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Play Episode Listen Later Mar 15, 2024 42:04

Hacks & Wonks Week in Review: Presidential Primary, Legislative Retirements, Police Recruitment in Seattle, Seattle Public Schools Board, and Burien Gets Sued Presidential Primary Takeaways In this week's presidential primary, Trump and Biden secured enough delegates to clinch their parties' nominations. While Trump's impact worries moderate Republicans in Washington like Dave Reichert, Biden faces pressure from the "uncommitted delegates" protest vote demanding an end to violence in Gaza. Washington Legislative Retirements Several longtime Democratic legislators, including Frank Chopp and Karen Keiser, announced their retirements after the recent session. This exodus provides an opportunity for a new generation of more progressive leadership. Police Recruitment in Seattle The Seattle City Council discussed subsidizing housing and lowering standards to recruit more police officers amid a staffing shortage. However, mounting evidence and feedback from police suggest the culture within the department and lack of accountability are deterring recruits, not council rhetoric or compensation. Seattle Public Schools Board Appointments Seattle Public Schools is in the process of selecting two people to fill vacancies left by two departures from the Seattle Public Schools Board. Highlighting the diverse range of candidates, including labor leader Joe Mizrahi and Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce's Sarah Clark, the segment explored the potential policy implications and the importance of educational governance in the city. Sheriff Sues Burien Over Unconstitutional Anti-Camping Ordinance Burien passed a stricter anti-camping law aimed at homeless individuals, which the King County Sheriff's Office refused to enforce as likely unconstitutional. In retaliation, Burien moved to defund the county's contracted police services, prompting criticism that it is escalating rather than solving homelessness. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Robert Cruickshank, at @cruickshank. Resources Tacoma City Councilmember Olgy Diaz Shares Strategies for Running for Office from Hacks & Wonks “Trump and Biden win Washington's presidential primaries” by Melissa Santos from Axios “How did Washington's 'uncommitted' voters do on presidential primary night?” by Katie Campbell from KUOW Senate Democratic Caucus Status | Northwest Progressive Institute “Shaun Scott Is Running for the State House” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger “Longtime Washington state senator is leaving, but not right away” by Jerry Cornfield from Washington State Standard “Sam Hunt to retire from the Washington State Legislature after many decades of service” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate “As Seattle police applicants lag, City Hall looks to bureaucracy” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times “Higher salaries? Subsidized housing? What will it take for Seattle to recruit and retain more police?” by Casey Martin from KUOW “Seattle School Board narrows candidate field for open seats” by Sami West from KUOW “King County files complaint over Burien's anti-camping ordinance” by Jadenne Radoc Cabahug from Crosscut “VIDEO: Sheriff files legal complaint against City of Burien regarding constitutionality of its expanded camping ban; City responds” by Scott Schaefer from The B-Town Blog “Burien's anti-camping ordinance is not an answer to homelessness” by The Seattle Times Editorial Board Find stories that Crystal is reading here Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here

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Week in Review: January 5, 2024 - with Lex Vaughn

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Play Episode Listen Later Jan 5, 2024 52:02

On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and Founder and Editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn! Crystal and Lex dive into the new year's headlines with a debate over Space Needle NYE drone shows vs fireworks, a rundown of new Washington state laws taking effect, and a discussion of why it's important to look past a poll's summary headline. They then chat about the new Seattle City Council taking office, a lawsuit against the City of Burien over its homeless camping law, and a new entrant into the Attorney General's race. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Lex Vaughn at @AlexaVaughn. Resources RE-AIR: Ending Youth Incarceration with Dr. Ben Danielson of AHSHAY Center from Hacks & Wonks “The new Washington state laws taking effect in January 2024” by Laurel Demkovich from Washington State Standard “Poll: Washington voters want to spend more — while cutting taxes” by Donna Gordon Blankinship from Crosscut Crosscut - Elway Poll | 2024 Legislative Preview “Tammy Morales, Rob Saka To Chair Key Council Committees During Pivotal Year” by Ryan Packer and Doug Trumm from The Urbanist “Seattle politics shift as City Council gets new members, president” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times “New City Council Elects Former Conservative Outcast as President” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger Council Vacancy | Office of the City Clerk “Unhoused people sue Burien over new homeless camping law” by Anna Patrick from The Seattle Times “Update: Eastern WA attorney who fought gun laws, COVID mandates plans run for state AG” by Eric Rosane from Tri-City Herald Find stories that Crystal is reading here Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. If you missed our Tuesday topical show, we re-aired an important conversation I had with Dr. Ben Danielson, director of AHSHAY Center about ending youth incarceration. Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and founder and editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn. [00:01:20] Lex Vaughn: Hey, nice to be back. [00:01:21] Crystal Fincher: Hey, great to have you back - excited to have you back. I don't know that I'm excited to talk about everything on our list today, but we've got to get through it. But I do- [00:01:33] Lex Vaughn: There's a lot. [00:01:34] Crystal Fincher: There's a lot. And so - first show of the new year - we just had New Year's Eve, New Year's Day happen and we welcome that in in the greater Seattle area with a big Space Needle fireworks show. This year, it was a drone show pre-show and then a fireworks main show. And this year, there was a bit of a challenge with it - it was a smoky, hazy, kind of unintelligible soupy mess. What did you think about it? [00:02:09] Lex Vaughn: I was like, what is this? It's 2024 - did someone read like the last part of the year backwards, like 420, and go - This is a 420-themed New Year's Eve celebration? I don't know - it was funny. I mean, I was celebrating out-of-state with family, but I immediately was getting messages from people like - Did you see this? Did you see this? I mean, honestly, I think that - I know that a lot of people are flipping out and going like, Something needs to be done - but this is Seattle. Come on - you know that the Space Needle thing doesn't always work as planned and that's part of the fun. And the look of it was definitely fun this last year. [00:03:01] Crystal Fincher: You know, it was interesting - weather is always, always a factor in anything that happens in this region, whether it's 4th of July celebrations or New Year's Eve. I think for me, I have just been, I mean, I'm someone who has traditionally loved fireworks for most of my life and has enjoyed them. Yes, 100%. But I also, especially over the past couple of years, contending with the smoke generated by fireworks - not on New Year's Eve, but you know, July 4th, mostly, but I guess the neighborhoods on New Year's Eve - the fire hazard associated with it, which is definitely worse in the summer than it is in the winter. It just seems like now we have the option for drone shows and those seem like they're a bit more resilient - they don't create smoke. And part of the challenge of this current show was the way that the fireworks and the smoke interacted with the atmosphere, kind of making each other worse, making visibility worse. And it just seems like, okay - I am ready to move on from fireworks and to move on to drone shows. They seem like they can do everything the fireworks shows do and more. And it just seems like given where we are at with our climate, given where we are at with the volatility of just Seattle weather period, that it seems like it makes more sense to me to do that. But you know, I don't know if that's an option moving forward. You know, I don't know what's gonna happen with that. I'm not in any way affiliated with that. So it'll be interesting to see, but I wish we could move beyond fireworks personally. [00:04:38] Lex Vaughn: I'll never be over fireworks. I want that - well, I don't know - it's like, I know there's a lot of debate over it. But I also think any attempt to lessen fireworks only increases fireworks. So honestly, the best plan for reducing fireworks all over a region is always like a big, you know, show that people can watch. And when I, you know, go back to my hometown in California for New Year's or July 4th - that city stopped doing a central fireworks show. And what happened is just a proliferation of fireworks all over the city. There's just like a fireworks show going on everywhere all night. So I always think it's worth it to have one big show or you're gonna get that. [00:05:31] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I do think that a big show that the community can come to is important. In the absence of that, people are definitely going to celebrate on their own. I'm just thinking the big show can be a drone show. We saw a pretty successful pre-show - I thought - [00:05:45] Lex Vaughn: The drone show is a good backup. I mean, especially in Seattle, 'cause it's like, you know, you might be excited about a show and then, something about the weather happens and it's - Oh, you're not gonna see anything. So it's like the drone show is the only thing that can be guaranteed if it can move to a little space where it's free from smoke or clouds or whatever. [00:06:09] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, also wanna talk about a few more things this new year is ushering in, and that's a number of new state laws taking effect as of January 1st. One of them includes marijuana testing and changing in how that can be used by employers. Under the new law, employers are blocked from conducting drug tests for cannabis when making hiring decisions. They can still test for other drugs before hiring and they can still test employees for cannabis in certain situations, like after accidents or if they suspect someone's impaired. There are also some exemptions for companies that need to test for federal requirements and other workers potentially - including police, airline crews, corrections officers - may still have to test. But it's a pretty significant change in just kind of pre-employment testing overall - that's done with a lot of lower wage jobs, certainly not so much predominant and higher wage jobs. But it does, there has been a tension for quite some time in going - Okay, well, if it's legal, then why are you testing for it? And so this seems to bring things more in line. Do you think that makes sense? [00:07:21] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, and I hope the message of a law like this is it's not worth it because you could be breaking the law and you can get sued. Like it's a liability for you now to try to judge people this way - If you haven't like sped up with the times here and realize that it's generally not that big of a deal to use cannabis. [00:07:46] Crystal Fincher: Another law that took place is a - that is taking effect - is a 10-day gun waiting period. So as of now, those wishing to buy a firearm in Washington need to complete a background check and then wait 10 business days before they can complete that purchase. We've seen this referred to as kind of a cooling off period before wanting to purchase a gun and actually owning one. We have certainly seen a number of examples from mass shootings to domestic violence situations where people use guns to murder people immediately after purchasing them. And so while no gun reform is going to solve everything - usually no anything solves anything for everything - and it really is gonna take a patchwork of policies and laws to move forward. And this seems like a positive one to me that has some evidence behind it. [00:08:39] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, honestly, this is like, I think the most positive new law of this next year that I'm really looking forward to seeing put in place and I hope becomes more commonplace because like you said - yeah, there's a lot of reform that needs to happen to make this country safer from gun violence. But this cooling off period is a major one. When I was a reporter at The Seattle Times, I definitely covered some very tragic situations where it was very clear that a young man or something was distraught over somebody breaking up with them and made a horrible decision really quickly. And it's like in a lot of these cases, it's - what could have happened if this person had just been held to a few more days of thought before pulling that off. [00:09:31] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Another law taking effect impacts hospital staffing. Hospitals in Washington need to establish staffing committees made up of nursing staff and administrators. This is in response to years of advocacy really by healthcare workers saying that - Hey, these staffing ratios have gotten way out of whack. We're not able to provide adequate care to patients, patient care quality is suffering and we need to get back to staffing ratios - happening during a time where we're losing healthcare workers. There's been a lot of attrition. The pandemic only has made that worse. And so this is trying to still allow hospitals to have their say, but to do it with the input of nurses and hospital staff to say - Let's put patient safety first. Let's really work on these ratios and make sure that we're moving in the right direction and really putting patients at the center of this year. And I think this is a step forward in this direction that will bring a little bit more transparency and accountability to the process. [00:10:43] Lex Vaughn: And it's awesome that hospital staff is getting this extra leverage to make that happen. Because I mean, obviously they've been pressing for stuff like that as unions and all. But it's crazy the way they have to fight to give us quality care. Increasingly, unfortunately, in our health systems here in the US, it's like a lot of hospital administrators are more focused on turning hospitals into these profit machines without as much thought about what's happening to staff and their patients. And those staff - those are the ones rooting for us and protecting quality of care. [00:11:30] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So there's a new voting rights law. It's intended to address situations where there are signs of polarized voting among different groups in a community, and where there are risks to some groups having their votes diluted so they don't have a fair opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. It makes it easier to try and address this with a couple different mechanisms - it allows organizations to sue on behalf of their members, it allows local governments to voluntarily reform their election systems to be more representative of their populations, and for lawsuits to be filed if the locality refused to take such steps. So it hopefully can bring the cost down. I mean, sometimes there are clear violations, but it has been very costly - prohibitively costly - for someone to pursue it if they feel they have been wrong and want to bring that in court. So this seeks to try and address that and provide a pathway for people to be able to sue without that cost prohibitive element involved and to recover costs they incur when researching those possible legal challenges. What are your thoughts on this one? [00:12:42] Lex Vaughn: I have to admit, I was like, when I, you know, just kind of heard about this one and got a general sense of it, I was like - wait, what? This sounds a little bit confusing to me. The motivation of it is just that like, if someone is feeling outnumbered in a community, that they have strength and power to - I have to admit like this one, I didn't totally get, 'cause I don't know if I've seen a law like that before. [00:13:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it is in line with previous voting rights act laws. And we have passed legislation in the same vein - I think five years ago, we passed a voting rights act in the same vein. But it's really an issue of like - we see a challenge when it comes to districting that's happening right now in Yakima, or issues where it looks like - Okay, a community's overwhelmingly voting in the same way if you look at it geographically, but things are sliced up and that's not turning out the way it is in government. I mean, there's a case to be made in a city I'm pretty familiar with - the city of Kent, the largest city in the state that doesn't have any council districts, no form of districted government, which makes the government certainly less representative than it is in other areas. But to try and bring a case or bring a suit and rectify this has been prohibitively expensive. You can see something being wrong, but whether you can pursue any remedy or whether there's any recourse is a whole different subject. And so it's like - okay, we see that there are problems happening, but we don't have the tools and power to make it realistic to expect something to be done about it. And if someone doesn't expect something to be done about a violation, if they see that there's no consequence for bad actions, it makes it more likely that that's going to happen. So this makes it more likely that - hey, if you are violating the law, if there are violations happening here, you can expect more of a consequence for that than you did before. So hopefully one that prevents further violations from happening, but for those that currently are, it makes them easier to remedy and rectify. So I think that's a positive step. Will it solve anything? Will it immediately change anything? I don't think this is like an immediately transformative piece of policy - we're going to see something that flips from night to day in this. But I do think that it's part of, again, patchwork of legislation like most things that makes it easier to hold people and entities that are violating voting rights laws accountable and to give people more tools to fix it. [00:15:25] Lex Vaughn: And maybe like slow the role of people who were planning on exploiting people in new ways or something like that. [00:15:31] Crystal Fincher: Yes. Because there's a lot of that happening right now. Okay. Absolutely. Another law that a lot of cities have been dealing with is one that addresses street racing. So this law imposes tougher penalties for street racing. If you're caught, you can have your car impounded for three days on the first offense and forfeited on the second one. It also increases penalties for those who are found to be aiding and abetting street racers. I don't know if this is going to get there. I mean, that seems like a really tough penalty. I am not personally familiar with how these laws have resulted in any changes, or whether they've resulted in any changes. But it seems like they're trying to do more. That people are seeing that this is a problem - and it is a problem - it's a problem for a variety of reasons. And they're trying to do something to address it - and hopefully it does help. We will see. [00:16:28] Lex Vaughn: Honestly, I think it's - of course this is dangerous. I mean, whenever I hear something like this happened - I can't believe sometimes I hear this happened in Seattle sometimes. I'm like - What street are you on? Oh my God. This is horrible. This is not the place. But I think the thing is - there is a culture for this that will always be there. And no matter what law you put in place, I mean, you're just going to make it sexier. So, I mean, honestly, I wish that there was some way to - I don't know - give people a space to do this more safely or something. That's the real solution, 'cause it is going to keep happening. [00:17:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think you're onto something there. I mean, clearly you're right - there's a culture around that - and I mean, it's so interesting. And it's kind of an offshoot of car culture. There are car enthusiasts and this is a subset of that. And it's kind of tangential, but we, as a community, as a society have been reducing the number of just alternative, recreational opportunities in spaces, particularly for younger people. And then criminalizing a lot of activity there. Some of that, you know, may be warranted. Not all activity is positive. Like we said, there's a lot of danger associated with street racing, but what are we doing to give people options to do safer activities? Whether it's racing activities or others, if we aren't providing positive, affirmative options, particularly for younger people - places for people to congregate and share that don't require an entry fee, that don't require purchase necessarily, that are places where people can congregate and recreate and do things that are meaningful to them together - that we're moving in the wrong direction overall. I think that's a valid concern and one we need to do better with as a community and society. [00:18:28] Lex Vaughn: But it's not going away. So it's - we just need a more proactive approach. [00:18:35] Crystal Fincher: Yep, and so we will keep our eye on how these laws pan out, on new laws as they pass. We have a new legislative session starting on Monday, and we'll be following along with what happens there. But we're seeing these results now and we'll keep paying attention. Also wanna talk this week about a new Crosscut poll that was just released - part of the poll at least. And the headline of this poll is - Washington voters want to spend more - while cutting taxes. Also another headline saying that 57% of people are in favor of repealing the state's new capital gains tax. Now this is interesting. We've talked about this before in the podcast, but polls are very interesting things. And it's very important to pay attention to the questions asked, who they're being asked of, and what the particulars are in this. And this one - I think there are some interesting findings in this poll, I think that you have to dig a lot deeper than these headlines. And I think that this doesn't actually tell us much about what voters' likelihood of voting for or against some of these questions asked in here. And one of the reasons why this is being asked is because there is likely to be an initiative, a statewide initiative, to repeal this tax. But it's very important to actually read the poll, to go beyond the synopsis in the article and to take a look at the actual poll. And when we do that, we see that these questions were asked in a way that they aren't asked when people are invested in, where like people working, right - if you're actually working on this thing, you would not trust this. You're not asking questions in this way. Usually when you're trying to figure out what happens - one, kind of the most important thing, you wanna ask the question in the same way that it's gonna be asked to voters on their ballot. Now we're kind of before that point, right? So a lot of times you'll hear - Well, is it the ballot title? Is it the ballot language? We don't have that yet, but you wanna get close to that. You wanna describe it in a way that you feel that they're gonna encounter it in the real world with voters. You also with this, it's very important understanding, particularly with something like this - there's gonna be a lot of money, there's gonna be a lot of communication in these campaigns. So people are gonna hear messages in favor of it. People are gonna hear messages opposed to it. They're gonna be getting mail in their mailboxes, they're gonna see digital ads, they're gonna be seeing political commercials about this - and they're gonna be getting a lot of messages. You want to expose the people you're asking those questions of of likely messages that they're gonna hear so that - okay, afterwards, is it more likely or less likely that they're going to support it? - or that you're coming closer to the conditions under which they're gonna make their decision. That's really informative and really predictive and a pretty accurate way of figuring out where support really lies. And really in those things, when you have a poll, you're asking those questions - there's a lot learned by asking the initial question before they hear any pro and con arguments. And then asking that final question - the question again - having heard all that, are you still in favor of, more likely to support, less likely to support this initiative or this law? And seeing who that moves and who different arguments influence is all part of how people put together these campaigns. None of that was in here. This was asked in kind of a kludgy way, actually, kind of a muddled way in how they did this. They kind of asked - Hey, they're expected to have a surplus from a capital gains tax and a carbon pricing trade system. What should we do with this money? And so it's just - Okay, we should put it into schools. And actually the majority of people did not say they want to keep spending at the current level or reduce taxes somehow. They were saying - majority 55% said put more money into schools, reducing homelessness, mental health programs, and combating effects of climate change. Then they asked - Okay, the following are some proposals that the legislature is expected to discuss in the coming weeks. As I read each of these, please indicate whether you favor, strongly favor, oppose, or strongly oppose each one. And so all it says is - Repeal the state's new capital gains tax. And that's it. And the other ones are - Eliminate some restrictions on when police can pursue criminal suspects in cars. Put more money into mental - like they're just asking the sentence. Now, if there's one thing, especially people involved in politics, involved in reporting know - it's that people do not have the context for this at all when you just ask that. [00:23:23] Lex Vaughn: In just a general sense, the average person is like - less taxes. Like no context, like what is it? [00:23:32] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, sure, it's a tax - repeal it. What is that? [00:23:32] Lex Vaughn: Are you taking more money from me? And it's like, if this does end up on the ballot, you know, again, like this year, the main message that I know we've kept saying to defend that capital gains tax is - it affects such a small number of people. It's probably definitely not you. [00:23:51] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, exactly. [laughing] It is such a small percentage of people. And when people are like - Oh, okay, you're not talking about something that applies to me and I'm already struggling and trying to figure this out. [00:24:02] Lex Vaughn: Honestly, that thing needs like a rebrand or something - capital gains tax. [00:24:05] Crystal Fincher: Well, and I don't even - you know, I don't know. [00:24:08] Lex Vaughn: The 1% tax - I mean, I think it's even smaller than 1%. It's like - tippity-top. [00:24:13] Crystal Fincher: I would question whether it even needs a rebrand because the other thing about this is that we have seen a lot of high quality polling that turned out to look like it was pretty accurate when it came to this. And basically the numbers look flipped. When people actually are asked a reasonably composed question, when they - after they hear pro and con messages, they're more likely to support the capital gains tax. It has actually been a popular policy in polling that we've seen till now. And, you know, the questions were asked more comprehensively and differently than they were here. It'll be interesting to see as this continues - I mean, certainly this is going to produce a great headline, which in today's media environment is a goal for many people. Most people don't read beyond headlines. So if you can get a great headline, that is a win because then that gives people an impression of something, even though it may not be completely accurate or there's not other contexts surrounding it. But it'll be interesting to see where this comes out. I would just be leery about these results based on the way that these questions are asked, based on the fact that it does contradict other publicly available polling that we've seen. And it'll be interesting to see, but I am taking this with a grain of salt - for these results. I do think that there are - just looking, polls are always interesting things. And even if it's not the number one thing that the poll may have been designed to elicit, it'll be interesting. There's this larger discourse, kind of want to say Stancil-ized discourse - discourse about the economy, and whether people are happy, and what this means for Joe Biden, and like where people are at. And that there are a lot of economic indicators that seem positive, but people are kind of sour on the economy overall - more sour than traditional economic indicators would indicate is logical. But these questions, there's a question asked here - Hey, what's your outlook for the country? - basically - do you expect things will - in general terms, get better over the next year or get worse? Much better, somewhat better, somewhat worse, or much worse. And in these, what we saw is that people said - Okay - and it was asked four ways in four categories. Do you think this for the United States, for Washington State, in your community, and in your household? And across the board, people gave, you know, majority of people said - Hey, things are actually gonna get better for my household. Majorities across the board there. And then slightly less for their community, and then less for Washington State, and then less for the United States. So there's this difference where if you look and you ask people individually - Hey, do you think the next year for you in general terms is gonna be better or worse? Most people say better. But if you ask people - Okay, generally for the United States, do you think the next year is gonna be better or worse? Most people say worse. And the further out it gets from them, the less likely they are to think that it gets positive. There are lots of theories for why this is, there are lots of people's views - but it's an interesting dynamic that is there. And it's not a new dynamic - we've seen this before, but it certainly is more pronounced. It's very pronounced and there's a very wide gulf, wider than we've seen in quite some time. The other interesting thing about that is when you look at the crosstabs broken up there - younger people are actually more optimistic than older people, which is interesting. [00:27:52] Lex Vaughn: Now I don't trust anything in this poll. [00:27:54] Crystal Fincher: [laughs] What I don't have at my fingertips right now is enough data on this asked in different polls in a variety of different ways to immediately be suspicious and wanna look into more. Like with that question about the capital gains tax, it's just at odds with other polls that we have seen - certainly publicly available, certainly at odds with a lot of private polling. [00:28:21] Lex Vaughn: But young people being optimistic - about anything political - hmm. [00:28:24] Crystal Fincher: In some ways, right? And about like, does it, are you more optimistic about your own prospects? Like looking at the personal, 'cause the further away you get, the more politically influenced it is. But looking at the personal, it's really interesting. And I just find that very, very interesting in what that means and the difference there. And to me, when I see those things, the interest is in wanting to dive down and - okay, what explains that difference? Who is experiencing kind of in that zone between you thinking things getting better for yourself and worse overall? You know, who is in that category? Who are the people who move? What's influencing that movement is interesting to look at. So we'll link this poll. And like generally, I would just say for people, when you're consuming polls, there's usually a whole article breakdown, and then there should be in each article - there is in this article - a link to the actual poll. Always read the actual poll. Always read the questions. Because a lot of times, some of these challenges or things that seem non-standard or problematic are often visible to a layperson if they read it. Like, okay, that's a weird way to ask the question. Or, you know, if you ask me that, I might be confused. Or like, what does that even mean? So there's a lot there, but that was an interesting finding. But we're certainly hearing about this today - we're recording this on Thursday - and we'll be hearing a lot more about it. What did you think just generally about it? [00:29:53] Lex Vaughn: First of all, I have to admit - I think a lot of times I don't click on that kind of external PDF like there is here with a breakdown of who was interviewed, breakdown of landlines, cell phone, text. I'll say at least this poll does a very good breakdown of exactly who they interviewed. But in general, I don't take a lot of reporting on polls very seriously. I usually think it reveals the bias of a media organization or a polling organization. And I'm - that's informative. That's what I'm taking from this. [00:30:36] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's, you know, polling is an interesting thing. Polling is - not all polling is predictive. Not everybody is polling likely voters or trying to mimic an election result. Some polls are just trying to take the pulse of where people are at. This, you know, is asking some things that they're gonna be dealing with in the legislature. And it's not like there's gonna be an immediate vote up and down on proposed legislation, but it could indicate people's general satisfaction of the legislation or not. I think with these things, it is important to read the actual poll. I will say - just for here - it's important to read the poll 'cause I have seen more than one misleading breakdown of a poll, or things that omit some significant or even contradictory findings. And so I think it's important to look for yourself to - okay, not a synopsis, but if we're really talking about how important this is about policy or what people think, let me look at everything people ask and let me look at this whole poll and see what happens - because we can't always trust the breakdowns. But also just understanding what polls do and don't do. A poll that - things can change massively in either direction, right, between now and the election. These are a snapshot in time. Something, especially at this point in time, is not predictive. They're very early. There's usually - if you're asking about a specific candidate or policy, a lot of people who aren't familiar with it yet, or who don't have all of the context - there's still a lot of pro and con arguments and a lot of communication that's gonna happen. So they're not determinative, certainly. They're not absolutely predictive. But they can be useful information points. And usually they're most useful - not in the horse race sense - but in the who does something appeal to and why, if it's done well. And just understanding that - certainly from a campaign perspective is really important - Even if you set aside the - ultimate who's likely to vote for this or not type of questions. So just another interesting one. I'm sure we're gonna see other ones. I think this is part one of two that they've released, so we're going to see some more from this soon. And that was a Crosscut poll. Also this week, Seattle City Council - councils all across the state, really were sworn in - the new Seattle City Council was sworn in. And so we have a new council. We have committees that were assigned. We have Sara Nelson, who is now the council president. Sara Nelson, who is a moderate conservative, who is now seeming to be very aligned with the mayor and leading a council that is much more aligned with the mayor's office - that is much more moderate to conservative. And so we're going to see a new council and seemingly a new direction here in the state. We saw one of Sara Nelson's first actions as council president was to disband the Renters' Rights Committee, which former Seattle City Councilmember, Kshama Sawant, had chaired since 2019 - disbanded that committee, and which is not that surprising. More than half of the residents of Seattle are renters, so it seems like that is applicable to the majority of people - it would be useful and helpful. But Sara has indicated distrust and hostility of several of those efforts before, has hosted landlord support groups before. And so it is not surprising, even though it may be really unfortunate. [00:34:18] Lex Vaughn: Yeah. [00:34:20] Crystal Fincher: But we're gonna see. What do you think about this whole thing? [00:34:24] Lex Vaughn: It's really unfortunate that a whole slate of people was elected that are probably gonna just kinda be in lockstep with the mayor. And I see all of them as like, faux-gressive - they know how to kinda have the facade of progressive to fit into Seattle, but their policies that they're rooting for are just so obviously conservative and Republican to me. Like making your first order of business disbanding a Renters' Rights Committee. [laughs] It's like, it's just amazing. And it just kind of adds to the cognitive dissonance of the whole identity of the city - who these council people are and what they're probably gonna do legally this year, the policies they're gonna enact - just makes me laugh that anyone thinks the city is liberal. 'Cause it's - unfortunately, these people that were just elected are probably going to move forward with basically a lot of conservative policies on a local level. [00:35:33] Crystal Fincher: It's gonna be really interesting to see. And for me, there's a lot that they're going to be dealing with. And just so people know - that for committee chairs, the people who are going to decide the general direction of these areas, what kind of legislation they pursue within their committees. Rob Saka will be chairing the Transportation Committee. Tammy Morales will chair the Land Use Committee. Joy Hollingsworth will chair the Parks, Public Utilities and Technology Committee. Maritza Rivera will chair Libraries, Education and Neighborhoods. Cathy Moore will chair Housing and Human Services. Dan Strauss will chair Finance, which will handle the budget, Native Communities and Tribal Governments. Bob Kettle will chair Public Safety. And the vacant Position 8 position - the person who will be appointed to the council - will chair Sustainability, City Light, Arts and Culture. Sara Nelson will chair Governance, Accountability and Economic Development. Within those, there's a lot that's gonna happen. And I think one thing that some people discount or don't expect is just how much practically they're going to have to deal with. Now it's kind of like - Okay, strip the progressive or conservative, whatever labels. There are serious issues that people have to deal with and a range of options, like a range that could be under the progressive label, a range that could be under the moderate label, right? But they're going to have to chart - well, they don't have to - their job is to chart a path forward for lots of this. Rob Saka, Chair of Transportation, which, you know, there's certainly a lot at stake - when it comes to transportation, there's gonna be a new Move Seattle Levy. He's overseeing the $700 million annual budget. We see a lot of asks and needs from the community. He's talked about getting back to the basics and being "the pothole king." And there, and it'll just be interesting to see. There's a lot of practical daily things that have to be dealt with. How is he going to do that? What approach are they going to take to a lot of things? We've seen Bob Kettle, Chair of Public Safety, talk about a lot of law and order oriented things, building a better relationship, promoting respect. We heard Sara Nelson talk about - one of her other first acts was proposing another pay increase for SPD, which is, you know, without anything changes, would deepen the budget deficit that the city is facing, barring any new revenue on the heels of other additions to that budget and elements of pay. It'll just be really interesting to see, because these things are having practical effects. They're all going to impact the budget that they're all going to have to deal with, with a major budget deficit coming up. They were all, most of these people who are new on the council were very hesitant to discuss what their actual practical plans were for dealing with this budget deficit, most hesitant to put support behind any new taxation, progressive taxation, proposals from the work group that the mayor convened on this that came up with options. But they have talked about cutting in areas. They have talked about the need to trim overall, but were hesitant or unwilling to talk about what specifically that would be. They're going to have to get into specifics now. They're going to have to deal with the things that they were hesitant to talk about during the campaign. It's going to be really interesting to see how this, how this carries out. Also, this is a very new council overall. They're going to have to get their feet underneath them. Sara Nelson announced that they are not going to be having regular committee meetings for most of this month to allow people to get up to speed - there's a lot of that that needs to happen - and that their first council meeting of the month will be on the 23rd to appoint the new councilmember that is going to take over for Teresa Mosqueda, who is, was just elected to the county. So it's going to be really interesting and just FYI - applications for that vacancy, if anyone is interested, are being accepted until January 9th. And that is Tuesday and the appointment will take place on the 23rd. Certainly a lot of talk about who might potentially take those places. We have heard a couple names bandied about, one of them being Tanya Woo, who lost - [00:40:10] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, how about not Tanya Woo? [laughing] [00:40:13] Crystal Fincher: You know, I just have a hard time - you're representing all of Seattle. It is a city that has made a strong stance and has made strong statements - fortunately - when it comes to protecting all members of the LGBTQ community, including trans people. And there's an interview with Hacks & Wonks, it's been covered elsewhere where Tanya Woo did not fully support the ability of trans people to participate in regular everyday life like everyone else, expressed reservations about trans people participating on sports teams - said if they wanted to exclude them, she would be willing to support that in a position on the city council - which just to me, there are policy differences, but then there are issues of just basic humanity and support of people and residents of the city. And that, to me, is one of those that's automatically disqualifying in my personal evaluation of that. And so it looks like that is not necessarily disqualifying for some people who might be considering this on the council, but I certainly think it should be considered with this. Now I do understand that she, I think, made an Instagram post apologizing for that and trying to clarify their position. I would just suggest that, you know, and lots of people evolve over that. So I'm not saying that that is what she thinks or believes for the rest of her life. Maybe she has changed and maybe she has learned more, and I hope that she has and that other people are on that journey. I just think that when it comes to appointing someone responsible for the city, we can appoint someone who is further along in that journey and not learning about the humanity of people at the same time that they're having to learn about all of these policies and operations that they're now having to. So it's gonna be really interesting to see. There are certainly other people who have held various elected office, school board candidates that have had exposure and that may be able to be really positive additions to the council, particularly with a number of councilmembers that have not served in elective office before - having someone who had in whatever capacity could be a very positive, helpful thing for this council. It'll be interesting to see. I think that there are - certainly there have been some names that have been talked about publicly. I think there are more names that are circulating privately. It'll be really interesting to see how this shakes out. But either way, I also don't think that's gonna tip the balance of this council. I do think that it could help with policy formation and general operational items. But I think just, you know, it's not gonna tip the balance of power of the council. [00:42:55] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, I think the direction the council is gonna go is pretty well set. [00:43:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. [00:43:01] Lex Vaughn: Yeah. [00:43:02] Crystal Fincher: Yep, so we will see. Also this week, news of a lawsuit against the City of Burien over their new homeless camping law that - we have heard about the saga of Burien for quite some time. There was also an independent report this week that came out really chastising the city manager for not handling some of the major issues that they're doing with due care and seriousness. But this is a lawsuit being brought on behalf of unhoused people by a regional advocacy organization suing the city, claiming that it banishes homeless people, inflicts cruel punishment, and it violates Washington's constitution. The Northwest Justice Project filed the lawsuit on Wednesday in King County Superior Court on behalf of the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness and three individual plaintiffs. What were your thoughts on this? [00:43:56] Lex Vaughn: I mean, it seems like this is the next step in inevitable plan to get this in the Supreme Court. I think there's probably a variety of cities, not just Burien, who have been wanting to challenge this. So this is another showdown that'll go to a higher court. But in general, I think it's just sad that it's happening because it's - we're talking about people's right to exist. It's not just a right to be homeless or something. It's a right to exist. There are people who cannot afford shelter. We as a society are not providing them enough aid in a dark period of their life. And you can't just ask people to go poof. Like, there's no magic wand that makes them just dissipate in air overnight. They have to exist somewhere. And to criminalize that is incredibly inhumane. [00:45:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I mean, they have nowhere to go. Homelessness is a housing problem - it's the lack of housing. There has certainly been a lot of talk and skewed coverage presenting the homeless population as basically criminals and violent drug abusers. And one - homeless people are more likely to be victimized by crime than any other group. And if we were looking at facts and data, we would start from that point - they are not more violent than the general population. [00:45:35] Lex Vaughn: A lot of people are escaping violence. I mean, especially homeless youth, you know? [00:45:41] Crystal Fincher: 100%. [00:45:42] Lex Vaughn: Yeah. [00:45:42] Crystal Fincher: But, you know, criminalizing - it doesn't help that. Sending someone to jail because they don't have shelter doesn't help them to get shelter - it moves them further away from it. It destabilizes people. And it's just incredibly expensive. [00:45:58] Lex Vaughn: Yeah. [00:45:59] Crystal Fincher: There is just- [00:46:00] Lex Vaughn: So ineffective. [00:46:01] Crystal Fincher: Yes - so really expensive and ineffective. Seems like - okay, that should be the thing not to do. But that's the thing that they are rushing to do. Interesting about this lawsuit is it doesn't cite Martin v. Boise, which is a previous 2018 decision that came out of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, saying that homeless people can't be punished for sleeping outside on public property if there are no adequate alternatives to offer them. Doesn't cite that, and it is also citing that it's a violation of Washington State's Constitution. So this, you know, which to me is notable because we'll see if Martin v. Boise stands. I don't think there's absolute confidence that that's going to continue to stand, although I certainly believe it should. But this could be something else that could prevent the large-scale just criminalization of homelessness without there being any place for anyone to go. No surprise to listeners of the program - I do believe we have an obligation to provide shelter and housing for people and that we have done a poor job of that, we have not kept up with the demand. And we continue to spend tons of money on these criminalized solutions that could go so much further if we invested them in ways that have shown they're more likely to reduce homelessness. There's been lots of coverage about Housing First models, which have been under attack, and there's actually an article recently about a very coordinated, conservative attack on these models. Just anecdotally, I've seen lots of people - Housing First policies have failed - when the truth is they haven't been tried yet. We've done a lot of criminalization. We have not done that - and man, we would love to, but suggestions that they don't work and that they failed are just false and not rooted. In reality, we haven't tried them. We have tried criminalization, and that's what's gotten us here. [00:47:53] Lex Vaughn: Criminalization, another word for addiction to punishment. Doesn't matter that there's just mounds of research showing that these old techniques of criminalization don't reduce homelessness, they don't make us safer. It's just frustrating to continue to see this happen when it's like there's so much evidence and research showing that criminalization is an expensive and ineffective strategy for solving A) homelessness, and B) making us a safer community in general. [00:48:33] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. The last item on our list today is there is a new entrant into the race for attorney general - a Republican from central Washington, an attorney named Pete Serrano, is the first major Republican to toss his name into the ring for Washington Attorney General. So he joins former US attorney Nick Brown, senior King County Deputy Prosecutor and State Senator Manka Dhingra in the race - who are both Democrats. So if he was elected, he would be the first Republican to hold the office since Rob McKenna vacated the seat in 2012. He's running on pretty standard conservative policies right now, which are kind of out there. He announced his candidacy with the host of the Washington Gun Law blog, if that gives you any hint - he is not in favor of any kind of gun control or gun laws. He, I believe, fought against vaccine mandates, filed legal challenges against the state's COVID-19 emergency order, fought against gun control legislation, and wants to bring more of that to the AG's race. What do you think of this? [00:49:48] Lex Vaughn: I think it's interesting that the first person he was coming out swinging against is Bob Ferguson. And I think as he campaigns, he'll probably keep his aim there because even though Bob Ferguson isn't running for AG again, he's running for governor. I guess this guy is gonna sell himself as like the check on Bob Ferguson if he wins the governor's race. I think - hopefully this guy won't stand a chance - but he will make these campaigns a little bit more colorful. [00:50:21] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, certainly a new dimension in this race. There were - the main people in the race, two well-known Democratic candidates or fairly well-known Democratic candidates. This being the first Republican candidate is a new dimension in the race. We will continue to follow it. We're gonna have a lot of very interesting statewide races, which is not an unusual thing - except in Washington State for the past decade, basically, where we haven't had much change there. So will be interesting to follow, and we'll keep our eyes peeled on what happens there. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, January 5th, 2024. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host is Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and founder and editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn. You can find Lex on Twitter @AlexaVaughn - you can also find her on several other platforms, as well as me. I'm everywhere @finchfrii. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

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I Never Thought of It That Way with Mónica Guzmán

Connecting the Dots

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 14, 2023 35:19

Mónica Guzmán is a bridge builder, journalist, and entrepreneur who lives for great conversations sparked by curious questions. She's senior fellow for public practice at Braver Angels, the nation's largest cross-partisan grassroots organization working to depolarize America; host of live interview series at Crosscut; and cofounder of the award-winning Seattle newsletter The Evergrey. She was a 2019 fellow at the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, where she studied social and political division, and a 2016 fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, where she researched how journalists can rethink their roles to better meet the needs of a participatory public. She was named one of the 50 most influential women in Seattle, served twice as a juror for the Pulitzer Prizes, and plays a barbarian named Shadrack in her besties' Dungeons & Dragons campaign. A Mexican immigrant, Latina, and dual US/Mexico citizen, she lives in Seattle with her husband and two kids and is the proud liberal daughter of conservative parents.Link to claim CME credit: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/3DXCFW3CME credit is available for up to 3 years after the stated release dateContact CEOD@bmhcc.org if you have any questions about claiming credit.

How Mount Mazama Became a Lake

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 24, 2023 29:21

Crater Lake wasn't always a lake. Knute Berger tells the story of when a blast 50 times the size of Mt St. Helens' blanketed the PNW in ash. Crater Lake National Park in southern Oregon is known for its crown jewel: a brilliantly blue and very deep alpine lake. But some 8,000 years ago, this lake was a mountain. Then the mountain erupted, blowing its top and layering ash so far afield that it impacted wildlife in Canada. Indigenous people carry oral traditions that share what it was like to witness the blast. Crosscut's resident historian Knute Berger unearthed this history in a recent episode of the Mossback's Northwest video series, but there is more left to uncover. In this episode of Mossback, Berger joins co-host Stephen Hegg to more deeply understand the geologic history of the blast and the cultural history of what eventually became known as Mount Mazama. They also discuss the chance of this or any other volcano in the Pacific Northwest blowing again — and what impact that could have on all of us. For more on all things Mossback, visit crosscut.com/mossback. To reach Knute Berger directly, drop him a line at knute.berger@crosscut.com. And if you'd like an exclusive weekly newsletter from Knute, where he offers greater insight into his latest historical discoveries, become a Crosscut member today. --- Credits Hosts: Stephen Hegg, Knute Berger Producer: Seth Halleran Story editors: Sara Bernard and Sarah Menzies

canada oregon lake indigenous pacific northwest northwest berger pnw helens crater lake crosscut crater lake national park knute knute berger mount mazama sarah menzies

Preserving Asahel Curtis' Legacy

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 17, 2023 31:18

Asahel Curtis shot thousands of images in the early 20th century. Knute Berger talks about the effort to share them with the public for the first time. Asahel Curtis, the renowned Pacific Northwest photographer, was amazingly prolific. He documented regional life for 50 years, from the 1890s to the 1940s. Crosscut's resident historian Knute Berger explored Curtis' work and legacy in Season 5 of the Mossback's Northwest video series, but that legacy now has a new chapter. As Berger detailed in a more recent episode of Mossback's Northwest, he's revisiting Curtis' story thanks to a new project that aims to digitize the approximately 60,000 glass plate and nitrate negatives that make up the photographer's massive archive. The Washington State Historical Society will spend the next few years painstakingly scanning each one. The goal is not only to preserve the history the images contain, but also to share them — for free — with the public. In this episode of Mossback, Berger joins co-host Stephen Hegg to discuss the digitization project and all it entails, as well as a handful of remarkable photographs the process has turned up already. Plus, they dig into the philosophical aspects of photography in an increasingly online, AI-driven world, where notions of fact and reality can seem elusive. For more on all things Mossback, visit crosscut.com/mossback. To reach Knute Berger directly, drop him a line at knute.berger@crosscut.com. And if you'd like an exclusive weekly newsletter from Knute, where he offers greater insight into his latest historical discoveries, become a Crosscut member today. --- Credits Hosts: Stephen Hegg, Knute Berger Producer: Seth Halleran Story editors: Sara Bernard and Sarah Menzies

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Week in Review: November 10, 2023 - with Melissa Santos

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 10, 2023 59:47

On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Seattle Axios reporter, Melissa Santos! Melissa and Crystal discuss how Election Night results in Washington state aren't conclusive and can change due to our mail-in ballot system, how four County election offices were evacuated and whether this might explain low turnout trends. Then they dive into where Seattle City Council election results currently stand and the impact that enormous spending by outside interests had on voter communication. Looking outside Seattle, more encouraging progressive results appear to be taking shape across the state in Tacoma, Bellingham, Spokane, Snohomish County, Bellevue, Bothell, and more! The show wraps up with reflection on why celebrated Seattle Police Department Detective Denise “Cookie” Bouldin suing the City for decades of racism and gender bias from SPD management and colleagues is yet another indication of internal police culture not matching their publicly declared values. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Melissa Santos at @MelissaSantos1. Melissa Santos Melissa Santos is one of two Seattle-based reporters for Axios. She has spent the past decade covering Washington politics and the Legislature, including five years covering the state Capitol for The News Tribune in Tacoma and three years for Crosscut, a nonprofit news website. She was a member of The Seattle Times editorial board from 2017 to 2019, where she wrote columns and opinion pieces focused on state government. Resources Digging into Seattle's Budget Process with Amy Sundberg and BJ Last of Solidarity Budget from Hacks & Wonks “4 election offices evacuated in Washington state; fentanyl found at 2” by Melissa Santos from Axios “Business-backed Seattle council candidates take early leads” by Melissa Santos from Axios “Seattle council incumbents still trail in latest election results” by Melissa Santos from Axios “Business-backed groups spend big on Seattle council races” by Melissa Santos from Axios “Tacoma to consider new tenant rights measure on Nov. 7 ballot” by Joseph O'Sullivan from Crosscut “Tacomans deciding on progressive renter protections” by Lauren Gallup from Northwest Public Broadcasting “The 4 biggest takeaways from election night results in Tacoma and Pierce County | Opinion” by Matt Driscoll from The News Tribune “Bellingham voters consider minimum-wage hike, tenant protections” by Joseph O'Sullivan from Crosscut “Lisa Brown leads incumbent Nadine Woodward in Spokane mayoral race” by Mai Hoang from Crosscut “Controversial Sheriff with Right-Wing Ties Faces Voters in Washington State” by Jessica Pishko from Bolts “Johnson defeats Fortney in sheriff's race, new ballot drop shows” by Jordan Hansen from Everett Herald “Pioneering Black detective sues SPD, alleging racism, gender discrimination” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times Find stories that Crystal is reading here Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. If you missed our Tuesday topical show, it was a special one. Our producer and special guest host, Shannon Cheng, chatted with Amy Sundberg and BJ Last from Solidarity Budget about currently ongoing City of Seattle budget process. The conversation ranged from the fight over the JumpStart Tax to why ShotSpotter is more egregious than you thought. This is the first show that I actually have not hosted on Hacks & Wonks and Shannon did a fantastic job. It's a really informative and interesting show, and I highly suggest you listen. Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Seattle Axios reporter, Melissa Santos. [00:01:41] Melissa Santos: Hi, Crystal. [00:01:43] Crystal Fincher: Well, good to have you back on this Friday following general election results in Washington state. We have a lot to talk about, a lot that's interesting. I think the first thing I wanna talk about is just the nature of elections and results. As a reminder to people - for so long, so many of us were used to going to a polling place, voting, getting election results on Election Night. We still get that from a lot of other places in the country. It does not work like that here in Washington - and particularly for the City of Seattle, some other, especially major metropolitan areas - where there's, you see differences in where different demographics typically vote in the timeline when ballots are out. What races look like on the first night can look very different than what the ultimate results show. How do you approach this? [00:02:39] Melissa Santos: Well, so I basically - especially in Seattle races - I try to put a caveat at the top of any story I write on Election Night or the next day, sometimes even Friday of election week saying, Races are known to swing by 10 or 12 points in Seattle - this could change. It will change. It could change dramatically, essentially. So that's, I think, what we're seeing here. I mean, as of right now, when we're actually recording - we don't have Thursday's results yet. So we only have a very limited batch of ballots, especially because of something else we're probably gonna talk about later - there was limited counting in some counties, including King County, yesterday and fewer ballots released because of a scare they had at the elections office. So we just don't have a lot of information. Election night - like half the ballots maybe are being reported, so that's just a ton of room for results to change. And we have seen that repeatedly in Seattle, especially when it comes to progressive candidates looking like they're down, and then - oh look, they won by four points, three points, two points. So this happens a lot. And that's just a good caveat to keep in mind as we're talking about election results the week of the election in Seattle. [00:03:49] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and as you said, we are actually recording this on Thursday morning. Viewers will start to hear this on Friday, but we don't have many results - we might as well talk about it now. The reason why we have even fewer results than we thought, or fewer ballots counted, is that there were some wild things that happened at some elections offices yesterday. What happened? [00:04:10] Melissa Santos: So four county elections offices in Washington state, including in King County, received an unknown powder substance in envelopes that were delivered to the election office. And so the King County Elections office in Renton, that does all this counting, was evacuated for three hours the day after the election - in which counting was not happening because they had HazMat there, they had the Fire Department there, they had the police there checking to make sure this wasn't something super dangerous, that there wasn't a chemical attack, essentially, against the election offices. And in Spokane County, they got a similar thing and they actually didn't - I don't think they released results yesterday at all, actually, in Spokane. Or at least it was very delayed and limited. So in King County, they released many fewer ballots, and counted many fewer ballots, and reported fewer than they had expected to on Wednesday, the day after the election. And then also Skagit and Pierce County offices got mysterious packages. And two of them - in King County and Spokane, it was, there were traces of fentanyl. We're still waiting for more information, so there was some sort of fentanyl in there. Not clear about the other two - might've been baking powder in Tacoma, according to one report I saw, so. But in any case, this is a threat that people are sending stuff that is very threatening. I mean, everyone remembers it was around - Anthrax scares and this and that. So when you get in the envelope as a public servant like that - you're worried it could kill you, it could kill your colleagues, and then you're gonna not keep counting ballots probably. Or your coworkers across the building are gonna stop counting ballots - and that's what happened. [00:05:45] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And people are on heightened alert for a number of different reasons. These bring to mind some of the increased attacks that we've seen that seem to have anti-Semitic, anti-Arab, anti-Muslim bias. There have been envelopes of powder mailed to synagogues in our state. So this has a lot of people wondering - are these ties to election denialists? Is this someone with some other grievance? But people are on heightened alert about that. King County counted about half as many ballots yesterday as they originally intended to, so we have really abbreviated results. The other factor that is a challenge that is not standard - not what we normally see - is turnout is low, is trending really low. And weirdly, it was trending above where we were a couple of years ago until Election Day - 'cause we can track how many ballots are received each day, how that compares - so it was actually up by a few percentage points. But on Election Day, really, turnout seems to have cratered. We don't know why. Again, the results being released - it's so early, so we just may not have the full picture. Maybe people just voted in a really late flux and we don't know that yet. There's just a lot that we don't know. But right now, turnout seems to be trending pretty low in a different way than we've seen before, at least so far. So we're not sure what that means, who might not have turned out, is this gonna wind up low? We just have a lot that we still need to see, both in results and in just the ballots received, and what that means for turnout. So with that said, let's start off talking about the City of Seattle. We had several council races. And I guess thinking, going through the results - overall, the more moderate candidate was leading pretty significantly in a lot of cases on Election Night. Again, as we talked about earlier, several of these races are still within the bounds where it's possible these races could change. And the person who ultimately winds up winning could be different than the person currently leading in several of these races - if ballots trend how they traditionally trend in the city - there's been a few different folks who've done some public analysis of this. But right now in District 1, Rob Saka - this looks to be one of the races that looks pretty conclusive, that Rob Saka currently holds a pretty commanding lead over Maren Costa. In District 2, Tanya Woo is currently leading Tammy Morales. This is a closer race and one that is within the margin where we see late ballots overtake what the early results were. In District 3, Joy Hollingsworth - this seems like a pretty settled race - seems to have prevailed over Alex Hudson. District 4, we have Maritza Rivera leading Ron Davis. This is one that is at the margin of where races come back - if ballots trend in the same way as they had before, Ron could end up eking out a win. If they don't, maybe he comes up a little short, but definitely a race we anticipate tightening up. In District 5, Cathy Moore holds a pretty commanding lead - this looks like one where it's beyond the range of kind of the bounce-back of ballots over ChrisTiana ObeySumner. And in District 6 - [00:09:34] Melissa Santos: District 6 is Dan Strauss, and that is really, really close, with Dan Strauss and Pete Hanning. And we actually saw Strauss, who's an incumbent, and is the more leftward candidate in that race - I mean, of the candidates in that race. [00:09:47] Crystal Fincher: Of the candidates in that race. [00:09:49] Melissa Santos: Not really the most leftward councilmember that is on the ballot necessarily, but in this race he is the more progressive of the two. He was down two points on Election Night, but now it's less than one percentage point. And that's just with the limited ballots we saw on Wednesday. So that's an example of how much you can switch there - we saw about a percentage point gain in a very close race. So I suspect Dan Strauss will actually win his race and be reelected, but we will see. [00:10:18] Crystal Fincher: It would be shocking if he didn't wind up winning this. And in District 7, we have Andrew Lewis and Bob Kettle, with Bob Kettle currently in the lead over Andrew Lewis. This is another one where it is still within the range that this is too close to call. We need to see further results. And if again, ballots trend in the same way as they've trended - particularly in 2021, but also in 2019 - then Andrew Lewis could wind up winning. This week is gonna be interesting with results because we typically get a daily update at between 4p and 5p, depending on the county. And King County - it's typically 4 p.m. But Friday is a holiday, so we won't get updates on Friday. Today, Thursday, will be the last day of updates. And then the next day that we get an update on the vote totals will be Monday. So Monday will probably be a very conclusive day, a day that shows whether people are on track to make it, where a lot of the late ballots are going to be in the tally - because the counting continues over the weekend, even though they don't release the results until Monday. So we'll see what that is. But a lot of races that are currently too close to call, even though if you've seen some other media outlets, particularly some columnists - I think Danny Westneat had a column, that was like - Oh, the progressive era in Seattle is over or something like that - which I think certainly the early results are different than even earlier results that we've seen in prior races, different than even in the primary, I think we would say. So there is something afoot here, and there's certainly going to be a different council with one, so many new candidates. But there's gonna be a new composition on the council, certainly. But saying what that composition is going to be with so many of these races still in the air, I think it's premature to say at this time, and we'll still see. We just don't know about the turnout and don't wanna mislead people, have to rewrite headlines. I think you're one of the more responsible journalists when it comes to setting appropriate expectations and making sure you don't overstate what the results are saying. [00:12:45] Melissa Santos: I mean, I think the one thing you can say, that I got from Danny's column, that I can guarantee will be correct is you will not have Kshama Sawant on the council anymore. And she has been one of the sort of firebrands on the council, very - has strong views that she doesn't shy away from and doesn't - whatever dynamic that is on the council, some people don't like it, some people do like it - that she just says what she wants to do and doesn't kind of do as much backroom compromise sometimes on certain issues. That's gone. So you don't have a Socialist on the council anymore - that is happening - 'cause she didn't run for re-election. There wasn't a chance for her to lose. So either way, that was gonna be different. But a couple of the moderate candidates we were talking about, I'm not really sure which way they'll vote on some of the issues that typically define Seattle moderates. And for me, Cathy Moore comes to mind. She won by - I mean, you can say Cathy won at this point - it was about 40 points. So that is not going to be, that's not going to happen for ChrisTiana ObeySumner. But Cathy, during election interviews, was a lot more forthright actually about taxes, saying - I disagree with the business community actually, that we probably need more tax revenue. And so she was much more open on the campaign trail about the notion of taxing businesses to close the City's budget deficit. And this is one of those issues that typically defines sort of the Seattle centrist moderates, business-friendly candidates - is having a lot more reticence about taxing businesses. Usually the candidates won't say - Absolutely not under any circumstances. But they'll say - We need to do an audit. I'm not, I mean, some of them actually will say, I don't think we have a budget deficit - in the case of Bob Kettle, I think that was something he said regularly, despite what the revenue projections do say. But Cathy Moore was a lot more nuanced on that topic. And also on zoning, potentially, and being willing to have more dense zoning in certain areas. I'm not sure that she'll vote the way - it remains to be seen. People can say things on the campaign trail and do totally different things, so we'll see. But she was fairly consistent about being sort of more on the liberal side of certain issues in that respect. Joy Hollingsworth, who has, I think, pretty definitively come out ahead in District 3 - this is Sawant's district. You know, she's a really - she's just a really compelling personality too. I mean, and I'm not saying this in a negative way - you talk to Joy, you feel like she's listening. She's a good candidate on the campaign trail. I saw her canvassing a lot - like in person, a fair amount - 'cause I live in that district. And her campaign sent out a lot of communications. She had the benefit of independent money, which we will talk about soon, I think, as far as more outside spending benefiting her campaign. So there were more mailers sent out - not even necessarily by her campaign, but on her behalf. And I just don't know if she's a traditional candidate. And she would say this and has said this - When am I the centrist candidate? I'm a queer, cannabis-owning business owner, you know, who's Black, and I just don't, when am I like the right-wing candidate here? So I mean, maybe doesn't fit the profile of what people think of when you're talking about sort of centrist candidates. And again, has done a lot of work on cannabis equity and equity issues, I think, that also helped her relate to a lot of voters in her district. Well, Rob Saka, I think, is more - who I think is pretty clearly winning in District 1 - is probably the most traditional, sort of more business-backed candidate who's skeptical of taxes, skeptical of how the City's spending its money, and then also had a lot of big business backing on independent spending. And is sort of more - we need to hire more cops, more in the traditional line of what you're thinking of as a centrist candidate. And he is going to be replacing a more progressive councilmember in Lisa Herbold. But, you know, they basically have Saka in that mold, clearly. And then the other two races that are decided already, it's not totally clear that it's some - it's gonna be a, exactly what kind of shift it's gonna be. And in fact, Cathy Moore is replacing a more moderate on the council anyway. So a lot is still dependent on what - the results we still don't have. And also, one of the more progressive members on the council is Teresa Mosqueda, who is running for King County Council and is likely to ultimately win that race, and that's gonna be an appointment process, where - to replace her on the council. So who that is - you could end up with a fairly progressive council, potentially, in some respects. If all of these races switch to progressive suddenly in the late results, which certainly may not happen. But it's just a little premature on Election Night to necessarily say the council's going to be way less progressive than it was, I think, potentially. That's all. [00:17:40] Crystal Fincher: No, I completely agree with that. We've talked about on the show - if you know me personally, we have definitely talked about this in person - but painting, you know, the media narrative out there, that - Oh, it's the super progressive council, you know, who's always battling with the mayor, and we want a change of direction. I'm always asking, define what that direction is, because we did not have a progressive council. There were different people in different positions on the council - certainly had progressives on it, but a number of moderates on it. And in this change, as you said - in District 1, I think it's very fair to say that that moved in a more moderate direction. District 5, I think that's moving in a more progressive direction, everything on balance. [00:18:30] Melissa Santos: And if Ron Davis wins in District 4 - which that district has been super swingy in the past because it has - I think university students is a factor, sort of, I do think there's a late turnout surge there in a lot of years, in some years, maybe that's greater than some districts. If he wins, you're going to be replacing Alex Pedersen, who is one of the more - certainly centrist, some would say conservative - but center candidates, and so you'd have a much more liberal person in that respect on, I think, both taxes, on criminal justice, I think on also zoning, definitely zoning, Ron Davis is like the urbanist candidate - is kind of what he's known as, and having worked with FutureWise and these organizations and in advocacy, sort of behind-the-scenes roles. So yeah, that would be, kind of, undermine the narrative to me. If you replace Alex Pedersen with Ron Davis, I'm not sure the progressivism-is-gone narrative exactly will hold up, so that's - but again, we would need some big swings for these things to happen. I'm not trying to act like you're going to get all these progressives. It definitely was a good night for business-backed, sort of, more centrist candidates on Election Night. [00:19:42] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely, I agree with that. And I think if Maritza Rivera ends up doing that, that's basically a wash on what their representation does - that looks like they have continued with what they generally had. And didn't move in a more progressive direction, but certainly did not get more moderate or conservative than what was already there, I think. I think there are two buckets of candidates that we're looking at, as you alluded to before. I think that Rob Saka, if Bob Kettle were to wind up prevailing, if Maritza Rivera were to wind up prevailing - those, I think, are most firmly in the traditional moderate conservative, very skeptical of taxation, very supportive of carceral solutions, more punitive solutions, lots of talk about hiring and supporting police, different answers to different issues, often involving public safety elements. I think that's fair to say. I don't think most people would put Cathy Moore, Joy Hollingsworth in that same category. I think Tanya Woo is a bit of a toss-up. This is another race where, I think, next to Dan Strauss, the next most likely candidate of what looks the way ballots traditionally go, even with some wiggle room - Tammy Morales, the way ballots trend in Seattle, certainly has a path to finishing in the lead. There is definitely a difference between those two candidates, but I think Tanya Woo has certainly expressed some reservations for taxation, has certainly expressed her support for public safety solutions - Maybe she falls somewhere in the middle there. It seems like she's not as aggressive as some of the other candidates and their zeal for those solutions, but she has signaled that she's open to them. So I think that's a question mark if it goes the Tanya Woo route. But this is a race that is definitely too close to call at this point in time for the way Seattle ballots trend. So that's Seattle. Let's talk a little bit more about the money, which you have written about - basically, everybody wrote about. We have not seen spending of this magnitude in Seattle City Council races since the Amazon money bomb that we saw in 2019. What happened with outside money in this race and what impact do you think it had? [00:22:34] Melissa Santos: So originally in 2019, there was a big - originally, that's not that long ago, I understand, but in recent history of Seattle elections - the Chamber of Commerce had a PAC that was spending a lot on behalf of the business-preferred candidates. And Amazon gave a million dollars plus to that - a million of it right at October, I think, in 2019. And that kind of - especially, Sawant in her race, again, Socialist councilmember, was saying Amazon's trying to buy the election. And then there was a sense that left voters turned out citywide even to kind of object to that. There was one, something that I think a lot of observers thought happened that year. And that one might have helped fuel this surge of left-leaning voters after the initial vote count as well. And also, Trump was in office. There was a lot of sort of motivation, I think, of progressives to kind of vote and make themselves heard wherever they could during that era. Okay, so this year - your original question - this year, we didn't have a chamber PAC doing all of the money. It wasn't all relayed through this chamber PAC. It was different. There were all these little political action committees called Neighbors of this Neighborhood. It was Downtown Neighbors Committee, Elliott Bay Neighbors Committee, and then University District Neighbors Committee. So it sounds, you know, those innocuous, sweet-sounding PAC names, right? But they were all supporting the candidates that were preferred by the, I mean, the Chamber and the Downtown Seattle Association. And they spent a fair amount of money. I mean, in the - I don't think that I had all the receipts when I did the calculations on Sunday, so there's a few more that have come in since then. But I mean, it was $300,000 almost for Maritza Rivera. And when I say for, I mean, a lot of it was spent opposing Ron Davis, but all benefiting Maritza - either in direct support from these external groups that were saying, Vote for this person, or, you know, saying, Don't vote for this person, her opponent, the more left-leaning candidate in that race. So that's quite a bit of money for one race, one district race, you know, you're talking about. And then we saw that for support for Rob Soka as well. And they were some of the similar groups where - there's overlap in who is supporting these PACs, right? Landlords organizations, there were builders and construction and realty interests. And there were - the Realtors PAC actually gave separately to a few candidates like Tanya Woo and Bob - okay, I shouldn't say gave. Let me back up. The Realtors PAC, the National Realtors PAC, actually spent its own money separately from these Neighborhood groups to support Tanya Woo and Bob Kettle. And so you just saw that outside PAC money was coming in. And that was, you know, a lot more than the leftward union side spent this year by a significant margin to kind of help support these candidates. So, I mean, at the end you had $1.5 million almost spent and more than $1.1 million of that, maybe $1.2 million, was from the business sort of backed interest sort of pouring money from outside into these races, supporting their preferred candidates. [00:25:53] Crystal Fincher: So I think - one, something that gets missed or I've seen a lot of questions about - so people are like, Okay, there's a lot of money. Corporations have a lot of money. How does that impact races? What does that mean when it comes to these campaigns and when it comes to what voters see? [00:26:11] Melissa Santos: So what you're paying for is communication. What they are paying for is communication. They're paying for mailers that go to voters, they're paying for TV or radio ads in some cases - maybe not radio this year, but it's, you know, this is some of the things that independent expenditures pay for. Online ads - so reaching voters to tell them about the candidate. And this is what campaigns do. That's the whole point of a campaign. Except when you have someone from outside doing it also, it just really widens your impact as a candidate - even though they don't coordinate, they're not involved together - it still will help get your message out to more people if you have supporters doing this on your behalf and buying mailers. I mean, I live in District 3 and most of the mailers I got were from Joy Hollingsworth's campaign, but I did get another mailer from an independent expenditure committee. And this was one that also was like - You like weed, vote for Joy Hollingsworth. Literally, that's what it said. I wish I was not kidding. So, I mean, again, that's - again, muddying the who's progressive and who's not a little. I mean, the mailers contribute to that, but anyway. And I got one mailer from Alex Hudson's campaign. So it just was like 5-1 on the communications I got from Joy Hollingsworth just to my own house. And so that's just an example of - even though only one of them was independent spending, you know, you can have a lot more mailers come and reach someone on behalf of a candidate if you have this outside money paying for it. [00:27:37] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and communication is really everything. I think, you know, most people know I do this kind of work during the day, this podcast is an extra thing, this is not the main thing that I do. But it really all comes down to communication. Like you talked about before, there are things that the campaign can do to directly communicate with voters - phone calls, canvassing is the most effective thing they can do. And if a candidate and their campaign is on the campaign trail doing that, that is certainly generally a really positive thing for their campaign and one of the most effective things that you can do to win votes. But Kshama Sawant is notorious and the DSA - people passionate about Kshama are notorious for mounting really formidable, substantial ground games where they are covering most of the district. Most candidates are not knocking on most of the doors in their district. They're knocking on, you know, a pretty small percentage of them. And even though to them and their supporters - they see the candidate talking all the time, attending events every night - you're only reaching 15, 20% of the people in the district probably. And so the other 80% of voters have not heard anything directly, have been busy living life. The thing that many candidates don't realize is that the hardest thing isn't getting them to understand that you're better than your opponent, especially for candidates who have not run for office before. The hardest thing to do is to let voters know that you exist overall. Most voters don't know that candidates exist. Most voters don't know that there's an election coming until they see the ballot arrive in their mailbox. People, like a lot of the people who listen to Hacks & Wonks - we're not the normal ones. We've talked about this before on this show. Most people do not pay attention to the news, to candidates, to elections as much as we do. That's really important to remember when it comes to this, because that spending - the type of communication, whether it's mail, the digital video ads that you see, cable TV ads, banner ads, text messages. One, that all costs money. And so having money enables you to do more of that. And getting that in front of voters is generally the most meaningful exposure that they have to candidates - that's how they're learning about a lot of them. So if they are bombarded with information from one candidate, they hear predominantly about one candidate - usually their communications talk about how wonderful the candidate is, all the wonderful things that they're saying or planning to do, or the version of that that they're spinning in that communication - that makes a big difference. And that's how people get to know who the candidates are. If someone isn't doing much of that, they can't win. That's kind of just a structural Campaign 101 thing. So again, talked about this on the show before - if you know me, we've definitely talked about this. Sometimes when people are making sweeping pronouncements about - This narrative clearly won the day and this is what voters are saying - that may be the case in a race where there's robust communication coming from all sides, where the amount of money spent is a lot closer with each other on both sides. But in these races where one candidate is outspent by hundreds of thousands of dollars and the communication that that equates to, you rarely see those candidates win in any circumstance, regardless whether the one outspending is moderate, conservative, progressive, what kind of message they have - if it's good or bad, it can be really mediocre, it can be pretty bad. If you spend and communicate that much and so much more than your opponent, that in and of itself usually is enough to win, which is why people talk about the influence of money and the communication that that buys being corrosive or toxic or such an issue, because that in and of itself is oftentimes enough to move enough voters to win the campaign. [00:31:57] Melissa Santos: And we should mention - Seattle has a Democracy Voucher system and I think all of the candidates, I think all of the candidates use Democracy Vouchers. Crystal can correct me if I'm wrong. But certainly some of the business backed ones receiving outside money also were limited - this limits their spending as a campaign, right? So the outside money takes on an even bigger role when each of the candidates can spend - I mean, gosh, the limit is, it starts at like $90,000, then it goes up if you all raise a lot of money. But you're limited, you're not spending more than $150,000, or $125,000, or something as a campaign. I forget the exact limits, but somewhere like around there or even lower. And then you have - so think about that - the campaign spending, we say $115,000 and really can't spend more. And then someone else is spending almost $300,000, right? So - separately - so you're having these, sometimes it's gonna be the majority of money in a race because the third party committees are not limited in how much they can raise and how much they can spend. So that's how you can get millions and millions of dollars. This year, it wasn't millions, but it was more than a million backing a certain slate of candidates. And that gets a big impact when you have fairly low-cost campaigns and everyone's limited to that to a certain degree. [00:33:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. So I think that is the picture of Seattle races at this point in time. I think it is fair to say that even if a number of the candidates come back, I think it's an over-pronouncement to say that there was a broad shift in direction one way or another. But I think it's absolutely fair to say that no matter what the results end up being, they're not going to be celebrated by progressive candidates, that moderates are going to wind up happier than progressives are gonna wind up with these results - in the city of Seattle. But I wanna talk about elsewhere in the state because I think the broad picture in the state - even though Seattle's likely to dominate the media conversation - that the picture in the rest of the state was more positive for progressive people than it has been in quite some time, that we see trends moving further in a Democratic and progressive direction, particularly in purple and red cities in some of the many metro cities. So Seattle, the biggest city in the state there, moved and had their results. But looking at Tacoma, looking at Spokane - these are two cities that seem to have moved definitively to the left in the composition of their councils, in Spokane's case - including the mayoral race - and also with some ballot initiatives. So starting with Tacoma - what's happening in Tacoma? [00:34:47] Melissa Santos: Well, they do have a measure on the ballot that's about sort of renter protections, which actually looks like it might prevail. It was down a little bit on Election Night, but again, we don't have a lot of results from Pierce County yet, and it's super close right now. And given the way the ballots so far have sort of trended, even with this limited amount of ballots released, I suspect that this sort of measure to enact a lot more protections for renters against eviction - and I'm blanking a little on some of the details of it - but that's sort of a priority for more liberal voters and certainly policy makers. That looks like it may pass still, still uncertain. But you also - what I thought was interesting, you know - you had, I'm just making sure I did not, two days ago with my Tacoma results, but it looked like Jamika Scott was doing really well and likely to win her race in Tacoma. And Jamika has run for mayor before and she's sort of a known, you know, pretty serious policy person, I think, in Tacoma on advocating for ways of getting rid of systemic racism. I mean, getting rid of it would be difficult, obviously, but sort of ways to mitigate and kind of make lives better for people who traditionally have not benefited from our systems. And she was really active with, or I mean, leader of the Tacoma Action Collective, which has been a group that's been sort of protesting different institutions in Tacoma, as far as their treatment of Black people and treatment of people of color more broadly, I think, as well. But especially with police brutality. This is someone who has been kind of consistently saying, We need some change in our system. And she's being elected, and people like her message in Tacoma - enough of them - to really catapult her into office, it looks like. And so that's something that was interesting. We saw Olgy Diaz, who is an appointed councilmember - oh gosh, no, she won an election by now - has she-- [00:36:51] Crystal Fincher: No, she was appointed, and she's running for her first actual election now, following the appointment. And she just took the lead. She was narrowly down on Election Night. Again, the same caveats apply - that that Election Night is a partial tally. It is not a result. So on the initial tally, she was down just by a smidge. Now she is actually leading. And just with the way ballots trend, it looks like that lead will continue to grow. So you had the more progressive candidates, certainly, in both of those races prevail. I think interestingly, particularly in Jamika's race - Jamika was not endorsed by The News Tribune, which has been very consequential in endorsing folks. And despite that - and I think, as a credit to the work that Jamika has been doing in community for a while and the coalition that Jamika built - speaking directly to issues that are impacting so many people. And a lot of times speaking meaningfully to communities, as you said, that have not traditionally been served very well by government. And really inspiring a coalition to rally around her, to vote in support of her, to turn out for that. I think that was helpful. In the same way, the Tacoma for All tenant protection measure, which had a storied path to the ballot - the City of Tacoma was basically looking to put a competing, less impactful measure that did less than this initiative did - looked like that was motivated by some of the opposing forces who didn't wanna see this measure prevail. They ended up going to court over it and the process wound up being flawed. So this wound up being the only measure - the citizens' initiative - on the ballot. And that attracted a ton of outside spending - the realtors, a number of landlord organizations, developer organizations spent a lot - hundreds of thousands of dollars in opposition of this initiative. And for - one, to be as close as it is, given all that spending, is pretty miraculous and I think goes to show the depth of the problem and how extremely it is felt to have this much support. But it looks, based on the way that ballots traditionally trend, like it's on track to eventually take the lead and win. So this is not the only initiative - there are others across the state, including other tenant protection initiatives that are speaking to what's - the large percentage of renters in the state are facing the seeming imbalance between how landlords can technically treat tenants and how important it is to put more safeguards around. And I think generally it's not controversial to say that treating being a landlord like any other business is not good for society when we're talking about a basic need for people. And putting more protections around whether the timelines of being able to raise rent, how you can evict people, the kind of notice that's required, and assistance that may be required. If you are forcing someone to move out, the issue of economic evictions, or just putting someone out - not because they did anything, but just because they want to earn more money from that property - are things that people are willing to revisit across the state. And I think a lot of people can learn that lesson. The other thing, just - I, as someone who does this for a living, get really excited about - that we're seeing in Tacoma and play out elsewhere in the state, is that sometimes these initiatives come and I'm speaking as a consultant, so obviously this happens - it has a lot of good results sometimes - but this wasn't the result of consultants getting around, establishment party entities saying, We want to put an initiative on the ballot, what should it be? And deciding what that's going to be in rallying support. This was something that truly did come from the community. This was a response from people in the community to problems that people in the community were having. They got together, they made this happen, they knocked on doors and advocated for it. This was not funded by an outside source - anything like that. And I think those are wildly successful. I think we've also seen this with the Tukwila Raise the Wage initiative that was successful that the Transit Riders Union did - that kind of model, which oftentimes is a reaction to inaction sometimes by people in power, which is frustrating to a lot of people, not seeing the issues that they feel are most important being addressed. We're having another very viable path with municipal initiatives being initiated, not just by the same old players with money, but people in community learning how to advocate and move policy themselves. I think that's a really powerful thing. We're seeing that across the state and I think we're gonna see more of it. I think that's a positive thing. [00:42:24] Melissa Santos: Yeah, Bellingham looks poised to raise its minimum wage as a city. And they passed a measure that actually - they've been doing tenant protections as a city council, but I think that what they look on track to pass - I should say the minimum wage is leading, I should say. I guess I'd have to look just close at the results. But they're on track to pass something that requires landlords to help tenants relocate if they raise their rent by 8% or more. I mean, that's like a pretty - Bellingham is a fairly liberal city, a lot of college students from Western and all this. But that's a level, that's like sort of testing out new policies at a city level that I don't think we've - I don't think Seattle requires the landlords to do rent - well, anyway, it is kind of, I'm rambling now, but it is kind of some creative, interesting stuff happening in some of these cities that is very on the progressive edge. And Spokane's mayor looks like they're going to be replaced with a Democrat - Lisa Brown, who used to be the state Senate majority leader and has been working in Governor Inslee's administration as Commerce Director. And so that's a big change there too. And that is certain - I think that is a very clear contrast in candidates where you have some voters rebuking the sort of far-right ties potentially of the mayor. Crystal has probably been following this more than me, but there was a big controversy recently with the mayor of Spokane sort of engaging with Matt Shea, who is like - oh my God, I forget all of this. [00:43:56] Crystal Fincher: Domestic terrorist, an advocacy, an advocate of domestic terrorism, someone who was planning to partake himself. [00:44:02] Melissa Santos: Yeah - who, an investigation that was commissioned by the State Legislature when Matt Shea was a legislator found that he engaged in acts of domestic terrorism. The current mayor were kind of hobnobbing with that, became an issue in that race. And voters are saying, Let's try something different - it looks like in Spokane with a more Democratic mayor. So that is a different than maybe what progressives might be seeing in Seattle. You're seeing other cities have sort of different results. [00:44:33] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. This was one where there's - in Seattle, it's on the centrist to progressive spectrum. This was a clear Democrat versus far-right Republican who did hobnob with Matt Shea, who attended - Matt Shea, who now is well-known as someone who was found to engage in domestic terrorism, to support a variety of far-right, extremist, insurrectionist type beliefs. Nadine Woodward appeared at one of his events, hugged him, seemed to be hobnobbing with his people. And even after that was palling around with Moms for Liberty - which are notoriously anti-LGBTQ, particularly anti-trans - candidates pushing for policy, pushing for book bans in school districts across the nation, basically. So there was a clear contrast here. These issues were front and center, and voters made a clear choice here and made the decision to change direction. And there're also - three of the four Democratic councilmembers are leading in Spokane. And so this is definitely moving in a more Democratic direction in Spokane, which is a really big deal. We saw similar in Tacoma. We were looking at a lot of suburbs - I mean, looking at the Eastside, just in King County - so many of those races. Now, Bellevue may have a more progressive council than Seattle. We've seen in a number of these cities, whether it be Bothell or others, where they have moved on affordable housing policy, transit and transportation, mobility policy in ways that Seattle has not. They seem to be outdoing Seattle when it comes to some of the implementation of progressive policy that lots of people have been asking for in the city of Seattle. Other cities have been moving beyond them and it seems like, in those cities, voters have responded well. There has been vigorous opposition to these, we hear reporting about pushback to expanding zoning and the types of housing that's able to be built in all areas basically. But those debates were had and it looks like in most of these situations where there were competitive candidates fielded, they prevailed. So I think that Seattle certainly looks one way. A lot of the state has really, really positive signals and directions. And as someone who works in elections, the map for what's possible in Washington state, I think, has expanded even more with this cycle. And there are some absolute blueprints to look at moving beyond to other cities, whether it's kind of party supported, establishment supported, well-funded efforts or more grassroots initiatives - that there are multiple routes now to passing policy that helps more people and especially the people who need the help most. So we will see what that is. Also in some pretty high profile races, like the Snohomish County Sheriff, where we had someone who billed themselves as a constitutional sheriff, who had said that they didn't plan on enforcing all of the laws, especially when it comes to gun legislation that we've passed, some gun control legislation - just some real extreme views. And voters picked the more moderate sheriff candidate there - certainly not revolutionizing what the traditional practice of public safety is among sheriffs, but I think voters definitely want to put more boundaries in place, and are worried about accountability, and really focusing on what makes people safer from all perspectives, and wanting to make sure people's rights are respected. And not necessarily feeling like violating people's rights is just a necessary price we have to pay to be safer as a community - that allowing that perhaps is part of what is making us more dangerous, what is contributing to some of the challenges in recruiting police officers. And addressing some of those systemic issues or at least promises of doing that from people are more convincing to voters in areas that have been comfortable voting for Republicans even - that they aren't just willing to just say, Do whatever you say you need to do regardless of whether it violates rights, or doesn't jive with the law, or whatever that is. So interesting results across the state certainly. Now with that, I want to talk about a couple of other things that we saw, including news. We saw news, we saw coverage before - I think particularly from PubliCola, from Notes from the Emerald City - about one of the most well-known officers in the Seattle Police Department suing the department. Detective Cookie Bouldin - suing the department saying that she has witnessed and experienced racism, gender discrimination over several years with the department. What do you see with this? [00:50:19] Melissa Santos: I mean, I don't think it's necessarily a surprise that over time, especially over decades, a woman of color, Black women in particular, may not have felt at home in the Seattle Police Department. This is something I believe she's raised before, now it's just there's a formal lawsuit. It's something that - it's not a huge surprise, but I think that it is a blow to the department to have someone so recognized as a leader and over time, to make these claims. It's kind of like when - not to change the subject to another thing, but when Ben Danielson, who worked at Seattle Children's, is a very respected Black pediatrician - is also suing Seattle Children's for discrimination and racism - maybe not discrimination, but discriminatory policies. And this has a huge impact when you have someone that you've held up as sort of an example of your best, in some ways, as a department or as an agency or as a hospital. And who is sort of someone you've said - This is someone who shows how we are including communities, who has been working on these issues. And then they say - Actually, there's been a lot of problems and there's been discrimination and racism that I've encountered in unacceptable ways. It's a huge blow to the police department, Seattle Children's. These are things that really are not good for the - not just the image of the police department, but because - they point to real problems. I'm not saying this is just an optics issue or something, but it signals that maybe what you've been saying publicly isn't what's happening internally, and it isn't what's happening privately, or how people are experiencing your actual policies and your actual operation. So that's not great. And I know for the police department - and I know that Chief Adrian Diaz has been really vocal about stamping out racism in the department. I mean, it's something he talks about a lot. But this indicates that there's been problems for a long time, at least in the minds of one of their really esteemed long-time officers in the Seattle Police Department. And I don't know that one chief talking about stamping out racism and trying to talk about culture change can - I don't know that the boat shifts that fast, right? So if you're pointing to deeper issues that have been - for decades, someone who's been there for decades, or was there for decades - gosh, I mean, it kind of, it raises questions about how much is still persisting of this and then how quickly it can change if it still is persisting. [00:53:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I mean, I think lots of people aren't surprised to hear that it is persisting, given a number of the things that we've seen coming out - whether it's the video of the SPOG Vice-President mocking the value of the life of a pedestrian that was killed, Jaahnavi Kandula, that was killed by a police officer speeding without lights and sirens on on the way to a call, whether it's the tombstone that they saw, whether it's just a number of the incidents that have resulted in complaints against several officers, consistently against a consistent group of officers, it seems, in several situations. And it's particularly notable just because Detective Cookie, as she's known by so many, has really been such a PR boon for the department, really is a face of the department. When people talk about community policing, when they talk about building relationships with community, when they talk about - Hey, there should be officers that really care, really get to know people, look out for people - a lot of them are directly thinking about Cookie Bouldin. They're directly thinking about things that they've seen her do in community. There's a park named after her. She's known for almost mentoring people, working, getting kids involved with chess - really someone who, I think, regardless of where you stand on the institution of policing where people would say, even with people that disagree, but if you're like Detective Cookie - She's okay, I've seen her help, I've seen her care. Certainly what I think a lot of people would want police to aspire to be, would want the role to aspire to be in a best case scenario. And for her to say - Yeah, well, this institution certainly, in Seattle, is one that is racist, is discriminatory, and has harmed people like me, people who it's held up as paragons and examples of what the job really is and how it can be done in the community - is troubling. We've seen this happen several times before in other departments - not with, I think, officers as publicly visible and known as Detective Cookie. But certainly a lot of discrimination suits - particularly from Black officers, other officers of color - saying that there have been systemic issues that they have been the victim of. Or even off-duty incidents where people have not recognized that they were officers and just saw a person of color and treated them in a different way than they were supposed to. So we'll see how this turns out, but certainly a stain, another stain on the department. I don't think anyone can say this is coming - this is just grievance, or sour grapes, or someone who just hates the institution of policing and is using anything to just tear down police, or who isn't supportive of policing overall. This is someone who has kind of built their life and they're living on that, is known for doing that and seemingly cared about that, yet went through all this. And maybe because they cared, endured through all of it - don't know the details there, but it is challenging. And I think one of the things that came out of the debates and the campaigns, the conversations that people had is really a reckoning with - maybe this is a big problem for recruiting. Maybe it's not the money that has been thrown at them that we've tried to use, that now even police officers are saying this is not a problem about money. People are talking about - it's not an attractive job. Maybe is it actually what's happening within departments the part that's not attractive and not external reaction to it. I hope that whoever winds up being elected on the council contends with this in a serious way. I think no matter what the view is on police, and I think there's a range of them within the candidates who are currently in the lead and even those who are not. But I do think this needs to be taken seriously. And I think even if you look at polling of Seattle residents - their views on public safety and policing are more nuanced than some of the like flat, simple - either you back the blue, you support cops, or you don't. Think people are, I think it's fair to say that at least most voters are generally supportive of having police respond when they call 911, but they want that to be an effective response. They want it to be a constitutional response that does keep everybody safe, and respect everybody, and build trust in the community. And we're just seeing too many things that are not that. And with that, I think that we have come to a close today. Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, November 10th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks, and this past week's guest co-host, is the incredible Dr. Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was Seattle Axios reporter, Melissa Santos, who does a wonderful job reporting on all things political and beyond. You can find Melissa on Twitter @MelissaSantos1. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can find me on all platforms, basically, as @finchfrii - that's two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, please leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

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The Mother of the Pacific Crest Trail

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 10, 2023 30:54

Catherine Montgomery spearheaded a movement to preserve old growth in Washington forests. Knute Berger shares her story. In the early 1900s in Washington, women couldn't yet vote, but many formed powerful civic groups to advocate for everything from prison reform to forest preservation. One woman stands out: the mountaineer, teacher, activist and suffragist Catherine Montgomery. Her advocacy helped support women's empowerment, protect wilderness and old growth trees, and even plant the first seed for what would later become the Pacific Crest Trail. Crosscut's resident historian Knute Berger introduced us to Catherine Montgomery's legacy in a recent episode of the Mossback's Northwest video series, but there is more left to explore. In this episode of Mossback, Berger joins co-host Stephen Hegg to paint a picture of Montgomery's life, the political and social context of her time, and the tough work Montgomery and many other women undertook in that era to advocate for forests and other social causes in the face of rapid development. Plus, we hear what it's like to visit the little-known park she helped create. For more on all things Mossback, visit crosscut.com/mossback. To reach Knute Berger directly, drop him a line at knute.berger@crosscut.com. And if you'd like an exclusive weekly newsletter from Knute, where he offers greater insight into his latest historical discoveries, become a Crosscut member today. --- Credits Hosts: Stephen Hegg, Knute Berger Producer: Seth Halleran Story editors: Sara Bernard and Sarah Menzies

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The Explosion that Rocked Seattle

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 3, 2023 31:35

In 1915, Germany wanted to keep the United States from joining World War I. Knute Berger explains how the fight came to the Northwest. In the years leading up to World War I, Germany and its sympathizers tried to prevent the United States from entering the conflict. An intricate network of spies and saboteurs attempted to sway public opinion as well as interrupt shipments of war materiel at U.S. ports. Seattle was not immune to these forces. In the wee hours of May 30, 1915, a scow packed with dynamite near Harbor Island lit up the skies. The blast marked the beginning of an era of anti-German sentiment; the Espionage Act; and, of course, the U.S.'s eventual involvement in both world wars. Crosscut's resident historian Knute Berger blew open this history in a recent episode of the Mossback's Northwest video series, but there is much more to the story. In this episode of Mossback, Berger joins co-host Stephen Hegg to discuss the murky details of this gigantic explosion in Seattle, the geopolitical context surrounding it, similar efforts by German saboteurs across the U.S. at that time, and the way these pre-war histories are remembered—and forgotten. For more on all things Mossback, visit crosscut.com/mossback. To reach Knute Berger directly, drop him a line at knute.berger@crosscut.com. And if you'd like an exclusive weekly newsletter from Knute, where he offers greater insight into his latest historical discoveries, become a Crosscut member today. --- Credits Hosts: Stephen Hegg, Knute Berger Producer: Seth Halleran Story editors: Sara Bernard and Sarah Menzies

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I Never Thought of it That Way, To A Braver Way... DTH Episode 185 includes classic conversation with Mónica Guzmán

Derate The Hate

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 2, 2023 53:01

Have you ever wondered how to have a meaningful conversation with someone with whom you disagree vehemently on a particular topic? Do you have family members that you disagree with politically, and cannot have a conversation without things becoming heated and toxic? What if there were a book that could teach you "How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times"? There is, and this week I am honored to have the author of that book on the Derate the Hate podcast to talk about her latest book, "I Never Thought Of It That Way"Who is Mónica Guzmán?is a bridge builder, journalist, and entrepreneur who lives for great conversations sparked by curious questions. She's director of digital and storytelling at Braver Angels, the nation's largest cross-partisan grassroots organization working to depolarize America; host of live interview series at Crosscut; and cofounder of the award-winning Seattle newsletter The Evergrey. She was a 2019 fellow at the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, where she studied social and political division, and a 2016 fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, where she researched how journalists can rethink their roles to better meet the needs of a participatory public. She was named one of the 50 most influential women in Seattle, served twice as a juror for the Pulitzer Prizes. Mónica has most recently launched the Braver Way Podcasthttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-braver-way/id1709364674Take-aways and Quotes from Mónica Guzmán:"Those who are underrepresented in your lives, will always be over-represented in our imaginations"Curiosity in 1-to-1 conversations will save us (like no politician, group, or institution can)"If there's one thing that most people on the left and right can agree on, it's that the way we treat and talk to the other side is broken"Monica's promise: "This book will equip and inspire you to be one level more curious about the people who disagree with you than you have ever been."What have you done today to make your life a better life? What have you done today to make the world a better place? The world is a better place if we are better people, and that begins with each of us leading a better life. Be kind to one another, be grateful for everything you've got, and make each and every day the day that you want it to be!Please follow The Derate The Hate podcast on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter . Subscribe to us wherever you enjoy your audio. Please leave us a rating and feedback. Send me a message on any media platform or subscribe directly from our sites. Let us know about someone you think should be on our podcast, and if we book them for a conversation, I'll send you a free gift! Not on social media? You can share your thoughts directly with me at wilk@wilksworld.comI look forward to hearing from you!Please check out our affiliates page by clicking HERE!

The Black Migration to Victoria

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 27, 2023 33:14

Still encountering racism in the 'free' states of the West, some Black communities sought the American Dream in Canada. Before the Civil War, many states in the American West were considered “free” because the institution of slavery was outlawed. That didn't mean, however, that these places were free from racism and legalized discrimination. So when a group of Black Americans from San Francisco were invited to join what was then a British colony in Victoria, on Vancouver Island, hundreds agreed to make the journey. The result was a mixed bag of freedom, opportunity, and, in some cases, encounters with the same discrimination they'd attempted to escape. Crosscut's resident historian Knute Berger explored this complex history in a recent episode of the Mossback's Northwest video series, but there is much more left to discuss. In this episode of Mossback, Berger joins co-host Stephen Hegg to lay out the context surrounding the Black exodus to Victoria and key figures in that history, including one who had a significant impact on the city of Seattle. Plus, we hear about one of the only known examples of the Underground Railroad in the Pacific Northwest. For more on all things Mossback, visit crosscut.com/mossback. To reach Knute Berger directly, drop him a line at knute.berger@crosscut.com. And if you'd like an exclusive weekly newsletter from Knute, where he offers greater insight into his latest historical discoveries, become a Crosscut member today. --- Credits Hosts: Stephen Hegg, Knute Berger Producer: Seth Halleran Story editors: Sara Bernard and Sarah Menzies

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Putting the P in P-Patch

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 20, 2023 30:00

P-Patches launched a modern agricultural movement in the 1970s, sprouting from a small family farm in Wedgwood. Seattle was once full of farms. But as the city developed, land-use regulation and other forces began to push farmers out. One farming family feeling the squeeze in Seattle in the 1970s helped launch a program that has had a profound impact on the city ever since. A piece of their land became the first of what is now a collection of about 90 public urban gardens, or “P-Patches.” Crosscut's resident historian Knute Berger dug into this history and what it represents in a recent episode of the Mossback's Northwest video series, but there is a lot more left to unearth. In this episode of Mossback, Berger joins co-host Stephen Hegg to discuss Seattle's early efforts at farm-to-table living, how the rise of supermarkets and other economic forces almost derailed them, the details of the first P-Patch and what these popular gardens now symbolize in an ever-changing city. For more on all things Mossback, visit crosscut.com/mossback. To reach Knute Berger directly, drop him a line at knute.berger@crosscut.com. And if you'd like an exclusive weekly newsletter from Knute, where he offers greater insight into his latest historical discoveries, become a Crosscut member today. --- Credits Hosts: Stephen Hegg, Knute Berger Producer: Seth Halleran Story editors: Sara Bernard and Sarah Menzies

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The Past and Future of Grizzlies in Washington

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 13, 2023 31:57

The North Cascades' bear population thrived in the 19th century, but now almost none are left. Advocates are working to bring them back. The iconic grizzly bear once roamed the North Cascades. Grizzly bones have also been found as far west as Whidbey Island. Today, however, there are almost no grizzlies left in Washington state. Some government agencies have started the process of potentially reintroducing the bears to the region, given their history as a key part of the ecosystem. This idea, however, isn't without controversy. Crosscut's resident historian Knute Berger dug into this history and controversy in a recent episode of the Mossback's Northwest video series, but there's more left to explore. In this episode of Mossback, Berger joins co-host Stephen Hegg to ask what evidence we have of grizzlies in Washington's historical record, why the bears have mostly disappeared and why some want to bring them back. Plus, Berger and Hegg offer some sound advice on bear etiquette. For more on all things Mossback, visit crosscut.com/mossback. To reach Knute Berger directly, drop him a line at knute.berger@crosscut.com. And if you'd like an exclusive weekly newsletter from Knute, where he offers greater insight into his latest historical discoveries, become a Crosscut member today. --- Credits Hosts: Stephen Hegg, Knute Berger Producer: Seth Halleran Story editors: Sara Bernard and Sarah Menzies Executive producer: Sarah Menzies

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Week in Review: October 6, 2023 - with Lex Vaughn

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 6, 2023 46:43

On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Founder and Editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn! They discuss how the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) Vice President who mocked Jaahnavi Kandula's death is now on red light camera duty, how a KING 5 story effectively victim blamed Kandula for what she was wearing, and how Seattle will pay nearly $2M after a man died of heart attack after incorrectly being on a 911 blacklist. Crystal and Lex then talk about Senator Nguyen's bill to detect gas price gouging, the Week Without Driving, Burien making their camping ban worse, how Bruce Harrell's dual responder program fails to civilianize crisis response, and a new GOP candidate in the 3rd Congressional District race. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Lex Vaughn at @AlexaVaughn. Resources “Maritza Rivera, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 4” from Hacks & Wonks “Ron Davis, Candidate for Seattle City Council District 4” from Hacks & Wonks “Seattle police officer heard joking after woman's death has been taken off the streets” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times “New video shows moments before woman is hit by Seattle police vehicle” from KING 5 “Seattle to pay nearly $2M after man dies of heart attack at address wrongly on 911 blacklist” by The Associated Press and KIRO 7 News Staff from KIRO 7 “Sen. Nguyen moving forward on bill to detect price gouging at the gas pump” by Brett Davis from The Center Square “Could You Go a Week Without Driving?” by Tanisha Sepúlveda from PubliCola “Burien Makes "Camping" Ban Worse, Auderer Now on Red-Light Camera Duty, Harrell Order Subtly Improves New Drug Law” from PubliCola “Harrell's Dual-Responder Proposal Would Fail to Civilianize Crisis Response” by Amy Sundberg from The Urbanist “Lewallen emerges as GOP alternative to Kent in rematch with Gluesenkamp Perez” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times Find stories that Crystal is reading here Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and our Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. If you missed this week's topical shows, we continued our series of Seattle City Council candidate interviews. All 14 candidates for 7 positions were invited and we had in-depth conversations with many of them. This week, we presented District 4 candidates, Maritza Rivera and Ron Davis. Have a listen to those and stay tuned over the coming weeks. We hope these interviews will help voters better understand who these candidates are and inform their choices for the November 7th general election. Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and Founder and Editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn. Hey! [00:01:36] Lex Vaughn: Hey, nice to be back. [00:01:38] Crystal Fincher: Great to have you back. And I just have to say before we get into it - The Needling is so good. You do such great work there. And like the last two weeks are as good as it has ever been. There's no one in the country doing it better than The Needling right now. It's just absolutely great. If you guys are not tuned into The Needling - website, Patreon, social media - please get into it. [00:02:03] Lex Vaughn: Thank you so much, Crystal. [00:02:05] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, we have a number of things to talk about this week. Wanna start off talking about an update to the story of pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula, who was killed by an officer who ran over her while going over 70 miles per hour in response to a call - although he did not have his siren going at the time - and a story that came out in KING 5 also related to that. But just starting - update to that story is the SPOG Vice President, Daniel Auderer, who was caught on tape mocking Jaahnavi's death is now on red light camera duty - has been taken off the street. It is not uncommon for officers to be reassigned to administrative positions while investigations are ongoing - that's the case here. What do you think about where we stand here in terms of accountability? [00:03:00] Lex Vaughn: I think no one should feel like anything real has happened as far as accountability or punishment goes - he's been reassigned, but he could be, as soon as we take our eye off this, he could be put back in the same position he was before. Auderer is still a major part of the guild leadership, so it's like - this isn't just any cop. This is guild leadership that forms a lot of the culture of the entire department, so it's upsetting to not see - once again, how - it's just upsetting to see how hard it is to even get real punishment happening for some of these people after what they do. They should be fired. And I think the next thing I'm focused on is just what's gonna happen in this next police guild contract - it's up this year and it's in negotiations right now. I just, I hope it's slightly better than the contract before - and it would just be nice if it was easier to hold police like this accountable. [00:03:59] Crystal Fincher: I'm right there with you. And I hope it's significantly better than it is right now. And there's a model in place for it - the City of Seattle passed an ordinance in 2017 that included many accountability procedures that the SPOG contract that's currently in place, that was signed in 2018, supersedes. It has written in there that it supersedes City law - so if there's a conflict, the SPOG contract is what wins, basically, over what the City says. And as we've seen, there've been several examples of things that regular people look at and say - This is not okay, this is not what we want - where we see officers commenting across the country saying - This is inappropriate, incorrect. Yet it seems like not much can be done, and the most that's done is they're suspended without pay then reinstated, or assigned to desk duty, various administrative tasks. It's a challenge. [00:04:55] Lex Vaughn: And I'm so tired of the shrug that happens - Well, I don't know, police contract. What are you gonna do? Well, now we're in negotiations. You are actively in a position to do something about it long-term. I don't want any shrugging right now about this 'cause we are actually in a zone where we can change the contract, or change how the City interacts with that union as a whole. I'm just learning myself about what options there are in increasing accountability. Is there a way to decertify this union completely if - I mean, I think a lot of what they support and don't fight against in their own ranks is kind of criminal itself. You're enabling people to kill innocent people - for me, to me, that's criminal. And it's like, I wish that was kind of acknowledged more often - where's the line here where some of what they're doing is criminal. [00:05:49] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and you know, the other thing I look at here is this is a threat to public safety in Seattle, particularly for people who say and believe that - Hey, we need more officers on the streets now, we need to hire more officers, there is a shortage. One, if there's a shortage, why are they responding to overdose calls, crisis calls in the first place and redeploying it? [00:06:11] Lex Vaughn: You know, as outlets like DivestSPD have reported in detail, it's - this call, where this young woman was killed by a cop going three times the speed limit in a high pedestrian area at night without a siren - he was rushing to a reported overdose call where health personnel, paramedics were already headed there. And apparently there were like six police units headed there as well? This is just inefficient, like at a minimum, at a minimum - incredibly inefficient and dangerous. And it really kind of underlines - how could you think we need more cops when in a situation like this, they're over-responding and actually a danger to the community. The entire way this operation is working is faulty and not increasing public safety. [00:07:07] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely not increasing public safety. And hurting the effort that they've invested a lot of money into to recruit additional officers. Since they offered retention bonuses, you know, there was a lot of talk over the past couple of years that - Oh, they need more money, they need an incentive to stay. Well, the incentive is not money. Many of them are compensated fairly handsomely, but since that was approved and they've been receiving retention bonuses - the attrition has not improved - we're still hurting as badly as we ever have. And it's time - and I appreciate Tammy Morales in a forum last night, as well as others, and there've been several other people who've also talked about this - just plainly stating, Hey, these incidences happening are a problem, are a disincentive for people to apply to be a police officer, to want to be a police officer, particularly in Seattle. And especially when so many cities are talking about having shortages, why would they choose a city that has so many visible problems and problematic officers instead of another one there? So, I mean, this is - the culture is as much of a problem in terms of recruiting as anything else. But also, we do have to stop and say - What are we even doing overall? - to your point. I also want to talk about this KING 5 story that came out recapping it, but got a pretty severe pushback and lots of call-outs - because in that story, they detailed what Jaahnavi was wearing, while it - was it dark colored this or that, you know, potentially talking about a drug test. And as you said - to be clear - she was in a crosswalk. She was doing exactly what she was supposed to be doing. The person doing what they weren't supposed to be doing was a person responding to a call that was questionable that they should be going to anyway. [00:08:55] Lex Vaughn: I cannot stand anyone acting like - Oh, she just didn't look both ways. This was a high pedestrian area - at night, no sirens. How many of us would expect, as soon as we're entering a crosswalk, for a cop, a giant car to barrel at us at over the speed limit of what's, on our freeways? Okay - that's fast. She didn't, she barely comprehended what was going to happen to her before it happened to her. [00:09:26] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and when you look at there, it's not - one, it's a crosswalk, and drivers should be aware of crosswalks and crossings marked or unmarked. This is a marked crosswalk - there's a crosswalk sign, there's barriers in the road - this is not an area - Oh, who would know that there would be a pedestrian there? Like, if there was a place for a pedestrian to be, it is there. And to essentially victim blame in that way and not talk about the responsibility of the person in the vehicle that has the power to instantaneously obliterate someone - what their culpability and responsibility was there - is just really disgusting. [00:10:04] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, I have to say, I'm really disappointed in KING 5 for that report, 'cause I mean, in Seattle, I think we tend to think of KOMO as the station that would run something like that, not KING 5. And it's hard to understand what the motivation of that report was. I mean, I guess they were maybe giddy that they had new video that hadn't been seen before, and I don't know, maybe there was only so much they had to say about it - she's wearing black clothes - but it just came off as very victim-blamey. You know, this is not a report that you wanna turn into a pedestrian safety cautionary tale - where that's not really the moral of the story here - 'cause I think any of us, most people, that would have happened to them, no matter what they were wearing, I doubt that cop would have all of a sudden had time to brake if she was wearing yellow. He was going way too fast. [00:10:57] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Absolutely going too fast to respond in any kind of way at that speed, to be able to take any kind of evasive action - and we see that in how the accident played out. I think this is reflective of the super car-centric culture and how problematic that is - instead of realizing that everyone has a right to use the roads and therefore everyone, whether you're walking, biking, riding. But the responsibility that people have in understanding that - yes, if you have the potential to do greater harm, then you must take greater responsibility. The consequence for a pedestrian walking out into the street to a car is negligible - there's going to be no damage there, right? Like, you know, looking at the worst-case scenario is entirely different than someone losing their life. And so I suspect in this situation - a problem that we've seen in lots of news media in that they saw the video, they looked at the police report and what the information that the police gave out, which unfortunately too often only focuses on, especially when situations when police are involved, only focuses on the pedestrian that is involved or the non-police entity that's involved. Just really striking, we - was the officer driving - were they tested for drugs or alcohol? Were they, I mean, you know, a sign of impairment there, so how in the world it makes sense? [00:12:22] Lex Vaughn: They were not. She was, he wasn't - despite the fact that this guy who ran her over, apparently had had his driving license suspended in Arizona the year before he came here and got hired with a bonus. So, you know, if you think these bonuses are getting us anyone quality, all you have to do is look at this case - not the case - we're not getting anyone special here. [00:12:48] Crystal Fincher: Well, you know, I don't know who it's bringing, but there absolutely needs to be a different strategy implemented here. And everyone needs to do better in reporting, and considering how they talk about this, and what our stance as a community is about this. I also wanna talk about another story this week that didn't seem to percolate, but that was surprising to me. And it was news that Seattle had to pay nearly $2 million to the family of a man after he died of a heart attack after getting delayed response because his address was wrongly on a 911 blacklist. One - okay, there's a 911 blacklist - there's news. [00:13:29] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, I did not even know that. Oh, God. [00:13:32] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, so the situation is this person had a heart attack, fell out - had lived in the unit for a year. The people who lived in it before him wound up on a list - and responders and police say they keep a list of people who have been hostile to or problematic with police, which, you know, I don't know what hard and fast rules about that, how subjective that is, but you can see how that could come to be. But they wound up on this list because of a prior tenant - that wasn't told to them on the call, there was no indication, you had - no one has any idea - [00:14:06] Lex Vaughn: I had no idea that was a thing. [00:14:09] Crystal Fincher: - that - yeah, that the list exists or that they may or may not be on it. So this guy's lived here for a year. It's not even like he just moved in there. [00:14:16] Lex Vaughn: And I'm like - oh my God. So it's like based on address, not even like phone numbers? 'Cause like I would imagine almost everyone has like a cell phone now. Like almost no one has a landline. [00:14:27] Crystal Fincher: Some people have a landline. [00:14:28] Lex Vaughn: I mean, okay. [00:14:29] Crystal Fincher: Some people don't have cell phones. [00:14:30] Lex Vaughn: It's like a small fraction of people. [00:14:32] Crystal Fincher: Most people do, some people don't - but either way - so they call and they're like - Okay, help is on the way. But the help is - they see there's a flag, so they have to wait for basically police to co-respond with them, which delays the call. You know, another 911 call comes in after a paramedic is apparently on the scene, but not going in because they're waiting for police. And they're saying help is on the way, but no indication that there's a delay. The man passes away because of - looking at the settlement, feeling like had he received more timely medical care, he certainly would have had a better opportunity to survive. But that this was the reason why he died - and that this list exists, that finding out through this, that evidently the list was neglected - they don't take people off the list or hadn't before this - was very problematic. In response to this, they're now saying they'll age people off of the list after 365 days. But you can imagine- [00:15:28] Lex Vaughn: Why did it have to take this to do that obvious a thing? [00:15:31] Crystal Fincher: Why did it have to take this? And how does no one engage with the fact that, especially with half of Seattle residents renting, right? [00:15:39] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, I'm a renter. And I read this and I was like - Okay. I mean, I've lived in this place that I'm in for three years, so well - I mean, I don't know. It's like, I want to check - I don't know who lived here before. [00:15:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, how do you get on? Is there an appeals process to come off? The lack of transparency surrounding this seems like it could create another situation like this in the future. So this was a story reported by KIRO 7 - would be interested to find out exactly what criteria are to get on the list. Are people ever removed from the list now other than aging off? And even with things aging off over a year, people move all the time - renters move all the time - this is absolutely disproportionately impacting people who rent. And a year is a long time to wait for something to edge off. If you have an emergency and you haven't lived in your place for a year, who knows if when you call 911, there's some reason that you don't know why people aren't responding. So I found that just really interesting. [00:16:43] Lex Vaughn: And just another important part of that report is that apparently a dispatcher was punished and also sued the City because he tried to fix that system. And he was kind of like wrongfully punished on the job for trying to bring up and reform that 911 blacklist. And it just seems like - wow, you know, a person like me - I didn't even know it existed, but I think we all got to take a hard look at that 'cause that's a tragedy that didn't have to happen. [00:17:14] Crystal Fincher: Absolute tragedy. And very interested to learn more about how that list operates and if it is in line with best practices and it just seems- [00:17:24] Lex Vaughn: It seems very outdated. [00:17:26] Crystal Fincher: It really does. Wanna talk about another story that is part of a larger story. And it's Senator Joe Nguyen, our state Senator, is moving forward on a bill to detect price gouging at the gas pump. Gas prices have been in the news a lot lately - they find their way into the news every year for a variety of reasons that - the price of gas is high. It's a cost that a lot of people incur. And as the prices rise, people feel that in their budgets, certainly - don't wanna minimize that at all for people who are on a tight budget. But for people who care about that, I hope they also have urgency in dealing with housing costs, childcare costs, some of the biggest costs that people have. But gas is a factor in there, and so we have a situation where gas prices are volatile - they have been, they always are. In this situation, we have Democrats and Republicans calling for a couple of different solutions. Republicans call for a gas tax holiday, they blame the Climate Commitment Act - which was passed here in this state, which assigns basically a price to carbon - and saying, This is the reason why gas prices are high. Other people have pointed out for quite some time that we still have these oil companies making record profits and that accounts for more of the gas price there. And these increases in price don't seem to correlate with the increase and decreases in cost. And we hear - Oh, you know, refinery's offline for maintenance. Well, that seems to coincide with major holiday weekends and times when they know people will be driving to make the price skyrocket. California passed a bill similar to this, which Joe Nguyen said he looked at and is modeling this off of. And they found that there was some, you know, shady stuff going on. And what this does is basically establish a commission, or a tribunal, or some organization that can review pricing information and kind of proprietary data from these companies - saying that this isn't public data, so it's not like there are gonna be competitive disadvantages for sharing and it's not gonna be given to the public. But this group can review it and say - Okay, is this in line with costs, or are you just raising the price of gas to price gouge consumers - which appears that it's happened before. So this is an interesting bill that Senator Nguyen is moving forward with to detect price gouging. And I'm gonna be really curious to see how this plays out. What do you think? [00:19:47] Lex Vaughn: I mean, I'd be interested to see how they plan on changing that behavior. 'Cause I guess I applaud the effort to detect price gouging and do something about it, but I'm almost in like a state of - I've just accepted oil companies do that all the time. I mean, I think especially in that year after - since the war in Ukraine, it seemed like there was a period where they were artificially jacking up the prices when they didn't really need to - even after President Biden had taken action to reduce that problem, the prices were still high. So I'm just so used to the price gouging that I assume is always happening, I'm like - Oh, okay, you gonna do something about it? Good luck with that. I don't have high hopes, but- [00:20:34] Crystal Fincher: Well, I think there are bigger structural issues involved. I mean, we are trying to phase out fossil fuels in a long-term perspective, and that is going to make the cost of gas increase in the long-term. Now, as with many things - and part of that is the price is inherently volatile, it's gonna become more volatile, especially as - even if we wanted to burn all the oil in the world, there's a limited supply of oil. So this was coming at some time. How do we make this transition in a way that is as fair and equitable as possible? And that's what the proceeds of the Climate Commitment Act are supposed to do - these proceeds that are exceeding expectations from these carbon credits - that's what the push towards more renewable forms of energy, electric cars - but even better, getting the cars off the road and using transit - and making, building our infrastructure and building our communities in a way that make that a viable and attractive option for people. 'Cause right now we still have a long way to go for that. And in this Week Without Driving, many of us are experiencing that firsthand- [00:21:39] Lex Vaughn: How was that? [00:21:39] Crystal Fincher: It's still ongoing. I shared online that I have a trip today to make where it's a two hour one-way trip, even though it's only 17 miles - but it underscores how important it is to improve transit service everywhere - and it benefits everyone. We have to get out, we have to mitigate the impacts of climate change. We have to get on this and accelerate our efforts to meet our 2030 goals - to have a shot at meeting our goals that are further down the line. We have a long way to go, but improving the accessibility and the experience on transit will improve traffic, will improve air quality, will improve finances. It costs a lot less if that's a reasonable option to do. [00:22:24] Lex Vaughn: I'm always shocked when people aren't completely on board with building great public transit as fast as possible everywhere. 'Cause even if you're a driver and you're never taking public transit, how is it not in your interest as well for as many people as possible to be in public transit? You get less traffic. It should be a win-win-win for everybody to get more of these things online. [00:22:49] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think there's a lot of misinformation about there. And I think the way that we have allowed communities to build and grow - that we've allowed sprawl and basically enabled- [00:22:59] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, yeah. [00:23:00] Crystal Fincher: -the inaccessibility of transit in communities makes people - the default lifestyle for many people is a car-based lifestyle. And we've allowed transit to atrophy in many places, if it even was readily available in the first place. So people - when people can't see it and can't see it working, they have a hard time conceptualizing it. [00:23:22] Lex Vaughn: Oh yeah. And I mean, whenever you do that Google Maps route - I mean, I do that sometimes where I'm like - Oh, what's the public transit route? If it's very long, I'll opt for using my car for part of that trip somehow. And that usually is the defining thing, right - is just looking up on a Google Map - is this a half hour trip or a two hour trip? [00:23:43] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. [00:23:44] Lex Vaughn: I mean, that's a big difference. [00:23:45] Crystal Fincher: It's a humongous difference. And for several - I fortunately am privileged enough to not have to drive often. But for those I do, that's an absolute consideration. And I would like to take transit. And there are some advantages even on a longer trip - you can do other things, you can multitask, you can just decompress - you don't have to be present and aware, paying attention while you're driving, you don't have the stress of traffic sometimes, which is nice. So I mean, even on a longer trip, there are some advantages to transit, but also it can be less convenient depending on there. And if you have to walk a long way, especially in poor weather, when it's cold. Or if there aren't adequate facilities at a transit stop - I saw someone yesterday comment, Hey man, I looked up something and it was a two and a half hour trip, and my bladder can't securely make that trip and we don't make public restrooms readily available to people. There are a lot of structural barriers in place for people to be able to use transit, and we have to do a better job at removing those barriers if we're gonna make progress. And so the Week Without Driving is really bringing that home to a lot of people in ways that we can talk about, but when you do it and you feel it, it just provides additional insight and urgency into that. I also wanna talk about the City of Burien - yet again - who passed their camping ban and then decided to make their camping ban worse. So what Burien did was now expand the number of hours per day in which being unsheltered will soon be illegal. PubliCola has been doing an excellent job covering what's been happening in the City of Burien - we will link this article and update in our show notes also. But basically the Burien city attorney said that the city decided to make the adjustment after learning that shelters begin making their decisions about who to admit around 4.30 in the afternoon. And by 10, most are closed. And according to him, it would be too late to take people there - that's questionable reasoning. And by starting the ban earlier in the evening, the city thinks that it can plausibly say shelter was available - which is important in order to pass the constitutionality test - and that people refuse to accept it. Those are not hard and fast rules, and especially with some of the new shelter coming online, it is more flexible. The shelters making such decisions and closing early are part of the reason why it's hard for people to do that anyway. A meaningful percentage of people who don't have homes still have jobs. Lots of people who don't have homes or who are housing insecure have jobs. And if their shift goes beyond 7 or 8 or 9 or whatever the closing time is- [00:26:32] Lex Vaughn: Very unreasonable. [00:26:33] Crystal Fincher: -you have to choose between keeping the job that has a shot at either getting you back into housing or keeping you from falling into a further precarious position on the street. It just doesn't make sense. So they expanded the hours that they were doing that. During the meeting - there's a lot of misinformation that comes from the council majority on this council - they were saying that they, Hey, it increases the amount of time that they're able to camp, which is just false. Like it was weird. It only allows camping between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m. - or the ability to be in public while you're unhoused, basically - even though that there aren't good options for where these people to go. And as we've been reminded several times, options are available and on offer to the City of Burien to have people have a place to go - land has been identified for them. And this is a seven-member council, it's a split council - so four members in the majority, three members in the minority. That four-member council majority has not decided to take the county up on the offer of a million dollars to help with long-term placement, hasn't taken - two entities now who have offered Pallet shelters here. It's just really unfortunate. [00:27:49] Lex Vaughn: Has that city been sued yet? Or like - 'cause it does seem illegal. I mean, they're not even, they're rejecting housing for these people and then doing this camping ban at the same time. I would think that's illegal. [00:28:03] Crystal Fincher: Well, that's the question. And it does strike a lot of people as illegal, which is one of the reasons why the King County Executive's Office sent a letter to Burien saying that - Hey, because your police department contracts with the King County Sheriff's for your deputies, we're telling you our deputies cannot participate in these sweeps because it's unconstitutional. [00:28:23] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, that's great. [00:28:24] Crystal Fincher: And they say - Ah no, it's not. They try to do an end around and find a loophole by leasing to a seemingly faux dog park organization that - then they could trespass people off of land. It's just a whole mess. [00:28:40] Lex Vaughn: The extent they're going to boot homeless people out of their city is crazy - without helping them. [00:28:48] Crystal Fincher: Without helping them, yeah. [00:28:49] Lex Vaughn: The option is right there, the money is right there - and they're not using it. I imagine a lot of these things just aren't true that they're saying? But is that true - that thing they said about all these homeless shelters accept people at 4.30 and not afterward? Is that a thing? [00:29:06] Crystal Fincher: And the way he phrased it even is vague in and of itself - they begin making their decisions at 4.30. [00:29:12] Lex Vaughn: Begin making their decisions at-- [00:29:14] Crystal Fincher: Yes. [00:29:14] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, and it's like - yeah, just think about, I mean, the average person is not done with work at 4.30. They're not even home from work at 4.30, if they're not a remote worker. And yeah, and there's a lot of different shifts out there that people might be taking. And it assumes that people who don't have shelter don't have jobs, which is just the worst piece of misinformation. [00:29:38] Crystal Fincher: Or don't have any other interests, or places to go - it's just challenging. And speaking of the King County Sheriff's, this is a big concern - who are they gonna have to actually enforce this? - which is a question that was asked. And Deputy Mayor Kevin Schilling said on the dais that - Hey, the King County Sheriff's Office signed off on the change. However, PubliCola followed up with the King County Sheriff's Office, and a spokesman for King County Executive Dow Constantine told PubliCola that the county has not made a decision about whether and how to enforce the law. So, that is absolutely not true - what Deputy Mayor Kevin Schilling said - that evidently is still under review. And it looks like they were, once again, in a rush and moved hastily without even knowing if this is something that they can enforce. It is just, it's just a challenge. [00:30:31] Lex Vaughn: Come on, Burien - get some new people on that council. [00:30:34] Crystal Fincher: Speaking of challenges that are pretty easy to foresee, or things that don't quite make sense based on what we're being told - is news that, hey, finally, finally, the mayor's office who has had the funding to do this and for some reason hasn't for a long time, announced that they're going to launch a dual responder program. However, this dual responder program would still fail to civilianize the crisis response, which is what the mayor's office had initially said they wanted to - we had a conversation with Deputy Mayor, then-Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell on this show about that before. But in the way this is going to be - in the way it's proposed, in the way it looks like it's going to happen - a new Community Assisted Response and Engagement Department, or CARE Department, will launch a dual dispatch pilot consisting of teams of two civilians, some of whom are behavioral health providers, who can be dispatched alongside SPD officers. And so this program hired six responders so far, $1.8 million has been proposed from the mayor in the 2024 budget. And in the press conference, which I think you said that you watched, they talked about this being similar to or based on programs that have gotten acclaim in a few other major cities. However, ours is substantively different than theirs - in that, theirs don't rely on co-response - meaning that an armed officer has to go with someone all the time - or they have options out of that, that is not a requirement of the dispatch. And there's good reason for that. One, most of these calls don't apply to that. In Denver's program, they found that they only needed to call for armed police response 2% of the time where their crisis responders were dispatched - especially as you said before, when they're saying they don't have enough cops to do the job that is expected of them, you would think that'd be like - Oh, that's great news. We can deploy our resources in areas where they can be more effective. [00:32:44] Lex Vaughn: That's why it's probably a dual response. They don't want our city to discover that we don't need police at every single one of these calls. And it's unfortunate that the mayor and this police department are more concerned with how can we get this police department more money, more people. It's, I guess, a rough transition here - to say the least - to get this city to wrap its head around the fact that you do not need police at every single one of these 911 calls. And in fact, it's very dangerous for a lot of these cops to show up, especially in cases where someone's having a mental health crisis or something. When I was a reporter at The Seattle Times, I unfortunately reported on cases where someone was having a mental health crisis and they were shot for not immediately obeying orders. That was, you know - I - if you have a loved one that struggles with mental health issues, the police - they're not who you want to call. It's dangerous, 'cause I think a lot of police are - they're just too willing and ready to shoot as soon as they're not listened to. And so I'm very disappointed that this is a dual response thing, when it's so clear we need that CARE team to just respond on their own, with their own expertise, without anyone armed on the scene. [00:34:09] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and especially in crisis calls, armed responses - an armed presence - is its own escalator. [00:34:17] Lex Vaughn: Yes - yeah, like duh - for anyone. And then imagine you're also in crisis - just not a great mix. [00:34:24] Crystal Fincher: It's challenging. You know, Crosscut previously reported that while only 2.2% of calls for service in Seattle were crisis calls, those calls accounted for 25% of Seattle officers' use of force. And if we recall, Charleena Lyles in 2017 was a perfect example of that, really unfortunate example of that. It's just really challenging. They seem determined to have an officer respond - to your point, it seems like they are afraid of relinquishing anything. But that seems to be happening - if you listen to their logic - at the expense of everyone else's safety and more effective deployment across the city. Then another really meaningful point brought up is just the scale of this pilot - what are we really able to see? [00:35:12] Lex Vaughn: Six people, right? [00:35:12] Crystal Fincher: Six people - yeah, absolutely. And that is completely out of line with the scale of the programs in these other cities. [00:35:21] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, Albuquerque - 70 people. They're really doing it. [00:35:25] Crystal Fincher: Look at how many officers we have. Look at the size of the city. And one thing that's been noticed by lots of people for a long time is that we put out these pilots, we say we need to see results, and we need to get data on them to see if they're gonna continue. And you just throw a couple people out there - and you can't reasonably expect any meaningful intervention from a few people. Now when you do look at that, they do outsize good for what they're there. So it's like, just imagine if we were to appropriately invest and deploy in numbers that could effectively manage this problem citywide. But we continue not to do that, which is frustrating, and watch more of the budget continue to go to police officers, vacant police officer positions - and it's just frustrating. [00:36:16] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, I mean, it's like the police department and the City are trying to make this argument that we don't have enough officers. And it's like - Well, what if we're just not doing this efficiently at all? And it's just unfortunate to see that the priority here seems to be retaining dependence on a police department that is as bloated as possible, and not just creating a more efficient public health and public safety kind of operation system here. Like you said, a lot of these calls - they do not need an armed cop, especially one that might be barreling through a high pedestrian area at 75 miles per hour, coming to the call. And if we're really interested in public safety here, I really think we don't need more cops. We need to use the cops we have more efficiently, with more accountability. And expand this other program, the CARE program, and let them respond independently to a lot of these calls and expand it. And I'm worried that this program is being set up to fail. Some people might say that - Well, this is better than nothing. It's a start. - I guess, but I think it's being set up to fail. This is six people - not that many people - and they're not being allowed to be the first to intervene, which is really where I think the magic of those programs happens. It's like - Wow, the situation did not get escalated. This person got the help they needed without a gun on the scene. [00:37:48] Crystal Fincher: And it feels like someone is coming to help, right? And it really is the difference in - is someone coming to help me, or is someone coming to control me? Is someone coming to make me do something, to stop me? [00:37:59] Lex Vaughn: Yep, that is - that's it - right there, yeah. [00:38:04] Crystal Fincher: And that makes such a big difference when someone is already in a place where they're unstable, where they're worried, concerned, where they're not perceiving things as well as they can be. And then expecting them then to be able to - oftentimes be calmer than the officer that's responding - and just rationally follow everything. You're being called because this person is not behaving rationally, right - so we know that from jump - everything else that stems from that, it's predictable that that's not going to have a great outcome. And again, we have to get to dealing with the root causes of this. There's nothing a police person can do to address a behavioral health crisis. [00:38:47] Lex Vaughn: That's not their expertise at all. [00:38:49] Crystal Fincher: That's not their expertise, it's not their job. It's not their - no training, no resources in order to do that. The people who actually can make those connections - who do understand our complicated and inadequate, but you know, system - and to try and get people in there and to get them some help that they need, so this is not a chronic problem. So this doesn't escalate. It's really important. The last story I want to talk about today is the emergence of a new GOP candidate in Washington's 3rd Congressional District. This district is now notorious for being one of the biggest districts in an upset race in 2022, where Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez beat Joe Kent, a very far right-wing Republican in 2022 - biggest upset race in the country. And so Joe Kent announced that he was running again, he's been running, and he's endorsed by the likes of Trump and you know, a lot of really, really, really far right extremists. And that is what a lot of people blame on his loss that - wow, even that was too much for this pretty solidly Republican district. So it looks like other Republicans in the state - I don't want to call them moderate Republicans, 'cause I don't think that is an accurate descriptor - but ones who realize that Joe Kent- [00:40:11] Lex Vaughn: Maybe just smarter, like more strategic Republicans. [00:40:16] Crystal Fincher: Right - is a tainted brand, right? And are trying to operate more strategically. And so Leslie Lewallen, a city councilmember in Camas in Clark County, has entered the race and drawn early support and endorsements from prominent Republicans like former Attorney General Rob McKenna, former Secretary of State Sam Reed, and Tiffany Smiley. And Tiffany Smiley, who's the challenger to Patty Murray in 2022. And so they are not going the MAGA route, they're trying to go the other route. Although if you look at the issues that she's talking about, this is really, you know, how they're dressing up someone who holds a lot of the same core beliefs when it comes to women's choice, when it comes to these really troubling attacks and book bans that we're seeing in schools, attacks on the trans community and the LGBTQ community - just a lot of worrisome things. This is not, you know, what we had previously described as a moderate Republican. This is still a pretty far right Republican, but it's not Joe Kent. And, you know, Joe Kent is out of touch with reality in a variety of things - it's hard to really explain how wild this guy is without just being like - look at this, I cannot - I had to do this in 2022. Like I can't do justice to what this is with an explanation, just watch him talk. [00:41:42] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, him and Loren Culp were kind of an insane, you know, pair to talk about back then. [00:41:48] Crystal Fincher: They were just not in touch with reality. But, you know, this will be interesting. And we see this effort, with Dave Reichert in the governor's race, to try and dress someone up as a more moderate Republican to kind of assuage some of the fears that people have of someone too extreme. MAGA - the MAGA brand - is not popular throughout the state, that's not a winning brand in the state. And Republicans have been losing ground because of it. But I think, especially when we look at a lot of these races in King County - like I'm thinking of the 8th Congressional District race, the Reagan Dunn race against Kim Schrier - even someone who has, you know, traditionally branded themselves as a moderate, they still hold beliefs that are pretty repugnant to lots of people. Kind of first and foremost, the issue of abortion rights, right - these are pretty fundamental rights. The issue of privacy protections - pretty fundamental rights. Wanting a stronger safety net - pretty fundamental, you know, support by a lot of people in the state. And Republicans seem to disagree with that. [00:42:48] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, or at a minimum, they're just spineless because Reagan Dunn, at certain points, has - if it's advantageous to him, you know, hasn't been as conservative, but just depends on where he's trying to mold himself. [00:43:03] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. [00:43:04] Lex Vaughn: Yeah. [00:43:04] Crystal Fincher: So at this moment, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez has a pretty substantial financial lead. I think I read that she has like a million and a half dollars and Joe Kent has like a shade under $500,000. But I - this will be a district that this cycle, I'm sure, attracts a lot of attention and a lot of outside spending. Definitely on the list for Republicans to pick up. Now, you know, we're sitting here as Republicans just kicked out Speaker McCarthy, which makes Patty Murray now second in line to the presidency since there's no current Speaker of the House. But, you know, Republicans have problems from the very top of the ticket all the way on down, so it'll be interesting just to see how they manage this chaos. [00:43:49] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, well, this whole next year is gonna be an interesting Republican identity journey - I don't know if it's a crisis, they've kind of been in crisis for a little while, but it's - they're gonna have to make some decisions about who they're gonna be in the future. Are they gonna continue the Trump route or are they trying to find this other, I don't know. I guess almost as far right, but just a different tone, different leaders at the helm kind of leading that. I don't know. [00:44:24] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, very - it'll be interesting to see. And, you know, we'll have another shutdown battle coming up in about a month. Who knows if we'll have a speaker by then? Who knows if we'll be in any better position for anything by then? [00:44:39] Lex Vaughn: I just heard yesterday there's a possibility of Trump being a speaker? [00:44:43] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, so- [00:44:45] Lex Vaughn: Oh my God, I didn't know that was a thing. [00:44:47] Crystal Fincher: Fun fact is the Speaker of the House does not have to be a member of the House or Congress. So yeah, they can appoint - they could do that with Trump if they wanted to, I think? [00:44:58] Lex Vaughn: Ahh, this world is insane. [00:45:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's, you know - it is frustrating - the Republicans are not a party serious about governing right now. And I just wish we would contend with that more directly. Or at least- [00:45:14] Lex Vaughn: And the people who vote for them. Like what are you doing? [00:45:16] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. So we'll continue to follow this, but that will certainly - is an interesting new element in that 3rd Congressional District race that will have impacts here locally and nationally. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, October 6th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful cohost today is Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Founder and Editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn. You can find Lex on Twitter @AlexaVaughn, V-A-U-G-H-N. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can find me on Twitter and most other networks @finchfrii, with two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time. [00:46:41] Lex Vaughn: Bye.

The Flight Heard Round the World

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 6, 2023 27:58

In 1924, four airplanes took off from what's now Magnuson Park. Six months and more than 26,000 miles later, half the fleet made it back. The 1920s marked an era of aviation. After World War I, many powerful nations focused on the new technology and rushed to be the first to use it to circumnavigate the globe. In 1924, the U.S. military selected eight Army pilots and four specially made biplanes with open-air cockpits to make that first attempt. The pilots were called “the Magellans of the Sky” after the celebrated 16th-century explorer who tried the same feat on the sea. Their official launch site? The shores of Sand Point, or what's now Magnuson Park in Seattle. Crosscut's resident historian Knute Berger shone a light on these lesser-known Magellans in a recent episode of the Mossback's Northwest video series, but there's more left to highlight. In this episode of Mossback, Berger joins co-host Stephen Hegg to dig deeper into the reasons behind the attempt, the physical dangers and geopolitical challenges the pilots faced, the flight's global significance and its relationship to Boeing. They also discuss the Centennial Celebration that will mark the anniversary of the flight in 2024, exactly where the planes launched and landed a century ago. For more on all things Mossback, visit crosscut.com/mossback. To reach Knute Berger directly, drop him a line at knute.berger@crosscut.com. And if you'd like an exclusive weekly newsletter from Knute, where he offers greater insight into his latest historical discoveries, become a Crosscut member today. --- Credits Hosts: Stephen Hegg, Knute Berger Producer: Seth Halleran Story editors: Sara Bernard and Sarah Menzies Executive producer: Sarah Menzies

seattle army heard flight boeing northwest berger centennial celebration crosscut knute knute berger magnuson park sarah menzies

Week in Review: September 8, 2023 - with Robert Cruickshank

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 8, 2023 43:36

On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank! They discuss a poll showing that Seattle voters want a more progressive City Council, the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction overseeing more and more school districts in budget crisis, gubernatorial candidate Mark Mullet getting financially backed by charter school advocates, and Bruce Harrell's ethnic media roundtable not going very well. The conversation continues with the possibility of a $19 minimum wage for unincorporated King County, internal drama within top brass of the Seattle Police Department, and reflection on a consent decree ruling that ends most federal oversight of SPD. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Robert Cruickshank, at @cruickshank. Resources “Ending Youth Incarceration with Dr. Ben Danielson of AHSHAY Center” from Hacks & Wonks “Poll: Seattle voters want new direction on City Council” by Josh Cohen from Crosscut “State will keep fiscal tabs on three cash-starved Washington school districts” by Jerry Cornfield from Washington State Standard “WA Supreme Court sides with state in suit over school building costs” by Dahlia Bazzaz from The Seattle Times “Big checks for a pro-Mullet PAC” by Paul Queary from The Washington Observer “Harrell asks for better relations with ethnic media” by Mahlon Meyer from Northwest Asian Weekly “King County looks at $19 minimum wage in unincorporated areas” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times “King County Councilmembers propose $19 minimum wage for Skyway and White Center” by Guy Oron from Real Change “Seattle police chief's alleged relationship with employee prompts inquiries, roils department” by Ashley Hiruko & Isolde Raftery from KUOW “Judge ends most federal oversight of SPD, after 11 years and 3 chiefs” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times Find stories that Crystal is reading here Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and our Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. If you missed our Tuesday topical show, I welcomed Dr. Ben Danielson, director of AHSHAY (Allies and Healthier Systems for Health and Abundance in Youth) Center for an important conversation about ending youth incarceration. Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review show where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long-time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank. [00:01:19] Robert Cruickshank: Thank you for having me back again, Crystal. It's always a pleasure to be here reviewing the week with you. [00:01:23] Crystal Fincher: Always a pleasure and I wanna start out talking about a poll that came out this week, sponsored by Crosscut - an Elway Poll - showing that voters seem to want a more progressive City Council. What did this poll reveal? [00:01:38] Robert Cruickshank: It's a really interesting poll. Crosscut's headline says - Seattle voters want a new direction on the City Council - but if you dig down with the poll itself, it's clear that there's strong support for a more progressive direction. One of the questions they ask is - Who are you more likely to vote for? A progressive candidate, a centrist candidate, or no opinion. The progressive candidate, 49%. Centrist candidate, 37%. And no opinion, 14%. That actually matches pretty closely some of the results we saw in key City Council primary elections last month. In District 1, for example, District 4, District 6 - you saw pretty similar numbers with a progressive candidate getting close to or around 50% and a more centrist candidate getting somewhere between the upper 30s and low 40s. We have a poll, we have the actual election results from the primary - now that doesn't guarantee anything for the general election. But evidence is starting to pile up that - yes, Seattle voters do want a new direction and it's very likely they want to be a more progressive direction. We've lived for the last three years - certain media pundits and media outlets, like KOMO or The Seattle Times, pushing really hard this narrative that Seattle wants a right-wing turn, Seattle's fed up with a progressive City Council, we're fed up with homelessness, we're fed up with crime - we want to turn to the right, darn it. The poll results and the election results last month just don't support that argument at all. Yes, voters are unhappy and voters are looking at what the progressive candidates are saying and thinking - Yeah, that's how we want to solve this. Yes, we want to solve homelessness by getting people into housing. Yes, we want to solve crime by having all sorts of solutions - including alternatives to policing, alternatives to armed response - to help address this problem. And I think that some of the media outlets and Chamber of Commerce and others, who keep pushing this Seattle-wants-to-turn-right narrative, are just trying to will a story into existence, try to will that reality into existence - but voters are making it clear they're not going along with that. [00:03:28] Crystal Fincher: It really does make some of the rhetoric that we hear over and over again sound like astroturfing, sound like a marketing project - because like you said, over and over again, these election results and these polls just repeatedly tell a different story. For example, we've talked on this show before about stopping with just - Hey, are you happy with the way things are going or are you dissatisfied? And if people say they're dissatisfied, there's been this assumption - that means that they want to get rid of progressive councilmembers and progressive policy. And that has never borne out in the data. One of the questions - On the issue of homelessness, if you had to choose, what approach should have the higher priority for city government resources? One option is: Moving the tents out of parks and public areas and moving their occupants into temporary shelters - which is a nice way to say sweeps - 41%. The other option: Developing permanent housing and mental health services for people experiencing homelessness - 55%. This is not controversial - we've been talking about this on this show for quite some time, lots of people have - these are serious policies backed by evidence and it just makes sense, right? And it makes you question how deeply invested are people in the narrative that Seattle is fed up and they want a really punitive law and order, harsh lock-'em-up approach to things - that just doesn't play out. What we're gonna see in this general election, as we've seen before - it looks like we're anticipating some of the same type of communication, same type of commercial, same type of mailers trying to use those same tired depictions of homelessness as if the people who are homeless are the problem and not the fact that they don't have homes to live in. And Seattle sees that. They see that over and over again. And what we see is there is this attempt, especially around public safety rhetoric, to make it just very flat. Either you want more cops and you support cops and Blue Lives Matter and all of that, or you hate safety and you love crime and you don't want anything. And just making it either you're defund or this Antifa radical, or you're wanting more law and order on the streets. It just doesn't turn out that way. People want serious solutions. We've been doing the same things over and over again. And the public is begging these people to keep listening, but it just doesn't work. Like you said, a plurality here prefer a progressive candidate - 12 points higher than a more moderate candidate, as they put it - conservative wasn't a choice in here. Centrist and progressive - as is the way in Seattle - the way things are usually discussed. Also, when they asked about priorities - How are they evaluating candidates for City Council? It's really interesting. The top answers were: Do they support creating a new department for non-police emergency response, Do they support city funding of substance abuse treatment for people in public housing - both of those at 72%. If you're in the 60s, that's automatic win territory. 72%, it's - how wild is it that this is not on the top of everybody's agenda? Then we move down to - looking at the lower end - the lowest, actually, was: Supporting a three-year moratorium on the Jumpstart tax - that actually made people more likely to vote against someone for voting against a moratorium on that tax, which we've seen the Chamber float and other allied business interests trying to siphon some of that money or reduce the tax that they're paying. And voters are clearly saying no. And people who advocate for that are going to be hurt by taking that position in this general election. So this is just really interesting. One of these questions: Support for Bruce Harrell's agenda. One, I want someone to define what that agenda is - great to ask that in a vague way - what does that mean? And I would love for people to talk - when they talk about the mayor's agenda, Bruce Harrell's agenda - define what that is. I think that's a tougher task than many people might assume at first glance. What else did you see here? [00:07:38] Robert Cruickshank: There are a couple of things that stood out. You talked about taxes. They asked - How should Seattle cover a budget shortfall? 63% want a new business tax, 60% are willing to tax themselves - this just bolsters the point you just made that, contrary to what the Chamber wants, there's no support out there for slashing business taxes. We want to tax the rich more. And so that's another reason why progressive candidates are going to do well. Something you said resonated about the astroturfing. And you see these efforts to try to create outrage about different public safety issues. We saw some of that this week, where Sara Nelson had a stunt press conference in Little Saigon - which is facing issues, and the community of Little Saigon deserves to be heard and deserves to have their needs addressed. That's not what Sara Nelson was there to do. She was there to have a press conference stunt where she could stand there with Tanya Woo and say - Where's Tammy Morales? Why isn't Tammy Morales here? The answer is, as Tammy Morales explained, Tammy wasn't invited because Tammy was also at the Transportation Committee hearing in City Hall doing her job and asked where's Sara Nelson? The answer is Sara Nelson's out grandstanding. She's also the same person who's floating things like moratorium on the JumpStart Tax, floating things like sweeps and crackdowns on visible drug use. Sara Nelson somehow snuck into office in 2021 and thinks somehow that the City is supporting her agenda - whatever that might be, whatever right-wing cause she has at the moment - that's not where the electorate is right now. And I think that's all they have - are stunts - because their actual agenda is unpopular. And I think you're going to start seeing - as a campaign heads into the heat of the general election, the same playbook we've often seen from more centrist candidates. And Jenny Durkan was an expert at this - of just bear-hugging progressive positions, making themselves sound more progressive than they truly are - to try to get elected because they know that's what the electorate in Seattle wants. And then once in office, the mask comes off and they turned out to be the Chamber candidate that they always were. So that's something that the actual progressive candidates are gonna have to watch out for. And voters are going to need to be very careful in discerning between these candidates. Who's just mouthing the rhetoric that they think is going to get them elected? And who's a genuine and proven commitment to these ideals? - Who's really fought hard for taxing the rich? Who's fought hard for affordable housing? Who's fought hard to get services and shelter to people who are unhoused? - rather than people who are just maybe grandstanding on it because they think that's how they're gonna win. [00:10:00] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I think you bring up a really important point. It is that discernment. Some of the justification I've heard for people who are very invested in the "Seattle has taken a right turn" try and retcon the justification - well, voters wanted a conservative business owner and they really want that perspective on the Council. They want someone who's gonna knock heads and get tough. But people so easily forget - that's not at all how Sara Nelson ran. Sara Nelson ran as an environmentalist, as someone who wanted to reform the police department - those were her top-line messages in her communications. She wasn't talking about being a business owner, she was not talking about being tough on crime - she initially started that in the very beginning in the primary and that fell flat. And so they switched up real quick and all of the communication looked like it was coming from a progressive. They used the word "progressive" 72,000 times - Oh no, we're the real progressives here. And it didn't turn out that way. And as you said, once she was elected, the mask came off and we continue to see this over and over again. The moderate playbook, the conservative playbook is to mimic progressive. It's to use that same language. It's to talk about issues in a similar way. Leave yourself a little wiggle room to not commit, to not give a hard and fast answer to something so that when you are elected, you can say - Well, I didn't exactly say that - or - I didn't take a position on this. And we see this over and over again. I hope it doesn't happen again this time, but there's going to be a lot of money spent to try and do this again. And at some point we just have to say - We've seen this before and we've had enough, and we want people who are seriously engaging in how to solve the biggest problems that we face. Because Seattle voters are really frustrated - they are fed up, but fed up with not being listened to. I do congratulate this poll for going beyond just the - Are you happy and unhappy? - and asking the why - What direction do you want to go into? What policy solution do you prefer? And as I suspected, the answers are very enlightening and give you an eye into what voters are really thinking and considering. And I hope all of the candidates - and the electeds who aren't even on the ballot - take heed. I also want to talk about school districts - right now, just as school is starting over again - facing budget crises and just a world of hurt. What's happening here? [00:12:28] Robert Cruickshank: As schools are starting across Washington state this year, there are some schools where teachers have gone out on strike, mostly in Southwest Washington - places like Evergreen Schools in Vancouver, Camas in Clark County - and that's worth watching and we're supporting teachers. In addition, we're starting to see an even more ominous trend of districts needing the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, OSPI, to actually oversee their budgets. They need OSPI monitoring because they're in such deep financial straits, primarily because this Legislature continues to underfund our schools. The Legislature doesn't give schools enough money to cover their basic operations, especially in an era of inflation. And so you have at least three school districts that we know of so far, Marysville, La Conner, Mount Baker - these are all in Northwest Washington - are under OSPI oversight for budgets. It's the most, at any one time, in several years - since at least a great recession. OSPI is quoted as saying this is unprecedented. And they don't think it's gonna stop there. It's just the tip of the iceberg - as more and more districts face problems, as federal stimulus money goes away, as levy equalization dollars start to drop, as regionalization money - which is designed to help districts afford to pay teachers what it actually costs to live in their community - that starts to go away from the state. The state continues to underfund special education. And just this morning before we went on air, we saw the State Supreme Court ruled against the Wahkiakum School District in Southwest Washington, their case where they were trying to get the state to be held responsible for the cost of school construction. The Supreme Court said - No, the state and local governments, local districts are gonna have to share that - even though it takes 60% of voters to approve a school bond for construction, those often fail. And small communities like Wahkiakum, small logging community on the Columbia River, don't have the property tax base to keep their schools in good repair. So what we're seeing is the Legislature, and now the Supreme Court, continue to hand blow after blow to local school districts. And this is alarming, not just because it leads to cuts and even school closures - something they're considering in school districts like Seattle - that's bad enough. But when you start to see state oversight in management of districts, that's when I think red flags should really go up. There's things like appointing emergency fiscal managers - in the state of Michigan and other states where Republicans took over - that led to huge cuts to schools, where these emergency fiscal managers would come in and turn schools over to charter school operators, they tear up union contracts, they would make all sorts of cuts to libraries and music and other important services. Now, we're not seeing that in Washington state yet, but that architecture is now in place. And if the wrong person gets elected governor or the wrong party takes over the Legislature, all of a sudden these school districts could be losing local control over their basic dollars and spending to the state. So this is a unfolding crisis that the State Legislature and the Democratic majority there continue to ignore, continue to not take seriously - even though it remains in the Constitution, literally their paramount duty, to provide ample provision for funding, not just enough. The open dictionary says more than enough. No one can look at a public school district anywhere in Washington state and say schools are getting ample funding. They're just not. And this crisis is only going to grow worse. We're only going to see further cuts to schools, further closures, larger class sizes, teachers leaving - unless the State Legislature steps in. [00:16:00] Crystal Fincher: We do have to contend with the fact that this is happening with the Democratic majority, right? Even more frustrating where - this is another issue voters support in such huge numbers - adequately, amply funding education and raising the revenue because revenue is needed to amply fund education. It's really frustrating. And so I guess my question for you, because you do pay such close attention - I do recommend people follow Robert for a variety of things, but his insight on education policy is really valuable - how do we fix this? Is it all on the Legislature? Where is the fix here? [00:16:39] Robert Cruickshank: The fix is at the Legislature. Local school districts can only do so much. A 60% threshold has not been changed by the Legislature - they have the ability to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot to change that, that never happens. But even more, the Legislature has also capped a local operating levy. Seattle, which has a very pro-tax population, would happily tax ourselves a lot of money to have amazing public schools. We can't do that because we're prevented by the State Legislature. And the obvious reason, of course, is Seattle has such valuable property because we have Amazon, Vulcan, other large corporate property owners here who will ensure that the Legislature doesn't do that. So we have a State Legislature and a Democratic majority that is just unwilling to take on the big corporations and the wealthy to fund our public schools. They point to the capital gains tax. And yes, that was an important victory in 2021. And it's raising almost double what was expected. But of course, there's a caveat there. They cap the amount of money that goes to the Education Legacy Trust Fund - anything above that is supposed to go to school construction, which is great - we just talked about the Supreme Court decision and how local governments and local districts in rural Washington definitely need help funding schools. That's great. But what happens when you don't have the ability to pay the teachers to go into those buildings? When you don't have the ability to provide the books, materials, the music classes, the arts classes, the small class sizes that we voted for in 2014? The Legislature proposed a wealth tax last year - 20 out of 29 Senate Democrats, 43 out of 58 House Democrats supported it as co-sponsors. Surely there were many more who weren't sponsors who were on board. The bill never even made it out of committee in either chamber. At some point, we have to look at the State Legislature and the Democrats, even the progressives - even the Democrats we like and support strongly - haven't stuck their necks out for education, haven't stepped up to say we're gonna fix this. They aren't recognizing the crisis that's there and that's what we have to do. We have to point the finger at the Legislature and go to them at their town halls, to their offices, committee meetings in Olympia, testify virtually if that's possible again in January and make it crystal clear - this is a crisis, it is dire, and you have to fix it. And the only possible source of the fix is the Legislature. [00:19:02] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Thank you for your insight on that, and we do have to get involved. We have to make sure they hear our voices, demanding that this happens. And while they're at it - to provide free school lunches for all school kids. Also several other states - I think we're at 11 so far - are doing the same, putting us to shame. All states should have this and so we have a lot of work to do. Also wanna talk about a candidate for governor - Mark Mullet, current sitting senator out of the 5th legislative district, being backed by charter school money. What's happening here? [00:19:42] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, Mark Mullet, a very right-wing Democrat - he probably would have been a Republican if he didn't realize that being a Democrat would get him elected more easily out there in Issaquah. He's been hostile to teachers' unions for a long time, notoriously hostile to other unions - very nearly lost his reelection in 2020 to Ingrid Anderson, a progressive nurse. Mullet only prevailed by 58 votes, but continues to act as a very right-wing Democrat. And he's always been in love with charter schools - he's been a major obstacle to getting the Legislature to fully fund our public schools. He sits on the Senate Ways and Means Committee. He works with centrist Democrats, corporate Democrats, and Republicans to try to block bills that would fund our schools. And in return, he's now gotten at least $25,000 from a charter school PAC to help fund a super PAC in support of Mark Mullet's run for governor. Polls continue to show so far that Mullet is trailing pretty badly here in the governor's race - Ferguson still has the lead, but it's early. We're well over a year away from the general election for governor. But Mullet clearly is staking his claim as the right-wing Democratic candidate, and the candidate of now folks who wanna privatize our public schools and spread charters everywhere. And as we've seen in other states, charter schools are really problematic. They don't really meet student needs on the whole. Their outcomes aren't better for students. And they're often fly-by-night operations - they'll close in the middle of a school year and then leave students just high and dry. But it's really revealing that Mullet is taking, or at least getting supported by, so much money - that's not a direct donation to his campaign, but it's clear that they are running a super PAC explicitly in support of Mark Mullet. It's a real sign - that's where his bread is buttered - by big corporations and school privatizer money. So something that I think voters are gonna wanna pay pretty close attention to as the campaign for governor starts to heat up next year. [00:21:33] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I do have to tell you, it is very concerning how unstable charter schools seem to be. How many - we see openings and then we see closings. And that just hardly ever happens with public schools. When it does, it's under financial duress and usually over the objections of all of the parents. But this has been something that we've seen with frequency with charter schools here in Washington. But yeah, definitely worth paying attention to that - and what that agenda is by the folks who have that super PAC and what other interests they're in-line with are really troubling. So we'll continue to pay attention to that. I also wanna talk about a story that came out - I actually think it was late last week, this is a short holiday week and so kind of trickled out - but it was a story about Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell's roundtable with some of our local ethnic media outlets. We have wonderful, rich ethnic media outlets here in Washington State - all throughout the state, definitely here in King County. And the mayor's office seemed troubled by the lack of positive stories coming out, and so invited a number of these journalists to - it looks like City Hall - to have a little roundtable conversation. How did that turn out? [00:22:56] Robert Cruickshank: Well, it's interesting. Many mayors have met with our local ethnic media - it's a good thing for them to do in and of itself - Mike McGinn did a great tour of them back when I worked with him in 2011. So it makes sense for Harrell to try to reach out, but it doesn't seem to have gone very well. And according to at least one of the reports that was there, the mayor wasn't happy about the meeting being recorded - said he could speak less freely. But I think when you're dealing with journalists, any public official should know that's how journalists like to operate - they wanna record everything. And it just seemed like the mayor wanted to make it very personal and wanted to get good coverage out of these outlets. And that's just not how you actually should be approaching these media outlets to begin with. These folks want respect, they wanna be treated as serious journalists - which they are. And I think that for a mayor to come in the way it appears Mayor Harrell did, I don't think it's gonna serve his needs and certainly not the needs of those ethnic media outlets. [00:23:49] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, this was covered in Northwest Asian Weekly and it was really a jaw-dropping read because it does seem to start off - Bruce Harrell is a charismatic guy and there's nothing wrong with that, there's nothing wrong with wanting to open lines of communication, to air out any challenges - I think that's a positive thing. Where I think this took a bad turn was this assumption that they should put aside their professionalism, put aside the obligation they have to report - and to seek information and accountability - and just play along, go along with what he says. And the one thing that caught my eye, which maybe it didn't - well, a few things caught my eye - but one thing that I found troubling in here, which may not be an overt red flag and who knows what he actually meant by that, but there was an allusion to - Hey, there's Comcast money - anyone who works in the City of Seattle is aware of how much Comcast money there actually is in the City. But he said - Hey, the city might be able to facilitate ethnic media getting involved in Comcast channel 21, while also him saying that they were dying - which those ethnic media outlets directly challenged and he seemed to not accept or be willing to do. But dangling - Hey, there's more access, there's more information here for you if you play along. And that's the unspoken part of this. And even if that wasn't intended - I don't know what he intended - but as a public official, you have to be aware of when you're holding that much power, when you have that much control of resources and influence over people who are wielding those resources, and you have access to a bigger platform, and you're saying - Hey, I can help you out with this - there's the implication, if you aren't explicit and careful, saying - If you scratch my back too, if you ease up on the criticism, if you stop asking troubling questions. It seems like they heard that in this meeting and seemed to react - one, just mischaracterizing where they're at and they're not sitting here asking for handouts, they're not asking for anything unearned - they are professionals who put out great products, who many of us consume regularly and they're a part of our media ecosystem that too many people just leave out. And they're saying - No, we're not dying, we're here and we're thriving and we just want answers to our questions. We just want invitations to invites that other reporters are getting invites to. And there seem to be questions with that, as well as some offense taken to them asking just regular general questions. One reporter, a Black reporter from a Black media outlet, brought up - Hey, we're having a really hard time getting straight answers from your police department. Bruce Harrell is literally the executive to talk to for that - they answer to Bruce Harrell, he is in charge of the police department. And his response - You're the only one who's had that problem. I think everyone listening knows that they're not the only ones who have that problem. We've seen that across the ecosystem in various places, particularly to people who don't cover City Hall sympathetically, and that's just really troubling. You're there and you're not listening to the reporters who are reflecting their communities and trying to get information that is really important to the communities they serve. And the dismissiveness was just really troubling. [00:27:27] Robert Cruickshank: It really is. And I think it goes to the concerns that those media outlets have had for a long time. They wanna be taken seriously and deserve to be because they're serious journalists - doing serious journalism that is read and respected, not just in those communities they serve, but around the City. And yet they struggle to get invites to press conferences, they struggle to get responses from City departments, they struggle to get included in stories, they struggle to get their basic inquiries addressed. And they understand that a lot of the City's media relations folks, whether it's the mayor's office or City departments, don't always take them seriously. So to have the opportunity to sit down directly with the mayor is hugely important for these outlets - not only to show that they matter, but to get answers and to get things fixed that need to be fixed in the way the City is interacting with those media outlets. And yet for it to go this way, it just, in their minds, likely justifies a lot of concerns they had all along. It's not going to assuage them at all. And from the perspective of supporting local media outlets, it seems like this should have been handled better. Even from Bruce Harrell's own perspective, it could have been handled better. 'Cause now he's got a story that makes him look bad and raises questions about the way his office is responding to some of the most important media outlets in the City. I think it's - to insinuate that they might be dying goes right to the heart of the problem. These media outlets have been thriving for decades. And it's not easy for any media outlet to survive these days, large or small, no matter what community they serve. And the last thing they want is to be dismissed again - in this case, dismissed as potentially just on the brink of death. I mean, who knows how many of the TV stations are on the brink of death, right? Seattle Times - who knows how long the Blethen family is going to want to keep running it until the family decides to sell it out to Alden Global Capital, which will just gut everything for parts. It's important to treat these media outlets and their reporters with respect, no matter who it is in elected office or whatever City department you're in. And so I hope that the mayor's office puts that right. [00:29:29] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely agree. Also want to talk this week about a potential $19 minimum wage coming to unincorporated King County. What's being proposed? [00:29:42] Robert Cruickshank: King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay is proposing a $19 an hour minimum wage for unincorporated King County - so that's outside of a incorporated city. So cities like Seattle, SeaTac have obviously raised minimum wage. Tukwila has raised it, Renton - which is on the ballot this year - likely to pass. But there are about a quarter million people in King County who are not in a city. They live in a community, sometimes, or maybe they don't live in a formal community, maybe they're out in more rural parts of the county - but they're part of King County. And what Girmay is recognizing is there's an opportunity to help them. So what he wants to do is raise the minimum wage for those parts of King County, for those 250,000 people - which is a substantial number of people - to make sure that they can also benefit from a higher minimum wage and raise it to $19. We all know how inflation is hitting people, especially the rise in cost of housing - and Girmay's done a great job trying to address housing as well in his role on the King County Council. But this is a great step forward for the King County Council to not just sit by and say the minimum wage is a city issue or it's a state issue. No, they have a quarter million people they can help right now. And to step forward and propose this, I think, is the right thing to do. I hope that all candidates for King County Council embrace it. I hope that the current councilmembers embrace it and pass it as quickly as they can, because I think this is an important step for folks living in those communities. [00:30:58] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And they shouldn't be left out of the progress that many of the people who've been able to live in cities have been benefiting from. And sometimes we think unincorporated King County and people just think - Oh, it's just a few people living out in the boonies. You talked about how many people there are, and these are places like Vashon Island, Skyway, White Center - where there are a lot of people - these are our neighbors. They just happen to be in an area that wasn't formally incorporated. And so I see this as definite progress. We have a ways to go to get wages to a place where they're really funding people's lives today. Rents are so high. The cost of living has increased so much. Rents, childcare, these massive costs that are so huge and that are preventing people from being able to fully participate in society, to be upwardly mobile, to live the life that they choose. We know we can do better. We know we owe this to the residents. And I think this starts for businesses that employ more than 500 people. This is [not] burdening small businesses. It just seems like this is really the logical thing to do. Medium-sized businesses with 16 to 499 employees would be given a four-year transition period, but it's really important to get this on the way. This is a very popular policy also, fortunately. And so I am optimistic that this will pass and hope it has the unanimous support of the council. [00:32:25] Robert Cruickshank: I hope so too. It should be unanimous. I'd like to see Dow Constantine come in strongly for it as well and help use his power and influence to get it done. It should be an issue in the council races - between Teresa Mosqueda and Sofia Aragon, for example. I think it's a really important contrast that can be drawn. [00:32:40] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I wanna close out talking about a couple of stories revolving around the Seattle Police Department. The first is a story that broke - I think it was KUOW reported on it - but there have been rumors dogging Seattle Police Chief Diaz about an alleged affair or rumored affair. However, lots of people are really wondering whether to question this because it also may be rumors intended - falsely made up - intended to de-credit the chief and speed his way out. And people are trying to weigh which one of these this is. What happened here and what do you see going on? [00:33:26] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, this is a sadly typical situation that we've seen in SPD over the years - where different elements of the command staff start sniping at each other and trying to take each other down, rather than focus on their jobs. It's unclear and we don't know - and I don't really care - what Chief Diaz is doing his personal time. Obviously, if it's an employee, then you gotta make sure all rules and ethics are respected - but if people are also throwing around insinuations, that hurts the woman in question. You don't wanna make a woman who's working in SPD subject to these rumors - not just that makes Chief Diaz look bad, the department look bad - you're sullying someone's reputation here. It shouldn't be sullied. But the bigger question here is - what does it say about SPD and what does it say about how it's being run? We're in the middle of a wave of burglaries that people are complaining about, and complaining about slow SPD response time, people complaining about safety on our roads. And I will say just yesterday near my home in Northgate, I saw a driver go right through a red arrow, turning into an intersection - it wasn't like it turned red right as they were entering, it had been red for some time when they entered - in front of a police car. And the officer did nothing - just let it happen and no enforcement at all. People complain about the number of homicides that are happening. It's a real crisis out there, and concerns about is SPD really doing all it can do to investigate these? Is it doing all it can do to close burglary cases? And yet what do we see SPD doing? Their command staff are sniping at each other and spreading gossip and rumor, whether there's any truth to it or not. And I think it's just a sign of how dysfunctional SPD has become. I think it's also a sign that we need strong leadership to reform this department. We'll talk about, I know, about the consent decree in a moment, but it's clear that there are ongoing management problems. And it raises the question - do we need a external chief to come in, who isn't part of all these rivalries and gossip and jealousies, to come in and put a stop to a lot of this? But it's just a sign - that these rumors are reaching the media - that SPD's commanders are not focused on the job they say they're focused on. They're happy to blame the City Council, which has no operational control over SPD, which hasn't said a word about defunding the police since they - for a hot minute in the summer of 2020, very gingerly cut a piece of SPD's budget, ever since then they've been showering as much money as they can on the police department - trying to ply them with recruitment bonuses and making it very clear - Oh no, we're not gonna defund you anymore. Sorry, forget about that. The City Council is not the problem here. There's a real problem with how SPD is managed. There's a problem with the command staff. And Council doesn't run that department - as you said earlier, the mayor does. And so we need to see how Bruce Harrell's going to respond to this too, because it's becoming increasingly clear that SPD isn't getting its job done. [00:36:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and it's not getting its job done in any way - people are suffering - and the most cynical thing is there've, no surprise, been SPOG communications in various places literally touting - Detectives haven't been able to respond to this commercial burglary for two weeks and it's 'cause we were defunded. As you said, defunding did not happen. In fact, their funding has increased. They keep giving money to these people despite staffing shortages in other departments too. If that would help, that would be one thing. But even police officers are on record saying - Yeah, these hiring bonuses are not gonna get more people in the door, keep people. Retention bonuses aren't gonna keep people. That's actually not the problem. The problem is not financial anymore. But it's really troubling just that everyone's eye seems to be off of the ball. And everyone's eye seems to be in a different place than where Seattle residents can see they need to be. As we talked about earlier with those poll results, Seattle residents want a more comprehensive response. They want responsiveness from the police department and they want to shift out responsibilities, assets to manage things in a way that does ensure they can get the service level they expect from the police department - and get other community violence interventions, diversion programs, other community safety initiatives up and running. And they just seem to be focused on literally everything but that. And at a time where everyone is facing this challenge of trying to manage, whether it's crime or behavioral health crises or everything that we're dealing with, they need to do better. We need Bruce Harrell to get this under control - what dysfunction and what disarray - he needs to get a hold of this. [00:38:01] Robert Cruickshank: He really does. Again, the mayor runs the police department. The mayor has operational control. It's not the City Council. And I think we need to see that leadership from the top to really fix what's gone wrong at SPD. [00:38:12] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now I wanna talk about big news that broke last night - that a judge just ended federal oversight of SPD after 11 years. Now you were in the administration that saw the consent decree established. What is the legacy of this consent decree, and where do we go now that federal oversight is largely ending? [00:38:34] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, the consent decree has its pros and cons. The upside is, and always was - and this is why many in the community demanded it and went to the DOJ in the first place in 2010 and 2011 - they felt they needed a federal judge, a federal monitor and the US Department of Justice to come in and force SPD to improve its use of force policies, to address concerns about biased policing, and ultimately also added in were - later in the process - concerns about how it manages demonstrations. So it's a pro - is that you get an outside body that is widely trusted, certainly when Obama ran the DOJ and now that Biden does, to come in and force the changes that SPD wasn't willing to make and the City wasn't able to make. The downside though is it's a federal legal process that is fairly limited in what it can cover. You're at the mercy of the federal judge, the federal monitor - who wound up stepping in the summer of 2020 to undermine some of the efforts that were taken to reform the department, including cutting SPD's funding. So its coming to an end doesn't mean that SPD has been fixed. What it means is that in the eyes of this judge, the specific conditions laid out in the 2013 consent decree, in his mind, have been achieved. And what does that mean for people here in Seattle? It doesn't necessarily mean that SPD is a clean bill of health and is now operating in a much better place than it had been before. And in fact, the federal judge did retain jurisdiction over use of force and of how discipline is managed. He cares a lot about the contract - having raised significant concerns about the previous SPOG contract that was done in 2018. But it goes back to something that I remember Mike McGinn saying a lot in 2012, 2013 during this whole negotiation process around the consent decree - pointing out correctly that lasting reform isn't gonna come from the federal government, it's gonna come from the community, and it's going to depend on the ability of City Hall to make change in SPD and make it stick. And he took a lot of heat for saying that. People thought he was trying to keep the DOJ out - he wasn't. He welcomed the DOJ, he was always honest about that, direct about that. But I think he was right. He was right then and right now that with the federal government largely stepping back - not completely, but largely stepping back - bringing an end to much of the consent decree, it's now up to us. It's up to us as a city, as a community, and especially our elected officials in City Hall to actually make sure that what we want done at SPD, what we want done with public safety more broadly happens. As we talked earlier in this podcast, there's a lot of support out there in the public for non-armed response to crime. People want it, it polls off the charts. We still haven't seen it. The mayor's office keeps promising and promising, keeps getting delayed and delayed. This mayor has been in office a year and a half now, and it's time to see it come to fruition - that's going to be another important piece of how we handle policing and public safety in the City - is to have armed officers doing less of it or focusing on the things they need to focus on and not the things where they don't need to be focused on. But we'll see what happens there because as we've seen all along, this is really up to the community to make these reforms stick. The DOJ had its role and we can ask how effective was it really - again, the ending of the consent decree doesn't mean SPD's fixed, it just means certain boxes got checked. But I think we have to see what happens out of City Council elections this year and what the mayor's going to do to address ongoing problems with the police. [00:41:59] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. All with the backdrop of negotiations happening now for the Seattle Police Officers Guild contract - and that will set the tone for so much moving forward. It's going to be interesting to see how this proceeds. [00:42:16] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, it really will. And I think that SPOG contract is going to be crucial - and who gets elected to the City Council this fall will play a really big role in how that negotiation winds up. [00:42:26] Crystal Fincher: It absolutely will. And with that, we'll conclude this week-in-review. Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, September 8th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful cohost today was Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long-time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank. You can find Robert on Twitter - and multiple platforms, I think - @cruickshank. We're all around. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter. You can find me on most platforms as @finchfrii. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

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Week in Review: September 1, 2023 - with Joseph O'Sullivan

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 1, 2023 37:52

On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by state politics reporter for Crosscut, Joseph O'Sullivan! They discuss Tacoma for All winning their lawsuit over competing renter protections on the November ballot, mobile home communities organizing against economic eviction, and Washington auctioning off $1B of carbon pollution credits. The conversation continues with reflection on people's concerns over the closure of the Larch Corrections Center, how Bruce Harrell and Dow Constantine's ideas add delay and expense to voter-approved Sound Transit light rail expansion, a questionable use of COVID relief funds for Emerald Downs horse racetrack, and Cruise robotaxis coming to Seattle streets. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Joseph O'Sullivan, at @OlympiaJoe. Joseph O'Sullivan Joseph O'Sullivan is Crosscut's state politics reporter. Before joining Crosscut in 2022, O'Sullivan spent nearly eight years as Olympia bureau reporter for The Seattle Times. Before that, he covered government and politics at news organizations in Spokane, Wyoming and South Dakota. Resources “The Childcare Crisis with Dr. Stephan Blanford of Children's Alliance” from Hacks & Wonks “Judge kicks Tacoma council's competing renter protections off ballot” by Heidi Groover from The Seattle Times “Judge issues ruling in ballot fight between Tacoma, renters group. Here's the decision” by Becca Most from The News Tribune “WA mobile home communities organize against 'economic eviction'” by Farah Eltohamy and Mai Hoang from Crosscut “WA's third carbon auction should push pollution credits over $1B” by Donna Gordon Blankinship from Crosscut “‘Blindsided' by a Washington prison closure” by Laurel Demkovich from Washington State Standard “Prison closure plan stokes wildfire response worries in southwest Washington” by Laurel Demkovich from Washington State Standard “Harrell, Constantine light-rail ideas add years, money to Sound Transit planning” by Mike Lindblom from The Seattle Times “$1.1M in COVID relief steered to Auburn horse racing track” by Brandon Block from Crosscut “The Capitol Hill Autonomous Vehicle Zone — More driverless robotaxi testing comes to Seattle” by Justin Carder from Capitol Hill Seattle Blog Find stories that Crystal is reading here Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and our Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. If you missed our Tuesday topical show, I welcomed Dr. Stephan Blanford, Executive Director of Children's Alliance, for a wide-ranging conversation on childcare - its importance, what makes it inaccessible and expensive, and how we can make an impact and fix this crisis. Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome to the program for the first time, today's co-host: state politics reporter for Crosscut, Joseph O'Sullivan. Hey! [00:01:22] Joseph O'Sullivan: Hi, how you doing? Thanks for having us. [00:01:24] Crystal Fincher: Excited to have you on today. And I wanted to start off by talking about a lawsuit related to a local election in Tacoma - a tenants' rights initiative called Tacoma For All won a lawsuit against the City of Tacoma. This has a bit of a backstory. Tacoma For All collected thousands of signatures to put a pretty substantial tenants' rights initiative on the ballot, only to find out that the City of Tacoma City Council then decided to put their own competing measure on the ballot. At the same time - implementing that measure immediately, depending on what happened with the ballot if that happened. With the Seattle election, with the ranked choice voting or approval voting - and do you want to implement any of these - it's just a confusing thing for a lot of voters. Similar competing measures happened in the Seattle measure - that was basically put on to stop the initial measure. It looks like that was really the intended purpose of the City's measure against the Tacoma For All initiative. They were able to nip that in the bud with a judge finding that, although the initiative part of it seemed okay, the way they adopted the ordinance had some problems and issues. So it will not be allowed to appear on the ballot. What are your thoughts on this? [00:02:43] Joseph O'Sullivan: I was interested just reading in The Seattle Times that the City's initiative they approved actually took effect right away. And they didn't really state that clearly. I don't know if it was the ballot language or whatever might have appeared when it was going to go before voters, which - I can't remember having seen something specifically like that, which seems a bit odd and adds to your point that that would be really confusing for voters. At the state level, you can have dueling initiatives go to the ballot. Those are complicated enough as they are, even when they're clearly explaining - you can choose this one, or this one, or neither. But this one seemed pretty unique. [00:03:17] Crystal Fincher: It also seemed pretty unique to me, especially in that - usually, to your point - in the state context, people think of those more as referenda. There's an existing policy that we're going to vote to continue or to stop - I give a thumbs up or thumbs down on. This was not the case. Another interesting aspect of this, which is an element in litigation related to elections, is that the timing really matters. In this, the City could choose to appeal and they have not answered whether they intend to do so or not. But a bigger consideration is their time to appeal before it's time to print these ballots and get this stuff out. There's a lot of administrative work that needs to happen to get ballots out to people on time and that work starts very soon - whether this litigation can even happen before that happens is a question. But very interesting. This is certainly being viewed as a big win for tenants' rights in Tacoma - I certainly think it is. I don't know that I love the precedent, and I guess people will do what they feel to do. I felt like it's justified before - was happy with some results when it happened. It's not like I've universally condemned this before. But always interesting to see the reaction to citizen initiatives. And that sometimes being viewed as a threat to power or not being viewed as legitimate - it's very tangential. But also reminds me of what's happening in Atlanta with Cop City and that initiative there and the challenges that the City of Atlanta has been presenting for those people who collected signatures in that whole process. So just very interesting to see the state of initiatives, both local and statewide, across the country and locally. [00:04:48] Joseph O'Sullivan: Yeah, and here in Washington, we just have such a robust initiative and referenda cultural and legal institution. We've been doing these for so long that it really is sort of a feature of direct democracy, where if you're an elected official, you're always thinking about this - the prospect of voters saying - Hey, we're going to take the decision out of your hands and try and answer it ourselves. And I think the broader thing with this, too, is that - why is rent control being discussed so much now? It's because rent's too expensive. And housing is too expensive all over the state - urban and rural, big city and small. If elected officials can't deal with that - they certainly haven't in the last 10 or 20 years in the way that it needed to happen - you're reaching a point where you're going to have people try and come up with their own solutions. [00:05:28] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Also want to talk about a story that was written this week in Crosscut about Washington mobile home communities organizing against economic eviction. What is this and what's happening? [00:05:41] Joseph O'Sullivan: So there is a Port Orchard-based company that has been buying up mobile home parks. We had a great story by some of my colleagues about residents in these parks. They're getting rent increases, they're seeing fewer services, more fees - like utility fees that weren't broken out and now they're added on to the rent that's already gone up. I don't think we've had a lot of this in Washington state, but when you have these big investment firms or real estate companies that buy up rental houses and then raise the prices - and you've seen that in other states a lot - there seems to be a little bit of a flavor of that in just this one kind of company that's doing this. And again, to go back to what we were just talking about, housing prices and the price of rent are probably certainly the single biggest cost issue for people in Washington state. And so this sort of dynamic is agitating and people are trying to find ways to respond to it. [00:06:29] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And especially with mobile homes - a long, long time ago, I was a land use and planning board on Kent's planning commission, and we had an issue like this - couple issues like this come before the board. It was then that I learned just how tenuous these situations, particularly in mobile home parks, are just because it's a bit of a different situation than homes. I think we need action on all of it. But mobile home communities and people who live there are particularly vulnerable because they're bringing their mobile home - it's theirs, generally, or sometimes they rent it - but it's not their land. So people go - Okay, well, just move the mobile home. It's a mobile home - it's mobile. You can't make it there, move it somewhere else. And mobile homes are notoriously difficult to move, depending on the condition. They may not be able to withstand a move. It's not as simple as just moving it. But you have this situation where - okay, if someone gets evicted and you can't move it, or it's really expensive, cost prohibitive, what happens? You potentially don't just lose your right to be on that plot of land, but you can lose everything. If you can't move the home, you can't be there. It can be destroyed. It's really a troubling situation. And so to have these situations with economic eviction, where it's nothing that the tenant has done - there's no "you did something wrong, you haven't been paying your rent," - it's we're jacking up the price that we know you can't afford, knowing that we're going to get you out of there and get in a tenant who's going to pay these new high prices. So it's basically just built-in displacement - that's what an economic eviction is. And so part of the conversation - this is where people live, this is a basic need that people have. And treating it as just a commodity - Well, it's a business and we have a right to make a profit and you can do that - is that where we want to be as a society with housing and the problems that it's causing? [00:08:22] Joseph O'Sullivan: Yeah, and I don't think there was data on this in the story, so I'm a little anecdotal. But it's also not like an apartment where maybe there's some 25-year olds and your rent's getting jacked up. And that's bad - that's an issue. When you're 25, you're younger, you're more resilient, more of your life is ahead of you - maybe you can figure it out. But at least some of the families in here - older and maybe have less mobility in their life, or maybe have been through enough things or have enough burdens on them too - so that kind of adds to what you're talking about too, is the instability of it. It's a potential to do pretty bad damage when you displace people. [00:08:55] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, people who fall into homelessness after being evicted - especially with an economic eviction from mobile home communities - that's not an insignificant number. There has been organizing around this in various communities for a while - certainly a number that I'm aware of in South King County, was an issue in SeaTac not that long ago in elections in the past few cycles. So I'm happy Crosscut wrote about this. I hope that we continue to raise not just consciousness about this and awareness, but that policymakers see the need to address this in a meaningful way. And in the absence of that, you see what happened with Tacoma for All or in Federal Way with their renters' rights initiative, or so many other cities - where if the people who are elected fail to address this, residents will. And it's a crisis now - I think we need to center the people who are at risk of homelessness or at risk of economic disaster and really find a way to prevent economic eviction, make housing more affordable across the board. Also want to talk about - we've been dealing with wildfires, smoke off and on, including this week. What's supposed to be helpful in this whole process is the state's relatively new cap and trade program - cap and invest as they call it - which creates these carbon auctions. So Washington's third carbon auction looks like it's going to push the total amount of pollution credits over $1 billion. Big number. What do you think about this, what's happening? [00:10:24] Joseph O'Sullivan: Big number. The policymakers and the lawmakers are probably pretty happy about that. But they're so early in a very new and complex law - and the obstacle state officials and politicians will have to clear is to take this money and find ways to use it that will actually really meaningfully impact emissions and also provide more resilience to safeguard communities. We're probably a ways away from seeing how these investments that are just starting to be made now - how they pay off down the road. [00:10:51] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. What we were sold were there would be some short-term gains, some immediate investments that could have immediate impacts. Overall with this - I've talked about this several times on this program before, many people do know how I feel about this - but we have a lot of evidence that suggests that the cap and trade system itself is not effective at reducing emissions. What can, potentially, are the investments from this revenue that is raised. If it's invested in the right way, that perhaps can impact this. And this is so much money - these cap and trade programs are great at raising revenue, and this revenue is exceeding projections. Does that also mean that we're going to have pollution exceeding projections, that there's more pollution going on than we accounted for that needs to be lowered? Don't know. We'll have to see. But really the bottom line is we need to reduce the amount of carbon that we're releasing into the atmosphere. We need to do it really quickly. We're already experiencing the impacts of climate change, and it's going to get worse before it gets better. And we better act quickly and very intentionally to make sure that it does get better without getting worse than it has to at this point in time. So we'll see. There were certainly a lot of promises, a lot of talk, a lot of concern, especially from frontline communities, those impacted most - Indigenous Native communities, BIPOC communities - who are the ones who are generally hit worst and first by climate change. And so we'll see if they live up to their commitments to meaningfully invest in these communities to mitigate the damage that is already happening. But I hope a lot of people are paying attention to this. I hope people are engaged in this. This is a significant issue, significant investment. As we've seen with so many other things, a lot can go right and a lot can go wrong - it just really depends on how they are. We also see when there's money like this available, some people see the opportunity for a cash grab. And like with some COVID relief funds, see an opportunity to get their hands on some stuff. I hope that our policymakers, that people in these departments managing this, are really careful and intentional about that. And most of the time, they are and they tend to be. I just hope this is something that everyone keeps a close eye on and holds our Legislature accountable to in the long term. [00:13:10] Joseph O'Sullivan: Yeah, I think that, to your point also, where money shows up, power does too. And even within the Democratic caucus, probably even within progressives within the Democratic caucus, you can find different approaches. Everybody has a different priority for the climate projects they want to do, or - Oh, we'll focus on transportation versus communities, or with a limited amount of dollars. Then you're trying to find consensus within your own team or among the people that are administering the money. And it's probably not going to be perfect, whatever it is. I think some of these things - we may not be able to look until 10 years from now. Did we electrify our transportation system? Did that happen? Did we do enough resilience? Because what happens if five of the projects go really well and five don't? How do you assess that? And how do they tweak it down the road? I think some lawmakers, at least - if not most of them - that were working on this law, hope that someday it'll join up with some of the other cap and trade markets, like in California, in Canada. Does this become part of a larger system? Is that a way that's going to be effective and move forward? Is it not? I think some of these things, unfortunately, time will tell. [00:14:16] Crystal Fincher: Time will tell. We are linked with California. That may create some issues. California has notoriously oversaturated their market with credits and are now trying to deal with that, which basically means that there is more pollution that they have in their system, that they baked into their system, that they have to now reduce. But we'll see. And to your point, sometimes with this, any little thing that goes wrong, people are prepared to jump on to - if they don't like the policy overall, that's a reason to get rid of it. I think what's fair to say is that in any big undertaking, no matter what it is, there are going to be challenges and roadblocks. And it's really about how vigilant people are being to spot them and find those before they create too much damage or waste too much money - that they course correct when that's happening. This is new. So there is - in any new thing that you're putting together, whether it's in the public or private sector, there are going to be lessons learned, there are going to be things that happen. But they don't have to be big boondoggles. We don't have to justify the wrong thing just because it's something that we did. So I hope that there is a recognition that - hopefully most of the things do go right - some things will go wrong. How do we address it when it does? How do we correct it? How do we hold ourselves accountable? So we'll see how that proceeds. We'll continue to pay attention to it. I hope everyone everywhere pays attention to it because, my goodness, the impacts that we're already enduring from wildfire smoke - to just the wildfires and the devastation that we've seen globally, but even just in our state have been pretty horrific - to extreme heat, to extreme cold. It's just concerning. And our infrastructure is not up to it today. So hopefully we spend and meaningfully invest in fixing that. Also want to talk about a plan for prison closure that was just announced - that has some people raising their eyebrows to the plan, and other people raising their eyebrows to the reaction to the plan. What's happening here? [00:16:13] Joseph O'Sullivan: The Department of Corrections announced that they were going to close one of our 12 prisons, large corrections facility, which is down in Southwest Washington - Clark County. The announcement was made either last month or in June - that drew some immediate outcry from the Teamsters Union that represents corrections officials. It's not like if you're an employee, you can transfer five miles down the road - you would have to move probably across the state somewhere to get a comparable job at another facility if you wanted to keep doing that. More recently, Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz has noted some concerns about the move since some incarcerated wildland firefighters are based down there. Of course, Southwest Washington - you're near the Columbia River Gorge and some pretty vast tracts of forest land and wilds, and they get fires down there. And the Public Lands Commissioner is concerned that this is going to take some capability to quickly respond to fires. The Inslee administration has signaled that our numbers are declining for incarcerated people, they don't need all the space that they have right now. And so, yeah - I don't know - it's a tough decision either way. But when I did an early story on this, and then I was reading - the Washington State Standard had some good coverage on this - it's just like when you have to consolidate school districts or something too. Nobody's ever happy to lose the school in their community. And there's a little bit of a feel of that too. [00:17:26] Crystal Fincher: There's some of that. For me - and maybe it's a different perspective than a lot of people have - I was dismayed in reading this because we've talked a lot about incarceration and its effectiveness on this program. And incarceration doesn't do a good job of reducing recidivism rates. Evidence shows that's not the case, which is why - looking at low-level offenses - sending people to prison for that is more likely to create more crime than it is to reduce it, which is one of the reasons why this low-level facility is closing. For the amount of money that we spend to incarcerate each person each year, and for that to not result in making us any safer is a problem. What I find so problematic with this is that we are talking about several reasons for keeping a prison open that have nothing to do with public safety. We're not doing it to keep the community safe, but we're keeping it to improve the economic conditions - through jobs or through support or through others - of other people. Wow, that's really troubling. Incarcerating people as a jobs program, which is - Oh man, we're going to have to relocate. We're going to have to do different things - that's not the purpose of incarceration. And not that those changes are not real in those people's lives - they absolutely are, and that's unfortunate - but to do so at the expense of incarcerating someone and making our community less safe doesn't seem like it makes much sense. And then also talking about - Well, these people are critical to wildfire fighting. Okay - it was in 2020 that the rate for a fire, an incarcerated fire[fighter], was $0.62 per hour. Particularly troubling because until very recently, we then prevented them - if they got out - from working as firefighters. So we're calling what they're doing so important and critical, yet we're not treating the people who are doing it that way. That just seems like expendable bodies. And if it's more convenient for us to keep people locked up and take away their freedom because it gives us benefits as a community that have nothing to do with public safety but are economic or others, then we start getting into conversations about slavery. And like the documentary 13th, which does a good job of talking about this, which I just find troubling. This was a decision that I know some people were very unhappy with - that's certainly a conversation to be had for here in the long term. But I just can't condone or agree with or get with the justifications that I am seeing in here that this is critical. And then even trying to say - Well, it's good for the people who are working. Well, if we really cared about that, then wouldn't we be paying them a fair wage for what they're doing? Wouldn't we be fast-tracking them into this career once they got out? We aren't doing those things, so it doesn't really seem like we're doing this because we care about them. It seems like we're doing this because some people feel it's more convenient for us. And that's not something we should be doing with people's freedom, in my opinion. [00:20:26] Joseph O'Sullivan: And interesting - as we're talking now, I'm thinking just covering wildfires and covering prisons. And there's both of them. Wildfires is a little different recently as more houses are burning and more acreage - people are starting to key in. But for many years at the Legislature, the Department of Natural Resources couldn't get more funding for more wildfires - this was even predating Hilary Franz, back to Peter Goldmark - they'd come begging the lawmakers in budget season - Hey, we need more capability to fight fires, we need more help, we need more staff, we need more resources. And the Legislature, after years of that, has started just in the last couple of years. And at the same time, properly funding the prisons so they deliver the services that they need to, like health care, is also something that's often on a lower priority. There's not a lot of special interests or big lobbying push to make sure an incarcerated person is getting the cancer treatment that they need or able to get to doctors' appointments. And that doesn't necessarily win you votes at the ballot box. And that's not to say that lawmakers are all cynical and they don't want to do that stuff ever. But every program is competing for limited money during the budget. And these are examples of things that have been underinvested in previously. The Department of Corrections says they're going to save some money by closing Larch. Where does that money go from here? I think that's an interesting question. And I guess we'll see. [00:21:39] Crystal Fincher: And these are complicated - because if you're just looking at this in a silo, if you're just in the Department of Natural Resources and just looking at your position and your job and the budget - yeah, these are questions that are going to come up. Okay, we do need more wildfire fighting resources. We don't have the budget for that. Where is that going to come from? Something is going to suffer here. And those are real questions that people have. I do think it's the responsibility of leaders to look at the system more comprehensively to say - Okay, what are we actually doing here? And are we getting the impact for our community out of this that was intended? And to say - I know that funding is in silos, I know that these decisions are happening in lots of ways all over the place. But if we're getting to the point where we're keeping people incarcerated because it will employ people at the prison - is that who we want to be as a society? And I think we need to name that and call it out explicitly and deal with it. Not that it's going to be easy to deal with, but ignoring it just really seems incorrect to me. This was an interesting read. And I understand how - in a silo - the reaction makes sense. But I also think that we have to do better. Also want to talk about - this week, Harrell and Constantine going back to the drawing board, at least partially, with Sound Transit planning and that adding millions of dollars and years to our Sound Transit planning timeline - for an initiative that was passed six years ago, I think, that we're still really waiting to get moving on, it feels like. What's your reaction to this? [00:23:21] Joseph O'Sullivan: I think that this is emblematic of one of the biggest issues in American democracy. And this goes back to the housing, too - is that it just takes us so long now to do anything, to build anything, to try and fix any problem, that by the time you get something built, it's like - Oh, great. We got a new light rail line. Then we're going to have half a million more people in the region - that's a number I just made up in my head, but you get the point, right? - it just takes so long to do this stuff. And then by the time it gets done, there's already new problems or other problems. There's so much more growth. And then you just start all over. And we see that with trying to build high speed rail all over America. We see that trying to build just houses and communities. There's a fantastic article I just read about how it was going to take years - there was a school closing down for renovation somewhere, there was space right across the street - a college. But they couldn't send the high school students over to use empty college buildings, because the college is zoned different, and you can't have secondary school in there. And I think this was over in New York or something. It was just - there's an easy solution to a problem, but we have all these local processes that slow everything down and don't allow for communities to nimbly fix anything. Of course, communities also struggle to nimbly fix anything, because everybody disagrees and doesn't want stuff built next to their house or something. And I think there's a little bit of that - at least in The Seattle Times coverage that I was reading about some of these stations - in where you're going to put them, and how disruptive it's going to be. I don't know. How does that get fixed? [00:24:47] Crystal Fincher: We get bogged down in process. And some people are like - Eh, it's just process. There's nothing you can do about it. And if you know me personally, we've had this conversation. So Seattle and Los Angeles started talking about their light rail systems at the same time. Los Angeles has built out a network, and they certainly have their own challenge and they certainly have process. But once they make a decision - and it seems like in other places, once they make a decision - it's less likely to be changed, delayed intentionally - not that cost delays and time delays don't happen, they absolutely do elsewhere. But the process involved with it is just more kludgy here. And people are more likely to say - Okay yeah, the residents here voted for this. This big corporation has a problem with it, and maybe we can change it to make them happy. And we just get so bogged down in that process. And it seems like we have leadership that is comfortable with getting bogged down in that process. And all the time that they took, you look at the - I was here, I think you were too - the drama about the State Route 99 tunnel. [00:25:52] Joseph O'Sullivan: Oh, sure - yeah. [00:25:53] Crystal Fincher: And then seeing what we ended up with, which is not quite what we were sold. And it's not surprising to me that some of the same people involved in that decision and how that ended up are involved in this decision and how it ended up. I think here it's people using process to mitigate impacts to interest groups that they're aligned with, really. It's not like there weren't decent plans here. But it seems like if there are big concerns from money interests - and it's not just on one side of the spectrum, it could be on multiple sides of the spectrum - that can interrupt process more here than in some other places after a decision has seemingly been made. Not that other places don't dither and debate about decisions. But my goodness, after a decision has seemingly been made, we find new and innovative ways not to find a way to move forward. [00:26:46] Joseph O'Sullivan: Yeah, I haven't covered City politics in a while, but I always feel like Seattle's interesting. It always seems to me - just reading coverage from afar - that it's a feature of Seattle politics, where it seems like there's always a lot of whiplash on the issues of the day, where - Okay, we're going to go on this course. And oh no, now we're going to reverse. And then, oh, three years later, we're going to go back to this. It's difficult to tackle really long-term issues. [00:27:10] Crystal Fincher: Then we suffer from the consequences of not addressing those issues, and here we are. So I hope that gets resolved quickly and we get to building. Also, want to talk about a story that was in Crosscut about COVID relief funds related to something we were talking about earlier - where $1.1 million in COVID relief was steered to the Emerald Downs Auburn horse racing track. What happened? [00:27:38] Joseph O'Sullivan: This was part of the American Rescue Plan Act, which was part of the federal COVID relief - which, of course, was just a torrent of money coming into the state - helping state government, local government, schools, and everything stay afloat during the pandemic. A lot was used for rental assistance, other programs, it helped pay for COVID testing and vaccines and stuff. And in Crosscut, we did a story about $1.1 million that go into Emerald Downs, which is the horse track in Auburn, to help them stay afloat or mitigate the impact of the pandemic - there's at least one expert that questions whether the money could be used like that. And maybe that pops up as a question down the road, where the state will have to backfill that money if there's some determination that it wasn't useful there. To me, reading that story, it seemed like an echo of the stadium stories you always have in local politics, right - who's going to pay for these big public things and then taxpayer dollars go toward it or something, or there's a question about that - I don't know. What do you think? [00:28:34] Crystal Fincher: It's interesting. Obviously, maintaining jobs was a priority in trying to - especially for businesses that had to shut down. And I'm not familiar with the particulars of Emerald Downs' operation throughout the shutdown - I think I remember them pausing activity - dealing with that, you could justify that. Was that the most pressing need coming at this time? That's also curious. And was that necessary? is a question. I do think that the bigger issue for me is that - one, accountability, and two, the impact of direct relief versus relief that is filtered through people with a lot of money and allowed to trickle down to people with money. It seems like any time we have a big program like that to - one, I think it's good to get direct money to people who are the most impacted, to the people who are not receiving an income through no fault of their own. But I do think that we do need to do more direct relief, unless we're giving it to the business who then is going to give it to employees. Or we need to do a better job of accounting for - okay, this is to save jobs, it's to compensate employees. Are we making sure that they're doing that and not using it to provide a bonus to executives or to expand a footprint somewhere, upgrade facilities, or something like that? Which, depending on how that happens, the case could be made if they're doing air filtration - that could be argued. But it's just always notable to me how it seems like certain people need to get a cut if relief is going to be provided to people on the ground. So I don't know that this is a boondoggle - I'm not going to say that this was a misuse of funds, not saying that - I don't have enough information to say that. But it just is something else that - did this go through all the due diligence that it should have. And given how much due diligence we make really poor people go through, how much surveillance we put really poor people under - it really is noticeable how different the requirements, the hoops you have to jump through, and the scrutiny is on who we hand out money to and how much is handed out to them, under which conditions based on - okay, this is a big established business, or this is someone who lost their job and this relief is going to make the difference between them having a home or not. [00:30:59] Joseph O'Sullivan: Just broadly, it's interesting - horse racing is a very old school sport, I don't know how long for the world - if it's going to be around in 50 years or not. And it's a unique area where you've got the Horse Racing Commission that oversees it, the track itself is owned by one of the tribes - I believe the Muckleshoot tribe - it just seems like a very unique set of circumstances, too. And I don't know how that interplays with the decisions that are made to put money there. [00:31:22] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And is fundamentally a betting facility something that we want to be prioritizing? I don't know. They are saying they're looking to the issue of whether it was an allowable use or not - that doesn't seem to be a hard yes, there's a question mark attached to that. We'll see what happens. But I do think it's good to look at where and how we're spending this money, and are we getting the results that were intended - I think that's a good thing overall. Final thing I wanted to talk about today - autonomous vehicles are coming to Capitol Hill in Seattle, which is raising a lot of eyebrows for people. What did you think of this? [00:31:58] Joseph O'Sullivan: I don't totally understand why it's needed. People have been getting around - Uber and Lyft, we did those the last 15 years. And before that, there were taxis. I just don't understand the argument for why they would be necessary for a major life improvement and - I don't know. What do you think? [00:32:16] Crystal Fincher: The promise of autonomous vehicles - philosophically, right? - driving is not comparatively an unsafe form of transportation when you look at the other forms. So if you can do something to make it safer - hey, that's great, right? That was the initial premise. In reality, taking into account that premise is based on functioning, tested, safe technology - oh, these cars are automatically going to be safe. But what is happening is that the cars are not delivering. The technology is not delivering on its promise, at least not yet. And so while it still is not, and while they're having - depending on where they're at - safety problems. And there's lots about Tesla's autopilot feature, which is less advanced than some of these other ones. But for all of them - the reason why they're working in Capitol Hill is because they need more testing. And they need to really figure out wet and hilly environments. So people on the street are guinea pigs while they figure this out? We're seeing in San Francisco, these cars get confused and blocking intersections - couple accidents recently, one ran into a fire truck. And they're behaving in ways that the companies who are designing them are not expecting, which is worrisome, right? We just don't know what we're getting. There's the promise of the technology, and there's the reality of today - those are two very different things. And putting this questionable technology, with vehicles that can kill people - this isn't Amazon testing out a little delivery drone, this is a multi-thousand pound piece of steel that can run over people. And just to put that out with not a lot of scrutiny, no real legislative or policy intention, and basically - okay, if they attest that they'll have a person in the car who can intervene. So with this city really looking like it's a guinea pig for these companies to figure out and iron out their technology, it's just really questionable. And the difference in process for this compared to - look at the process that a bike lane, that the scooter and bike share went through? And evidently for this, you just have to submit an application saying that there will be a person in the car who will be ready to intervene if something happens - which is better than fully autonomous cars that are happening in San Francisco and elsewhere right now - but it just seems like maybe we aren't considering everything with this. But we'll see. It's happening. [00:34:47] Joseph O'Sullivan: Yeah, and to your earlier point, too, technology always gets the benefit of the doubt. The starting point of our thoughts are never is this for-profit thing that's being sold going to increase the quality of our lives? It's never that. This is something new, this is something amazing - and the default is just to accept it. We see that with - the State Legislature debated for a few years to try and pass a data privacy law, never got it for various complicated reasons, couldn't do something. But even that, that they were trying a few years ago - that was 15 years after private companies started taking all of our data for every little thing and using it for their own profit. And we just - as a society - we don't place any skepticism upfront on technology, and we generally newaitit to find out what happens afterward. [00:35:29] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and the challenging thing is that there aren't people waving warning flags about - we've seen how this play ends before - it's not great. And looking at the challenges happening in San Francisco, but we'll see. Evidently, this is happening. What my hope is is that there are trained employees as drivers who are taking the role of needing to intervene potentially seriously. I think that's better than just laypeople or no one in there. But it seems like we should probably talk about this and figure out - with intention - what we want this to accomplish and what the outcomes are, so we can see if it is delivering what we want it to deliver while we allow a company to use people in our streets as guinea pigs, basically, for their profit. [00:36:17] Joseph O'Sullivan: Yeah, I'm not sure that a solution like this is getting at sort of the root problems, which is often just another thing that - yeah, I don't know that this is going to solve everything around pedestrian safety and traffic congestion. [00:36:31] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and the fact that - if we're looking at other cities, it may actually make it worse with the current level of technology. We will see and will certainly continue to follow this as it proceeds. And with that, thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, September 1st - my goodness, September already - 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is the phenomenal Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today: state politics reporter for Crosscut, Joseph O'Sullivan - thank you so much for being on the show. [00:37:02] Joseph O'Sullivan: Thank you for having us. [00:37:03] Crystal Fincher: You can find Joseph on Twitter @OlympiaJoe. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. And you can find me on Twitter @finchfrii - and on most other platforms @finchfrii. You can catch Hacks & Wonks wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of the podcast of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, please leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

Smoke, we just have to live with it

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Play Episode Listen Later Aug 24, 2023 10:24

It's back.After a bit of relief, more smoke could be on the way.We're deep into wildfire season.. And the state is parched.Crosscut's Hannah Weinberger is here to talk to tell us what we need to know about our fifth season..We can only make Seattle Now because listeners support us. You have the power! Make the show happen by making a gift to KUOW: https://www.kuow.org/donate/seattlenowJoin us for a live taping this Friday! The conversation is all about Seattle's music scene. Tickets and more info: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/kuows-seattle-now-live-casual-friday-music-in-seattle-fremont-abbey-tickets-574989819027?aff=oddtdtcreator And we want to hear from you! Follow us on Instagram at SeattleNowPod, or leave us feedback online: https://www.kuow.org/feedback

Casual Friday with Hannah Weinberger and Ishea Brown

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Play Episode Listen Later Aug 4, 2023 22:51

This week…There's a primary election going on, in case you weren't aware.New data shows that Seattle just isn't headed back to the movies.And pickleball fans are pushing for more courts… by hosting a funeral.Crosscut environment reporter Hannah Weinberger and Truth Be Told podcast Supervising Producer Ishea Brown are here to break down the week.Join us for a live taping in August! The show is all about Seattle's music scene. Tickets and more info: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/kuows-seattle-now-live-casual-friday-music-in-seattle-fremont-abbey-tickets-574989819027?aff=oddtdtcreator We can only make Seattle Now because listeners support us. Make the show happen by making a gift to KUOW: https://www.kuow.org/donate/seattlenow And we want to hear from you! Follow us on Instagram @SeattleNowPod, or leave us feedback online: https://www.kuow.org/feedback

Marc Summers on Double Dare and His Last Meal

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Play Episode Listen Later Aug 1, 2023 39:26

The television host shares his ideal last meal and serves behind-the-scenes details from Nickelodeon and the Food Network. Marc Summers, best known for his role as host of the 1980s Nickelodeon game show Double Dare and host of the Food Network's Unwrapped, actually launched his career doing magic tricks. Summers shared this fun fact, and a whole lot more, with Rachel Belle, host of Your Last Meal — a James Beard Award finalist for Best Podcast — during a live taping at the Crosscut Ideas Festival in May. Another fun fact: Your Last Meal is now a Crosscut podcast! New episodes will be released every other Thursday. Learn more, listen and subscribe here. For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, Belle and Summers dig into the actor's lifetime love of show business, how he snagged the job hosting the beloved Nickelodeon show (plus what that legendary slime was really made of), and why Summers decided to share his OCD diagnosis in the late 1990s. This conversation was recorded May 5, 2023. --- Credits Host: Paris Jackson Producer: Seth Halleran Event producers: Jake Newman, Anne O'Dowd Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph --- If you would like to support Crosscut, go to crosscut.com/membership. In addition to supporting our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Seattle's PBS station, KCTS 9.

Week in Review: July 28, 2023 - with Shauna Sowersby

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 28, 2023 31:31

On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Washington State government reporter for McClatchy, Shauna Sowersby! They discuss the failure of an anti-trans referendum campaign, a self-proclaimed white nationalist country musician playing at the Washington state capitol, new state laws going into effect, AG Ferguson continuing to avoid disclosing his donors, and another lawsuit filed against the Washington State Legislature for withholding public records under “legislative privilege.” The conversation continues with federal pandemic relief aid getting funneled into police surveillance technology, no-notice sweeps being ruled unconstitutional by King County Superior Court, and an audit showing that the Seattle Police Department could do more with existing resources to address organized retail crime. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Shauna Sowersby at @Shauna_Sowersby. Shauna Sowersby Shauna Sowersby was a freelancer for several local and national publications before joining McClatchy's northwest newspapers covering the Legislature. Before that, Shauna worked for the US Navy as a photographer and journalist. Resources “PRIMARY WEEK RE-AIR: Teresa Mosqueda, Candidate for King County Council District 8” from Hacks & Wonks “PRIMARY WEEK RE-AIR: Becka Johnson Poppe, Candidate for King County Council District 4” from Hacks & Wonks “PRIMARY WEEK RE-AIR: Sarah Reyneveld, Candidate for King County Council District 4” from Hacks & Wonks “PRIMARY WEEK RE-AIR: Jorge Barón, Candidate for King County Council District 4” from Hacks & Wonks “With referendum failure, WA just dodged a bullet of hype and hate” by Danny Westneat from The Seattle Times “‘Heretic' group to offer unbaptisms at WA Capitol Campus” by Shauna Sowersby from The Olympian “New Washington state laws go into effect Sunday. Here are some of the key ones” by Shauna Sowersby from The Olympian “WA AG Bob Ferguson should come clean about donors” by The Seattle Times editorial board “WA judge fines AG's office, DSHS in ‘cavalier' withholding of lawsuit evidence” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times “New lawsuit alleges WA state Senators were ‘silently withholding' public records” by Shauna Sowersby from The Olympian “Federal aid is supercharging local WA police surveillance tech” by Brandon Block from Crosscut “Summary judgment in ACLU case could end ‘no-notice' sweeps in Seattle” by Tobias Coughlin-Bogue from Real Change “Audit: Police Could Do More, Without Hiring Extra Cops, To Address Retail Theft Rings” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola Find stories that Crystal is reading here Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and our Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen. In preparation for the primary election on next Tuesday, August 1st, we've been re-airing candidate interviews for the open City [County] Council seats all this week. Be sure to check them out if you're still deciding whom to vote for. Today, we are continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome to the program for the first time, today's co-host: Washington state government reporter for McClatchy, Shauna Sowersby. Hello. [00:01:09] Shauna Sowersby: Hello, thanks for having me. [00:01:11] Crystal Fincher: I am so excited to have you on the show today. I think I told you before - followed your work for so long and your reporting has been really important for quite some time now, so very excited. To begin the conversation, we will start talking about the failure of a referendum for a piece of legislation that would benefit the trans community. What happened here? [00:01:35] Shauna Sowersby: During the State Legislature this year, there was a bill that was passed, 5599, that was sponsored by Senator Marko Liias. And that bill expanded a law that was already in place and included teenagers trying to seek gender-affirming care as well as abortion care. So it wasn't really a new law, it was just expanding on something that was already there - to try and protect these other factors that were involved. [00:02:04] Crystal Fincher: This is really about protecting populations within our homeless community. This is about shelters and whether shelters have to mandatorily divulge information, or if they wait to determine, or discriminate in any way. So it's not - as it was couched by some people - this is about medically intervening with youth, this is about intervening in family matters, or they wanna take people from your homes. This is about a population that's already unhoused and legislation that's trying to keep teens from really being vulnerable when they're homeless and out on the street with nowhere else to go, which is a very, very dangerous and harmful place to be. This became what a lot of people refer to as culture war stuff - is really what we're dealing with in this whole time now, where people are targeting trans people, trans rights, really the broader LGBTQ community in a lot of these situations. And anything that could potentially make life easier or just not as extraordinarily difficult for trans people in things that they may be dealing with. There are a lot of LGBTQ youth that get kicked out of their homes for that reason - and so if they are there, or people who are seeking abortion care - that can't be a reason for someone to be turned away or submitting information, divulging information to other people. Basically just protecting them like we protect everyone else. But I was happy to see, personally, that this referendum failed. And I think it's just another statement that overall - we don't play that, we don't do that in Washington. Certainly these elements are active, but they are nowhere near the majority of community and we need to keep making sure people know and understand that and make that visible. [00:03:44] Shauna Sowersby: And I just wanted to point out, too, that it failed by a lot - I think it was like 5,000 signatures or something that it failed by. So I don't think it had quite as much support as the writers of that referendum had intended. [00:03:57] Crystal Fincher: When you look at the facts of what is and isn't happening and why, and what gender-affirming care means in the context of the broader community - it's got broad meanings. People who are not even trans access that all the time. It's not a controversial thing. This is not really about kids. This was an attack on the entire community and an attempt to claw back rights. [00:04:17] Shauna Sowersby: And I think the Danny Westneat article in The Seattle Times brought up a really good point too. This wasn't even an issue until gender and reproductive rights got brought into the mix. It wasn't a problem before that. These two things are very popular topics throughout the country right now. [00:04:35] Crystal Fincher: I also wanna talk about a self-proclaimed Christian nationalist country musician playing at the Washington State Capitol. What went on? [00:04:43] Shauna Sowersby: He'll be there Friday the 28th. There was a Rolling Stone article that came out a while ago about him. He was open about being a white nationalist - seemed to be proud of the fact that he is a white nationalist country musician. So he'll be there at the Capitol with Turning Point USA, which I'm sure a lot of folks listening might be familiar with. But the House of Heretics will be there and they will be doing unbaptisms and gender affirming rituals. I believe one of their quotes was something like they wanted whenever Sean plays on Friday night for it to be the devil's ground for him to play on. So I thought that was pretty interesting. [00:05:24] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it is. And Turning Point USA is a radical organization - you have a self-described white nationalist, like a Charlie Kirk, that is associated with and promoting white nationalists. And it's just not that wonderful. And like I said, these things are here and they're around and people are trying to introduce this in the community, certainly trying to make it seem more mainstream. But it's not. And I think all of our responsibility is making that known and visible. Other news this week - and especially with you as a legislative reporter covering so much that happened in the legislative session - we passed legislation, but there's usually a little bit of time before it's passed and when it completely takes effect. But we do have a number of new laws about to go into effect this Sunday. What are some of the key laws coming? [00:06:09] Shauna Sowersby: Our legislature did a really good job on housing this year. And one of the laws that went into effect on the 23rd was more access to ADUs, so that's a positive thing. That's something that the legislature had been going after for several years, if I remember correctly, but finally got that one. So those are allowed in certain cities with a certain population. Hopefully that will help ease the lack of housing situation that's going on pretty much everywhere around the state. So I think that's a good one. Another one that goes into effect is landlords' claims for damages. So that extends the timeline landlords have to provide documentation to show that they are in the right in retaining a tenant's deposit - which is a really important one, I feel - that's also another thing that they've been trying to get passed for a long time. They also need to keep receipts that they can actually show to their tenants before they can charge them, so I think all of those are really good. It also prevents them from charging past normal wear and tear, which anybody who's ever rented, I'm sure, has probably run into an issue like that. So I think that type of law will be a positive for a lot of renters out there. And then another one I thought was interesting, just because I'd never really heard of this before this year, but they're making pill presses illegal in the state. I had no clue what these were, to be honest with you, before they passed this law. It's basically trying to prevent people from overdosing on fentanyl when they take things that they think might be something else, such as a Percocet. These can look very legitimate with these pill presses, but can include amounts of fentanyl in them that can kill you. So obviously that is another positive law that went into effect just recently. [00:08:04] Crystal Fincher: And that's how people can identify pills. They're registered, marked for different types of pills. You can actually look up and Google them. If a pill gets lost or dropped or something and you pick it up and see markings on them, you can find out what it is by that. But yeah, people have been abusing that to pass off some substances. And when we have such dangerous and harmful drugs out there that can be so easily mixed into other substances or look like something else, that's really important. As well as the accessory dwelling unit, or the ADU, bill - a lot of people think of them as mother-in-law houses, but allowing people to add density or add a unit to their existing property is an important element in the whole web of increasing the amount of density, or preparing communities to responsibly absorb more people living there without having real estate prices go sky high as we've been seeing. So some really, I think, good laws coming in, some progress being made. And so it'll be interesting to see how these are enforced, especially when it comes to those landlord ones - to see if they actually do materially improve the situations that they are seeking to improve. Also wanna talk about Attorney General Ferguson's campaign for governor and a call for him to come clean about his donors, especially in a piece that was published in The Seattle Times this week. What's happening with this? [00:09:27] Shauna Sowersby: The Public disclosure Commission was set to have a ruling a few weeks back that outlined and reinforced the idea that if you're moving money from one campaign to another campaign - so Ferguson moving from going for Attorney General again to governor - so you can move a certain amount of money over into your other campaign without having to disclose those donors. Like you were saying earlier, it's something that could be done - they were saying you shouldn't be doing it this way. And right before that date came in, they clarified that he switched all that money over - and I believe it was $1.2 million, is that correct? [00:10:05] Crystal Fincher: It's about $1.2 million and they received notice that a clarification was coming. They transferred it the day after that notice, which I think was a day before they officially did it. That is a detail that I don't know we all knew and understood before. And it's confusing. With the PDC, there's an underlying law and the PDC issues guidance and interpretations. This entire time, the actual law has not changed. The PDC's guidance about the law is what changed. And a person was looking at the law and looking at the guidance - unconnected to the campaign, I think to any campaigns - and was - Hey, it looks like your guidance does not actually say what the law does, or it leaves a hole. The bigger issue is - say you transfer these things over - we have campaign finance limits. If you can only donate - say a limit is $1,000, it changes year to year - if you transfer money over from some of those same donors, it could put people over the limit for this race and you can't be over the limit. The PDC said - Oh, that is correct. We overlooked that or got that wrong. Called the campaigns to say - Hey, we realized we got something wrong and we're going to be issuing formal guidance tomorrow. After that call, the campaign said - Oh, let's transfer it. Then we find ourself here. There's the law. Should this have been done? The answer appears to be no, but it's also hard because people are following guidance. I followed a PDC guidance before. And so the fact that it was done in the first place - I completely understand you're relying on the PDC for guidance - it's the muddy area of when they say - Ooh, this guidance is wrong. And it's not like they're saying the law is going to change. If it's not the law, it's not the law. It's not illegal if you do it before it's a law. It's a little dicey in that they were notified that they weren't going to be able to do it and then rushed to do it before it was written on paper when basically they got the tip off. [00:11:57] Shauna Sowersby: And now the fact that they're being called on to disclose those donors and they're not doing it - that's another issue as well. [00:12:05] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's something that the PDC is taking up again. I believe they're having a meeting - we're recording this on Thursday - I think they are having a meeting today, potentially as we speak. Big issue that we're left with - because the issue of democracy, small-d democracy, is the disclosure of donors. This is foundational to our system. And from near and far, every state has campaign finance regulations. Some are enforced better than others, but this is really important so that within campaigns - there's dark money with PACs - within campaigns, it's really defined that someone can donate, but they have a limit and they can't donate above that limit. That helps, from the campaign perspective, make sure that people with money can't crowd out everyone else or just dominate the conversation financially within that campaign. I do find it concerning that right now, there's $1.2 million worth of donors that we don't know. If you have pledges that you're not accepting money from these people or who's that? We see in other races - Oh, whoa, this Trump supporter donated or this, on the Republican side, Biden supporter did this. Or you're wondering why they're donating and what promises may have been made. I'm not saying that promises are always made for donations, but usually people donate to who they find themselves aligned. That's a reasonable thing to explore and debate, which is why our law mandates that. I hope that they are disclosed. Even if they find that he shouldn't have transferred the money at all, I do think it is realistic and very doable to disclose them. Disclosure is easy. For them to have been able to transfer the money, they had to get permission from the donor. So they have all of those records - that the transfer couldn't have happened without it. It'll be really interesting to see how this winds up. [00:13:48] Shauna Sowersby: One more thing too that I wanted to add about the whole Ferguson thing is that - for the state's highest attorney's office, him being in that office for so long - he obviously knows these rules. He knows that he should be holding himself to a higher standard. One of the things that concerns me - not just about the PDC and his campaign finance stuff - is that his office was recently fined for withholding hundreds of thousands of documents in a lawsuit against a developmentally disabled woman. Documents that would have helped this woman and her case, but appears that a lot of these documents were intentionally withheld. Not saying that Ferguson himself was responsible for doing these things, but it is his office. The mixture between that and then the recent PDC guidance that - as a candidate for governor, he should really be putting himself in a higher standard. [00:14:44] Crystal Fincher: Like you said, who knows how much he was aware of going in - and most of these donors are probably above board - I would assume most of them are not above the limit. How much money is it, really, from donors who are above the limit here? Practically looking at correcting this issue - say it's even half a million dollars worth, he still has a significant financial lead over other people and it gets this thing that's dogging his campaign. Just disclose the donors - you have the money, just disclose donors. [00:15:15] Shauna Sowersby: You're already in the lead. Hilary Franz said she wanted to make sure that this was a fair transfer and that everybody was going by the same rules. Even with somebody else calling him out for it, still wasn't doing it. [00:15:28] Crystal Fincher: There's a reason why he's the front-runner. There's a lot of things about him that excite people, but I don't think you're ever above having to answer questions. Even if you are the front runner in the race, we all wind up better. And it sets a precedent - people may be comfortable with Ferguson and he may make a wonderful governor, but for successive governors, I don't want a precedent set where they don't have to follow the rules. I want to talk about another lawsuit filed against the Washington State Legislature for withholding public records under "legislative privilege." What's happening this time? [00:16:03] Shauna Sowersby: Nothing new here. I believe it was Friday of last week - me and some other requesters got back a set of documents - this is from a request that was filed, I want to say, in January and closed out in February. We were told that we had all records from every lawmaker that was withholding records under "legislative privilege". Lo and behold, Friday, we get another batch of records that have suddenly been found. The petitioner in this lawsuit, Arthur West, also filed one of the previous lawsuits for "legislative privilege." He believes that in this case, it's called "silent withholding" - it's still part of the same lawsuit that he's filed before, but this is an addendum where he believes they may have intentionally been withholding these final documents - they should have been found, they should have been captured in our request, so it's odd they're showing up now. This is an additional lawsuit into what's already happening - I believe WashCOG, Washington Coalition for Open Government, they also have a lawsuit pending. I don't think it has a hearing date until later in September. So not looking good so far for lawsuits and lawmakers. We'll see how this all turns out. I'm assuming it'll be a slow process, but we're finally getting things kicked off. [00:17:25] Crystal Fincher: I'll be curious to see what comes of it. Also want to talk about a story that came out this week - just a couple of days ago or yesterday, I think - about the amount of federal aid going towards police surveillance. When we say police surveillance, what are they talking about? [00:17:40] Shauna Sowersby: An article from Brandon Block in Crosscut - looks like they are using federal aid money that was supposed to go to other things to basically spy on people. It seems like there's a lot of concerns from groups like the ACLU who say that the surveillance equipment can be used - not just for immigrants and for trying to deport people, but it can also be used for people who are seeking out-of-state abortions coming into Washington. So there's multiple concerns here what the surveillance equipment could be doing. And it looks like a lot of it is - from the article - license plate surveillance and the drones that they were using - makes you wonder why these smaller towns are spending so much money on surveillance equipment. [00:18:29] Crystal Fincher: I don't think people realize that this much money was going to these things. And at a time when lots of people are talking about wanting more police funding, wanting to hire more officers, saying that there's not money to do it - there's so much money being spent and being siphoned from other areas where it seems like it was originally intended to go and being spent on this surveillance technology, like drones and automatic license plate readers, going through communities and looking up everyone's license plates everywhere. And usually - one, these are not equitably used, equitably deployed. A lot of times they are deployed much more heavily and ubiquitously in lower income communities and BIPOC communities. Is the community aware of this? Are people aware of this? Like you said, we have other states trying to - actually have criminalized abortion care, gender affirming care. There aren't policies, strong policies with enforcement that really limit how this data can be used, how it can be shared, how it can be spread. This is where we can have bad outcomes where potentially someone from another state, someone with a nefarious purpose can find this information to track people down and inequitably enforce laws that are on our books in communities, causing disproportionate harm. At minimum, this should be something that is very intentionally discussed in these communities. I definitely recommend that people do read this article by Brandon Block - we'll include it in the podcast show notes and on the website. It's really concerning to see so much money diverted for this purpose - was supposed to help people survive the pandemic, help people not get evicted, help cities support small businesses - that this was diverted for this purpose and in a way I don't think was transparent or consistent with what people intended within their communities or even federally. [00:20:25] Shauna Sowersby: Yeah, it seems like people weren't asked about that. I'm sure there was probably no conversation for that, but like you're saying, it could have been diverted for a number of purposes and instead goes to surveillance equipment. [00:20:39] Crystal Fincher: We will see if there's any follow up on that. There was another case this week that was really important and reiterated what other cases have found and that is that no-notice police sweeps that are used in lots of localities, including Seattle, were found to be unconstitutional. What did this ruling hold and what are some of the impacts that it may have? [00:21:01] Shauna Sowersby: In this article from Real Change, it talks about how the court ruled the city's sweep policies are not carefully tailored, in some circumstances, to pursue the city's valid governmental interests and require more disclosure than is reasonably necessary. The rules define obstruction so broadly, the city can invade unhoused people's privacy rights without notice, offers of shelter and preservation. [00:21:27] Crystal Fincher: This is an issue that many cities are dealing with. We've been talking about the unfortunate circumstances in Burien, certainly in Seattle. Every community is really looking at this and facing this. So many of our neighbors are now homeless - and the City of Seattle and Burien have really gone too far. It had been established before that it is illegal for a city to conduct a sweep if there is no offer of shelter provided. Basically, if you have nowhere for someone to go, it is found to be unconstitutional to sweep someone in that instance. There's a reason why the CDC recommends against it, why it is not recommended, especially in extreme weather situations. These are people's whole possessions. Though outwardly sometimes they may not look like much to someone walking by, this is what they have and this is critical - the few things they do have for work, their ID, the few mementos that have meant the absolute most to them that they've been able to keep when they've lost everything else is what they have. Just coming through unannounced - and you leave, you come back, and your stuff is gone. Or you have an hour and the stuff is gone is really destabilizing. We have to do a better job of supporting this. Most people have also seen that when there is nowhere for someone to go, it doesn't do anything to solve the problem. We're really just moving the issue of homelessness around. We're not doing anything to solve it. It's this game of musical chairs and most people are just moving from property to property or place to place within a city most of the time, certainly within the region. So we've got to expand our response. We can't keep doing the same thing over and over again. The biggest problem here is that people don't have housing. If housing is not an element in the solution, it's not a solution. And yes, that is complicated. Yes, it's costly. But it really is not as costly as allowing the situation to continue. I don't think there's anyone left, right, or anywhere who is satisfied with seeing people on the street within encampments, but I think people just don't want to double down on that failure, spend so much money on police resources - all the resources that we're spending in a way that doesn't solve the problem. So the City of Seattle is gonna have to go back to the table and figure out what they're gonna do. Other cities are gonna have to look at this ruling and modify what they're doing, or potentially face the same lawsuit and legislation, and wind up having to do it by force rather than proactively. [00:23:58] Shauna Sowersby: The governor and the legislature - they've been trying to tackle this issue too with the rights-of-way - the whole idea there was that they weren't gonna move people out unless they had some sort of housing situation set up for those folks. So instead of just shuffling them around from one place to another, it's still a small pilot program at this point - and can't do it on a large scale, obviously. I think instead of sweeping folks, this is a better alternative - not the best alternative, for sure - but it's better than shuffling folks around one other part of the city like you were saying. [00:24:33] Crystal Fincher: And this ruling did say that the use was overbroad. There are still circumstances where it is legally permissible to do this if really obstructing a sidewalk. It is constitutional for a sweep to happen. The issue is that they're happening in so many more situations where there's imminent harm or obstruction. The last story I wanted to talk about today was an audit that came out about the City of Seattle, but really applicable to many cities - saying police could do more without hiring extra cops to address retail theft rings. This is really important - we see stories almost every day on the news about theft. If you're online, you see surveillance photos from stores and theft happening. People are trying to figure out the way to address this, and the biggest problem that seems solvable from a public safety perspective is going after these retail theft rings. But in a way, going after petty theft is not going after retail theft and this audit addressed that. This report basically said targeting organized retail theft is important. And some cities like Auburn have been successful at doing that, but they've succeeded by trying to "cut off the head of the snake" - as they put it - and not going after petty theft. What this study found is that Seattle really likes going after petty theft and calling it going after retail crime. Most of the crimes are theft under $750, they are individuals doing this. They find them participating in task forces, but as for action on the ground - action that they're taking - it doesn't appear that they're doing much to actually go after the heads of these organizations, the organized part of that organized crime. According to the audit - in PubliCola that came out on the 25th - responding to calls from just the top 100 retail locations in the city used almost 19,000 hours of police time, equivalent to nine full-time officers that could be streamlined by using tools like rapid video response instead of deploying officers out all over town. So if they need to interview employees, they can do those interviews by Zoom. They can do those in a more proactive way, in a more efficient way - that saves officers time, that saves employees time, that is really less impactful to both the business and the department. And can also get them that information quicker, so it gives more of a chance to get closer to the people who are in these fencing rings, who are making it profitable for these people to steal. And the audit found that the City does participate in task forces and stuff, but they should also invest in place-based strategies like environmental factors, the actual design, better lighting, activating vacant lots, and other non-law enforcement approaches to make hotspots less appealing places for people to operate illegal street markets. There were 68 strategies proposed last year, but the City's only implemented three. So we have these conversations - they're really visible in Seattle, but they're happening all over the place in cities from Auburn to Kent to others - having these community meetings and saying - Wow, we're really trying to do this. If you look under the hood, you see that they continue to go after petty criminals at the expense of the ability to go after the heads of these organized crime rings and using other tools besides just a cop responding to something to prevent these things from happening. How did you see this? [00:28:00] Shauna Sowersby: Yeah, this is something that could probably not just apply to Seattle, even down here in Olympia, Tacoma. This is a result of the other media outlets making a bigger deal about shoplifting and focusing on that as a narrative - that could be inspiring more resources to be going into those sorts of things, as opposed to - like you were saying - the areas where they really could be focusing on instead. We're just going for the wrong thing. [00:28:35] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and you raise a good point. If you are seeing this highlighted - and we've seen lots of stories of theft used in a way that's really propaganda, we've seen situations here locally and nationally where the impact of theft has been overstated and the cause is muddied. If people really care about this, they'll take these findings into account and implement them. If all you hear them saying is the same thing over and over again, that seems more like a campaign tactic or like a scare tactic. We have to use all of the tools at our disposal. We have to get more intentional about wisely using the resources that we do. You have people saying the only way that things can be improved is to hire more cops. There's no way to get more cops online without basically a year lead time because they have to be accepted, go to the academy - there's a long lead time before you get them on the street. Wow - how bleak and hopeless is that situation? Seemingly nothing else can be done - after we have already taken so many steps and allocated so much money, extra money - retention bonuses to stay, high salaries, how many officers are clearing money that other people in the community aren't making? And so using that money effectively, finding ways to use the existing assets more efficiently - this is gonna save officers' time. We should see action taken on these. And certainly within SPD, when there are 60-something recommendations and only three have been implemented, we need to keep ticking down that list. I hope we get beyond the talk when there's so much that needs to happen to keep us safe and to hopefully prevent crime instead of just responding to it. There are things identified and hopefully they choose to do them. And with that, we thank you for listening to this Hacks & Wonks on Friday, July 28th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful cohost today was Washington State government reporter from McClatchy, Shauna Sowersby. You can find Shauna on Twitter @Shauna_Sowersby - Shauna underscore Sowersby. You can - and that's S-H-A-U-N-A. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter and you can find me on all platforms @finchfrii, that's two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, please leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in, vote by August 1st, and we will talk to you next time.

Psychedelics and Our Mental Health

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Play Episode Listen Later Jul 27, 2023 42:41

Research shows the drugs can be effective in treating depression and substance-use disorders — but there's still much we don't know. Psychedelics are moving back into the mainstream. According to a growing body of medical research, psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin and ketamine can have a profound impact on people struggling with mental health conditions, including depression, post-traumatic stress and substance-use disorders. As a result, legal barriers are beginning to fall away. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has designated psilocybin as a “breakthrough therapy,” for example, accelerating its path to approval, and recently released draft guidance for all clinical trials with psychedelic drugs. For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we listen in on a conversation among science journalist and author Carl Zimmer, palliative and rehabilitative care physician Dr. Sunil Kumar Aggarwal and University of Washington psychiatry professor Dr. Nathan Sackett about the rapidly emerging field of psychedelics in psychotherapy. They discuss these drugs' specific effects on the brain, explain their use in clinical practice and in current research and explore some of the bigger questions raised — from the challenges of practicing medicine in a legal gray area to the nature of human consciousness. This conversation was recorded May 6, 2023. --- Credits Host: Paris Jackson Producer: Seth Halleran Event producers: Jake Newman, Anne O'Dowd Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph --- If you would like to support Crosscut, go to crosscut.com/membership. In addition to supporting our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Seattle's PBS station, KCTS 9.

Tackling the Biodiversity Crisis

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 25, 2023 49:51

Pollution, habitat loss and climate change all threaten wildlife and their ecosystems. Conservationists discuss what we can do to help. Wildlife numbers are plunging worldwide. From toxic waste to invasive species, deforestation to rising temperatures, threats to the survival of our planet's millions of plants and animals are causing scientists to warn of a sixth extinction. It's estimated that roughly a third of the world's species have become endangered or gone extinct in the past 500 years. And as the climate crisis continues to escalate, many more will be forced to adapt. For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, environmental journalist Michelle Nijuis, Conservation Northwest senior policy director Paula Sweeden and National Wildlife Federation chief scientist Dr. Bruce Stein unpack the reasons we're facing such a crisis and what we can do to mitigate it. The panelists' proposed solutions range from federal legislation to backyard gardens—and ultimately make the case that the biodiversity crisis is inextricable from the climate crisis. This conversation was recorded May 4, 2023. --- Credits Host: Paris Jackson Producer: Seth Halleran Event producers: Jake Newman, Anne O'Dowd Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph --- If you would like to support Crosscut, go to crosscut.com/membership. In addition to supporting our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Seattle's PBS station, KCTS 9.

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Shop Built Jigs, Woodworking With Children, Finding Inspiration and MORE!!

Woodshop Life Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 14, 2023 55:49

Brians Questions: Every time I make a jig I struggle to get the fence square. How do I do this properly. Is this a common problem amongst new woodworkers? Love the show guys keep it up! Johnny This is Ben and I'm 8 years old. I would like to make a pocket knife with my dad. What suggestions do you have for making one? Ben and Nathan Guys Questions: I recently found your podcast and have been binging it while in the shop. Guy, I was quite surprised to learn about your passion for 3D printing and various tinkering in his shop. I share the same passion for tinkering that extends beyond woodworking. In my shop I get almost as much satisfaction in discovering/creating a jig or tool to complete the job as I do in the actual finished product. My biggest “tool” build has been the ‘Mostly Printed CNC machine', which is good enough for cutting various templates or basic v-carves. I can't justify the price tag for an off the shelf machine to do that work when this one is good enough for me, at least for now. But I don't think I could ever make something like a dowelmax, when I can buy a quality tool for relatively cheap. Apologies if this has been asked before. My question is about shop built tools and jigs vs. store bought. From your perspectives, with quality and cost in mind, what tools should be purchased off the shelf and what tools can be or maybe should be shop made? (Crosscut sleds, planer jointing sled, flattening jigs, clamping jigs, mobile bases, router tables…the list goes on and on). For reference I'm very much a hobbyist making stuff for the house or family and friends, while selling a piece here and there. So I do not work under any form of deadlines other than those imposed by my wife. Additionally, this is my creative outlet, I'm a gear design engineer the other 40 hours, this is my opportunity to make what I want to make. Keep up the great work! Caleb Gurd Gears & Grain Woodcraft Hey guys. You have been kind enough to answer a few of my questions in the past so thought I would throw a couple more your way. I have two questions which fall into the category of finishing. Number one - I'll be building a coffee table out of walnut which is a mix of heartwood and sapwood. I would like to find a way to blend the color of the mixed wood together. If I use a walnut dye on the entire project will the color of the heartwood and sapwood blend together and provide a uniform looking finish? If dying the wood is the solution can you recommend a brand of dye? Should the dye be oil or water based given that I'll likely use an oil based clear coat. I have never used dye in the past so any tips will be helpful. Answered - Second question. Our cherry wood kitchen table, which measures 36"W x 48"L, needs refinishing. I believe the original finish is an oil based pre-catalyzed lacquer. I'll be refinishing just the table top which has several scratches and shallow dents measuring up to 1/16" deep. The legs are painted black so no need to match the color of the top with the legs. Can you recommend a method for removing the original finish? I don't own or have access to a drum sander. Also, can you recommend a durable oil-based finish for refinishing the table top? Is spraying the preferred method for such a large surface area? Or, will a wipe-on poly do the job? Thanks again for all your help and expertise. Jack Francis Geneva, IL Huys Questions: Hello fellas. Thanks for the enjoyable podcast, I've been listening for months but finally asking a question. Where do you look for inspiration when it comes to design for furniture pieces? Any particular magazines or books you like to reference when coming up with designs. Not necessarily looking for how to's , but more on design and style. Thanks again! A. Torres Kind sirs- Wonderful job etc. and I hope this finds you well. I posit this question knowing full well that I "overthink things" (according to Guy), even though I am "really intelligent" and have "design style" (according to Huy, your Tom Fan Club membership package is in the mail, including a life-size Tom cutout, suitable for posing with for social media photos.) I need a second desk for a backup office when my in-laws visit. I have a nice 2.5" thick ambrosia maple slab about the right size, and a couple of 4' long, 6" x 8" pine posts. My idea is to wedge-mortice the posts through the slab to create two 30" legs, and then mortice those into the 18" offcuts to make wide "feet". Think two upside down capital "T" going through the slab 3' apart. Would this construction method obviate the need to consider wood movement, since I only have one point of contact between the pieces? My understanding of wood movement is that it is the constraining of movement that can cause issues; in this case I can see the mortices getting 1/16" wider in the winter but if they're wedged, who gives a care? Or, should I hide the mortices and give them a little wiggle room to avoid splitting if the legs swell? Would pine stretching, crack maple? There I go over thinking things again. But thank you for humoring me. I await your answers with bated breath - Tom the Bomb Figura

love children 3d built shop apologies finding inspiration woodworking huy jigs crosscut

Week in Review: July 14, 2023 - with Lex Vaughn

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Play Episode Listen Later Jul 14, 2023 46:29

On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Founder and Editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn! They discuss a Hitler apologist on The Seattle Times Editorial Board, problematic items on display in a Seattle Police Department break room, complaints filed against Bob Ferguson's opaque transfer of campaign funds, and WA Republicans wanting to make the long-term care tax optional. The conversation continues with Kshama Sawant's push for a rent control trigger law, dueling tenant-protection laws on the Tacoma ballot, and former US Attorney Nick Brown's entrance into the Attorney General race. UPDATE: After the show was recorded, The Seattle Times fired David Josef Volodzko. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Lex Vaughn at @AlexaVaughn. Resources “Business Perspectives with GSBA's Gabriel Neuman” from Hacks & Wonks @finchfrii on Twitter: “Wonder why the Seattle Times endorsements are the way they are? Here's a member of their editorial board:” @finchfrii on Twitter: “Do you stand by this, @SeattleTimes ? Are you keeping a Hitler apologist and genocide minimizer on your editorial board?” “New Seattle Times Columnist Believes Hitler Wasn't as Bad as You Think” by Charles Mudede from The Stranger “Deep! Hole Seattle Times Editorial Board Writer Digs After Nazi-Apologist Comment Officially Reaches Hitler's Bunker” from The Needling “Seattle police kept mock tombstone for Black man, Trump flag in break room, video shows” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times “Complaint pushes for Ferguson to reveal donors of $1.2M in campaign transfers” by Jerry Cornfield from Washington State Standard “WA Republicans propose making new long-term care tax optional” by Claire Withycombe from The Seattle Times “Seattle Democrats Snub Sawant After Request to Endorse Rent Control Trigger Law” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger “Tacoma voters to decide on dueling tenant-protection measures this fall” by Heidi Groover from The Seattle Times “Former U.S. Attorney Nick Brown launches 2024 campaign for Attorney General” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate “Former U.S. attorney Nick Brown announces bid for Washington AG” by Joseph O'Sullivan from Crosscut Find stories that Crystal is reading here Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and the Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. If you missed our Tuesday topical show, I had a conversation with Gabriel Neuman, Policy Counsel and Government Relations Manager for GSBA, about the organization's work as Washington's LGBTQ+ Chamber of Commerce. Today, we are continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome to the program for the first time, today's co-host: Founder and Editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn. [00:01:22] Lex Vaughn: Yay, I'm so glad to be here. [00:01:24] Crystal Fincher: We are very big fans of The Needling over here, so really, really excited to have you on. And we have no shortage of topics to talk about this week. We will start with an odd development that was not on my bingo card, but we have evidently a newer Seattle Times Editorial Board member who is a Hitler apologist, genocide minimizer? [00:01:53] Lex Vaughn: They hire him to make the rest of them seem less conservative - that's the only thing I can think of. And I can't believe that his comments have been online for almost a week now or so, and he hasn't just been fired - 'cause he's not apologizing and the way he tried to clean it up was so much worse. He had a follow-up tweet saying - I guess I should have said Pol Pot or Leopold II. [00:02:19] Crystal Fincher: What did he actually say? What happened here? [00:02:23] Lex Vaughn: I feel like it's important to look at the exact quote - which I should bring up. So first of all, he's taking on this tacky - or hacky - article about the statue of Lenin in the center of Fremont. And everybody has a moment when they move here when they're - Is that Lenin? I thought it was a fisherman at first, I'm - It couldn't possibly be Lenin. And there's always a moment when you're new here, you're - Explain. But I think people who've lived here for a long time are - I'm tired of explaining, figure it out - Google exists, dude. So first of all, just funny that he's even taking this really tired argument. And then the way he tackles it - to make it original - is to say, somehow, Hitler was better? [00:03:13] Crystal Fincher: He's not a fan of Lenin, as many people aren't - I don't think that's a controversial opinion at all. However, he decided to make his point by comparing him to Hitler. His argument was - at least Hitler wasn't that bad. Then went into all of the ways that, in his opinion, Hitler wasn't bad. And like you, I feel like I need to pull up the exact words - because if I paraphrase, you're gonna think I'm exaggerating and it's that bad. [00:03:41] Lex Vaughn: I have it in front of me. Okay, I guess what his intent was was to just illustrate how bad Lenin was, but no one usually tries to prop up Hitler in doing that. The exact quote from one of his tweets is, "Hitler only targeted people he personally believed were harmful to society whereas Lenin targeted even those he himself did not believe were harmful in any way." [00:04:08] Crystal Fincher: Which is wild. So this is unfolding on Twitter - he shared his article, he's sharing this perspective on Twitter. And obviously Seattleites' jaws are dropping in unison and many replies back to him. But one of the replies was, "The big problem with genocide is whether or not you sincerely believe the people you're genociding are harmful to society." To which Josef Volodzko - is the reporter's name - replies, "I'm not talking about genocide." To which that man replies, "Is genocide not a key part of Hitler's 'targeting people,' bud?" [00:04:44] Lex Vaughn: Oh my God. [00:04:45] Crystal Fincher: To which he replies, "Yes, but I wasn't talking about genocide. Did you bother to read what I wrote?" [00:04:52] Lex Vaughn: It's just amazing that the statement itself is so bad on its own. And then when you look at all of his replies, you're just - How does he think he's making this better? He's making it worse? [00:05:04] Crystal Fincher: Just FYI to everyone everywhere - anytime you're talking about Hitler, you're talking about genocide - there's so many problems with this. But predictably, he has shared other very questionable opinions on his timeline. As a Black woman, I have frequently seen people minimize the American slave trade. A popular talking point on the West was - but other people did it worse. And so he has a tweet talking about - Well, the Arab slave trade was much longer and basically worse than the American one. And I have never seen people who have those two opinions and will share them with no nuance. If you're in an academic setting and you're studying it, obviously you're gonna talk about historical genocides and all of that - you can have those conversations in context. But here - the context you've heard, and there isn't much of it, and it's very, very troubling. And usually people with those two opinions, who especially are not afraid to share them publicly, have a whole lot of other troubling opinions there. The bigger issue here to me, aside from the fact that it's wild that The Seattle Times is evidently fine with this perspective, is the fact that it's a relatively new journalist hired by The Seattle Times - moved here from, I believe, it was rural Georgia - hasn't been here for long, but somehow still made it onto the Editorial Board, which is just a very questionable practice by The Seattle Times in the first place. Do you want someone to be familiar with the area, with the people? - because this article is just so off. The reason why that Lenin statue hasn't been removed - and there have been efforts to remove it - is because it's on private property. Unlike a lot of other statue, monuments that have been removed elsewhere - those were on public property, so it does become a public concern to remove them. That's why the conversation has not been a conversation. Seems like he's trying to characterize the left as somehow loving Lenin in Seattle - that is not a thing - not a thing! [00:07:03] Lex Vaughn: And there's just no better way to, I think, make yourself seem like a dumb transplant - 'cause it's a whole culture around that statue of - it's seen as this thing that just got shipwrecked in a part of the city. Nobody wanted it. Nobody asked for it. Just this weird, giant, heavy thing on private property that people have just decided to cope with the best way they can. As a former reporter at The Seattle Times, I know there's gotta be reporters who are very pissed off right now - I know that the Editorial Board did things that we even petitioned against when I was there. And it's so frustrating when the Editorial Board is destroying, or getting in the way of, the better work that the real journalists are trying to do at the newspaper. I've always found it ridiculous that so much money is even dedicated to that stupid Editorial Board - when you could be funding better reporting that actually makes your publication stand out and be valued here. That publication is surviving despite the Editorial Board, not because of it, and instances like this just make it - wow. [00:08:14] Crystal Fincher: It is wild, it's a problem. And the premise of it doesn't make sense, and there's arrogance about it too - it's just so weird. And no one has to mount a defense of Lenin at all, period. We certainly don't need to mount a defense of Hitler to underscore that Lenin was harmful. So - What you doing, Seattle Times? [00:08:37] Lex Vaughn: It's not even about, necessarily, a political disagreement. The logic of this guy is completely off. There's a line in the column about Lenin where he literally says - Do you think that statue would still be there if he owned even one Black slave? - you just moved to a state named after George Washington, who died with 317 slaves. [00:08:59] Crystal Fincher: It makes no sense - completely out of touch, does not reflect the population here. Somehow they thought he would not only make a good reporter, but a good member of the Editorial Board. And we just talked about, on a recent Hacks & Wonks, how problematic - aspects to a number of the political endorsements made by The Seattle Times Editorial Board and the logic used. And wow, this helps to explain why it really, really damages the credibility - there is no apologizing for Hitler - that is never necessary, it is never appropriate, and he just found a way to double and triple down. The Seattle Times has been silent about it. Plenty of people have been contacting them, calling them. [00:09:43] Lex Vaughn: Honestly, it's nothing, I think, that Editorial Board isn't used to. It's just they have this narcissistic idea that they're doing something brave. And they're actually just doing something very stupid by having people like him publish on their behalf. [00:10:00] Crystal Fincher: This is certainly a reputational hit. I think lots of people don't see this as merely a difference of opinion, but a minimizing of genocide and some deep-seated need to find redeeming characteristics for Hitler. Someone was talking about - What about this about Lenin? And he's - Well, you know, Hitler fed hungry children and had a program for that - as a comeback. [00:10:25] Lex Vaughn: At this point in time where, unfortunately, Nazi sentiment and racist sentiment is becoming sadly more overt and shameless - unfortunately, there are some conservative readers of The Seattle Times and that Editorial Board that think parallel to what this guy is saying in his tweets. [00:10:46] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, so we will keep an eye on that. Also this week, The Seattle Times reporting side broke news that a tombstone for a man killed by SPD and a Trump flag was on display in an SPD break room. This was caught by officer-worn body camera footage and seen. And it just seems like an absolute mockery of the City and its residents, the reform process that has supposedly been underway - just terribly disrespectful and problematic. How did you see this? [00:11:26] Lex Vaughn: I'm sure a lot of us weren't shocked that's the kind of interior decoration a precinct had, especially because we had six officers who were there at January 6th. A lot of us are already very aware and not shocked that there's some shameless white supremacy and racism within the ranks of the police department. And I think I'm almost frustrated - people acting surprised. Why isn't it being taken more seriously that there needs to be as little tolerance for - the tombstone, itself, is such a especially grim, violent thing - being proud of killing someone that lived here, that's really sick. [00:12:08] Crystal Fincher: And keeping, in essence, a trophy - which unfortunately, is not unusual. We've seen this at other departments across the country. It's very troubling, it's very violent. It's not a healthy culture at all. And just in a larger conversation - one, it was pointed out by many people, you keep talking about the financial stuff, and wow - there's been lots of money thrown at recruitment efforts and salary efforts. And they're very well compensated - just another report came out recently about how many officers are clearing $200k/year. But this is why people are not joining the office - most people don't agree with this - this is disgusting. This is not within the realm of what the public wants from policing. And who wants to join this? This is toxic. This is the kind of culture - if you're celebrating your killing of someone, if you're maintaining a trophy and basically mocking it, that's not the protect and serve impression that people who want to help their community are going after. And so there has to be an addressing of culture here. We can't continue to ignore it. The other thing that is so striking to me - and continues to be - is that it's like we forget what the structure of the City is. This is a department that Bruce Harrell is in charge of. He is the executive who is in charge of this department - the buck stops with him. There's a chief that answers to Bruce Harrell. The chief gave some nonsensical justification here, but Bruce Harrell doesn't appear to have even been asked about this, particularly with his pronouncements on the campaign trail before he took office and early in his term that he was gonna ensure that the culture was appropriate. And at times he made some weird statements in - making them watch a video and sign a statement saying that they agree to something else. Is this the culture of policing that Bruce Harrell is comfortable with? His silence would indicate that, but it would be nice if a member of our press would ask that question. [00:14:20] Lex Vaughn: Mayor Harrell is so good at talking the talk and not walking the walk. We all know he's not gonna really do anything about it, but he's not even talking about it. In too many US cities, including Seattle - no one's gonna say it, but I think a lot of these political leaders are just - Yeah, cops are now a bunch of racists. Well, what are you gonna do about it? That's been something people are asking for. What they're not saying is they don't have the balls to really punish these people, or they don't wanna go through the process of punishing these people - which if we look at the City of Kent, they did fire a guy, right? [00:14:56] Crystal Fincher: We had a literal Nazi cop assistant chief - and I say literal because it came with a Hitler mustache, and SS insignias on his office door in the department, and anti-Semitic jokes, really bad stuff. Initially, the mayor decided to suspend him for two weeks - that became public knowledge and then they asked him to leave - these contracts make it challenging to fire officers. They ended up paying him - I think it was half a million dollars - to retire. And it's a mess. [00:15:31] Lex Vaughn: Even in that case, it's like that's the most accountability we could exercise on people - this is just a really large payout to get them to leave - wow, that's not an incentive. Aren't we supposed to create a lack of incentive for this? So that guy lost his job, but he got a nice severance package. And it's just too much of a pain to deal with the guild or the union behind him to just straight up fire him? [00:15:55] Crystal Fincher: Like with many union positions, there are rules and regulations, there are protections and policies. And with police, there are so many establishing precedents for keeping people in problematic situations that it's now hard to fire someone for things that are justified. The officer who was reinstated for, I believe, punching a woman in the face and breaking her jaw in SPD - who was actually fired by Chief Diaz, but reinstated after arbitration. So these contracts and what is set up by them, and the precedent of letting things slide, only make things worse moving forward. But also, we have a lot of leaders who are afraid of - one, legislation, any legislation at all - and sometimes you do need to push the envelope 'cause sometimes those firings are still sustained. And you should try to sustain them because that's the right thing to do. But they're a very powerful political lobby and they use tactics on the ground to reinforce their political point - we just saw in the Chicago municipal election that the police basically threatened to walk off the job if the candidate that they didn't like was elected. Now the city was - No, we want that candidate and elected him. Of course that was an empty threat, right? And they've tried that before in New York when they did stop policing - crime actually went down, calls actually went down - that's an interesting thing to talk about at length. But yeah, there are a lot of leaders who are afraid of taking them on. And even not taking them on, but just standing for some common sense reform. Even if you weren't saying - We don't want any cops. Just - Hey, we want some standards for ethics and behavior that we wanna stick by - that has not been received well. And they have gone after people, with their sizable war chests, who have tried to live up to their campaign promises to work on fixing the culture. And to have any hope of doing that - for those who think that's a viable option - if this is posted in the precinct, what message do you think that is sending to people who may not be comfortable with keeping trophies for people who are killed? [00:18:11] Lex Vaughn: Even if you are a good cop in that office, you know what you're up against. And it's a popular phrase that all cops are horrible. But even when there are cops that do have integrity, that job is so much harder for them to do with integrity when they have to work with people like that. I'm very frustrated that there really isn't any true accountability for our police departments. And I think a lot of people underplay just how much sociopathy we're enabling with our own taxpayer money. [00:18:43] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And how much we expect from everyone else - we expect minimum wage service workers to do a better job of deescalation than our highly paid police force - and that is backwards. We hold low wage workers to higher standards of behavior and accountability, and it just doesn't make sense. And we need to do better. I hope people ask Bruce Harrell what his plan is to deal with this and make it better. This is his responsibility. Ultimately, the buck stops with him. Also wanna talk this week about a development in an ongoing story about our gubernatorial race that is shaping up - lots of people in there. This story concerns Bob Ferguson and donations that he received. So background, Bob Ferguson is our attorney general - is running for governor now. And had a bunch of donations over years - a couple million dollars in donations - to his attorney general race and campaign fund. Our campaign finance laws say that you are allowed to transfer money from one campaign to another if you get the permission of the donor. So lots of paperwork going on - lots of writing and tracking who said what, there's a big database there. And what actually came about is that the law - which has been in place this whole time, which hasn't changed - says that we have campaign donation limits. Our Public Disclosure Commission initially said - Okay, yeah, you can transfer things over - but didn't address the naming of donors or ensuring that in that transfer that people don't exceed the donation limit. 'Cause he already had people donate, and basically donate the maximum, to his gubernatorial campaign. They may have also, and likely there are people who - some of those same people who donated to his attorney general campaign. [00:20:43] Lex Vaughn: So they might be able to double that. [00:20:44] Crystal Fincher: So if they transfer that money over - yeah, then they essentially can give double the campaign contribution that they're supposed to give - that is against the law, but that wasn't made clear by the Public Disclosure Commission until recently. Now, when the Public Disclosure Commission announced - Oh, we're gonna clarify our interpretation of this law and we're gonna make it clear that people have to stick within the donation limits. And they said - And we'll do this at our next meeting - basically. So the Ferguson campaign said - Uh oh. Literally the next day after they announced it said - Oh, we're transferring this over now. It's technically before the deadline, so we don't have to abide by the disclosure for that meeting. So if you look at Bob Ferguson's campaign finance disclosure right now, there're about almost $1.2 million of this dark money. And when you compare that to the money that all of his opponents have - they don't have anything close, right? - so this is giving him a humongous fundraising lead, which in our current political system really matters and is a definite advantage. But it's likely that there are donations that are beyond the limit. The tricky thing here is the law - the actual law - has not changed, so this has technically been against the law the whole time. The tricky thing is the Public Disclosure Commission gave perhaps an incorrect or incomplete interpretation of this law - it's usually who people go to for guidance. So there's a new complaint, basically asking Bob Ferguson to unmask his hidden donors - the donors that are not reported right now - to ensure that he is in compliance with campaign finance donations, because it doesn't make sense. And also, especially for someone who said that they aren't gonna take corporate gifts, that they aren't doing that - well, we don't know. We don't know what this money is - it is dark money. And Bob Ferguson has previously railed against and sued, for example, Facebook and Meta for lax campaign finance information collection and reporting, right? So this is an issue that he has engaged with before. And they do have all of the information to report. You have to do all of that work in order to get the authorization to transfer the money from the people, so they have the information. It's not like it's this big administrative burden to track this information down - that work was done in order to transfer the money. So the question would be - [00:23:12] Lex Vaughn: Okay, so they flat out wouldn't be able to transfer that money without those donors signing that - [00:23:18] Crystal Fincher: Giving their consent - right - so you basically have to contact the donor. [00:23:22] Lex Vaughn: Why isn't that public record - just those documents? [00:23:26] Crystal Fincher: No requirement for it, currently. I have not seen campaigns violate this honor system. Most campaigns do abide by the letter of the law. And really the Ferguson campaign is arguing - Well, we abided by the interpretation that the PDC gave us. And so at the time of the direction, we did what the direction said and no more - and that it should be legally fine. But certainly the spirit of the law here is a challenge, and they're going through court for the substance of the law. But I do think it's really interesting. And especially from someone coming from the position as the chief attorney of the state, that it seems like it would make sense to do this. It seems like it flies in the face of small-d democracy to do that, but there is an argument there and there was confusing guidance - you can't deny that - that happens sometimes. So the question is - The law hasn't changed this whole time and the law says what it says. So was he in violation of the law? [00:24:27] Lex Vaughn: He's basically - I think I can get away with it, so I'm gonna try. Bob Ferguson has done some great things as AG - I like some of the things he's come out against and taken initiative on fighting, but there's moments where he's very disappointing as well. [00:24:43] Crystal Fincher: To me, what I see from this is - there's just a lot that we still have to learn about everybody's records. We know who Bob Ferguson is in terms of his work as attorney general, certainly he has a lengthy record that we can examine in his time as attorney general. And I'm certainly, as someone on the left side of things - there's a ton that he's done that I've appreciated, that I agree with - lawsuits against the Trump administration and other federal actions that were egregious that he stood up against. And that other Western and Democratic attorney generals and governors have been standing up against. There's a lot more to do and a lot more that he's going to be responsible for as governor - and we don't know what that is yet. Similarly, we don't know what that is with a number of the other candidates. So I think a lot of this, especially the news about his touting the endorsement of former Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best, raised a lot of eyebrows - but that invited a lot of curiosity and questions from people, I think, and really underscored - we need to pay attention here. Though there may be a significant financial advantage, there may be more to the story. But similarly, there's a lot of other candidates and we have to figure out what's going on with them too. I just hope that people thoroughly examine who people's relationships are. And part of that story is who people's donors are. One thing I can say - working in politics for 15 years now - is people's donations do have a stronger correlation than the promises they make on the campaign trail. So pay attention to who those donors are. But that advice, which I've talked about on the show plenty of times before in many different contexts, is more challenging when there's over a million dollars of dark money sitting there in a campaign - that just doesn't sit well with many people, I don't think. And it seems like there's an easy way to remedy that. I also - can it be that much money that's over the limit? It feels like you could still name who these donors are, and as long as they aren't contrary to anything that you've already promised - I'm not gonna take money from these types of interests - maybe a million bucks is over there. But even if it's a couple hundred thousand bucks that's over the limit, you still have a dominant financial lead. So why not do that? is the question I have, but we'll see how this continues to unfold. I also want to talk about news this week that Washington Republicans want to make the long-term care tax optional. Now this long-term care tax comes about - lots of people have heard about it as Washington Cares - amid a long-term care, elder care crisis that we're really having. Looks like the majority of Americans are going to, at some point in time in their life - and a majority of Washingtonians - require long-term care. A lot of that is elder care scenarios, people falling ill for a period of time - people are living longer, and with that often came living with more ailments that required more intense care. But this is something that the majority of Washingtonians are anticipated to need, but that is really expensive and that is causing bankruptcies, it's causing financial hardship for a ton of people. And like many things like retirement and social security, like other insurance, when you know that it is likely you're going to incur an expense and you don't have the money saved up for it, you look at the population and it is going to be a financial crisis for most of the people it encounters, it then becomes in the interest of the state to take action to say - We need to make sure that this really expensive service that people need is going to be available to them. Hence, the Washington Cares program and a tax, I think, that averages about $29 a month for someone making $60,000 - I think that was what I saw reported - we'll link the article in the show notes and the resources, obviously. But it is something that came about because of a need. And if you know people, as I do, who have required long-term care without the money and it has bankrupted them, or they've had to become a ward of the state to get into a nursing home or something like that - it's financially devastating and generationally financially devastating. And as we're talking right now - with as many people going through financial hardship, with inflation of so many other things, there are more people who are vulnerable to this. And so this initially passed, it then essentially repealed and passed in a more compromised version. But like many insurance programs, it requires that lots of people pay in in order to fund the benefits for everyone paying out. So what making this optional will do - and Republicans know this - is basically break the program. [00:29:35] Lex Vaughn: Is this a thing where people get to opt out of certain payroll taxes? That whole concept to me is strange. Are there other optional payroll taxes? [00:29:44] Crystal Fincher: Not really, especially for something like this where it is a state-funded benefit. Like social security, like other things, most legislation isn't just passed and then that's it. Many legislation goes through many tweaks over the years. Our favorite benefits and entitlements have, so there are likely to be other tweaks coming up to this. One that was just made, or that may be upcoming, is allowing benefits to be used if someone moves out of state, for example - so they're continually listening to feedback. But what is not workable - financially and just operationally - is just allowing people to opt out. Also, I think Senator Karen Keiser mentioned that it does not appear that they have the votes for this - it's more of an anti-tax talking point. And if it's Washington Republicans, they're gonna have an anti-tax talking point. [00:30:35] Lex Vaughn: Yeah - you're in deeper in your knowledge of our state politics. What chance does this stand of happening? Are there enough people that would make that happen? What floors me sometimes, especially when it comes to state politics, is both houses are Democrat controlled. I know that Republicans do succeed in some of their missions like this, but part of me is - Why are we even worried about it? Who's gonna betray us? [00:31:02] Crystal Fincher: Just looking at Senator Keiser's quote - this doesn't appear to have the votes. And now I will say that it did get repealed and basically redone because there were Democrats that had concerns - that they heard from enough people that they felt had concerns about it, that they did basically take another shot at it - and edited it to make it better and respond to some of the concerns that they had. Because what I don't wanna minimize, it's not $30 a month - this is something that is really, especially amid other inflation that we've experienced - although inflation is now slowing, post-Inflation Reduction Act actually, but it still happened. People still are under tight budgets. And so $30 a month can be felt by people. The balance is really what benefit are you getting from that $30 a month? And the evaluation here is that eliminating the chance for financial catastrophe and a loss of life savings, basically, later in life - or even just if you need some long-term care there is worth the benefit. That there are so many people suffering from that right now - that this would alleviate more harm than it creates, is really what the evaluation is. And frankly, that evaluation is the case for a lot of legislation and taxes or revenue that's gonna be raised. So I don't think this has a chance unless there were more Democrats that were going to be concerned, but I think that most concerns were addressed with this latest iteration. And I do think that it's positive. People do require long-term care - how many people do you know that have been sick for extended periods of time, or that whether it's COVID or cancer - I think it's necessary, I support it, I think that it would be bad to repeal. But Washington Republicans are banking on something else - they try to run against this in prior elections and were not successful - I would anticipate the same thing happening. So I think Republicans are trying to spin up some fear from voters, and I'm sure they'll have some receptive ears from more conservative or traditionally anti-tax voters. [00:33:12] Lex Vaughn: What we have seen, in a positive shift in the last few years in general, is nationwide Republicans had to give up on campaigning against Obamacare because enough time has passed that people of all political backgrounds have benefited from it. Maybe the Republicans who offered this up need to understand that more people are in favor of better healthcare coverage. And it's becoming a little more accepted that the whole community needs to step up and better fund a bunch of things like this. [00:33:45] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. One of the things that's making everything hard to afford these days is the cost of housing, the very high cost of housing locally. There's been talk from a number of people about the ban on rent control in our state and lifting of the ban. Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant has sponsored a rent control trigger law that basically, for Seattle, would enact some rent control measures if and when our legislature decides to end rent control. Councilmember Sawant wrote to members of our legislative delegation, including Representative Gerry Pollet and Senator Jamie Pedersen, asking for their support of this law. Got back some responses that were a little snarky, basically said - Now we ain't heard from you in all this time, and now you're calling up asking us to support this. [00:34:39] Lex Vaughn: At the last minute - this is her trying to cram it in at the last minute. [00:34:42] Crystal Fincher: Yes - Gerry Pollet saying - I sponsored legislation to do this - now that legislation didn't make it out of committee or have a hearing. Jamie Pedersen essentially chastised Councilmember Sawant for not working with them in other things that they passed. Councilmember Sawant responded by saying - Now, I don't know where you've been, but I have over several years been advocating for this, have passed resolutions in support of this, have previously indicated my support for a legislative solution to this. So I'm on record, have communicated before that I am supportive of efforts in the Legislature. And the reason why you didn't see me in the Legislature supporting your bill that you introduced, Gerry Pollet, is because you didn't even get it far enough to have a hearing. So there was no opportunity to weigh in - it didn't go anywhere. But you also failed to answer the question - Do you support this effort in Seattle? [00:35:41] Lex Vaughn: Such a weird deflection. [00:35:42] Crystal Fincher: Yes, so there is some acrimony between the sides there. I think Nicole Macri also weighed in and said - There does appear to be acrimony and I need to look more specifically at it. Clearly, we can look at this last legislative session and there were not enough votes, unfortunately, to advance renter protection rent control measures. We absolutely have to mitigate against rent increases, the high cost of moving and living. [00:36:14] Lex Vaughn: And I mean - can we get real? The average Democrat was not really actively recruiting people like Kshama Sawant. Give me a break. [00:36:23] Crystal Fincher: Yes, and Kshama Sawant is notoriously not a Democrat and very critical of Democrats for inaction on things like this. And she took the opportunity to be critical of Democrats in her communications here. Now, do I think that a rent control renter protection should pass? Absolutely. Do I think the ban should be lifted at the legislative level so that cities can choose to do what they feel is best? Yes. But it's going to be interesting to see how this proceeds. I would hate to see an effort that may have a chance get torpedoed because of personality conflicts. [00:36:59] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, when we're talking about - yeah, something as critical as housing for people - get past all of this personality BS. Especially when you're all on the kind of left end of a political spectrum - focus on where you have common ground and get something done. I don't know who enjoys seeing unproductive arguments like this. To me, it highlights just how cowardly most Democrats are in Washington state when it comes to topics like rent control. And that it's still such a touchy topic here - because not to pull the California card, I'm from California - and there's a lot of really great rent control laws in California that I grew up with and had in the first cities that I lived in as an adult. And they were so prevalent that I thought everyone had rent control and I didn't get it until I left. And I can't believe that in 2023, you still got Democrats here in Washington state going - Oh, I don't know, I'll be called a socialist if I support this, I don't know. Ugh, Jesus - it's just pathetic that really the only person who's really forcefully, I think, promoted rent control is Kshama Sawant. And Democrats should be ashamed that - yeah, a socialist has led that, not Democrats. [00:38:15] Crystal Fincher: Certainly at the local level. Yes, I think there are others who have indicated support of this over the years - and there are some more progressive Democrats who have been supportive and some legislation that was introduced to do this, but certainly the majority of the delegation does not agree or else this would be law right now. Also, housing costs are a big topic for everyone across the state. The City of Tacoma just decided to put dueling rental protection initiatives on the ballot for November. I don't know if you've been following this, but there is an effort in Tacoma to pass some pretty comprehensive renter protections - allowing notice for people who are moving, capping late fees at 10%, providing rental assistance if - tiered rental assistance based on the amount of increase if someone can't afford it for moving into another location - extended notice. Now they've been pushing for this, they have had a lot of momentum behind this. However, there are a lot of landlords and interests who have been lobbying against this and basically lobbying the City to pass a watered down version of this. And what the City decided to do was not only put the more comprehensive version on the ballot, but also put the watered down version on the ballot - which would cap late fees, not to the degree that the other more comprehensive initiative would, it would provide for more time to notice, but doesn't have some of the really helpful provisions that some of the other legislation has there. And what a number of people are saying is by putting both on the ballot, you're really doing both to defeat instead of giving people a clear choice between - do you want to do this or not? It's much harder and it's a much more confusing set of issues to get your arms around and choose between them. And so this is not a move that a lot of people received with excitement and definitely feel that this hurts the prospect of anything passing. And then there are some who say - Well, people deserve a choice. How did you see this? [00:40:25] Lex Vaughn: That's probably the desired effect of the people who volunteered the watered down option - is just to make it seem too confusing and get people to not do their research and go - I don't know - throw up their hands. 'Cause I think the more voters feel like they have to heavily research things, the more they feel - Oh, I don't know if I should even vote. Just your average humble person is - Oh, I don't know. I didn't do my research. I don't - it's probably not a big deal if I don't vote at all, 'Cause I don't know what this is. I'm not gonna research the difference between these two things. What was the ballot item in Seattle? I forget. I forget - it was like - [00:41:06] Crystal Fincher: It was approval voting versus ranked choice voting. [00:41:08] Lex Vaughn: Yes, that's the one - that's the one - that was so confusing. Even as somebody who thinks of themselves as pretty politically informed, at least more than the average person, I had to really spend an afternoon going - What? I had to do some homework to know what I was voting on there. [00:41:28] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. [00:41:29] Lex Vaughn: I guess this is a tactic, right? Where it's like - you're euphemistically giving people more options, but really you're just confusing people so much that they don't even wanna vote at all. [00:41:44] Crystal Fincher: Confusion is usually not helpful for initiatives. Usually if there is voter confusion, they don't vote, they vote No on everything - that happens more than not. It's not like it can't be overcome, as we did see with ranked choice voting. [00:41:59] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, people did get interested. [00:42:00] Crystal Fincher: But it usually takes more money, more communication to do so - so the job did just get harder. And in our last piece of news today, we have a new entrant into the race for attorney general to replace Bob Ferguson. Former US Attorney Nick Brown has announced that he is running. What is your read of this? [00:42:23] Lex Vaughn: He follows The Needling, so he must be a good option, right? [00:42:29] Crystal Fincher: I do have a better opinion of people who follow The Needling than those who don't. [00:42:34] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, he's getting the real fake news. [00:42:36] Crystal Fincher: State Senator Manka Dhingra has announced that she also intends to run. I made a comment in another publication that we do have a record to examine with Manka Dhingra - whether you agree or disagree with it, there is a record there to examine and that is a helpful thing. Nick Brown is largely an unknown for a lot of people - certainly has a record as a US Attorney, has been visible and active within Seattle - I've seen him in press conferences with Mayor Bruce Harrell talking about, and he's talked about - Hey, we can't arrest ourselves out of these crises, that type of thing. Now the policy, the politicians he was beside - effectively were trying to and continue to try and arrest themselves out of some things - but that wasn't his decision. [00:43:26] Lex Vaughn: There's only so much he can do in that decision. [00:43:27] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, so I'm eager to hear - and if you look at what he said when he announced, I'm certainly curious to learn more. He does seem to have a distinguished resume and although he hasn't been in politics and doesn't have a record there, that doesn't mean that you're not qualified and capable to run for office and have gained valuable experience in what you've done. So I just think there's a lot to be explored and I think it is healthy to have several options here. [00:43:57] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, I'm glad to see him join. [00:43:57] Crystal Fincher: Here we have two Democratic options. Because I do think that we should have a robust debate about what that role is, what it entails, and what our approach is going to be. So really just - I'm curious and will definitely be staying tuned. [00:44:13] Lex Vaughn: Yeah, I think early on in some of these contests, it's - when you haven't done the complete deep dive on every candidate yet, you're kind of - Oh, it's good to have some options here. And I know that I personally need to do more research on both of them before I make a call on who I support. But yeah, it's good to have options. And I do think that - I don't know what will happen, but I honestly think that office, AG, is almost as important as the governor's office to me. 'Cause it's like they're really - they're interpreting the law and really holding people accountable, which is, I think, a huge deal. It's one thing to come up with laws and sign things, but it doesn't matter if no one's holding people accountable. I like that Bob Ferguson did go after some people pretty strong and I liked seeing it. And I hope that the next AG has that same fire 'cause we'll need it. [00:45:11] Crystal Fincher: I agree. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, July 14th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks, and really the wind beneath my wings, is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today is Founder and Editor of The Needling, Lex Vaughn. And if you are not following and into The Needling - woe to you, fix it, make it right. You can find Lex at @AlexaVaughn, that's V-A-U-G-H-N. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter at @HacksWonks. You can find me on all platforms, any and all platforms basically, at @finchfrii, that's F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, please leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - and we'll talk to you next time.

Introducing Those Who Can't Teach Anymore

This Changes Everything

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 12, 2023 44:03

This Changes Everything Season 3 was all about public education. So we wanted to share an episode from another podcast that you might be interested in. This spring, This Changes Everything won a first place award in Audio Storytelling from the Best of the West journalism contest — specifically for the second episode of Season 3, The Kids Are Not All Right, which was about the mental health crisis facing young people today, its relationship to the pandemic and the effect that all this is having on teachers, too. Because of that award, a high school teacher from Wyoming named Charles Fournier asked us to do an episode swap with his podcast, Those Who Can't Teach Anymore. His podcast also won a first place award: a Top of the Rockies award from the Society of Professional Journalists. It explores why teachers are leaving education right now and what can be done to stop the exodus. We wanted to share the first episode of that podcast right here. It's called “Fight, Flight, or Apathy.” It chronicles this mass exodus of teachers, one of whom includes Charles' wife, Jennie. Jennie and two other teachers who recently left the profession talk about why they left, offering some key insight into what's going on — and going wrong — for teachers in public schools right now. And if you want to hear more podcasts from the Crosscut newsroom, check out Crosscut Reports, which comes out a lot more frequently, and showcases reporting from our colleagues here. Topics range from efforts to change the culture inside Washington's prisons to how reproductive health care has changed in Washington after the fall of Roe v. Wade. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Solving the World's Plastics Problem

china washington seattle pbs plastic plastics seattle times washingtonians crosscut liz berry

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 12, 2023 44:04

Following the failure of the Washington Recycling and Packaging Act, experts and a key lawmaker discuss next steps. Plastic is everywhere. It's in our refrigerators, in our oceans and even in our bloodstreams. And wherever there are plastics, there are questions over what to do with them. In Washington state, as in most other places, the answer has been to recycle them whenever possible. In 2011, Washingtonians recycled 56 percent of recyclable materials, but since then there's been a decline. Now the state recycles about 49 percent. For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we listen in on a conversation from the Crosscut Ideas Festival about plastics and the challenges to recycling. Seattle Times environment and climate editor Ben Woodard leads the conversations with Washington state representative Liz Berry, Ocean Nexus Center director and anthropologist Dr. Yoshitaka Ota and Zero Waste Washington executive director Heather Trim. The panel discusses why those numbers have dropped, as well as China's role in recycling, the equity issues surrounding the practice and legislative efforts to hold producers of goods accountable by having them pay for recycling services. This conversation was recorded May 6, 2023. --- Credits Host: Paris Jackson Producer: Seth Halleran Event producers: Jake Newman, Anne O'Dowd Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph --- If you would like to support Crosscut, go to crosscut.com/membership. In addition to supporting our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Seattle's PBS station, KCTS 9.

Climate Crisis Solutions with Jamie Stroble and Dr. Heidi Roop

americans seattle pbs climate crisis roop crosscut

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 11, 2023 51:11

The climate leaders share why individual responsibility and corporate accountability aren't mutually exclusive — and how daily habits can aid the planet. The impacts of climate change are everywhere, often making headlines. Yet most Americans don't know what climate change really is, or don't think it will harm them ... until it does. For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we are listening in on a conversation about the challenges in communicating about climate change impacts and finding solutions with climate scientists Heidi Roop and environmental strategist Jamie Stroble. During the Crosscut Ideas Festival in Seattle, the two climate leaders discussed tangible solutions we can all participate in, and how climate scientists must recognize that facts and figures don't change minds, but human connection can. Roop and Stroble also discuss the longstanding inequities and structural barriers that result in disproportionate impact on marginalized communities, and how young people's activism provides some hope for the future. This conversation was recorded May 6, 2023. --- Credits Host: Paris Jackson Producer: Seth Halleran Event producers: Jake Newman, Anne O'Dowd Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph --- If you would like to support Crosscut, go to crosscut.com/membership. In addition to supporting our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Seattle's PBS station, KCTS 9.

The Powers and Possible Perils of Gene Editing

university new york times seattle hiv powers pbs nobel nobel prize perils crispr gene editing california berkeley jennifer doudna carl zimmer crosscut doudna kcts

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 6, 2023 31:00

Nobel Prize-winning scientist Jennifer Doudna discusses how the technology she helped advance is treating diseases and raising ethical dilemmas. Gene editing is a game-changer for humanity. From health on individuals to the fate of the planet, the possible impacts of the technology are something previously found only in science fiction. But as with all scientific advancements that supercharge human capabilities and power, the technology comes with ethical questions. These possibilities and questions are at the core of this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast. We're listening in on a conversation between Nobel laureate and University of California Berkeley chemistry professor Jennifer Doudna and New York Times columnist and science writer Carl Zimmer as they discuss one of these technologies, CRISPR. Doudna, who won the Nobel for her work with gene editing technology, explains the fundamental science behind CRISPR, how it's now being used by scientists to treat a wide range of diseases from HIV to sickle cell anemia, and where it might go from here. This conversation was recorded May 3, 2023. --- Credits Host: Paris Jackson Producer: Seth Halleran Event producers: Jake Newman, Anne O'Dowd Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph --- If you would like to support Crosscut, go to crosscut.com/membership. In addition to supporting our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Seattle's PBS station, KCTS 9.

Which Metaverse Will Win?

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 4, 2023 48:14

Two experts in immersive technologies may disagree on what the metaverse will look like, but they do agree that it is going to change society. The metaverse may very well be the future. Before we get there, though, it is probably necessary to establish what exactly the metaverse is. That, it turns out, isn't so easy. For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we listen in on a conversation between Carnegie Mellon University professor Jesse Schell and Wedbush Securities managing director Michael Pachter, who discuss recent developments in metaverse technologies and how the public views these developments. In this conversation with journalist and author Steven L. Kent during the Crosscut Ideas Festival in Seattle, the two also spar over what exactly the metaverse will be, and share how much further they believe the industry needs to evolve to truly see the metaverse reach its full potential. What they agree on is that the metaverse will be able to bring us closer together, but also risks pulling us further apart. This conversation was recorded May 2, 2023. --- Credits Host: Paris Jackson Producer: Seth Halleran Event producers: Jake Newman, Anne O'Dowd Engineers: Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph --- If you would like to support Crosscut, go to crosscut.com/membership. In addition to supporting our events and our daily journalism, members receive complete access to the on-demand programming of Seattle's PBS station, KCTS 9.

seattle pbs metaverse carnegie mellon university crosscut wedbush securities michael pachter jesse schell kcts steven l kent

Week in Review: June 16, 2023 - with Katie Wilson

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 16, 2023 45:24

On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by general secretary of the Seattle Transit Riders Union, Katie Wilson! They cover a lot of ground today, discussing Bob Ferguson's unnamed donors, the Burien Planning Commission resigning in protest over “scapegoating” and “lack of action and missteps” by the city council majority and city manager, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell's “War on Health,” reflections following the Seattle City Council mobility-focused forums, the Seattle City Council approving an affordable housing levy for the November ballot, Trans Pride barring Seattle Public Library, King County Council considers mandating that stores accept cash in addition to card or electronic payments, and a Saving Journalism, Saving Our Democracy event on Wednesday, June 21st, at Town Hall Seattle. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii, find today's co-host, Katie Wilson, at @WilsonKatieB, and find the Seattle Transit Riders Union at @SeattleTRU. Resources “Better Behavioral Health Crisis Response with Brook Buettner and Kenmore Mayor Nigel Herbig” from Hacks & Wonks “Before rule change, AG Bob Ferguson moves $1.2M ‘surplus' to campaign” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times “Early WA governor's race skirmish? Campaign finance loophole scrutinized” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times “Public Hearing to review – and possibly take action against – Charles Schaefer and Cydney Moore will be Thursday, June 15” by Scott Schaefer from The B-Town Blog “King County's letter to City of Burien offers $1 million and 35 pallet shelters for homelessness crisis” by Scott Schaefer from The B-Town Blog “Emotion-packed special Burien City Council meeting results in removal of Charles Schaefer as Planning Commission Chair” by Mellow DeTray from The B-Town Blog “UPDATE: Total of 9 commissioners, advisory board resign en masse in protest of Charles Schaefer's removal” by Scott Schaefer from The B-Town Blog “Seattle to Launch "War on Health"” by Amy Sundberg from Notes from the Emerald City “Harrell's approach to fentanyl crisis: Heavy on spectacle, light on substance” by Marcus Harrison Green for The Seattle Times “Community Court Is Dead. What Comes Next?” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola “Harrell Vows to Pass New Drug Law, Creates Work Group to Find Solutions to the Fentanyl Crisis” by Andrew Engelson from PubliCola “Mayor Harrell Promises a ‘War on Health,' Not a ‘War on Drugs'” by Ashley Nerbovig from The Stranger “Midweek Video: Seattle Council Candidate District 3 Mobility Forum” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist “Seattle City Council District 5 Mobility Forum Video” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist “City Council sends $970M Housing Levy to Seattle voters” by Josh Cohen from Crosscut “WA renters need to earn twice the minimum wage to afford rent” by Heidi Groover from The Seattle Times “Seattle Public Library Kicked Out of Trans Pride After Hosting Anti-LGBTQ+ Activist Kirk Cameron” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola “Data shows Seattle area is becoming increasingly cashless” by Gene Balk from The Seattle Times Saving Journalism, Saving Our Democracy – Town Hall Seattle Find stories that Crystal is reading here Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and our Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. If you missed our Tuesday topical show, I learned about North King County's innovative new Regional Crisis Response Agency with its inaugural Executive Director Brook Buettner and Kenmore Mayor Nigel Herbig. Following national guidelines and best practices for behavioral health crisis care, a five-city consortium established the RCR program in 2023 as part of a vision to provide their region with the recommended continuum of behavioral health care - which includes someone to call, someone to respond, and somewhere to go. Today, we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: co-founder and general secretary of the Seattle Transit Riders Union, Katie Wilson. [00:01:35] Katie Wilson: Thank you, Crystal - great to be here. [00:01:37] Crystal Fincher: Great to have you here again, and just - I am such an admirer of the work that you and TRU do. Just wanted to start talking about - an updated public disclosure report cycle just happened, we're in the midst of a gubernatorial race that has started early. But there was a notable addition to these reports, or occurrence in these reports, and that was the reporting by Bob Ferguson of his surplus transfer. How did you see this? [00:02:10] Katie Wilson: Yeah so basically, Ferguson transferred - I believe it was - $1.2 million from surplus funds from previous campaigns to his current gubernatorial campaign. And it appears as just a big lump sum, so it's not clear who donated this money - what individuals or interests. And because of the timing of the new PDC interpretation of the law, this appears to be technically okay, but it does mean that it's very possible that you have people who contributed to that $1.2 million who are also contributing to his current campaign and therefore going over individual campaign contributions. So you could look at it as a big infusion of kind of dark money into this race if you wanted to. It appears to be technically legal but definitely of, I suppose, questionable ethics in a larger sense. [00:03:05] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and it was really notable. I'd read the reporting looking at it, but when you're looking at a PDC report and you see basically more money undeclared, unassigned to - literally listed under miscellaneous there in the report - it does make you wonder who those people are. Especially since if you work in politics or affiliated with it, you know that it's because of an action by the attorney general - which lots of people agree with - that we can't currently advertise on Twitter or Facebook because they lacked the appropriate reporting requirements. Because that's so important - to see who is giving what - we have stronger disclosure requirements than some other areas. Certainly it's something we take seriously. And so it is interesting to see from the attorney general who did that, just a lot of dark money. This could be an interim reporting thing maybe, he could still report who those donations belong to. As you said, it could run afoul of some of the campaign contribution limits if there are people who gave both to that campaign that he's transferring from and to his current gubernatorial campaign, but it's really a conundrum. Our Public Disclosure Commission recently clarified that you can't make transfers above any campaign contribution limits, but the official notification or the official clarification didn't happen until after this transfer - although they did let everyone know that they were going to be making that rule change. And it was after that notification that this transfer was made. So no, it was probably dicey, a bit questionable - especially because of that, I would expect to see the donors disclosed. I hope to see the donors disclosed - I think it's an important thing that is unambiguously the spirit of the law, if not the letter. So we'll see how this continues. Are there any other notable races that you're paying attention to, notable reports that you saw? [00:05:09] Katie Wilson: Not so much on the PDC side - I think I didn't comb through it as closely as you did. But one more note on the Ferguson thing - I was just thinking, it just brought to mind - I think the reason, part of the reason why it's notable is just the size of the transfer of money, right? $1.2 million is actually quite a campaign fund. But also just, of course, that it is Bob Ferguson - many of us associate him with principles and things like that. [00:05:36] Crystal Fincher: In law and order. [00:05:37] Katie Wilson: Right - in law and order. And so it just makes me think about just the difference between the things that we say that we believe and then how we behave in our own lives. And you think of something like a new tax going into effect - and a wealthy person who supports a tax that is going to require them to pay more money, but then they shuffle things around before it goes into effect to avoid it affecting them as much. Human nature perhaps, but I think we can expect better of our elected leaders. [00:06:10] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Speaking of expecting better from our elected leaders, I wanted to talk about what's happening in the City of Burien. We certainly have talked about this before, after King County Executive Constantine sent a letter that was - I don't know that it was unprecedented, but certainly not something that we see often. After Burien had twice enacted sweeps of homeless encampments - which as we know are advised against by public health authorities, don't have evidence showing that they are effective, usually people just end up moving to another place - that doesn't solve homelessness, it is actually destabilizing. And providing services and housing is what has had a track record of success that's much better than sweeps. But they kept doing it. And then they - and when I say they, I'm talking about a majority of four people on the Burien City Council – in 4-3 votes on the council, voted to move forward with that. And then because they were called out about a law that says if you're gonna sweep, you need to have shelter available - it makes no sense and is unconstitutional to say that someone can't be in a public space without somewhere else for them to go. When that happened, they said - Okay well, we'll try and just do an end run around the law, and we'll lease it to this dog park group - which is a front for people who are just going to use their lease and occupation of that land as a private entity to then trespass people off of that land, so a sweep by proxy. Which Dow Constantine, the King County Executive, saw and said - I can't have our sheriff's deputies participate in this - and those sheriff's deputies are the ones who are actually providing police services to the City of Burien - saying that this is unconstitutional, we can't be a part of it. But at the same time, offering help to get through the problem, offering $1 million, offering several pallet shelters - I think it's 100 pallet shelters - for people and space in order to put that. Which most cities, I think, would be jumping up and down, celebrating, saying - We need all the help we can get. [00:08:18] Katie Wilson: You would hope, but most cities - you think most cities in King County would be jumping up and down to start a sanctioned encampment in their city? [00:08:31] Crystal Fincher: I think many would. I think more would than you think. Now, that caveat comes with they may sweep in addition to that, I don't know that they would stop the sweeps. But I do think that most would take that money and identify places in the same way that they've identified places in these contentious meetings for shelters and different locations and the conversations that we have with that. Not that it wouldn't have any friction, but most cities have taken advantage of funds in this area. It is definitely more unusual to say - No thanks - to a million bucks, especially when the problem is chronic. They have swept three times now and the people just moved to another location - 'cause surprise, they have no other home to go to. And if there is no shelter, then what? So shelter has to be part of this. And hopefully we proceed beyond shelter and really talk about housing and helping transition people into that. So this is just a conundrum. But the escalation came when the City Council tried to censure a member of the Planning Commission and a City Councilmember who were actually trying to do the work of finding housing for people - accusing them of interfering. And it just seemed like a really ugly thing - that they felt like they were being called out, showed in their reaction to King County Executive Dow Constantine's letter. Just seems like taking offense to even being questioned about this tactic - again, that is against best practices - and feels like retribution, and really unconstitutional retribution. What's your view on this? [00:10:09] Katie Wilson: Yeah, this has been a really contentious public issue in Burien for a little while now. And I think that the bigger issue that we're dealing with here is the spread of the homelessness crisis. Of course, the homelessness crisis has been regional - not just in Seattle - for a long time, but I think that there's been an intensification over the last few years and especially coming out of the pandemic as rent increases, not just in Seattle, but in some cases even more so in other cities around the county have just shot up, right? So you've had double digit percentage rent increases in many, many cities around the county, including Burien. And so I think that that has led to, been a big factor in increasing numbers of unsheltered homeless people in Burien and other cities outside of Seattle, so that it's becoming a more visible and urgent public problem for them. And I think that there's a lot of kind of wishful thinking on the part of both some elected officials and a lot of people in Burien that this isn't really a Burien problem, right? Like maybe these people could just go to Seattle or something, right? So I think that there's a - and we saw this play out too in the fight in Burien about permanent supportive housing recently, right? So there's a reluctance to invest in things like shelter and services in the city, and a desire that the problem just goes away or goes somewhere else. So that's, I think, the bigger picture. And the specific grounds on which the councilmember, Cydney Moore, and the Commissioner Charles - and I'm forgetting his last name now - that this meeting was held, hearing was held last night to potentially remove Charles from the commission and to censure Cydney on the council was that they had - when these sweeps were happening - they had allegedly talked to campers and helped them to find somewhere else to camp. And so I think the idea was that it was improper for these public officials to basically tell people - Here. You can camp here. - when it's technically illegal. And so this hearing took place last night and the outcome was that the - Charles was actually removed from the commission, something that the council had the power to do. And they did that by a 4-3 vote. And in the end, Cydney Moore was not censured. There was a proposal to postpone discussion indefinitely that passed, so that didn't happen. The council does not have the power to remove a fellow councilmember - that can only happen through an election. If they had had the power to remove her, would four of the councilmembers have voted to do so? We'll never know. But they decided not to censure her, knowing that she's going to still be on the council, at least through the elections. [00:13:06] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and at least in elections - there are active elections going on here. We have two people who have been strong proponents of these sweeps, who have spoken against King County Executive Dow Constantine - two of them are running for election. One running for a King County Council seat - Sofia Aragon, running against Teresa Mosqueda. Another running for Burien City Council seat - Kevin Schilling, with two opponents there. And it was really interesting this week - there were endorsement meetings held in a variety of LDs - Burien is in both the 33rd and the 34th Legislative District. So hearing local Democratic organizations talk about this - and it is just confounding - 'cause there's such a misalignment between what you hear coming from the legislative districts and the Democratic base in these areas in the city, and some of the elected officials. So there seemed to be a strong repudiation - certainly a decline to endorse Kevin Schilling again, same with Sofia Aragon. And so it just seems like there are signals coming from people that this is not the right solution. And even if people don't know what to do about the problem and are - I see this as a problem, I'm not sure what to do. It feels like everybody is going - But why would you pass up some help and maybe a path forward? Why would you pass up a million dollars? And talking about passing up - that this offer was made earlier this month, late last month - and they haven't even taken it up, considered it. We still have people living outside. And they had this special meeting to consider kicking this planning commissioner off of the Planning Commission, censuring this councilmember - yet, they're still not even taking time to discuss this offer. Focusing on solutions, getting to work - no matter what your viewpoint is or what you're working on - seems like that would be what would satisfy most people, at least make some progress moving forward on whatever it is that they're going to decide to do. But it seems like they're doing nothing and refusing any offers of help, both financially and otherwise. So many times it's the - Well, how are you gonna pay for it? Someone else is willing to pay for it. The hardest part of this is already taken care of. So I hope that they do take action to move soon. We have seen already some repercussions from this council action and seeing several people from some Burien commissions have resigned - one from an Airport Commission. In fact, not only an airport commissioner, but several members of the Planning Commission are resigning from their seats. And a statement that is released - was just released here while we're recording - the statement says, "We, the undersigned, are resigning from the Burien Planning Commission effective immediately. We've lost confidence in our city council's ability to lead. Over the past several months, it has become clear to us that there is a majority on the council, specifically, Mayor Aragon, Deputy Mayor Schilling, and Councilmembers Matta and Mora, who are unwilling to discuss issues of affordable housing, homelessness, and poverty in Burien. Instead, they have spent valuable time and resources seeking someone to blame for their lack of action and the missteps of the new city manager. Planning Commission Chair Charles Schaefer fulfilled their need for a scapegoat, and they removed him from his position last night while still refusing to take action to address the homelessness crisis that impacts Burien as much as any other city in our region, state, or county, or country. In addition to being unproductive, this action raises significant concerns for us all about our own constitutional rights as individuals serving our city." So we will continue to pay attention to what is happening here, and see what happens. Also want to cover this week - Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell - I don't know if he meant to say this or what, but announced his "War on Health" this week. What happened here? [00:17:17] Katie Wilson: Okay, what a situation. So I think - I guess the idea is that - we all hate the War on Drugs, so we're gonna go for a War on Health instead. Yeah, bad marketing. So the background of course is the City Council vote recently on basically copying the new state drug law into Seattle's code so that the City Attorney Office can prosecute drug possession and public use in Seattle. And that vote ended up failing due to a last minute switch by Councilmember Lewis. And Lewis subsequently said that he would vote for it, but only if there was a process to stand up some new alternative to replace the community courts that City Attorney Ann Davison had unceremoniously dissolved. And so this announcement by Bruce Harrell was of a task force - I'm now forgetting the name of the task force, Crystal, maybe you can help me out - and so the idea is that this very diverse task force, people coming from many different perspectives are gonna come together and they're gonna figure out the solution. We're gonna have more diversion programs, we're gonna have ways for people to avoid just spending a long time in jail for drug possession or public use. And then Seattle is going to pass this law at least partially recriminalizing drugs. And then, everything's gonna be great. So that's the Harrell version of what happened. [00:19:03] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and it's interesting. And it was the Fentanyl Systems Work Group - a subset of the Fentanyl Systems Work Group that was originally put together as part of an effort to revitalize downtown - so now there's a shift, in a subgroup made of that. It was noted that - he said that we need to take a public health approach. There are no public health representatives on this large and broad task force, but it just - if you know me, we've probably had this conversation, but - at some point in time, we have to stop trying to task force our way around problems. We've known of this crisis for quite some time. We've had staff dedicated to figuring out what to do with this crisis. This is a big problem. I don't think that the issue is that people don't know what the problem is, or what the options are on the table - we've been discussing this as a community for quite some time. It really is just - what are you going to do about it? And of course, no one is going to be - everyone is not going to be happy with whatever decision is made, but there needs to be action taken. Hopefully that action is aligned with best practices and what we have seen work elsewhere. But it seems like this is a half-baked response and kind of a flat-footed response to the council declining to do what they were doing there. But even if they would have passed that - that doesn't take care of the crisis. We're talking about criminalization here. We're not talking about the things that actually get people out of addiction, that gets fentanyl off of our streets, that does address public use - which is a problem and needs to be taken care of. I think a lot of people's frustration is just - why do we keep spending time and money either doing nothing, or doing things that have already failed? It would be great if we could spend time and money on things that have a shot at working and have shown that they have worked elsewhere. [00:20:59] Katie Wilson: Yeah, totally. And a couple of things that jumped out at me, reading some of the coverage of this - I thought Marcus Harrison Green had a good op-ed in the Seattle Times about it. And one of the things that he pointed out is that many people start using after they become homeless, right? And so in that context, throwing someone in jail - which is incredibly expensive, even if you do it compassionately, as Harrell has promised compassionate arrests or whatever - and then eventually they're back out on the street where they're more likely to overdose is a really bad idea. And I think that Erica Barnett, in a lot of her coverage of this and related ideas, points out repeatedly that the idea that jail is gonna be just this nice kind of sobering up period, and then you're gonna come out and be much more likely to get treatment and services is really wishful thinking. And in one of the pieces on PubliCola about this, Lisa Daugaard points out that the really critical issue is actually finding funds for recovery services for people with substance use disorder, especially people who are homeless. And that's really, I think, the elephant in the room in terms of what we're not talking about when we're creating this task force to come up with policies and everything. It's just not being willing to reckon with the scale of the resources that are gonna be needed to actually provide the housing and give people the services that they need. And this is something that I think - not to say that that's not gonna be talked about, I'm sure it will be talked about - and it will be talked about in the fall budget process this fall. And that just really makes me nervous - because as someone who's on the City Revenue Stabilization Work Group that's thinking about how the City should deal with an impending general fund shortfall, there's not gonna be a lot of money sloshing around that is just waiting to be allocated to things like this. So I think there's gonna be some really challenging conversations coming up about how we fund these extremely underfunded needs. [00:22:59] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I also wanna talk this week about a number of candidate forums that were held in the City of Seattle from organizations focused on mobility and disability throughout the community - a large coalition of those. And so there were council forums held in several districts. I moderated one of them, another one ended up being canceled - it was a District 4 forum - in honor of the strike at the University of Washington. Any takeaways that you had from these forums with Seattle City Council candidates? [00:23:35] Katie Wilson: Yeah, and by the way, side note - congratulations to UAW 4121 - I believe they've settled their strike as of yesterday. So that's awesome. But yes, so there was going to be a District 4 candidate forum and that's been - hopefully will still happen at some point, but was canceled in solidarity with the strike. But over the last couple of weeks, a large coalition of organizations - including the Transit Riders Union and other groups that work on transportation, climate, and disability issues - hosted forums in the three other open seats, so District 1, District 3 and District 5. And you can watch all of them - so they were recorded, I think The Urbanist might've run articles with links, they're on YouTube. And full disclosure - I did not attend all three forums, I have listened to a lot of it - but my overall impressions were hopeful, but also cynical. So I think a lot of the candidates in all of these races gave a lot of really good answers, made commitments, said that they support much greater investments in multimodal infrastructure. They understand that over 60%, or 66%, of Seattle's carbon emissions come from transportation. They need to really do mode shift - give people realistic options that aren't driving. They support one of our, TRU's issues - trying to get Seattle to pass legislation to require large employers to pay for transit passes for their workers - something that we were working on before the pandemic and was interrupted, but we would love to see happen at some point soon. So lots of good answers. I think the challenge that I see is that when I think about, for example, our current City Council and the kind of answers that they would give to those same questions at a candidate forum, I think a majority, probably a super majority would also give great answers to those questions. And one of the things that we've experienced over the years working with allies to try to get Seattle to do better on these transportation issues is just how short the good intentions and commitments fall in practice often. So for example, it's one thing to say that you support building sidewalks in all the places in cities that don't have them. How are you gonna come up with the astronomical funds that are required to do that? It's one thing to say that you support a connected network of bus lanes and bike lanes throughout the city. How are you gonna behave when there's big political conflicts because you're trying to take space away from cars? And another thing that we've experienced is that even when we have a council that is pretty good on these issues - if we don't have an executive who's right there with them and going to cooperate on implementation, the council can even pass things, like dedicate money for multimodal investments. And then those things don't happen because the mayor doesn't actually support them. And so the money doesn't actually get spent on those projects and things just get delayed and delayed and delayed out of existence. So that's the caution, but we'll see. I think I don't have very much of a sense in a lot of these council races of where exactly things will land after the primary, but I'm hopeful that we'll get some councilmembers in there who care about these issues and will at least make a good effort to move forward. [00:27:08] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. I definitely share the takeaways that you have. I also found it notable - one, on a number of the questions - yeah, the answers were more agreeable than initially thought, even specific answers. I also think - and heard it from them directly - they were surprised at hearing figures like 40% of residents of Seattle use non-car modes of transportation, yet only 4% of the SDOT budget is dedicated to those modes - and just that big contrast there. And they were very unaware of that contrast. I think there's a lot of people who, because of the way that media coverage has been over really the past decade plus, that more money and resources are dedicated to this than actually are - and really seeing how little comparatively is budgeted for people in cars versus everyone else doing everything that's not in cars is really stark, and they seemed very surprised by that. And I hope that helps to frame just why we're in the situation we're in, and why we have so far to go, and the urgency is so strong right now. So hopefully we do get some good policy wins out of this, ultimately, when these races shake out. Also want to talk about the Housing Levy being approved. What did the City Council do this week? [00:28:38] Katie Wilson: Yeah, so the Seattle City Council voted unanimously to send a $970 million Housing Levy to the November ballot for voters to vote on. This is a seven-year property tax levy, so that $970 million is spread over those seven years. And this would be used to construct and operate new affordable housing. It would be used to subsidize affordable home ownership. It would be used to raise wages for workers in the supportive housing and services sector. There's a big chunk for rental assistance, some other things. And it's a significantly larger levy than the one that is expiring - I believe it's like over three times bigger than the previous one. And of course that is, I think, probably an appropriate response to the scale of our housing prices. I guess what I would say is that it's tough - because we're chasing the private market. So as rents in the private market and housing costs, home prices in the private market just shoot up and up, it becomes more and more expensive - more and more people on the lower end cannot afford to rent, let alone buy in our region. And so then that demands more and more public resources to create housing that they can afford. And to me that - so it's tough because you look at the Housing Levy that's just expiring and it was very successful, right? It actually created more housing than it had been projected to. And then in addition, we have other funds that are going into building affordable housing, like the JumpStart big business tax - a big chunk of that is going to fund affordable housing and that's been incredibly successful. You look at the list of projects around the City that have benefited from money from JumpStart and it's a long list. And so this funding that we're putting into affordable housing is really a success story, but you look around and you don't see that reflected in general kind of feeling of - this city is becoming more affordable. And that's really just because we have - so much of the housing is still stuck in this kind of dysfunctional private housing market that is just going up and up and up. So yeah, that's what's happened. [00:31:02] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. And your point about - progress is absolutely being made, that's just a factual statement - but we still have the conditions that are creating this problem. And it's like you have to plug the leak in the boat if you're going to successfully bail it out, and we haven't adequately plugged those leaks. The wages required - there was an article about this this week - the wages required to just afford rental housing, let alone a home, are astronomical. What were your takeaways from that article and how does that contribute to this problem? [00:31:39] Katie Wilson: Yeah, totally. And that's the annual Out of Reach report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition - so every year they come out with a big report about every state in the country, every county in the country that kind of looks at what is the wage that a full-time worker would need to make in order to afford housing in that region. And basically what the report showed is that here in Washington, in the state - not just in King County - a Washington renter needs to earn $30.33 an hour to afford the typical one-bedroom apartment in the state without spending more than 30% of their income on housing costs. And then in the Seattle area, that's even higher. So a renter would need to make $40 an hour, over $40 an hour to afford that market rate, standard one-bedroom apartment. And these are significantly higher numbers than last year's report - I believe it said they're about 20% higher than last year. And so what that tells us is that even though - luckily, here in Washington state and in the cities in King County that have established higher minimum wages, those wages are indexed to inflation - so we do get an annual inflation adjustment upward. That adjustment is not sufficient to make up for the rising cost of rents in our region so that lower-wage workers are definitely falling behind. And that $40 an hour figure is really interesting because it basically means - you look at the wages in Seattle, SeaTac, and now Tukwila, which starting on July 1 is going to have a minimum wage of $18.99 for most workers - those are getting up toward $20 an hour. But looking at this, it's like you would actually need two adults working full-time at those higher minimum wages to, with any comfort, afford a one-bedroom apartment in King County. So it really just shows how even as there are these efforts going on - this year, ballot initiative in Renton and work that TRU is doing with allies in Burien and unincorporated King County to try to get more jurisdictions to raise minimum wages - we're trying to get them to raise up to around $20 an hour, right? $19 or $20 an hour. And that's great, but man, it still doesn't mean that you're going to be able to afford housing easily. So yeah, it's a problem. And I think like this and thinking about the Housing Levy and just how far we have to go to make this region affordable, I think it really also underscores the need for social housing and how important it is that the City does a good job of following through on Initiative 135 and getting that started, so that we can start expanding the non-market housing sector - serving not just the very lowest income levels, but people even of all income levels - because really only taking housing out of the private market, ultimately, is going to fix this problem. [00:34:41] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And a reminder that there is an option for taking some housing out of the private market in the City of Seattle with the - Seattle's public developer that has been established. And as we talk about these City Council elections coming up, really making sure that there are plans that these candidates have to fund this developer and to pursue this is going to be very important. Also this week, we saw an announcement from Trans Pride that they are no longer welcoming the Seattle Public Library at their event. What happened here? [00:35:16] Katie Wilson: Yeah. Trans Pride basically announced that Seattle Public Library is not welcome at their event due to a number of issues, but I think the most recent one - and maybe the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak - was the library's allowing Kirk Cameron to host a talk in a library auditorium. I believe this was last month. Kirk Cameron being a former child TV person - I never saw him, I don't remember who he was - but who is now an anti-LGBTQ+ activist and has written children's books about the dangers of Pride. And so the library, as a public institution, says that it has legal obligations to not engage in viewpoint discrimination and has to allow any group or individual to rent its meeting spaces. And Trans Pride has responded by uninviting the Seattle Public Library from participation in the upcoming event. [00:36:24] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And this to me is a situation where - yes, the library is correct that because of First Amendment issues, they do have to accept facility rentals from there. But Trans Pride also absolutely has the right to determine who is and isn't welcome at their event, and especially in today's environment where safety is of paramount concern. Yeah, I think in this situation, both parties have the right to do what they do. I've seen some reaction in going - questioning whether Trans Pride can even do this. They absolutely can. This is what consequences are. And while it does appear that the Seattle Public Library, and most public libraries, do have to rent to their facilities to people for events and they can't choose who does and doesn't get to do that - it is unambiguously clear that Kirk Cameron is espousing harmful and dangerous rhetoric that's false, and it winds up endangering our trans community. And yeah, absolutely, they're not going to be welcome at an event where their institution can participate in making Trans Pride and the people in our community less safe. It's pretty straightforward. You have no right to participate in everybody's events - if they don't feel comfortable with you there, then that's that. So to me, this is just the library made its decision that it felt that it had to make, and Trans Pride made their decision that they felt that they had to make - and that's just that. [00:38:03] Katie Wilson: Yes, and PubliCola has done a lot of good coverage of this issue, so go there to read more. [00:38:09] Crystal Fincher: We will, of course, be linking that article in the show notes. Also wanted to talk about an upcoming vote this week with the King County Council about whether to mandate that stores in the county, or at least in unincorporated King County, continue to take all forms of payment, including cash. Why is this such an issue? [00:38:29] Katie Wilson: Yeah, so article in this week's Seattle Times from Gene Balk talking about how cashless payment and refusing to accept cash is becoming a more and more common thing in the Seattle area. And this is timely because there is actually legislation before the King County Council, championed by King County Councilmember Jeanne Kohl-Welles, that would require businesses - most businesses in unincorporated areas of the county, which is the jurisdiction that the King County Council has jurisdiction over - would require them to accept cash as a form of payment. This is something that I don't believe any jurisdiction in Washington state has done yet, but it's not unusual in other parts of the country. So New York City, San Francisco - there's a bunch of cities. And even a couple of states - I think the entire state of New Jersey, there might be a couple more - have passed legislation that requires businesses to accept cash payment. And obviously for a lot of us, we just walk around with a card and that's fine and it works for us. But especially seniors, immigrants and refugees, people with privacy concerns - either from experience with or fear of identity theft, domestic violence survivors, houseless people - there's demographics that are much more likely to rely on cash for most or all daily transactions. And if you're in one of those - in that situation - then if you have more and more businesses not accepting cash payment, then you get effectively locked out of the local economy. And so this legislation is coming to the full King County Council next Tuesday for a vote. It's not guaranteed to pass - so I think that there's definitely some reluctance on the part of some of the King County Councilmembers to vote on this. So if you think this is important, now's a good time to email in to your King County Councilmembers and maybe consider testifying next Tuesday. But yeah, I think unincorporated King County has a chance here to set an example for other jurisdictions in the area. [00:40:44] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And that great reminder to make your opinion known to your city council - County Councilmember - if you can. I was just in Santa Monica, California a couple weeks back, and they had businesses that had signs in their shops that they don't accept cash. This is a thing that can happen in this area. And it does seem to be a reaction to not wanting "those" people around. And there are lots of reasons why someone may prefer to use cash over other means, or may have to use cash over other means - and discriminating based on the type of payment just doesn't seem wise or prudent. And especially as we see so many forces working on excluding people from so many other places in society, we certainly don't need to contribute to the acceleration of that. So I also want to talk about an event taking place next Wednesday. What's happening? [00:41:47] Katie Wilson: Yes. So next Wednesday, 730 PM, at Town Hall Seattle, there is a forum that is co-sponsored by South Seattle Emerald and Real Change called Saving Journalism, Saving Our Democracy. And this is going to be a conversation about the challenges that news outlets, especially local news outlets, are facing these days keeping the lights on and providing adequate coverage of local issues. And the panelists include Jelani Cobb, who is the Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, and Michael McPhearson, who is the Editor of the South Seattle Emerald, Florangela Davila, who is a journalist who's worked at a bunch of different outlets, and Frank Blethen, who, of course, is the publisher of The Seattle Times. And the moderator is going to be Delores Irwin, co-chair of the League of Women Voters of Washington, which actually - earlier this year - put out a really great study called The Decline of Local News and Its Impact on Democracy, which charts the struggles that newspapers, in particular, in Washington state have faced over the last decades and kind of the dwindling news coverage in a lot of areas of the state, creating news deserts. So I think it's going to be a fascinating conversation. And I happen to know that there will be some potentially actionable policy proposals that will be discussed that could turn into interesting campaigns in this area in the near future. So I definitely encourage people to attend the event, get involved in the conversation. [00:43:39] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And I am a big fan and supporter of both Michael McPhearson and Florangela Davila - we are fortunate to have them both in our local media ecosphere. And certainly, this is part of a broader national conversation. But looking forward to see what's discussed. It's critical to our democracy, it's critical to just our everyday lives - the quality of representation and policy that we see - and how people and organizations and institutions are held accountable. So it makes a big difference - I hope people definitely tune in and attend - we will put a link to that in the show notes also. And with that, I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, June 16, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today is co-founder and general secretary of the Seattle Transit Riders Union, Katie Wilson. You can find Katie on Twitter @WilsonKatieB. You can find Seattle Transit Riders Union on Twitter @SeattleTRU. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. And you can catch Hacks & Wonks wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, please leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

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Week in Review: June 2, 2023 - with Doug Trumm

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 2, 2023 44:46

On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, Crystal is joined by a friend of the show and today's co-host: Executive Director of The Urbanist, Doug Trumm! They discuss Sen. Mark Mullet announcing he's running for governor, The Amazon employee walk-out, SCOTUS ruling against the Teamsters in a blow to workers' rights, City of Burien encampment sweep controversy continues, the Redmond Salary commission being abruptly disbanded by the mayor after they considered paying council members competitive salaries, and SPD wasting public money meant for school and pedestrian safety. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Doug Trumm, on Twitter at @dmtrumm. Doug Trumm Doug Trumm is executive director of The Urbanist, where he has contributed as a writer and editor since 2015. He graduated from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at UW in 2019 with a concentration in urban policy. As a car-free renter living in Seattle, his policy focuses include improving transit and street safety and tackling the housing affordability crisis. His cat Ole is a national treasure. Resources “The Big Waterfront Bamboozle with Mike McGinn and Robert Cruickshank” from Hacks & Wonks Washington State Senator Mark Mullet launches 2024 gubernatorial campaign After shootings and new threats, Seattle's Garfield High cancels in-person classes Pedestrian Projects Face Delays As School Camera Funding Falls Short - The Urbanist Amazon walkout to go ahead after 1,700 employees sign on, organizers say | The Seattle Times Some Amazon employees walk out in Seattle to protest climate, office policies | Reuters Seattle city attorney will end community court, but some say the reason why is misleading Emotions run high – but no action taken – at Burien City Council's Special Meeting Tuesday night Burien Decides to Take No Action on Encampment on Its Property, Opening Path for Private Sweep - PubliCola SCOTUS rules WA company can sue union over strike-related damage | Crosscut Redmond mayor disbands commission proposing increased council salaries | The Seattle Times Pedestrian Projects Face Delays As School Camera Funding Falls Short - The Urbanist Find stories that Crystal is reading here

Casual Friday with Hannah Weinberger and Tan Vinh

assault weapons crosscut melissa santos

Play Episode Listen Later May 5, 2023 16:53

This week…Governor Jay Inslee says he's ready to pass the torch. The national park service is considering timed reservations at Mount Rainier. And is the West Seattle Bridge cursed?Crosscut science reporter Hannah Weinberger and Seattle Times Food Writer Tan Vinh are here to break down the week.We can only make Seattle Now because listeners support us. Make the show happen by making a gift to KUOW: https://www.kuow.org/donate/seattlenow And we want to hear from you! Follow us on Instagram @SeattleNowPod, or leave us feedback online: https://www.kuow.org/feedbackTickets for May 19th's Casual Friday Live taping: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/casual-friday-live-seattle-love-tickets-514549319867?aff=podshownotes

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Words In Review: Should we say “assault weapons”?

Week In Review

Play Episode Listen Later May 2, 2023 7:16

Guests:Melissa Santos, Axios Seattle reporter Joseph O'Sullivan, Crosscut reporter

ShopNotes Podcast 153: The Eastern Red Cedar Challenge

ShopNotes Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 28, 2023 60:36

Listener Question — Where does the table saw go? Stephen asks: How can you put a table saw against a wall? There are enough different operations that all sides are required for access. Ripping requires access in the front and rear. Crosscut tables require access from the left side as well as the right side for longer stock or plywood. Red Cedar Challenge — Prove Logan Wrong Logan milled some large Eastern red cedar. While it's ideal for drawer boxes, and lining chests and closets, he doesn't think it looks all that great as a primary material. Send us a photo of your red cedar project. The winner will get a special prize. Handworks is Coming Later this year, the Handworks show https://handworks.co/ occurs in eastern Iowa. If you're planning on going, why not take some time for a Woodsmith tour? Email woodsmith@woodsmith.com to set up a time. New Tools Logan added a travisher to his tool kit. Now it seems he will start making chairs. Phil completed a coping saw that was featured in Woodsmith and designed by Christ Fitch. Free Plan The home's entryway tends to be a magnet for clutter. If you don't have a good method for organizing these items, it can quickly turn into an unsightly mess. The elegant hall tree https://www.woodsmithplans.com/plan/hall-tree/ you see here is a great solution to this problem. With a set of hooks, shelves, and a bottom bin for storing umbrellas, it's the perfect spot to deposit or collect these items when you arrive at the door. It even has a pivoting mirror for a quick check before you head out the door. You Use Titebond Glue, right? You want a glue that you can trust. And fortunately, Titebond https://www.titebond.com has the glue you need to get the job done with confidence. From interior glues with strong initial tack and short clamp time to exterior glues with exceptional strength and water resistance, look to Titebond – the right glue for your next project. For more information, visit https://www.titebond.com Subscribe to Woodsmith to receive tips, plans, projects, and techniques both in print, and in video. It's all at https://www.woodsmith.com. Follow us at https://www.facebook.com/woodsmithmagazine/ https://www.woodsmith.com

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One-in-ten: The men who are driving the commercial sex market

Podcast on Crimes Against Women

Play Episode Play 50 sec Highlight Listen Later Apr 10, 2023 54:23

Ten percent - or one in ten - of men are buyers of commercial sex. In doing so they are perpetuating an industry that not only continues the objectification of women but also endangers the lives of women and girls. This episode explores the tactics of sex buyers and the traffickers they work with to buy women and girls for sex, how sex buyers are prosecuted, and what it will take to reduce or eliminate the commercial sex industry. Alisa Bernard and Benjamin Gauen join the conversation to offer perspectives from the front lines of supporting survivors and prosecuting traffickers and sex buyers.Alisa Bernard is the Equality Model Campaign Manager at World Without Exploitation and has a deep background in and extensive ties to the anti-trafficking movement having collaborated with several major stakeholder groups including the EPIK Project, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, World Without Exploitation. Ms. Bernard previously served as Director of Public Policy and Advocacy at Thistle Farms and the Executive Director of Education and Partnerships for the Organization for Prostitution Survivors. She also has developed and facilitated trainings at conferences across the US and Canada as well as authored articles featured in the Seattle Times, Crosscut, and Dignity Journal.Benjamin Gauen is a Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney with the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office. Mr. Gauen leads his office's work in combatting sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation offenses through investigations and prosecutions, policy development, and community engagement. He has nearly 12 years of extensive felony trial experience specializing in cases involving sex trafficking, sexual assault, child abuse, and domestic violence. He is a member of several anti-trafficking task forces in Washington State and frequently partners with stakeholders to strengthen laws and system responses that help victims and survivors. Additionally, Mr. Gauen conducts training on sex trafficking for prosecutors and law enforcement around the United States. He also serves on the board of directors for the non-profit organization Stolen Youth, which works to end child sex trafficking in Washington state.

529- The Wilderness Tool

99% Invisible

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 21, 2023 44:23

Vintage crosscuts that were made between 1880 and 1930 are often the tool of choice for trail workers who maintain the country's roughly 112 million acres of protected land. That's ahead of chain saws and newly made crosscuts. And the reason this old tool has stuck around so long -- even in an age when there's a newer, better gadget coming out every year -- it goes way beyond the physical saw itself. The rise, fall, and unexpected second life of the crosscut saw is also the story of how America created the very concept of wilderness.The Wilderness Tool

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Casual Friday with Katie Campbell and Hannah Weinberger