First, the overhyped:

Mike!(tm) McGavick: He started his campaign to unseat Sen. Maria Cantwell with 40% in the polls. He never got any higher than that, and Cantwell's job approval ratings never dipped below 50 percent statewide. McGavick ran his whole campaign on a call for "civility" as part of the most uncivil political party in modern congressional history. And yet throughout the year, local media insisted this was a close race. Maybe it was that exclamation point. Final result: Cantwell 57 percent, Mike! 40 percent.

Tim Eyman: Has anyone noticed that Eyman has morphed from anti-tax crusader to open joke? These days he wears goofy costumes and transparently lies to get press attention, has lost most of his statewide supporters, can't get even slam-dunk initiatives like one opposing gay civil rights on the ballot, and for years has been losing most of the initiatives he does get on the ballot, or gets them thrown out by the courts. Voters have noticed. Local media, apparently, has not.

Speaking of gay-bashing, remember Rev. Ken Hutcherson's national boycott last January? Of course not, because it never happened. Instead, Hutcherson simply announced that he would be appearing on the influential Focus on the Family to target Microsoft, Boeing, and other big corporations that endorsed Olympia's then-pending gay civil rights bill. One problem: Focus on the Family knew nothing about it. There was no boycott. But why go to all that trouble of organizing one when you can instead simply tell an AP reporter one exists?

Seattle School District catastrophe: Yeah, they've made a mess of the school closures, Raj Mahnas resigned in part due to a nasty public mood at a school board meeting, and the district has all the problems of most urban school districts. But politicians like Greg Nickels and Ed Murray (and the establishment media that agree) who've been using these problems to lambaste reform school board members they never did like have their own agenda, and are overlooking some inconvenient truths. Like improving test scores, new jewels at rebuilt high schools like Ballard and (soon) Garfield, and the transformation of a $30 million deficit into $20 million in reserves.

Some Corpses Are More Equal Than Others: Anonymous local climbers who die on the slopes of the Cascades or Himalayas get headlines for days. Each of the some 100 homeless people who died on the streets of King County in 2006 stayed, well, anonymous.

Weather: December's windstorm was big news. But how many other, lesser weather "events" in 2006 got their own graphics and theme music?

The year's most underreported stories:

Seattle's Neighborhoods are Changing Radically: Virtually every major neighborhood in Seattle, from Lake City to Ballard to the Rainier Valley, has seen sharp changes and major development in the last five years, affecting the quality of life (for better and worse) of every Seattleite. That accelerated in 2006, but because you usually can't pin it down as a one-day event, it mostly went unremarked in local media.

Evergreen Point Floating Bridge: While the Alaskan Way Viaduct got endless attention, an equally expensive and controversial decision - one far more critical to the region's transportation future, and environmentally much more sensitive - faces the area over what to do with SR 520. As 2007 opens, we're left with the two most expensive and disruptive choices, arrived at with zero voter input. Sound familiar?

City Council Punts on the Viaduct: We heard a lot about the Viaduct's replacement, but not about why it will cost us a lot more than it should. Last March, the state told Seattle's City Council to either decide or refer the issue to voters. After sitting on it for six months, the city council, which mostly favors a tunnel, abruptly demurred on a public vote at the last moment in September, the same week in which the tunnel's cost estimate went up by $1 billion and a poll showed Seattleites preferred a replacement viaduct instead. So council sent it back to Christine Gregoire, who decided in December that Seattle voters must vote on it in 2007. Bottom line: a vote an unnecessary year later, with attendant higher costs for whichever option is chosen plus another year's risk that the existing structure will collapse in an earthquake. Thanks.

Neighborhoods Take On Parks Department ... and Win: In 2006, residents near both Gas Works Park and Occidental Park won lawsuits against the city over park development plans. Under public pressure, Parks had to reverse itself on a skate park at Woodland Park and a fireworks display at Union Bay. Voters overwhelmingly passed a charter amendment forcing the head of Parks to face reconfirmation by city council, and at year's end the department's controversial director, Ken Bounds, announced his "retirement." Nobody connected the dots.

Dave Reichert's Unflattering History: Locked in a tight reelection race with Democrat Darcy Burner, Rep. Reichert traded heavily on his past stewardship of the King County Sheriff's Office (KCSO) and his "capture" of the Green River Killer. Two problems: First, Reichert was not only irrelevant to Gary Ridgway's capture, but actually impeded the investigation of Ridgway in its early stages. Secondly, the P-I spent a year spotlighting past abuses at KCSO, but almost never noted that they almost all occurred under Reichert. Everyone else ignored Reichert's past ineptness, too. With different coverage, Burner would have won.

There were other underreported stories-the fiasco of the Port of Seattle's Terminal 30 and other Port sleaze comes to mind, as does the criminal conditions at King County Jail. Most of this information is out there for a discerning citizen, just not emphasized. Read carefully in 2007, and rely on more than one source. You'll come away knowing a lot more about how our city and region work--and what you can do to change things in 2007.