenino, who had "Lap-Band" weight loss surgery last August when she weighed 260 pounds.

Republican Kevin O'Sullivan and incumbent Democrat Bob Macleod are locked in a heated race for the $93,000-a-year job representing District 3 on Thurston County Commission. The two are old foes. O'Sullivan held the commission seat from 1999 to 2002 as a Democrat, but was defeated by Macleod in a re-election bid.

A Marin assessor-recorder's office employee was arrested Friday and an arrest warrant issued for her boss on suspicion of five felony and two misdemeanor counts of perjury and abuse of official position, the county district attorney said. Karen Anne Small-Long, former chief deputy recorder, and her assistant, Jan Cheryse Rowden, tried to file forged documents that appeared to be an attempt to avoid paying property taxes on a transfer of home ownership, said Marin District Attorney Ed Berberian.

An Independent Journal report on Marin County's public pension program won top freedom of information honors from the Society of Professional Journalists' Northern California chapter. The Independent Journal won the James Madison Freedom of Information Award in the overall media category for stories on Marin County's ballooning pension program.

It didn't take Denis Rice long to find a fatal flaw in the Marin County pension system when he became a county supervisor in 1977. "When I first got on board, I knew that something was wrong with retirement," said Rice, a Tiburon attorney who served as supervisor from 1977-81. Rice realized the county was boosting worker pay an average of 5 to 6 percent annually, but that in the projections of pension fund liabilities, officials low-balled costs by banking on "a zero percent increase in salaries and compensation."

SAUSALITO legal secretary Jo D'Anna sees no retirement in her future anytime soon - and no pension, either. At 55, with 22 years of experience, D'Anna would be in line for a pension of about $32,000 annually for the rest of her life - plus annual cost-of-living increases and generous retiree health-care benefits - if she was a legal secretary all that time with the Marin County Counsel's Office.

A financial time bomb threatens taxpayers in Marin County. It's the rocketing cost of Marin's county and municipal pension programs, a mounting fiscal obligation that compels taxpayers to provide public employee retirees with escalating pensions that are more generous than those available to many in private enterprise.