Podcasts about DSHS

Talking Points this week Blazed Weekly News 90th SESSION LEGISLATURE POWER GRAB by STATE AGENCY conflicting rules and legal decisions beverage only support DSHS and sunset committee federal regulation marijuana rescheduling CARVE OUT FOR FLOWER AT DPS NEW AGENCY TEXAS HEMP & CANNABIS BUREAU

David Sergi talks with Russell and Rachel about the 15 th Circuit Court of Appeals case is still pending while the recent Senator Perry hearing made a laughing stock of his dog and pony show. Meanwhile positive change in the reschedule conversation and discussion for a hemp bill in Washington. www.BlazedNews.com www.texashempreporter.com 

Tilders, Julian www.deutschlandfunk.de, Sport am Sonntag

Tilders, Julian www.deutschlandfunk.de, Sport am Sonntag

https://rumble.com/v77pd7m-new-texas-hemp-rules-thca-removed-lawsuit-coming.htmlRUMBLEhttps://open.spotify.com/episode/6HGP6NiZ2md681l9MHZxIX?si=eZ_aL7q0T6Oh-w2A9nedQwSPOTIFYhttps://youtu.be/_feWHSSMus0NON-PUBLIC-YOUTUBEJay Maguire of the Texas Hemp Federation gives is a legal update on the Fight for Texas Flower and the unjust rule making powers that DSHS has taken against Texas retailers of Legal Hemp Flower.Are Texas Hemp Rules expanding beyond State authority?Cannabis activist and formal Texas NORML podcast -host David Wienecke joins the show to give thoughts on the industry, activism, and why we fight for flower420 Issue Has several ad spaces remaining.https://issuu.com/blazedmagazine/docs/april_2026Deadline Monday 30th

David Sergi and Jay Maguire join the podcast this week after the recent hearing from DSHS public comment period began last week.Also just the day before this recording the Texas Supreme court Justices hear oral arguments from DSHS and Plaintiff SKYE Marketing case or Hometown Hero's case to consume federally legal hemp products. A case that was filed 5 years ago by Maguire and Sergi for Hometown and Skye.Having this Dynamic Duo on the podcast this week is huge insight on where we are and how things play out.Amidst all this the Federally side is looking at a DEA possible rescheduling of Marijuana while; Now, Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Rand Paul (R-KY) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) have filed new legislation that would push that timeline back by another two years, giving hemp interests additional time to make their case that the policy would significantly harm the industry that was legalized during Trump's first term under the 2018 Farm Bill.  

Texas Policy & Rule Changes DSHSJay Maguire and Shaun Salvaje discussed policy options with the team and how might Texans reacts with (Friday) tomorrow's open public hearings. Comment below what you think about the rule making powers that are coming. Blazed@blazednews.com.com Listen Weekly on Spotify. www.BlazedNews.com

Schweizer, Marina www.deutschlandfunk.de, Sport am Feiertag

Schweizer, Marina www.deutschlandfunk.de, Sport am Feiertag

Host Austin Jenkins sits down with the new Secretary of the Department of Social & Health Services Angela Ramirez.

Sportsfreunde, heute drücken wir die Schulbank! In dieser Folge ist Dr. Sebastian Schwab, Dozent für Fussball an der renommierten Deutschen Sporthochschule in Köln, zu Gast. Er gibt exklusive Einblicke in seinen ungewöhnlichen Karriereweg bis zum Lehrstuhl und erzählt, wie sein Arbeitsalltag zwischen Wissenschaft und Spielfeld aussieht. Freut euch unter anderem auf folgende Themen: Der Weg an die Deutsche Sporthochschule und die tägliche Arbeit eines Fussballdozenten. Spannende Projekte im Kinderfussball und wie die Wissenschaft das Training der Jüngsten revolutioniert. Die Herausforderungen im Schiedsrichterwesen und begleitende Projekte zur Stärkung der Unparteiischen. Setzt euch eine Folge lang gemeinsam mit uns auf die Schulbank. Es gibt viel ...Dieser Podcast wird vermarktet von der Podcastbude.www.podcastbu.de - Full-Service-Podcast-Agentur - Konzeption, Produktion, Vermarktung, Distribution und Hosting.Du möchtest deinen Podcast auch kostenlos hosten und damit Geld verdienen?Dann schaue auf www.kostenlos-hosten.de und informiere dich.Dort erhältst du alle Informationen zu unseren kostenlosen Podcast-Hosting-Angeboten. kostenlos-hosten.de ist ein Produkt der Podcastbude.

Sportsfreunde, heute drücken wir die Schulbank! In dieser Folge ist Dr. Sebastian Schwab, Dozent für Fussball an der renommierten Deutschen Sporthochschule in Köln, zu Gast. Er gibt exklusive Einblicke in seinen ungewöhnlichen Karriereweg bis zum Lehrstuhl und erzählt, wie sein Arbeitsalltag zwischen Wissenschaft und Spielfeld aussieht. Freut euch unter anderem auf folgende Themen: Der Weg an die Deutsche Sporthochschule und die tägliche Arbeit eines Fussballdozenten. Spannende Projekte im Kinderfussball und wie die Wissenschaft das Training der Jüngsten revolutioniert. Die Herausforderungen im Schiedsrichterwesen und begleitende Projekte zur Stärkung der Unparteiischen. Setzt euch eine Folge lang gemeinsam mit uns auf die Schulbank. Es gibt viel ...Dieser Podcast wird vermarktet von der Podcastbude.www.podcastbu.de - Full-Service-Podcast-Agentur - Konzeption, Produktion, Vermarktung, Distribution und Hosting.Du möchtest deinen Podcast auch kostenlos hosten und damit Geld verdienen?Dann schaue auf www.kostenlos-hosten.de und informiere dich.Dort erhältst du alle Informationen zu unseren kostenlosen Podcast-Hosting-Angeboten. kostenlos-hosten.de ist ein Produkt der Podcastbude.

     Slam the Gavel welcomes new guest, Melissa Strawn to the podcast. Melissa is a domestic violence victim who has had a Protection Order for YEARS, but now she is only TWO days away from going to JAIL. Her case is in King County WA. She has one of the most clear-cut cases of JUDICIAL FRAUD. The Seattle Superior Court Judge, Judge E. Rania Rampersad held her divorce trial without Melissa while she was in the hospital with pneumonia. Then the judge signed orders fraudulently stating that Melissa was at trial. Judge E. Rania Rampersad granted SOLE CUSTODY to her ex husband despite him being LEGALLY BARRED from the kids for the last three years. Her ex used easily provable fraud at the trial.     Melissa was the CEO of a Seattle tech startup, a well respected member of the female founder community, and was an accredited investor, focusing on women-led companies. AND NOW, ALL FOR BREAKING FREE from her abuser, she is about to be JAILED, stripped of her children and home.  Melissa is not just fighting her ex husband anymore....There is a CORRUPT judge trying to hurt Melissa BEFORE she can EXPOSE her. Judge R. Rampersad's motives need to be investigated. Melissa also has a GoFund at: http://www.gofundme.com/MelissaStrawnTo Reach Melissa Strawn: wakinginweed@gmail.comSupportshow(https://www.buymeacoffee.com/maryannpetri)Maryann Petri: dismantlingfamilycourtcorruption.comhttps://www.tiktok.com/@maryannpetriFacebook:  https://www.youtube.com/@slamthegavelpodcasthostmar5536Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/guitarpeace/Pinterest: Slam The Gavel Podcast/@guitarpeaceLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maryann-petri-62a46b1ab/  YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/@slamthegavelpodcasthostmar5536  Twitter https://x.com/PetriMaryannEzlegalsuit.com   https://ko-fi.com/maryannpetrihttps://www.zazzle.com/store/slam_the_gavel/about*DISCLAIMER* The use of this information is at the viewer/user's own risk. Not financial, medical nor legal advice as the content on this podcast does not constitute legal, financial, medical or any other professional advice. Viewer/user's should consult with the relevant professionals. Reproduction, distribution, performing, publicly displaying and making a derivative of the work is explicitly prohibited without permission from content creator. Podcast is protected by owner. The content creator maintains the exclusive right and any unauthorized copyright.Support the showSupportshow(https://www.buymeacoffee.com/maryannpetri)http://www.dismantlingfamilycourtcorruption.com/

VALUE FOR VALUE Thank you to the Bowl After Bowl 406 Producers: Kevin S, ChadF, harvhat, SircussMedia, marykateultra, Boolysteed Intro/Outro: From the Dust - Stardust PO Box 410154 Kansas City, MO 64141 HyperSpaceOut.com BAB Easter egg in Abs 'na 6-Pack Episode 270 - On a Serious Note FIRST TIME I EVER... Bowlers called in to talk about the First Time They Ever used a computer. Next week, call and tell us about the First Time YOU Ever headed East. CALL/TEXT NOW: (816) 607-3663 TOP THREE 33 Taylor Swift's 'Showgirl' promotional film collects $33 million (Wall Street Journal/ archived) Black Lives Matter suing Soros-backed Tides Foundation over missing $33 million (New York Post) Boston Bruins to retire Zdeno Chara's No. 33 before game on January 15 (WCVB) BEHIND THE CURTAIN The White House sent Congress a notification that President Donald Trump has determined the US is engaged in a formal armed conflict with drug cartels (NYTimes / archive) Federal drug prosecutions fall to lowest level in decades as Trump shifts focus to deportations (Reuters) US basketball player facing execution in Indonesia over $400 worth of gummies (The Guardian) Scientists discover new cannabis compound with 'remarkable antioxidant, skin anti-inflammatory' benefits (Marijuana Moment) Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has a bill to add a new 24% wholesale tax on pot on her desk (Michigan Advance) Texas Department of State Health Services adopts emergency rules making hemp products 21+ (DSHS.Texas.gov) METAL MOMENT RevCyberTrucker brings us The Dickies ' Killer Clowns From Outerspace Follow his shenanigans @SirRevCybertrucker@noauthority.social ON-CHAIN, OFF-CHAIN, COCAINE, SHITSTAIN Clark Moody Dashboard Bitcoin price hits an all-time high, but here's what really matters (Forbes) Bitcoin hits all-time high as USD on track for worst year since 1973 (CoinTelegraph) Did Bitcoin 'Uptober' just start? Analysts say watch these key signals next (CoinTelegraph) FUCK IT, DUDE. LET'S GO BOWLING! Button King's legacy lives on (The Associated Press) Vermont ski areas employ goats, sheep to clear the slopes (AP) Dungeon discovered under UK market square (FOX) Art world masters fooled as police raid famous gallery after fake Dali found (FOX) Python found at SoCal In-N-Out (FOX) Boy, 8, suspected of stealing car in Georgia (FOX)  

Wheeler, Thomas www.deutschlandfunk.de, Sport am Samstag

Wheeler, Thomas www.deutschlandfunk.de, Sport am Samstag

(The Center Square) – Washington state faces deficit spending by 2028 as lawmakers just hit taxpayers with the state's largest combined tax increase – all driven by massive state spending increases over the past decade, an investigation of state budgets by The Center Square found. Washington state spent about $80 billion in the 2013-15 budget but is set to spend more than $173 billion in 2025-27, a more than 116% increase over that time. U.S. inflation since 2015 has risen just 35.63%.

(The Center Square) – The Washington state Department of Social and Health Services' spending since 2015 has nearly tripled from $9 billion to $25.4 billion, a 182.22% increase heavily driven by long-term care cost increases due in part to an aging population. Since the 2013-15 budget, long-term care spending grew from $3.8 to $12.9 billion, and now represents half of DSHS' biennial budget. Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxx Read more: https://www.thecentersquare.com/washington/article_bb21f8a4-c9c2-4bd0-8e4f-a1e76e308bc4.html

The Texas Legislature has appropriated million over the next two years to launch a statewide pilot program aimed at reducing the population of unvaccinated, unsterilized dogs and cats. The program, to be administered by the Department of State Health Services (DSHS), is designed to prevent the spread of infectious diseases such as rabies, toxoplasmosis, and leptospirosis. The funding awaits final approval by Gov. Greg Abbott. As a pilot program, DSHS will begin developing the rules and procedures necessary to implement the state-funded initiative over the coming months. The Texas Humane Legislation Network will monitor the development process and work...Article Link

Washington is bringing back the SUN Bucks program, offering $120 in summer food benefits per eligible child. Find out how families can qualify. https://www.clarkcountytoday.com/youth/sun-bucks-program-returns-to-provide-summer-food-support-for-washington-children/ #ClarkCounty #Vancouver #SUNBucks #localnews #DSHS #schoolmeals #childnutrition #SummerEBT #SNAP #WashingtonState

Muskeln und Sport werden viel zu häufig auf Aussehen und Attraktivität reduziert. Dabei können beide so viel mehr! Zusammen mit @Lukas Leibfried werden in der aktuellen Podcastfolge # 63 von essenZ fürs Ohr allerhand Mythen über Bord geworfen, zum Umdenken eingeladen und am Ende des Gesprächs wollte Heike direkt in die Sportschuhe hüpfen. Lukas ist Kenner seiner Branche! Er studierte Rehabilitation, Prävention und Gesundheitsmanagement (M. A.) an der #Deutschen Sporthochschule Köln (#DSHS) und hat eine mehrjährige Erfahrung als Sporttherapeut für verschiedene Indikationen und Zielgruppen (Metabolisches Syndrom, Psychosomatik und Sucht, Rückenprävention, Kindersport). Als wissenschaftlicher Projektmitarbeiter für digitale Gesundheitsförderung war er an der Konzeption, Umsetzung und Evaluation von Präventionsprojekten sowie der Entwicklung von multimedialem Wissens-Content beteiligt. Zurzeit forscht Lukas zum Thema Trainingsmotivation im Forschungsinstitut für Training in der Prävention. Außerdem lehrt er im Bachelorstudiengang Sport und Gesundheit in Prävention und Therapie an der DSHS und unterstützt die Weiterentwicklung des Sportbereichs beim Verein für Gesundheitssport und Sporttherapie Köln e. V., in dem @Prof. Dr. Ingo Froböse 1. Vorsitzender ist. Lukas taucht mit Heike tief in die Welten der Motivation und Mucki-Bude (das eine braucht jede:r, das andere nicht unbedingt) ein und erklärt sehr anschaulich, wie die kleinen, zielgerichteten Schritte zum Erfolg führen. Klar ist für ihn, dass Bewegung und Sport nicht bei allen im Mittelpunkt des Lebens stehen. Er hat #Lösungen für die Viel-Beschäftigten parat – denn auch für ihn selbst sind diese die Lösung, #Fitness und #Gesundheit zu stabilisieren. Höher, schneller, weiter? Ja, kann man machen. Wer Lukas hört, wird schnell nachvollziehen können, dass es für das #Wohlfühlen anderes benötigt. Darüber hinaus gibt er zu verstehen, warum das #Brennen in der Muskulatur auch mal gut sein kann, was es mit den #Myokinen auf sich hat, das Alter kein Grund ist, sich zurückzunehmen und dass das „Yes, I can“-Gefühl der #Selbstwirksamkeit unschlagbar ist. Und weil jede:r in dieser Disziplin immer besser werden kann, erklärt er auch gleich noch, wie sie aufgebaut werden kann. Einen wichtigen Hinweis gibt Lukas auch für Personen mit #Diabetes, die noch unsicher sind, wenn es um das #Training im #Studio geht: Die @Expertenallianz für Gesundheit, für die Lukas auch aktiv ist, hat zusammen mit der @Deutsche Diabetes Gesellschaft (DDG) ein neues Qualitätssiegel für Fitness- und Gesundheits-Studios hervorgebracht, das zeigt, dass Patient:innen sich beim Trainieren dort in guten Händen fühlen können. Bei all den motivierenden Worten von Lukas wird er am Ende aber noch kritisch und empfiehlt bei Angeboten für schnelle Erfolge und muskulöse Körper vorsichtig zu sein – aber hör selbst, warum! Diese Podcastfolge ist für all diejenigen, die Bewegung und Sport für Fitness und Gesundheit mit anderen Augen sehen wollen, die verstehen wollen, warum das Brennen der Muskeln auch sein Gutes hat und wie jede:r die persönlichen Ziele erreichen kann. Viel Spaß beim Reinhören! Mehr über Lukas Liebfried findest du hier: Homepage des Forschungsinstituts für Training in der Prävention mit Umfangreichem Wissens-Blog und einer Datenbank mit freizugänglichen wissenschaftlichen Artikeln Training und Gesundheit: https://www.fit-praevention.de/ Info-Seite mit Content rund um das Thema „Gesundheit braucht Training“: https://www.gesundheit-braucht-training.de/ Fit mit Diabetes-Zertifizierung – die wichtigsten Info für Betreibende von Fitnessstudios: https://www.expertenallianz-gesundheit.de/fitmitdiabetes Wenn du mir oder uns von essenZ etwas mitteilen möchtest, schreib uns gern eine E-Mail an: team@essenZ.hamburg. Feedback, Anmerkungen, Fröhlic

Monologue:Waldorf Astoria coming to the Hill CountryDrones on DemandNERF Wars6000 Year Old Texas ResidentsHemp update from State CapitalGuest:As Head Football Coach and Athletic Director at Dripping Springs High School, Galen Zimmerman is more than just a play-caller—he's a mentor, leader, and architect of a winning culture. His coaching philosophy goes beyond X's and O's, instilling discipline, resilience, and teamwork in every athlete who steps onto the field. Under his leadership, the Tigers have thrived, not just in competition but in character, preparing students for success beyond the game. Whether he's guiding a team through a high-stakes fourth quarter or shaping young athletes into future leaders, Coach Zimmerman's impact extends far beyond the scoreboard. His legacy isn't just measured in victories, but in the lessons and values his players carry with them for life.Based in Dripping Springs, Steve Mallett and Michelle Lewis  invite you into their world of engaging conversations with guests who bring fresh ideas, humor, and wisdom to the table. They dive into everything from life's absurdities to community quirks, adding their signature twist of small-town charm and bold candor. Think of them as the funny neighbors with the best stories, the ones who always tell it like it is. With a healthy dose of Hill Country spirit, they explore local gossip and topics that connect us all—proving you don't need to be famous to be extraordinary; you just need a microphone and the courage to share your voice. Every episode is a mix of laughter, insight, and connection, making this podcast one you won't want to miss! New episodes weekly! Send us a textSupport the showSPONSORS: The top Real Estate Pro's at The Mallett Integrity Team. Call-512-627-7018 SouthStar Bank a tradition of full-service community banking for over 100 years. www.southstarbank.com Nomic Power Solutions your trusted partner in Austin for turnkey backup generator installation, service, and maintenance for your home. Cody/Dillon-512-387-4232 Jovie Belterra-Nestled within the Belterra master-planned community, discover your path to joy and wellness at the exquisite 55+ apartment community. Thanks for listening! Follow us, leave a review, TELL A FRIEND!AppleSpotifyInstagramWebsitemallettandmichelle@gmail.com for inquiries on advertising or gue...

An interview with newly re-elected Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, and an exit interview with outgoing Department of Social and Health Services Secretary Jilma Meneses.

What’s Trending: Yet another elderly woman was murdered, this time in a drive-by shooting in Burien. The Kamala Harris campaign now wants to change the rules and turn the mics on at all times during the debate. Maia Espinoza (Candidate for 28th District State Senate and Director of the Center for Latino Leadership) wants the DSHS secretary terminated for recklessly releasing sex offenders into our communities. // Big Local: SeaTac airport is still dealing with complications in the wake of last weekend’s cyberattack. An audit found that a Morton city employee stole nearly one million dollars of taxpayer money. The Marysville school district will be starting the year with overly crowded class sizes. // Nassau County in New York is banning facemasks at protests and just made its first arrest for it. Actor Armie Hammer has recently sold his truck because he can’t afford gas.

 "Wholesale Hemp, Delta 8 THC, Delta 9 THC, HHC, and CBD products sold in bulk at fair prices. We focus on delivering value to all of our wholesale clients. Come experience the difference of working with a value driven supplier in the wholesale hemp industry." CEO Cody Sandone talks with Russell this week about regulation issues, the DEA standing recently, DSHS comments period, and the future of the market of Hemp Products not only in Texas but nationally.https://elevatedtrading.com/Our magazine is available online atwww.TexasHempReporter.comto be a guest on the show or sponsor the podcast.512-897-7823 c.texashempreporte@gmail.comFollow our YOUTUBE PAGE HERE:https://www.youtube.com/@texashempshow

An interview with Washington Department of Social and Health Services Secretary Jilma Meneses.

On this topical show, Crystal welcomes Everett Maroon, Executive Director of Blue Mountain Heart to Heart, for a conversation about their work in Southeast Washington using a harm reduction philosophy to support people, stabilize lives, & promote health and wellness in the community. Crystal and Everett chat about how the opioid epidemic has impacted rural communities, the role that stigma plays in keeping people from the help they need, what harm reduction is and why it is important. They then review the recent roller coaster ride of Washington state's substance use disorder policy, starting with the Washington Supreme Court's Blake decision, followed by a temporary legislative fix, then an impasse at the end of last year's legislative session, and finally a middle-of-the-road deal that recriminalized simple drug possession in addition to newly making public drug use illegal. Crystal and Everett lament the missed opportunity to meaningfully change the system & the continued lack of treatment services relative to need, and wrap up with what can be done at the state and local level to address the opioid crisis. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find more information about Blue Mountain Heart to Heart at https://bluemountainheart2heart.wordpress.com/.   Everett Maroon Everett is the Executive Director of Blue Mountain Heart to Heart. He supervises their program areas and is also responsible for fundraising, development, and evaluation of the agency. He has overseen a broad expansion of HIV case management services into Asotin and Garfield counties,  harm reduction programs into the Tri-Cities and Clarkston, and an innovative, outpatient opioid recovery program across six counties in Southeast Washington. Everett co-authored the now-completed Greater Columbia Accountable Community of Health's (GCACH) Opioid Resource Network, and contributed to the Washington State Opioid Strategy. He serves as a technical assistance provider on the Law Enforcement-Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program expansion in Washington State. Everett also is a state commissioner on the LGBTQ Commission. He has worked on quality improvement projects for various federal and state agencies for more than 28 years.   Resources Blue Mountain Heart to Heart   Eastern Washington Health Profile | Community Health and Spatial Epidemiology Lab at Washington State University   “Treating opioid disorder without meds more harmful than no treatment at all” by Mallory Locklear from YaleNews   “We Must Support People Who Use Substances, Not Punish Them. Here's How.” by Susan E. Collins, PhD for PubliCola   “New Law on Drug Possession, Use Takes Effect July 1, 2023” by Flannary Collins for Municipal Research and Services Center of Washington   Substance Use and Recovery Services Plan | Substance Use and Recovery Services Advisory Committee (SURSAC)   “Finally Addressing Blake Decision, Legislature Passes Punitive Drug Possession Bill” by Andrew Engelson from PubliCola    “Legislators Continue Failed War on Drugs Approach in Blake Fix Bill” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist   "WA's new drug law could help needle exchanges — or restrict them" by Andrew Engelson for Crosscut    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 Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show 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. Today, I'm very pleased to be welcoming Everett Maroon, who's the Executive Director of Blue Mountain Heart to Heart. Everett supervises the program areas of Blue Mountain Heart to Heart and is also responsible for fundraising, development, and evaluation of the agency. He has overseen a broad expansion of HIV case management services, harm reduction programs to the Tri-Cities and Clarkston areas, and an innovative outpatient opioid recovery program across six counties in Southeast Washington. Everett co-authored the now-completed Greater Columbia Accountable Community of Health's Opioid Resource Network and contributed to the Washington State Opioid Strategy. He serves as a technical assistance provider on the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, or LEAD, program in Washington state. Everett is also a co-chair of the Washington state LGBTQ Commission. He's worked on quality improvement projects for various federal and state agencies for more than 28 years. And Everett and I also had the opportunity to both serve on a steering committee for a statewide ballot initiative surrounding decriminalization of substances. Welcome to Hacks & Wonks, Everett. [00:02:07] Everett Maroon: Thank you so much, Crystal. And it's really great to see you, and I appreciate having some time to talk with you today - so thank you. [00:02:15] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So I just want to start off - what is Blue Mountain Heart to Heart? [00:02:21] Everett Maroon: Well, it's a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in Southeast Washington state based in Walla Walla. We also have an office in Kennewick and then another one in Clarkston - roughly 30 people on staff. And it was founded in 1985, originally as an HIV concern, where we probably helped about 250 people live and pass away with dignity at the beginning of the AIDS crisis. Then was incorporated in 1991 - the organization moved into longer-term case management as the medications for HIV became more sophisticated and HIV went from being a death sentence to a chronic condition. And at that point, we began getting more involved in prevention of infectious disease, including HIV, hepatitis C, and STIs. I came along in about 2010, first as a grant writer and then as the executive director. And it really was notable to me - people would come in - if they had HIV, there was so much the state would do for them. And the state's interest was around public health - so if we keep people from being able to transmit this virus to other people, we'll keep the transmission rate low. In public health, we talk a lot about viral load - community viral load. And so you would add up the viral load of all the people living with HIV or AIDS in a community, and then that's the number that you get. And depending on how many people are in your community, you have a risk assessment for how much you should be concerned about HIV transmission in that community. Well, if you didn't have HIV and you came into my office, I had many more limitations on what I could do for you. Even if you were battling basically the same kinds of issues as people living with HIV had - unstable housing, lack of engagement in the workforce, mental health, substance use - all of these things rise up as things that destabilize people in their lives. Certainly systemic racism - the way that we invite so many foreign-born Latino farm workers to Washington state to pick our agricultural crops every year, but then pay them far below what a living wage would be. And we then expect that there's not going to be detrimental effects on those people. I think we all see that the state needs to do something different around supporting people who are here to make the state so profitable and make its agricultural sector so productive. So it really bothered me that - in one instance, because there was a transmissible disease associated with the potential client, we were all willing to put money into programs to support them. But then if they didn't, they just had the effects of the destabilizing forces around them and we weren't doing much. I really wanted to change that. I thought that we could get more investment in supporting people and stabilizing their lives and improving their wellness and health. And that that would be a good thing for everybody in the community, not just these people who were facing very serious gaps in resources and support. So we met as a board and a staff and changed our mission, amended a few things to it. And now our mission is really about helping people with a variety of different chronic diseases, including substance use disorder. There are certainly things to say about the limitations around the disease model for substance use, but when I'm thinking about federal and state funding for assistance programs, that model really helps create investment, financial support. So from 2010 to today, the agency has grown from about $150,000 in annual budget to about $4.1 million. We've gone from 2.5 FTEs a year to more than 30, and we have 14 case managers across 3 different case management programs. We have a drug user health equity program. And we still continue to have those prevention programs, but they're more aligned with case management. So we use a no-wrong-door approach here - no matter what your initial need is when you walk in, we try to see what other resources we can bring to bear to help that individual. So if you're coming in because you're using, or you need syringes for consuming - say, methamphetamine or something like that - you can also get nicotine cessation kits, you can get Plan B, you can get Naloxone because there may still be fentanyl in the substances you're consuming. We have a wound care clinic. We have a contingency management program for people who want to begin abstaining from methamphetamine. So no matter where someone's coming in, we have a variety of programs that we can try to support that person with. The harm reduction philosophy is one of the umbrella guiding value systems or philosophies for our work, even though we're doing some discrete specific activities for people. So that's, in a nutshell, what Heart to Heart is. We have a board of 9 and a staff of 30, and I think 28 of those positions are full-time. [00:07:47] Crystal Fincher: So who are you typically serving? [00:07:50] Everett Maroon: We see some diversity across our caseloads - it varies a little bit from program to program. I would say that we have somewhere around 55% are men and 45% are women. We do tend to see white, non-Hispanic people out here more often than not in our caseload, but we have about 12% of folks who are Hispanic and some other race - so white, mixed, African-American, Native. We see a lot of people on the far lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum, I would say - and that varies a little bit from location to location. So when I look at who we've served in Clarkston, about 12% of our prevention clients tell us that they are unhoused and almost 40% of them are temporarily housed - so that could be like couch surfing or at a shelter. The unhoused number is highest for our Kennewick clients at 35.6%, so majority of people that we're serving in Kennewick are unhoused or temporarily housed. In Walla Walla, maybe about 20% of people are unhoused, but the people who are temporarily housed are in truly atrocious conditions. So there are a lot of people in Walla Walla living in someone else's shed or garage - they don't have access to plumbing, they don't have access to heat or air conditioning in the summer when it's 110 degrees out here. So there're definitely big stressors on the people that we're serving. A lot of the women that we're serving are in very abusive relationships, or they have experience being sex trafficked, or being made to participate in illegal activities in order to have a relationship or to have housing. So there are definitely gender differences in terms of what people are facing among our caseloads. Folks that are in some of the more rural areas that we serve with our mobile clinic - they are very concerned about other people in their small communities knowing what's going on with them. And so they're very reluctant to seek care because they don't want other people to know what they've been engaged in. And that is its own kind of barrier for them. [00:10:22] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And that being tied to the stigma that is causing so much shame, whether it's having HIV, an STI, substance use disorder - a variety of things where the stigma creates this shame cycle, which prevents people from seeking help, prevents people from getting better, and actually encourages the spread because of that and not being treated. Now, we met each other around the issue of substance use disorder. The landscape about how we deal with substance use disorder has changed over the years. Starting out, particularly with you being so engaged in so many different rural areas in Washington state, what have you seen or how has particularly the opioid epidemic impacted the communities you're working within? [00:11:15] Everett Maroon: I think that what you said about stigma is really relevant to answering this question. In large part, we see stigma coming in to sort of silence people and keep them away from seeking help. A 2019 study from Washington State University showed that in general, Eastern Washingtonians have a life expectancy of five fewer years than people living west of the Cascades. Part of the reason why is because of later dates of diagnosis, delayed care - those kinds of things add up for people en masse, and then we see a detriment to the outcomes for them. So if you don't get your cancer diagnosed until you're stage 3, your prognosis is worse than if you'd shown up really early in stage 1. The same kind of thing happens for people who are engaging in substance use. And just to be clear, many people use substances and don't become dependent on them. But when they do, it becomes very difficult very quickly for them to extract themselves on their own. Opioids in particular - because they so mimic this endorphin pathway that we all have as human beings - it's almost impossible for people to just will themselves to stop using because the withdrawal symptoms kick in so overwhelmingly that they just feel terrible. And so to deal with that, they use again. A different way of thinking about how people might seek help is to say it's going to be non-stigmatized for you to come into our office and say - I've been using fentanyl, I've been using meth, I've been using anything in front of me. What can we do today about reducing my use? There are very few places where somebody can walk into a doctor's office and say that and then be taken seriously and aided. When you're talking about rural environments, I think that the stereotype is that people in rural environments don't care about folks that are struggling with these issues. I see directly - I observe - it's that we have such a smaller, thinner resource infrastructure. It's that we have fewer providers. So if there's a problem with one provider, there might not be another one in your health insurance plan that you can go see. So now you got to either work with this person who says something stigmatizing to you, or you just don't do it. And if you return to this place of - Well, I'll just get through this myself. Well, we know that that's really not a good option for most people. It's not a realistic option for most people. So in my rural environment, what we've tried to do is build a trauma-informed, non-stigmatizing or anti-stigmatizing environment so that people know they can come in, tell us the God's honest truth about what's really going on with them. And we're going to start from whatever space zero is for them. So there're definitely folks who can tell us about a time they were entering treatment and then they relapsed and then they were kicked out of the program. Or due to relapse, they missed two appointments and then they were kicked out of the program. Where they admitted that even though they were getting Suboxone for their opioid dependence, they were still sometimes using meth on the weekends and then they were kicked out of the program. So we just believe in our harm reduction philosophy that - if we're not looking to dispose of people, but we're looking to retain them for future engagement, we're going to see better outcomes for them. Because we're going to walk with them as they stumble, because we acknowledge that that's part of what they're facing - occasional relapses and stumbles. And you can do that in an urban center and you can do it in a rural environment. We just have to have the commitment. [00:15:08] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, I've heard a lot of people have different conceptions and misconceptions about harm reduction, and hearing - Well, if you don't require people to be clean before you help them. If you don't use this as a stick to get them to do what is best for them, then we're really just enabling their problem. We're becoming part of the problem. - Why is that not true? And what is harm reduction and why is it important? [00:15:39] Everett Maroon: That enabling hypothesis is very persistent, almost as persistent as opioid use disorder - it's been around a long time. But when you look at the actual evidence for treatment - in fact, there was a study that just came out that showed that treatment without prescribing a medication is almost worthless. We really need to be thoughtful about what clients need. If somebody had a heart attack after having a heart attack six months ago, the cardiologist would not say to them - Well, you had another heart attack. I refuse to see you anymore. If someone had type 2 diabetes and they walked into the doctor's office and the doctor said - Oh, your blood sugar is really high. You must not be following my treatment plan. I'm just going to cut off all of your insulin and see how you do. We would cite that provider for malpractice. But somehow when we're talking about meeting clients where they are or patients where they are around substance use, people rise up from the woodwork and say - You're enabling them. All we're trying to do is keep people engaged in care so that we don't lose them and we take away opportunities for them to make behavior change. If we're continuing to engage with people and motivating them to come in to see us, then we can provide them with more opportunities to stabilize their lives. If you stop trying to force a particular outcome on a client and you give them room to sort out what their priorities are, you're actually teaching them how to cope with stress the way we want to see people cope with stress - which is in an adaptive, positive way. When we get patronizing with people or we prescribe for people - You must do it this way, you cannot do it that way. Well, I see a lot of people who have overdosed and passed away waiting four weeks or more to get an assessment so they can get into treatment. So I know there has to be more ways for us to reach out to people where they're already at, so that we're not just losing them forever because nobody's going to get better from something if they're not even here anymore. So for me, what harm reduction means is - I'm using a respectful position as a professional to support people how ever they initially show up and to continually be there for them so that we can help them move through these stages of change that we know people go through when they're dealing with some behavioral health challenge. So if we allow people to come in and say - I relapsed last weekend - and they know that they can say that because we're not going to throw them out of the program for that. Then we can say - Okay, what do you think was the root cause of why you used again? And then you can sit down and say - Well, they wanted to please somebody, or it was offered to them and they weren't ready for it to be offered to them, or they haven't really broken out of this friend group that's always telling them to use it, or maybe a trauma happened to them. And then we can respond to that root cause and help them find another way to get through that if that ever happens to them again. If we had just said no to them and pulled a hard line on it, they would do no learning, we wouldn't learn as professionals, and we would lose that client. Life isn't perfect and people aren't perfect, so our programs should not demand that of them - in the same way that we don't demand it of other people who are living with conditions that we don't stigmatize like we stigmatize SUD. So harm reduction is very easily misunderstood, but it is also the most studied public health intervention of the last 30 years, with more than 1,500 different research efforts pointed at it. And what it has continually shown is that it is better at engaging people and retaining people and getting behavior change. So if you want to get concerned about a syringe service program in a particular neighborhood, do know that people that are going to it are five times as likely to get into recovery as people who don't utilize it. So I think that there are many ways that we could have this knee-jerk reaction against harm reduction, but at the end of the day - it gets people into recovery, it helps them reduce their use, it helps them stabilize the things in their life that were very out of control, and it helps keep them safer so that they encounter fewer infections and sequelae associated with having those infections. So we're here to help reduce the traffic on first responders and hospital systems and law enforcement. And I will just always sing the praises of the harm reduction approach because I see it work every single day. [00:20:42] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, like you, I've seen it work up close. You are certainly doing the work, have so much experience in seeing it work. But to your point, we have so much evidence. We have so much data pointing towards this being the most effective method. And it is largely because of stigma and because these deeply entrenched narratives and beliefs - largely by people who don't know many people who've been in this situation, or who hear an anecdote that is happy and was the case for one person but is not addressing what the majority of people are experiencing and what is shown is helpful. And principally, addiction is not a logical activity - people are not making inherently logical decisions. You can't just say - Well, I've decided that this person is going to be hitting rock bottom. They need to hit rock bottom in order to really get things together, and certainly the logical response to something going bad is to prevent the things that caused it from going bad and changing behavior. - And nothing about the reality of substance use disorder functions like that. And our refusal to come to grips with that from a policy perspective is playing out and seeing worse outcomes on our streets in many situations, worse outcomes in our communities - both people housed and unhoused, with great support without great support - it is just such a challenge. And I appreciate people in your position, organizations like yours, who are engaged in really trying to do that. Now, in Washington state, we've had a bit of a roller coaster ride over the past few years when it comes to substance use disorder policy, drug policy, and how we've approached it. Which kicked off this roller coaster ride with the Blake decision by our State Supreme Court, which basically decriminalized personal possession of all substances in our state, which kicked off a reaction that said - Oh, but drugs are bad and we have an opioid crisis. So clearly we need to reinstitute these laws, crack down and reinstitute penalties, and make sure we know this is criminal behavior and we can lock people up for engaging in personal use, now use in public places. - What is your opinion of that approach? [00:23:06] Everett Maroon: Well, the State Supreme Court was not trying to decriminalize drug possession in Washington state. It was saying that the statute as written, which was different from all 49 other states in the United States, was not constitutional. Because there was no other statute that they could turn to to say this is how law enforcement should enforce simple drug possession, we then did not have a statute on the books that was valid for detaining people around that for, I think, eight weeks. You will note that the state of Washington did not completely fall apart in those eight weeks with no drug possession statute. But it is an extremely common statute to cite people on, which is why it's costing the state millions and millions of dollars - I think seven figures, right? Eight figures. It's in the tens of millions of dollars. To re-adjudicate all of these sentences - because when you void the statute, you void all of those convictions that go back to the 1970s. So it was very commonly asserted in courts across the state of Washington - the statute around possession without intent - and so prosecutors did not want to not have something to turn to. When I talk to jailers and corrections staff, when I talk to many sheriff's deputies - the people who are actually on the ground - and many peace officers in city police departments, everybody knows that simply locking people away and arresting them and demanding accountability from them hasn't worked. If it had worked, we would not be here today. So people were really ready when the Blake decision came down, in my opinion, to do something different. But systems don't like system change. Systems are very stubborn and they want to stay in the track that they've been in, which is why reform is so difficult. So in the response that came immediately from Blake, they opened up a bill - even though it was now out of the timeline for the legislative cycle. So they made all these exceptions for themselves so that they could run a bill through. And that was - the engrossed Senate bill 5476 came out in 2021 and stood up a temporary measure. And they said this will sunset June 30th of 2023. And of course, by then, we'll have a new statute. We would never not attend to this. So they gave themselves a two-year window. Well, in 2023, the legislature was not decided on how to respond. Should it be back to a felony? Should it remain just a misdemeanor? Maybe it should be a gross misdemeanor. Maybe we shouldn't make this gross misdemeanor have a sentence of 364 days, but we'll have it make a sentence of 180 days. Maybe that's actually worse. So there was no real throughline in the policy debate around what to do for simple possession. Meanwhile, to the south of us, Oregon had - through ballot initiative - decriminalized all drugs. There's some evidence saying that's been a good thing for them, there's some evidence saying that hasn't been a good thing for them. Oregon is less than half the population of Washington state and has a much smaller revenue base. We've got very large corporations set up in Washington state that Oregon simply doesn't have, including Amazon and Boeing and many other big players, that give us a much bigger budget than Oregon gets. So I feel like it was maybe foreseeable that the legislative session would end without answering this question. Legislature, in the long year, ends in early May. So now they had less than two months before this statute was going to disappear. And I have heard from several people, why didn't we get there? The progressives ran out of the room and said - We can't vote for this. The GOP had decided they weren't going to vote for the bill as written because it wasn't enough about accountability, which is their new catchphrase for saying the onus is on the individual to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and not have a drug problem anymore. That left only the middle-of-the-road Democrats and they were not enough to carry the day on that vote. Well, then in the intersession between the special session that was called and the end of the regular session, there was a lot of dealmaking and communication. And what we got out of it were some of these middle-of-the-road ideas. So, in fact, it is now a gross misdemeanor with a 180-day sentence. It does still have a line into diversion programming - so instead of arrest, you can put somebody into the Recovery Navigator program that got set up by 5476. And they fixed some problems that were in the paraphernalia statute, so now it is clearly legal again to put out litmus tests to the public so they can test their substances for fentanyl and those things. The other thing it did was clarify for municipal officials - they can regulate some pieces of harm reduction activities or harm reduction-related activities, most notably around whether organizations or agencies can hand out safer smoking kits. This is an important question because when the pandemic hit, heroin dried up because shipping stopped, which meant smuggling stopped. And the world really got heroin from one notable place - Afghanistan - and when the poppies couldn't be processed anywhere because they couldn't get transported anywhere, China showed up with synthetic fentanyl precursors that Mexican cartels were really happy to turn into fentanyl. And rather than coming all the way from Afghanistan and around to Asia and then the United States, they could just be right next door to the United States. And so they flooded the markets in the U.S. with really cheaply made, very inconsistent fentanyl products. Fentanyl is so much more potent than heroin or any organic opioid. And fentanyl has a much shorter half-life, so people who I saw as participants who were making do with shooting up heroin 3 times a day, now were using fentanyl 30 times a day, and everything fell apart for them. They could not hold a job anymore. They couldn't manage relationships with their family. They couldn't stay housed. Because it was all about that next hit to delay the withdrawal symptoms, which were much worse on fentanyl than they ever felt on heroin. So we had 933 Narcan uses to reverse overdose in 2023, and we had 301 in 2021. So within two years, we saw the crisis hit a threefold increase - that is really astounding. It's horrifying. So King County, I think, has had a 47% increase in overdose fatalities in the last year. There are other places around the state that look more like 28% or 30%. But those are still terrible increases in fatality. It's not really clear where overdose as an event that maybe doesn't lead to a fatality is because many of these events don't ever get captured by first responder systems or hospital systems. But what I see from self-reports from our participants is that it's much, much worse. So I think it's good that the state is making these investments in diversion, but we really don't have the treatment bed capacity that the legislature is pointing people to go into. If everybody who wanted to be in treatment today could be in treatment today, there'd be enormous waiting lines. So we have to do a lot more - again, at the system level - and we have to lower the barriers to getting into treatment. So I'm really happy this year to be a part of the Bree Collective that is going to look at treatment reform for OUD. They did look at this in 2017, and this is the first time the Bree Collective has come back to look at the same issue again. But as you said earlier, so much has changed so rapidly that we need to return. [00:32:09] Crystal Fincher: As I look at that law and what happened with that law - one, I still mourn a little bit the opportunity that was there, but these things happen with policy all over the place. One of the things initially after that decision, the first Blake fix - because there are basically two attempts to fix it through legislation - is everyone seemed to agree, whether it was Republican, Democrat, progressive, conservative, that we don't have adequate detox capacity. We don't have adequate treatment capacity. And that requires a lot of investment and people wonder where they're going to get the money from - there's not universal agreement on that - but that we are lacking there. And part of what I heard from legislators with the intention after the first shot at the fix, where they applied the sunset, and there was - You know, evidence does point to more of a public health-based approach and less of a carceral approach to substance use disorder. But we don't have the infrastructure necessary to responsibly do that, so we need a stopgap in between. So we are providing these carceral solutions to this program with the hope that we take these two years - we really do a lot on adding capacity, making needed investments, and making sure the infrastructure is there so that when we do divert someone, there is treatment there for them to go. Now, the pandemic happened in that interim, which threw a lot of things off - it's not like people simply sat there and said, We plan to do nothing from the outset, this is just a whole red herring. But it didn't happen. And then politics happened and people got afraid of being called soft on crime and soft on drug use, basically. And that motivated some fear-based legislation or provisions. And so what we wound up with was - in the second fix - was less of a focus on diversion - they basically made that largely subject to prosecutorial discretion. Although they did, like you said, shore up paraphernalia concerns. But they did weaken the ability to reliably stand up harm reduction services and gave cities basically the latitude to say - We don't have to have these in our community - which is harmful because oftentimes, harm reduction services are where people who fall through the cracks of the other programs, people who are rejected from the other programs, people who people say - Well, they won't accept help. Well, they will from harm reduction services that are truly aligned with trying to help them as a person and meet them where they're at. So with this landscape that we have now, what has this done to you as a service provider and your ability to meet the needs of this community? [00:34:59] Everett Maroon: Let's be clear about what allowances they gave municipalities to affect the work of harm reduction organizations. The State Supreme Court still, very clearly, in 1988 said that giving people clean syringes and the associated other medical supplies is an essential public health program. So there's really nothing that municipalities can do to end actual syringe exchange, be it on a needs-based or a one-to-one-based exchange. There's nothing unlawful about it, and there's nothing that local government can do to stop that work. Where they can come in and say - No, you can't do this - is around the safer smoking kit provision and around litmus tests, because those are the newest things that have been added. Those were clearly not what the State Supreme Court was thinking about back in 1988. So what I've seen happen are harassment campaigns that have been semi-organized, that have made people fearful of going to SSP sites. And I've seen that when public health entities are doing those harm reduction programs, that you can defund those projects. And that stops the work there. But they still don't have the availability to come in and as a county commission or a planning commission for a city council, come in and say - You can't give out syringes to people. So they can't do that. And let's just note for a moment that the safer smoking kits - they're called things like crack pipes, which elicits this whole racist juggernaut that was put on people in the 1980s, again, because they were talked about in very racialized terms and very racist terms. Whereas people using a different form of cocaine just didn't face the same kinds of penalties and consequences. So it is a reminder to me that local government could have this effect on one kind of harm reduction activity and not another, that we're still operating through a very racist white supremacist lens here with regard to drug policy in Washington state. So for people who are thinking that they're acting agnostic to race and history of racism, I have news for you. You're not. You're still supporting those systems. I think it's very possible for harm reduction organizations to get legal representation - maybe through entities like the ACLU, but there's certainly other people around the country who are very concerned that harm reduction be able to continue unabated to support people through this deepening overdose crisis, who can help you make arguments like - this is a protected class of patients. So very clearly, people with opioid use disorder and substance use disorder are covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act. And so local government that doesn't have a lot of money should think very carefully about how to restrict - if their goal is to restrict - these operations, because they may very quickly run afoul of the ADA. Also, and I'm not a legal advisor - I just say it as someone who's already come up against these issues - they may also very easily run afoul of the Equal Protections Clause of the United States Constitution. And that is very important for them to think about because damages related to not being in compliance with that are very high, can be very high. And so I really would recommend that people in local government volunteer or at least take a tour of these harm reduction organizations in their midst, have a better understanding of what they're trying to do, and start to ask questions with those harm reductionists about how can we align your work with, say, the work of first responders, the work of law enforcement who are engaged in diversion? How can we help align it with people who are offering treatment in our areas? I would love to see communities around Washington state put together interagency workgroups to try to help respond to the crises that are local to them. Certainly every community has different kinds of resources, different kinds of limitations, different kinds of advantages, things that they've done when working together that have produced great things for their communities. This is one of those times when we really can come together and instead of pointing at each other saying - You're not doing enough or you're doing the wrong thing - we really can say - Wait a minute, these are our kids, our spouses, our neighbors, our co-workers, and we want to show up for them. So how can we do that? And if we all work to have a better understanding of each other, I think we're going to have much better responses on the ground than in simply looking to curtail this activity. [00:40:10] Crystal Fincher: I think sometimes we get into - we're looking at this from the outside, we're looking at the legislative session, and it is really simple to see - okay, they're entrenched in their interests, and we disagree, and therefore, they cannot be part of what a solution needs to be moving forward, or I can't work with them. Well, what I've seen - numerous examples across policy areas - of when people do sit down together and commit to listening to each other and understand that - Okay, we actually have a number of goals that align here. And how can we work together to make those happen is a really positive thing. Do you see examples of multi-agency responses working well in Washington? [00:40:55] Everett Maroon: Yeah, we even have one here in Walla Walla, that is run through our public health organization, and it's a behavioral health mapping program. And I think it's doing well to try to help figure out what can we - again, what resources can we wrap around people not necessarily in crisis, but near crisis, who may be in crisis at some point in the near future. I think co-responder programs are doing really well in various places around the state. And I think the world of the Let Everyone Advance with Dignity or Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion programs - I run two of them. And I see prosecutors and corrections officers and population health and case managers and DSHS all showing up to say - Okay, wait, we're going to - here's all the things we know about Sally and how can we help Sally today? And when you turn around and you get a phone call from someone, they say - Hey, I'm calling you from treatment and I'm feeling great. Or they say - Here's a photo of me. I got a photo from someone who was in the woods on the west side and they're holding their kid. And thanks so much, I never thought I'd get my kid back. And they're out in the woods with the mountains behind them - that can and does happen. I would not be such a champion for harm reduction if I didn't see it working all the time to help people reclaim their lives. But sometimes it's no longer appropriate for them to just try and do it themselves and do it just with their families, that they have maybe burned or lied to and all of that. It's better for them to work with professionals and then they can return and re-engage those systems that they thought they were alienated from. But I see it all the time and I know that we can do it and we have to dig in as communities. [00:42:37] Crystal Fincher: So we're currently in the midst of a legislative session. We have several cities and counties trying to deal with this in various ways. The state is trying to basically incrementally provide more capacity as they find and identify revenue to be able to do that. It's slower than all of us would like, certainly, but they are and have been moving towards that. What would your recommendation to legislators be this session? And what would your recommendation to local elected officials be for what can most meaningfully address this opioid crisis? [00:43:14] Everett Maroon: I think that local governments are well-suited to looking at their regulations around housing, capacity, zoning, and helping situate things like recovery houses, transition housing, places where people can go to restart. But as long as we are trying to do treatment and therapy and wraparound care for people who are unhoused, we're just fighting - we're fighting the tide with our little sandcastle. So we have to think about what those barriers to the outcomes we want to see really are. We certainly need specific housing for women fleeing abuse. We need specific housing for single men, but also families. We need to be able to help people step back up into more traditional housing over time. I think the state has a lot of priorities, and I appreciate that in Washington state, only a small amount of our budget is really actionable through discretionary means. There's so much that we have to spend on by statute or by ruling. And so it's a really difficult question, and I don't envy the legislators trying to tackle it. But when we try to take things little bit by little bit and we're not looking at the whole big picture, then we run into a lot of false starts and failures, and then people start to question if the approach is even right. I swear on all that's holy, the approach is right. But we can't get tens of thousands of people out of this situation very quickly if we don't have attention to housing, if we don't have treatment beds and treatment providers. If it takes three years to get the certification to be an SUDP, you are basically saying we have to wait three years for anything to change in Washington state. So we have to be thinking about workforce resources, housing, programs to help people deal with the trauma that they've picked up either on their way to using substances in a maladaptive way or after they started using them in a maladaptive way. I know people are going to say - Everett, where's the money come from? But I love this idea of health engagement hubs. But boy, the SURSAC committee asked for 10 sites and they got 2. It's just going to take us longer to figure out how to tweak that model to see how to make it work in as many places as possible. And I know also if we get people housed and we get them reengaged in the workforce and we get them back with their families, it's going to generate so much more revenue for the state. We're asking to front-load some programs so that we can get the benefits for a long time after. [00:46:02] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And it is an issue of when and how you pay for it, fundamentally. Dealing with all of the symptoms of substance use disorder, all of the outcomes when you don't treat this in a way that is likely to lead to recovery. Then we see this manifesting in a wide variety of ways and making the other issues that we're dealing with from homelessness to the wealth divide to just everything that we're dealing with - education - so much harder, so much more expensive. We're placing this burden on ourselves, really. So we have to systemically look at getting ourselves out. I appreciate that. For people in their communities who are listening and just thinking - Okay, I hear this and we need to do something. I see this problem in my community. I know this is a problem. We need to do something. And the low-hanging fruit of something in communities seems to always be - Okay, we'll pass a law, we'll toughen a penalty. What can they look to or help with or get involved with in their communities that is likely to lead to a more positive outcome? [00:47:11] Everett Maroon: There are all kinds of things people can do based on their own ability, interest, time, and their connections. So if there's a leadership group in your town, join it. If there's a behavioral health committee through public health or city council, go to those meetings. Get a seat at the table. Pester people in your council and commissioner meetings. Ask them how they're working on it. Look at the budgets that are public budgets and ask the funders how do they evaluate the people who are providing services. There are lots of things that you can do to check in on how things are going. You can always write letters to the editor telling people about why they should themselves get involved in this work. You can volunteer at these organizations that are doing the work. And even if you just want to go be a candy striper at your local emergency department, there's a lot that you can do to help people there. Or if you're more into serving at a soup kitchen - consider that a lot of people who are living on the street don't have anybody say anything nice to them all day long. You can be that person. You can be the one who helps build a bridge back to their sense of humanity and connection to the community. So I worked in soup kitchens a lot, and I initially worked there because I had to do community service after shoplifting. So I will say that publicly - I was 22 years old and supremely stupid. But I learned so much from doing my time there. And then I continued to work at that soup kitchen for two or three years after that, because it just was so meaningful to me to be able to commune with people and help them feel okay about this one moment in their day. So I think shoplifting - the best thing I did for myself was get caught. [00:48:56] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well, thank you, Everett, for your time today, for your wisdom and knowledge. We will continue to pay attention to how things progress through session, through different cities in the state - but really appreciate your experience and perspective here. [00:49:13] Everett Maroon: Thank you so much, Crystal. I appreciate the opportunity. [00:49:15] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - 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.

In the studio today are Cassie Villegas, Outgoing Interim Director of Washington General, and Sven Akerman Jr, a contractor from Outlook Insight with Washington General.   You can find out how Washington General empowers staff with an integrated AI tool that does the heavy lifting when researching policies, regulations, and RSA requirements, freeing staff to focus on providing quality services.   Listen Here   Full Transcript:   {Music} Sven: Our team was presented with a challenge from DVR. They had a 767 page customer service manual, but it was really kind of difficult to find answers quickly.   Cassie: You can go right in and find your answer, and I found it in 0.2 seconds rather than two hours. Coming through all of the different policies or regulations.   Sven: I see this more as enablement capabilities as opposed to replacement capabilities to where, like Cassie was saying, get back to focusing on what you really want to do, not what you have to do.   Cassie: Now, I don't think our staff could live without it. If we tried to pull it back now, there'd probably be mayhem.   Intro Voice: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management, Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host Carol Pankow.   Carol: Well, welcome to the manager minute. Joining me in the studio today is Cassie Villegas, outgoing interim director Washington general, and Sven Ackerman, junior contractor from Outlook Insight who is working with Washington General. So thanks for being here, you guys. Sven, how is it going in Washington?   Sven: Well, things are fantastic heating up and, uh, well, not heating up. It's actually getting wetter. But it's a beautiful time to be in business for Washington.   Carol: Excellent. And, Cassie, how are you doing? I know you're the outgoing interim director. Hopefully you're going somewhere good.   Cassie: Yeah, absolutely. Things are winding down here for me in terms of VR, but starting to wind up for the next step. So yeah, pretty excited.   Carol: Good for you. Good for you. Well, thanks for joining me. We are going to have a very interesting conversation today about artificial intelligence or AI as it is commonly known. And artificial intelligence has been all over the news this summer and fall. I think about the Hollywood SAG-AFTRA strike. CEO Sam Altman with OpenAI. And in a nutshell, artificial intelligence is a simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems. And so when I was preparing for the podcast, I started making a list of AI in my life. I'm like, okay, what things are considered AI and it really is all around us. And I know we think it's this other big thing there, but it's here, it's everywhere right now. And I thought about my virtual assistants Siri and Alexa, the facial recognition when I go to the airport, I use CLEAR. So they're looking at my eyeballs to, you know, get my identity spam filters. You think about the algorithms in your Google search, driving my car with driver assisted technology and so many more. And I think there's a tendency for people to kind of go to that dark place. They conjure up all the dark things I could do. And you think about machines are becoming humans, and you look back at movies like The Terminator or War Games, Space Odyssey, and there are definitely valid concerns. You know, we've heard in the news as of late where individuals are cloning your voice, you know, and they're sending it to your grandma and asking for a ransom note or something like that. So as with all things that are new, you know, there's always this balance. And so when I think of AI, I always think of things like it being really cutting edge, which, sorry to say, I'm not always associating with VR, you know? And much to my surprise, I come across this article about how you guys are using this in Washington. So we have to dig in. I'm super excited. So, Cassie, can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and your background and how did you come to VR?   Cassie: Yeah, so I'm currently, as you said, outgoing interim director. I've been the interim director for Washington General since July of 2023. Prior to that, I've been our deputy director. I've worked with our community rehab programs, their CRP's. I've been a tribal liaison. I've done some of the DEI work. And prior to coming to Voc Rehab, I worked for the Independent Living Council for the State of Washington. So I got my foot in the door with VR through Independent Living. But before that, I've worked in trio programs with students trying to help them obtain education, higher education, and that career exploration piece that's very similar to what we do in VR. So I've been around not very long. And of course, like you stated, I am outgoing. I'm leaving. We have a new interim director that I've handed some power over to or transitioning right now. So yeah, good things on the horizon for me, but also for VR.   Carol: Very cool. It's always fun to find people's pathway into VR. We always have our foot in somehow. So that's cool that you came in through the IL world. So also, can you tell us a little bit about Washington General and how many staff the agency has and like how many consumers you all serve?   Cassie: Yeah, absolutely. So in the state of Washington, we have 39 counties. Our state is broken up into three regions. We have about 41 offices across the state, and we have about 340 staff in the last year on cases, we've served just over 7000 customers. That does not include youth and students who are not on caseloads through those like group services, through pre-employment transition services. But that would probably well over double that 7000 number if we included them in that count.   Carol: Well, absolutely. And I have two brothers that are out in Washington, so I know about the complexity geographically of your state it is very different. And while something may seem like it is an hour away, it really is not as you're hitting the mountains or which way you're going. And big, big differences in very rural areas of the state, a lot of geographic complexity. So, Sven, let's go to you. Tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and the company that you work for.   Sven: Sure. Well, I'm the founder and chief executive for Outlook Insight. We're a social services focused company that leverages modern technology, really helping those who help others. We're proudly celebrating our 25th anniversary here on December 22nd. So just four days away from 25 years old, my background is in technology management and implementation, with a focus really on Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 solutions. But I've been working with vocational rehabilitation agencies since 2009, when I started working at a company that built VR case management software, and since then, I've been proud to have delivered well I've been part of the implementation of over 26 VR case management systems and had the pleasure of traveling all over the country, meeting with executives and staff from VR agencies, kind of understanding the mission, what they do, how our technology helps them, and then branched out onto our own kind of rekindling the fire of the entrepreneurial spirit in 2019. And since then, we've been working with a variety of different agencies, including Washington DVR, Washington DSB, DSHs at large, and others, really helping them drive new technology capabilities to streamline their operation as we go along.   Carol: Very cool. So you bring a very unique perspective. You can see technologically some of the gaps that we have to as a system for sure. So how did you get into this AI space?   Sven: Well, you know, it was just a curiosity back in like December of 2022, you know, as the OpenAI ChatGPT conversation started to explode, we started looking at new ways to automate, you know, just some of the routine work we absolutely fell in love with generative AI. It's really, really spent that first quarter of the year just understanding the myriad of different open source, fee based, large language models, how to use them. And over time, we really kind of settled back into our roots a bit and decided that the Microsoft Azure platform was going to be the one that we wanted to focus on, really just kind of recognizing that's where our background and experience in technology is most prominent. And then the advanced capabilities offered a lot in terms of what we could do with it. Well, not to mention that it's generally acceptable by most state agencies to be working in Azure. So with that, it was interesting. Two things really happened agency related at about the same time. The first thing that happened was our team was presented with a challenge from DVR. They had a 767 page customer service manual, and it's a really a vast collection of guidance, policies, procedures. But it was really kind of difficult to find answers quickly in there. So they asked if there was a way to better access that content, make it more accessible and available to folks. So we accepted that challenge, and we decided to take some of our AI curiosities and apply it to this space. And we loaded a model along with their customer service manual. We also loaded it full of the RCWs and wax of Washington State law. We threw in there all the RSA policy directives and TAC publications as well as the federal statutes, and that really established a full corpus of data.   Sven: And then we started to ask questions, kind of refining the prompts to optimize the responses. And that's when it all started to come together in terms of forming great answers for Washington DVR related to their customer service manual. But the second thing that happened was really interesting. You know, working in technology, I help a variety of folks, especially as people are onboarding, sharing knowledge where I can. And one of the newer staff person who was hired to take over the technical roles of someone else who's going to be retiring, came up to me and they had a technology policy question, and I was like, well, don't trust me on this answer. Let's go find the authoritative source. Let's go out to the Washington OCIO policy website and see if we can find the answer there. And I got to tell you, you know, after 20 minutes of searching, we were coming up empty handed. And eventually we wound up finding the answer that we were looking for in one of the sub sites there. And I thought, man, this is just too hard. I mean, how can a new worker be expected to remain compliant when the compliance guidance comes from so many places? So that was frustrating enough for us to take all of the OCIO policies in Washington state, load them into a model on our own, and see can we get to those answers much more quickly? And we were just thrilled and delighted with the approach. It really helped that new employee get to answers very quickly, and we have since been kind of socializing that experience with others. So there's how we got in there.   Carol: Tell us a little more about this technology. How does it really like, how does this all work?   Sven: Well there's not a ton of mystery to it, although we're not going to get into any of the complexity about how AI and machine learning works. But really the intent of this solution is really to. Help workers find information to make the most productive with their compliance driven environments. So ultimately, what we're intending to do is to drive them to authoritative content based off of just human language prompts and questions. Kind of like you would ask a coworker a question or have a discussion with them. And so the way that it works is, you know, at the agency level, the content that is of interest for exposure through this model is compiled together, and we pull that data into a search index. So we index all of that content in a way that we can then do what's called a semantic search across it, basically finding answers based off of intent of the question, not just keywords. And that delivers back a very rich response in terms of the authoritative content that comes back. And then we take those results, and then that's where we start to leverage the large language model, the Azure Open AI large language model, and we summarize the content of that search.   Sven: Okay. So we searched the content that the agency knows we have a result set. We summarize that in just a human readable form. We present that back to the user. And then we also include in their citations back to the original document that was uploaded and ingested. By doing it that way, we're able to quickly show the user. Here is a summary of what has been discovered with some context and understanding around it. Let them drill into the authoritative content to really see you know, what are the specific words that are of legal authority. But then we take it a little bit farther in that since it's not just a search retrieval system, using that large language model, we expose the ability to do things like drafting emails based off of the context of the conversation you're having, or explaining things in new ways, like through telling stories or simplifying concepts down to perhaps a more easily understandable level for folks you're trying to communicate with.   Carol: I thought the storytelling was kind of hysterical because for disclosure to our listeners, Sven shared the link with me to access. So I'm in there asking it questions, and then it says, do you want this presented in another form? So obviously, you know, I put in like, hey, how many days do I have to determine eligibility? And so of course, then this whole thing comes back, it links to all of the policies. It gives you any RSA guidance on it. It's got the regulatory citation. And then I'm like, tell me the story. You can click the button. You know, tell me a story about this. And so then it's like, oh, then there's the story about Bill or whatever. And it does this whole thing about to put that in the context, I thought that was pretty cool. I am like, I've never seen anything like that. Now. The story got a little wild there for a bit as it goes through it, but it was pretty fun. I thought that was super interesting way to think about it. So, Cassie, I know Terry Redman started this initiative with Sven and his company. How were you involved in all of this?   Cassie: Yeah, so as the deputy under Terry, I was hearing a lot of really cool things from Terry, from Sven hints that something big was coming. We're working on this AI tool. It was really excited when Terry decided to step away, and I got to bump up into interim to get the full picture and to, like, really know what was going on behind the scenes. Just personally, I'm excited by innovation and technology. I am a millennial. I've, you know, had a computer in front of me my entire life, basically. So I'm like, let's use new tools. So I inherited the project, was really excited when I got to finally see the demo from Sven. And I'm like, let's go, let's get this out there to our staff as fast as we can. And that's what we did. We kept it moving. We added to the list of to-do's, but this was the top of that to do list. And here we are. We've got this really great tool.   Carol: So when did this all roll out?   Cassie: So we soft launched it in early October just to get hands on it from some of our like program managers. And then we had the hard launch the full as available to everyone. At the end of October of 2023, we had an all staff in-service event for two days. We brought Sven and his team in to introduce it to all of our staff, to train them on how to use it, to kind of give them that background on the purpose and how to ask appropriate and meaningful questions, how to check the sources and just start easing people into using it. So we've had it up for about two months or so now. So yeah, we had a really quick timeline and our staff are using it daily now.   Carol: So how is that rollout going? What's the reaction from the staff?   Cassie: I think now it's pretty positive. There's still people that are discovering it. You have new folks or people who maybe just they didn't think it pertained to them. We had a program manager in our headquarters office. I think it was just what last week Sven at our holiday party, they pulled you aside and you left the party to go show them how to use the tool, because they just didn't have a need for it until someone said something and they were excited to see how it worked. But at first I think there was a lot of nerves around it. I, like you, kicked us off at this conversation as scary to some, so there was a little bit of convincing, hey, this is a really beneficial tool for your day to day. It did take a little bit of show and tell, demonstrating the tool, showing the benefits, reinforcing the benefits to everybody. Why it's a good thing? But now I don't think our staff could live without it. If we tried to pull it back now, there'd probably be mayhem.   Carol: Well I can imagine I think about all the new counselors coming in, new techs, you know, all the different staff coming in and you get your orientation and, you know, you're reading policies and procedures and it's just all so much. There's so many dates and all these, you must do this and this and this. I think this would be fabulous because everybody gets assigned a mentor. You have a way that you're getting trained, but you don't want to 40 times a day, go back and ask them like, oh gosh, I forgot. Like what was the requirement around this? If you could just type your question in and you get the answer. I find for me at least, that helps me remember for the next time, you know, because I've done that research, I've gone in and seen it then and I'm able to like, retain that even better. So I'm sure. Are you hearing that like from new staff especially? I would think this would be like an amazing tool for them.   Cassie: Yeah, absolutely. I think there's many benefits to the tool. So like you said, new staff coming in, maybe not embarrassed. They don't want to ask the same question four times. Sometimes you need the context to retain it. Maybe you hear the old tropes from staff who've been around. You know, we've got the MythBusters kind of thing that needs to happen. Sometimes you can go right in and jump in, find your answer, and make sure to share it with your peers. Actually, that's a myth. This is what policy says. And I found it in point two seconds rather than two hours coming through all of the different policies or regulations that we have to work within. So there's benefits there. There's also benefits when it comes to talking to our customers. If we don't have a clear understanding of our own practices or policies, it's a challenge to explain the why to each other, but also to our customers. So there's a benefit that it's right there in front of your fingertips. Really easy to access when you're in meetings with customers to explain the why. And then like you've talked about already, the storytelling piece. So storytelling helps us learn. It's helping us as VR professionals learn, but it also helps our customers have a clearer understanding of services and the whys. And I think that sometimes the work that we do is really hard. So we get a little bit of cognitive fatigue, or if we're constantly having to think differently to explain things to our customers, it can take away some of the brainpower we need for the more challenging parts of our day to day. So you just go into this AI tool and say, tell me a story about this particular policy, and I can explain it to the person sitting in front of me in a way that they're going to understand, and I'm keeping that cognitive load off of me and just using the tools so I can redirect that where it's actually needed, where maybe the tool doesn't have the ability to help me with that actual direct customer service.   Carol: I know folks have that tendency to always go to the dark place, you know, like, did you have staff feel like you guys are just trying to get rid of us? Like, now we got this and you aren't going to need us anymore?   Cassie: Yes. And you know, I did have a call from a labor representative saying, tell me about this tool. How does it impact the day to day? We don't want you to replace VR counselors. And we're like, absolutely not. This is a tool to enhance critical thinking and professional judgment and to make the day to day work of our counselors easier so they can get back to what they're here for, which is that direct vocational rehabilitation counseling. We know that there has been a lot of changes over the years, WIOA and others that have put an extra burden on staff who feel that maybe they're being removed from that direct service that don't appreciate it. So this is just another tool to allow them to spend their time where it really needs to be spent. And that's with our customers. So instead of spending hours looking through the regs, trying to figure out, can I do this, can't I do this, why they can go directly to it, type in their questions, take something that maybe used to take hours, complete it in a few minutes, and then move on to, you know, the true meaning of vocational rehabilitation.   Carol: Yeah, I want to put a big exclamation point on that, because I know we have a lot of our listeners that keep going, like, what are other states doing? How can we get counselors back to counseling and not having to do all this other stuff? This just seems like another tool in the toolbox that could be super amazing for your colleagues across the country. So, Sven, I want to ask you, a lot of times when you're developing some kind of new technology or a new way of doing something, it can take a long time. How long did this take from kind of start to finish? When Terry approaches you with the idea for you to deliver the final product.   Sven: So again, we started we started our research about a year ago, and once we kind of cut our teeth on just what was real, what was not where we were, and we're not going to focus, that was one of the bigger decisions that we had to make. We wanted to choose something that would be most impactful, but also most acceptable by everyone. We had started to build the base platform for delivery of this generative AI solution, like, say, the middle of Q1 last year. And by like the middle of May, we actually took it on a road show at a conference here locally and showed it to a group of peers, a couple hundred people at a tech conference. And so we already had kind of the foundation in place. But that foundation was guided heavily because the conversations I started having with Terry were well before that. I mean, it was probably September or October of last year, you know, marinate on it a little bit and then. And come around December. It's like, let's see what we can do with AI on it. So we took it on as a personal company endeavor to bring a product into the space that could quickly and easily be onboarded for state agencies. And so by the time we got the go ahead from Cassie and her team, I think let me see. That was a Thursday. And by Monday we had the model fully loaded up and available for that soft launch she was talking about. So it only took a few days. And since then we've continued to refine that process. We can deploy now, you know, typically within 24 hours of having an order have the solution in place and at least core knowledge there to start to inspect and to do QA on.   Carol: That is crazy. I'm like shaking my head. I know our listeners can't see it, but I'm like, that was quick. Like, you did this all really fast.   Sven: You know, It's been a bit of a whirlwind and I can't tell you that. It's been with a great sleeping nights. Um, so there's been a lot of nights and weekends. I know we're still working full time other jobs, but even just time slicing it in, it's been a passion. When Cassie talks about the need for counselors to be delivering the services that they were really hired to deliver, I can speak directly to that. My brother in law's developmentally disabled here in Washington state. He benefits from DVA and other services, and I know how important it is for those counselors, those people who are serving the community to get the mundane, hard stuff out of the way so they can do the actual brain work and really focus on that service delivery and mission. Because for every minute that I can help save through technology, that might be one more minute for my brother in law. So it's been really kind of cool to think about it from that perspective. And as we've been going through, you know, it's really led to other things like our absolute commitment to total accessibility. We're currently undergoing a WCAG2.2 AA certification audit, and we're hoping to have that wrapped up probably in early January. It's accessible right now, but it's going to be unbelievably accessible here. Once we wrap up a couple of issues that they've identified, it's gone quick. But it's been long. It's been a good kind of long, but it's certainly been rewarding.   Carol: Good on you. I think that's really cool. And I'm super glad you're really focused in on that accessibility. That will also help the colleagues across the country be able to access that. Now, Cassie, I know you've talked about some really nice benefits for your staff. Have you seen any other ways that's making your program better? I know lots of states are really interested in rapid engagement or if you've seen any impact. I know it's only been two months, but is there seeming to be some impact on your processes?   Cassie: Yeah, I think so. Right now it's all anecdotal and I wouldn't have like very hard concrete data with just the timeline that we're in. But I do think that it is having a positive impact. If we look at the amount of time alone, not even direct customer service, but the time it's taking our staff to find answers to their questions, we're a large program were spread all over the state. We've had a lot of turnover. So people that are maybe in the field don't always know who to contact at headquarters with their questions. So if you're looking at just the amount of hands a question can go through before there's an answer, in addition to having an FTE sitting in like a policy position expected to respond to all of the questions that they're getting, I mean, we're saving full FTEs on this tool. Our policy manager used to basically do this nonstop. They would just be responding to emails all day. It didn't give them the opportunity to dive deep into the real, meaningful work that they needed to do to improve process and policy for our program. It was just simply answering questions to staff in the field, and we've already seen that decrease significantly. We do know that customers that their questions are getting answered quicker, our staff are able, like I said earlier, to provide simple terms, plain talk for some of those answers that probably would have gone back and forth multiple times with customers. So we are seeing an increase there. I do think it does tie really nicely into this focus in rapid engagement that we're seeing across the country.   Carol: That is super cool.   Sven: Tying into that Cassie, one thing I can share from the back end is, first of all, when this rolled out, this is a voluntary use tool. It was just a resource that was made available. Nothing was taken away. Their SharePoint is still there, their customer service manual is still available for them to use as they have, but just through organic adoption. Since we soft launched this on October 10th, there have been over 10,000 request and response cycles that have gone through our system. Over 20 million AI tokens have been used up from an organic growth perspective. That's one of the leading indicators of something that's useful for folks.   Carol: That is super cool. Holy cow. I know Sven too you had a really interesting perspective about what's happening with the whole knowledge base over this next seven, eight years or so. You want to talk about that?   Sven:  Yeah, one of the things we were looking at, I mean, anytime you're looking at a product, you're looking at the market and the market going forward. Right. And I found it curious, looking at some of the data that came from the Office of Financial Management, O.F.M., where their calculations, just based off of the age of the current population of state workers, some 25 to 40% of the staff in Washington state are going to retire over the next 4 to 7 years. They're just reaching that age and it's going to happen. So what that's going to do is it's twofold. One, it's going to have a direct impact on availability of senior folks who have been around for a long time and know so much they're going to walk out the door and their knowledge is going to walk with them. So you have that compounded by a whole new crop of new folks coming in. Right. And where are they going to go to get those answers? And how are they going to maintain the mission in the absence of having that the proverbial shoulder to tap, if you will? That was one of the things that we were looking at, thinking, oh my gosh, this is actually a huge problem not just in Washington state. This is a national problem. It's the baby boomer generation is reaching retirement age. And it's like, okay, holistically, I think in terms of just government continuity, I think solutions like this need to be made available to folks. And with any luck, we'll be able to keep the service levels where they are or even improve on them as we go forward. But I don't think it's going to be an accident. I think it's going to have to be purposeful.   Carol: Absolutely. Yeah, Cassie?   Cassie: Yeah, I was going to also add, just as a little story piece, our incoming interim director was in voc rehab a long time ago. It's been a while. So she's being reintroduced to VR and she's been here all of maybe a week now, maybe two weeks. And she told me I've been using the tool every time I'm in a meeting, and I need to know a definition of something, or I'm not really sure of the answer. I just like, can hop in a virtual meeting, open it on my second screen and find the answer. So I think being spend to what you're saying about new folks coming in, it is absolutely a game changer for the transition of generations in and out new staff. VR is very complex, we all know, and it's just a tool that has a solution that's now that we're using. It seems so simple for all of these really complex problems. We're solving really complex problems with an AI knowledge interpreter tool.   Carol: Yeah, I thought it was absolutely amazing. I just know as I went in and played around just a little bit, I'm like, oh my gosh, within five seconds you have this whole array directly to your policies, procedures, any of the RSA sub-reg guidance, all of the, you know, citations that you needed. Here it is. And then you can get it laid out for you in a very understandable way, which is super helpful for the work. I know if our listeners are going to be interested in this and getting some more information, so what would be the best way for them to do that? So Sven, do you have some contact information?   Sven: We do. We're just now starting to build out a website with more details. So organic conversational growth is happening in real time. So it's like okay we can't just keep answering them live. We have set up a page, up until now, remember, our focus has been on delivering the value of the tool itself. But we have a new marketing director and a team that's actually starting to work on these things. So we do have a website put up its outlookInsight.AI. And if you go there, you'll find some information about the tool, an ability to contact us. We have a contact us link. And we're starting to publish webinars that will be available for folks to register for. If they want to sit in on a demo and get more information that way. It's not fancy, it's in its infancy, but it's a start, and it's better than having to answer emails and phone calls the whole time.   Carol: Yeah, very cool. And Cassie, is there anybody that would be good for someone to reach out to at Washington General?   Cassie: Yeah, we could give you the contact information of Jack Fruitman, our IT director, and his email would be Jack j a c k dot period dot fruitman fruit man@DSHS.WA.gov.   Carol: Excellent. I really appreciate that. And was there any other last things either of you wanted to share?   Cassie: I mean, I just want to plug that these types of tools can have a really positive impact in really simple ways. Like I just said, it seems really complex now that we're using it, Sven, it's complex, more complex for you than it is for me on the technical side of things. But for me, it's a really simple tool that does solve a lot of large issues. So I think it's really important that we're all just embracing the advancement of technology, and we're accepting of these innovative solutions. You know, it can be scary. It can be dark, but we can also use it to our benefit, and we can use it in a way that helps us really support those who need our services the most. And we can get back to true VR counseling with this tool. And I hope to keep adopting and seeing the adoption of tools like this in the future, especially for VR.   Sven: I'm going to echo that. The application of AI, it really is, for all intents and purposes, in its infancy. Machine language has been around for a long time. A lot of the foundational components have been in use for decades. But all of these pieces coming together now with these language models is novel. It really does promise the power to simplify our lives and really improve the quality of what we do. I see this more as enablement capabilities as opposed to replacement capabilities to where, like Cassie was saying, get back to focusing on what you really want to do, not what you have to do to make that happen. And, you know, there sure are some unresolved concerns. And, you know, those can't be ignored. But what the right application to the right use cases, technology really doesn't have to be scary. It can be super awesome, and it can really empower your teams really from day one.   Carol: Very cool. Thanks for being with me. And Cassie, best wishes to you. And Sven, Thank you, I'm sure you're going to hear some folks reaching out to you. So thanks to both of you, I hope you have great holidays.   Cassie: Yeah. Thank you, you too.   Sven: Thank you so much, Carol.   {Music} Outro Voice: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time, brought to you by the VR TAC for Quality Management. 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On this Tuesday topical show, Crystal chats with ChrisTiana ObeySumner about their campaign for Seattle City Council District 5. Listen and learn more about ChrisTiana and their thoughts on: [01:06] - Why they are running [04:49] - Lightning round! [12:20] - What is an accomplishment of theirs that impacts District 5 [16:09] - City budget shortfall: Raise revenue or cut services? [21:48] - Public Safety: Alternative response [26:58] - Victim support [35:53] - Housing and homelessness: Frontline worker wages [39:25] - Climate change [43:28] - Transit reliability [46:58] - Small business support [52:48] - Childcare: Affordability and accessibility [56:33] - Difference between them and opponent As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find ChrisTiana ObeySumner at @votechristiana.   ChrisTiana ObeySumner ChrisTiana ObeySumner is a Black, queer, non-binary, and multiply disabled person, community organizer and activist. They are CEO and principal consultant of Epiphanies of Equity LLC -- A social equity consulting firm that particularly specializes in social change, intersectionality, antiracism, and disability justice. For two decades, they've dedicated their life and career to amplifying the importance of social equity – defined as the lifelong work of deconstructing inequitable sociological impacts and products such as policies, institutions, cultures, biases, and constructs; and facilitating strategic and embodied pathways towards the construction of equitable processes, accountability structures, and outcomes.    Resources Campaign Website - ChrisTiana ObeySumner   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 Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show 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. Today, I am excited to be welcoming to the program candidate for Seattle City Council District 5, ChrisTiana ObeySumner. Welcome! [00:01:02] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Thank you so much for having me - I'm so excited. [00:01:04] Crystal Fincher: Well, I'm excited to have you. And just starting off, I'm wondering what made you decide to run? [00:01:11] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: I get asked this question a lot - you know, it's, the best way I can put it is this. I have been engaged in some sort of civic, politics, social equity since I was a small child. My grandmom was a Black Panther, my family was always very opened and talked a lot about what it meant to be - you know, if not you, who, if not now, when - sort of things. And especially growing up in a family who was chronically unhoused or homeless - a lot of folks who were disabled, a lot of folks who under-resourced - most of my family is in Camden, New Jersey, in Philadelphia area. And so, and for me being autistic as an 80s child, so the ADA did not really help as much. There was always sort of a need and a early exposure to what it meant to advocate, to speak up for yourself, to speak up for others, to really call out inequity when you see it, to get into good trouble. And that has really been the through line of my life and my life's work - I have done that as a youth leader, I've done that for Mad Pride - especially in Louisville, Kentucky. I've done that in terms of homeless and housing unstable youth, especially in colleges - I came here to Seattle in 2010 to go to Seattle University, where I became Commuter Student rep and Non-Traditional Student representative for those reasons. I've worked in direct social services at DESC, Compass Housing Alliance. I did my AmeriCorps at Full Life Care for Harborview. My first work-study job here was in the Office of City Clerk where I learned how to read policy. I started my business, Epiphanies of Equity, in 2018, right after the running for the transparency seat in 2017, where I came second to Kirsten Harris-Talley. And since then has worked with over 250 businesses, governments and organizations across the country - obviously concentrated here - where we have specifically been working for social equity, for policy advocacy, for disability justice. Essentially when humans are human-ing with other humans, we know that certain human things happen - how can we work towards a society where humans are working towards equity? And through all of this work - additional to the co-chair Disability Commission and Renters' Commission - I'm putting all of this resume out here to say, I have approached a lot of the work, especially since being here in Seattle, from a lot of different angles. And especially in the last few years, has really heightened where I've worked with a lot of folks in the city and beyond - this is the next natural step towards that work. And so when the incumbent or the previous councilmember, Councilmember Debora Juarez, announced that she was not going to run, I must've gotten - between Gluttonous Eating Holiday and the 1st of the year - got somewhere between a dozen and a half calls from folks who were just like - So, you heard, right? Open seat, you gonna run? And I really thought about it for a while 'cause I'm a wonk - of the Hacks & Wonks, I'm the wonk part of that - and I just really wanted to go to the policy piece and I decided, you know what, let's give it a shot. So here I am. [00:04:47] Crystal Fincher: And here you are. Well, at this point, we're gonna switch up this interview a little bit and add an additional element that we haven't added before - a lightning round. Just quick answer, yes or no, or quick answer questions to level set a little bit. And then we'll get back to our regularly scheduled full-length answers where we can wonk out about everything. So starting off - This year, did you vote yes on the King County Crisis Care Centers levy? [00:05:17] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:05:18] Crystal Fincher: This year, did you vote yes on the Veterans, Seniors and Human Services levy? [00:05:22] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:05:23] Crystal Fincher: Did you vote in favor of Seattle's Social Housing Initiative 135? [00:05:28] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. And Epiphanies of Equity was one of the folks who also tried to endorse it, as well as the JumpStart Tax. [00:05:37] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. In 2021, did you vote for Bruce Harrell or Lorena González for Mayor? [00:05:44] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Lorena González. [00:05:45] Crystal Fincher: In 2021, did you vote for Nicole Thomas Kennedy or Ann Davison for Seattle City Attorney? [00:05:51] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: NTK. [00:05:53] Crystal Fincher: In 2022, did you vote for Leesa Manion or Jim Ferrell for King County Prosecutor? [00:06:03] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: I don't remember. I don't recall. [00:06:14] Crystal Fincher: Okay. [00:06:14] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Sorry. [00:06:15] Crystal Fincher: Did you, in 2022 - no, that's totally fine. In 2022, did you vote for Patty Murray or Tiffany Smiley for US Senate? [00:06:23] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Patty Murray. [00:06:25] Crystal Fincher: Do you rent or own your residence? [00:06:27] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: I rent. [00:06:29] Crystal Fincher: Are you a landlord? [00:06:30] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: No. [00:06:32] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to require landlords to report metrics, including how much rent they're charging, to help better plan housing and development needs in the district? [00:06:41] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes, it's actually part of my platform. [00:06:44] Crystal Fincher: Are there any instances where you would support sweeps of homeless encampments? [00:06:49] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: No - not at all, in any form. [00:06:52] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to provide additional funding for Seattle's Social Housing Public Development Authority? [00:06:57] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:06:58] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with King County Executive Constantine's statement that the King County Jail should be closed? [00:07:05] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: I do believe, yes - I'm abolitionist, so I think all the jails should be closed. [00:07:09] Crystal Fincher: Should parking enforcement be housed within SPD? [00:07:14] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: No. [00:07:15] Crystal Fincher: Would you vote to allow police in schools? [00:07:18] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: No. [00:07:19] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget for a civilian-led mental health crisis response? [00:07:26] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes, if it's civilian-led and it's not further padding SPD budget. [00:07:31] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocation in the City budget to increase the pay of human service workers? [00:07:36] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Absolutely. [00:07:37] Crystal Fincher: Do you support removing funds in the City budget for forced encampment removals and instead allocating funds towards a Housing First approach? [00:07:46] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:07:47] Crystal Fincher: Do you support abrogating or removing the funds from unfilled SPD positions and putting them toward meaningful public safety measures? [00:07:57] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes, if they're unfilled. [00:07:59] Crystal Fincher: Do you support allocating money in the City budget for supervised consumption sites? [00:08:04] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:08:05] Crystal Fincher: Do you support increasing funding in the City budget for violence intervention programs? [00:08:11] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. As a violence intervention program - I was, I think in my head I was getting, I have them mixed up the two different things - which, when you're talking about them, which one are you talking- [00:08:24] Crystal Fincher: Like community-led violence or organizational-led violence intervention programs. [00:08:28] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Oh! Yes, yes, yes. [00:08:30] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. [00:08:31] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:08:31] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract, a Seattle Police Officers Guild contract, that doesn't give the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General subpoena power? [00:08:46] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:08:46] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't remove limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian, or police versus non-police? [00:09:04] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Can you ask the question one more time? [00:09:05] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that doesn't remove limitations as to how many of OPA's investigators must be sworn versus civilian? Should there be a cap on civilians? [00:09:19] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: No. [00:09:21] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose - yes. These are confusingly led - we're not - these are not intended to be gotcha questions, so I want to totally make sure you understand. And that one's a little kludgy. [00:09:34] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: There should not be a limit on civilians. So yes, I would oppose something that would have a limit. Yes, okay. [00:09:39] Crystal Fincher: Do you oppose a SPOG contract that impedes the ability of the City to move funding to police safety alternatives? [00:09:48] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:09:49] Crystal Fincher: Do you support eliminating in-uniform off-duty work by SPD officers? [00:09:56] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Support eliminating in-uniform work by off-duty? [00:09:59] Crystal Fincher: In-uniform off-duty work, like if they were to work in a security capacity elsewhere. Would you support eliminating them doing that in-uniform? [00:10:08] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:10:09] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to ensure that trans and non-binary students are allowed to play on the sports teams that fit with their gender identities? [00:10:17] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:10:17] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to ensure that trans people can use bathrooms and public facilities that match their gender? [00:10:23] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:10:24] Crystal Fincher: Do you agree with the Seattle City Council's decision to implement the JumpStart Tax? [00:10:29] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:10:30] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to reduce or divert the JumpStart Tax in any way? [00:10:35] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: No. [00:10:36] Crystal Fincher: Are you happy with Seattle's newly built waterfront? [00:10:41] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: It's all right. [00:10:42] Crystal Fincher: Do you believe return to work mandates, like the one issued by Amazon, are necessary to boost Seattle's economy? [00:10:49] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Absolutely not. [00:10:50] Crystal Fincher: Have you taken transit in the past week? [00:10:53] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:10:54] Crystal Fincher: Have you ridden a bike in the past week? [00:10:58] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: I have a disability that doesn't allow me to ride a two-wheeled bike, but I do have a tricycle that I ride sometimes. [00:11:03] Crystal Fincher: Should Pike Place Market allow non-commercial car traffic? [00:11:09] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: No. [00:11:10] Crystal Fincher: Should significant investments be made to speed up the opening of scheduled Sound Transit light rail lines? [00:11:17] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:11:18] Crystal Fincher: Should we accelerate the elimination of the ability to turn right on red lights to improve pedestrian safety? [00:11:26] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yeah. [00:11:27] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever been a member of a union? [00:11:29] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes, SEIU 1199 Northwest. [00:11:31] Crystal Fincher: Will you vote to increase funding and staffing for investigations into labor violations like wage theft and illegal union busting? [00:11:40] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes. [00:11:41] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever walked on a picket line? [00:11:43] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: I have. [00:11:44] Crystal Fincher: Have you ever crossed a picket line? [00:11:46] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Absolutely not. [00:11:48] Crystal Fincher: Unlike Drew Barrymore, evidently. Is your campaign unionized? Is your campaign staff unionized? [00:11:56] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: I have pushed for that because I use a organization that is in the process of unionizing. [00:12:04] Crystal Fincher: Okay, and so assuming they're unionizing, will you voluntarily recognize their efforts? [00:12:10] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yes, yeah, yes. And my business is a co-op as well. [00:12:16] Crystal Fincher: Awesome. Well, that concludes the lightning round - hopefully pretty painless. Now, back to regular questions. So lots of people look to work that you've done to get a feel for what you prioritize and how qualified you are to lead. Can you describe something you've accomplished or changed in your district, and what impact that has had on your district's residents? [00:12:40] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yeah, so I've lived in District 5 the entire 13 years that I've been here. One of the things that people don't understand about District 5 is it's a lot more diverse than folks believe it is. I think the people who are the loudest seem to be seen as the demographic here - as primarily white, wealthy, middle-class, upper-class, homeowner types, right? But there's a lot of folks here who are people of the global majority, people who are disabled, people who are renters, people who are students. And one of the things that was really great to be able to advocate for was when I was co-chair of the Renters' Commission - at the time with Jessica Westgren, who was my co-chair - the Renters' Commission really advocated and wrote a letter of advocacy to City Council and to other pertinent entities, put out a press release in the news about some different rent stabilization and renter protection pieces that we'd like to see. What was able to come out of that was Councilmember Sawant's office passed the six-month advance notice for any rent increases, which was really significant for me. When I moved here in 2010 as a student, one of our first apartments that me and my mom lived in did have a pretty significant rent increase. I remember it was around the holidays and we only had maybe 30 or 60 days to get out or pay. My mom was on SSDI, I was on SSDI going to school - we did not have that. We were lucky to find another place to live, which eventually did end up getting sold. But there had been several times, either living with my mom or after I got married living with my partner, where if we didn't have that six-month advance notice, that we wouldn't also have had the opportunity to either save money if we could, get assistance if we could. I don't think people understand how quickly and how swiftly being housing unstable or becoming unhoused can really be. It really just takes being in a situation where you are responsible for an extra $200 a month - which means food, which means co-pay, which means transportation. In these cases, I don't know if you call the universe, luck, the ancestors, Buddha, whatever you call it - that was able to help us to find another opportunity for housing, but especially working in direct social services, I knew firsthand that that's not the case all the time. And so, especially as there's increased renters in the city, I think that's really helpful for that. There's other things that come to mind, but I feel like that's one that folks have heard me talk a lot about. [00:16:07] Crystal Fincher: And that is helpful. I wanna talk about the City budget. The City of Seattle is projected to have a revenue shortfall of $224 million, beginning in 2025. Because the City is mandated by the state to pass a balanced budget, the options to address this coming deficit are either to raise revenue, or cut services, or some combination of both. How will you approach the issue of how the City collects and spends money on behalf of its residents? [00:16:35] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: One of the things people hear me say a lot on this campaign trail, which I think I can get into a little bit with this question, is - I say a lot, either getting to the taproot of the issue or finding upstream solutions for effective collective and downstream results, which sounds - I understand it sounds very schmaltzy but let me explain what I mean with this question. There's this both-and situation that's happening with the budget that is really a interconnected effect to some upstream issues. And so there are certain areas of the way that the City gets revenue that are longer-term solutions that we really need to address. For example, we have the most regressive tax structure in the state. Washington State has the most regressive tax structure in the country. When we talk about some of the suggestions from the task force that just put out - the opportunities for progressive revenue task force - there are really promising things in there, like say having an income tax - which I know in Seattle, I'm learning, is a dirty word. This is the seventh state I've lived in, this is the first state I've lived in that did not have an income tax. Now I will say living in Louisville, Kentucky, it went a little bit too far, to be honest - I mean, they had a state tax, a city tax, a borough tax, it felt like a tax tax, they had all kinds of taxes - I'm not saying that. But we don't have an income tax at all in the most regressive tax structure in the country that also has one of the widest income disparities - the top 20% of income earners in the city makes 22 times more than the bottom 20% of income earners - there's a difference between $400,000 and about $18,000. So if we have a state constitutional law that says we can only have equality-based taxes and not equity-based taxes, or flat tax, that's not really gonna help have a progressive tax structure now, is it? So there's long-term pieces that folks have asked me before - Well, what, are you just gonna go off to the state and try to advocate to change the constitution? Yes, I will, if it's causing these issues. Now, in the short-term - we can increase the JumpStart Tax to bring in more funding. We can look at, especially parts of the budget that is going towards criminalization and punishment. And I think to explain a little bit about when I talk about reallocation of funds, community and SPD have both said that there are certain things that they're doing that they feel is outside of their purview and what they actually feel is necessary for them to do. We're in agreement there. And a lot of those sort of lightning questions you had around domestic violence, around violence intervention, around social services, even around parking or events - District 5 has a 7-minute response time in SPD. And a lot of it is because they are going all over the place. I listen to the police scanner - I think it's something I got into after the 2020 protest comms, things I used to do - and there's so many, I would say like one in every four calls, that seemed like it was either like someone's in the elevator or someone's screaming down the street, something like that. If we were to take those services that the community feels like SPD is out of their purview, SPD feels like it's out of SPD's purview - and we reallocate those services to community-based services, not necessarily that they would also have SPD come along. First of all, that'd be against the point in a lot of ways. But we have them go to alternative community services - true alternative community services, preferably nonprofits and organizations that are already doing this work on the ground. You see the average cost that it took for SPD to do those services that we would be reallocating, and we reallocate that part of the budget to those new services, especially if there are upstream pieces that could help - like housing. It would be in our best interest - whether it's for our community, for the folks who are impacted, or for taxpayers - to have money that's going towards, say, sweeps, go towards permanent housing. And so I would really, if elected, love to continue to work on how do we implement those seven or nine suggestions from the Progressive Revenue Task Force, and also continue to look at innovative solutions towards balancing this budget in ways that we can take the burden off of just increasing taxes - on the real estate taxes - in a way that's regressive. I think that we want to do, say, like a capital gains tax - I definitely think we need to do that. We want to do vacancy tax, we want to do land value or land banking taxes - I think that's important. I also feel, I feel really strongly - again, I know this is state - but I feel really strongly that as a city councilperson, it's my - any city councilperson's responsibility to advocate for issues that are impacting their community. And having flat rate taxation and regressive taxation is having a devastating impact on the community. [00:21:48] Crystal Fincher: I also want to talk about public safety and particularly alternative response, because we do - as you said before - need a more comprehensive approach to public safety, and that goes beyond policing. While the council and mayor have definitely taken action to increase the police budget, give retention bonuses, and other incentives to retain and hire more police, we're lagging behind other jurisdictions around the country - and even in our own region and county - with alternative response programs to better support those having behavioral health crises and other issues. Seattle has stalled in implementing what is a very widely-supported idea. So where do you stand on non-police solutions to public safety issues? And what are your thoughts on civilian-led versus co-response models? [00:22:40] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Major part of my platform - I guess now, because folks ask about it a lot - is that I firmly, firmly believe that we need to transition from hyper-relying on the police and having alternative solutions that is 100% civilian-led. I mean, let's look at it this way, like with the example I gave, right? If SPD is saying they're working out of their purview, it's impacting their response times. It's impacting how much their workforce burden is. It is forcing them to redeploy folks out of places like investigations, causing these huge backlogs in the lab, to street patrol. Why then would we require them to be a co-lead with the alternative solutions? We are trying to remove that hyper-reliance and burden off of them completely - like if it's out of their purview, it's out of their purview, and that's all that on that. Now, like I said, a lot of my family lives in Camden, New Jersey, and they had a huge reduction in their crime right before 2020 George Floyd racial reckoning by completely overhauling to community interventions and alternatives. They have some situations where there is a co-lead model, but those are for situations where there's active threats of harm with weapons involved, right? But if it's more so things, like I said - like intimate partner violence, domestic violence, someone needs social services, mental health services - things that wouldn't require police to be there, which is gonna be very few things. It has led to such a significant change in a place where it used to be considered one of the more dangerous cities in the country. So I think what's really important here is I think when folks hear me talk about this, their first thought is like - Ah, this is a Defund the Police, BLM person. I think that that has definitely been something, looking the way that I do and sort of wanting to talk to what's really gonna get to the taproot of the issue, has been part of what folks have considered in terms of my viability, or like how am I going to be when I'm in office - one of those things, right? But the reason why I went through that whole resume in the beginning was not to toot my own horn, so to speak, it was because it shows that I have successfully and continue to successfully sit in spaces where folks are in conflict, folks are scared, folks are confused, folks do not have a lower risk tolerance that is needed for true transformative social change. And I am able to support and move along progress towards goals, especially goals at the organizational level and even the policy and governmental level. It's not as well known because I'm sort of - I am working with the folks who then go off and do the press conference, as opposed to one doing myself, right? But that is what I bring, that is the toolkit that I have built. And that toolkit has worked time and time and time and time again. In terms of SPD and public safety in a lot of ways, like I said - I look at it like if you go into an organization, you have a team or a department that is working outside of their scope, outside of their purview, they're overburdened, their work is suffering - you're sort of in a space of like, do we give them more money to give them more team to do all the things we're asking of them? Or do we do something else? And what I would always say in this case, if it was in the scenario is - you take all of the tasks that is not core and central and imperative to that team or department, and you reallocate it and create a new team or department. And you reallocate the budget that averages what that team and department does for those services - and then you continue to watch for progress. And I am very confident that if we actually diversify what we do to address all of the different multiple pathways towards this shared goal of community safety, we would be in a way better spot than continuing to throw money at a bunch of overworked, overburdened people working out of scope. [00:26:57] Crystal Fincher: Gotcha. I also wanna talk about victims. So many times we're talking about stats and responses and all that, and sometimes we don't focus on people who've been harmed or victimized. And a lot of people speak for victims, but we don't do a good job of listening to people who have been harmed themselves. And usually what they say is that - one, they wanna make sure that what happened to them doesn't happen to them or anyone else again. And they want better support. And that support - not just talking about within the system currently - they call police, there's a response. But even if police respond and come and take a report and do their thing, that person is still left - if it's a property crime, without property, with damage, without money, sometimes having to take off work - and it really does impact lives. How do you propose to better support victims or people who have been harmed? [00:27:55] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: I think one of the biggest upstream solutions we really have to address is - if we are to have services and supports that help folks help victims, we need to make sure that they are resourced to be able to do so, and right now they are not. And when we say resourced - not just a budget for the projects, right, or the services, or the interventions, housing, funding, whatever that is, but the people who would actually work in those positions. We know, like for example, in emergency services or shelter services, folks are so woefully underpaid it's a national crisis. But also the resources to be able to have folks in those positions who are being amplified in their voices and leadership because they are part of those most intersectionally impacted. One of the reasons why - I guess another reason why I'm running for office is, you know - if we want to talk about the knowledge of the policy process, how to put bills forward, things like that - I definitely have that. But there is an additional piece of that - the wisdom of lived experience - that can help to understand how these things happen in the actual reality on the ground, beyond a theoretical philosophical perspective. As a social service worker, as also someone who is not just a survivor - I guess we could say survivor of domestic violence - but continue to live it, especially running for office 'cause everything's public, right? There's a lot of different requirements, structures, pathways in place that it just leaves you to wonder that if there were folks who, whether it was directly making those decisions or through advisory councils, that was able to keep to-date the ways that our policies, our systems, and our structures are gummed up on the ground, in the lived experience, in the actual reality - if we could move some of those things so that they could be more helpful. That has been the biggest barrier I've seen for folks being able to get care, or to get resources, to get supports after they've been harmed - whether it's for their property, whether it's for their life, whether it's for their wellbeing, whether it's for their safety - the money isn't there. The staff is overworked and underpaid, and the attrition rate is so high that it's hard to move through the system at all. And then when you do go through the system, some of the requirements that you have to meet or some of the standards put in place in the framework doesn't get to the core root of what you need. A quick example - I guess I can say it for myself 'cause that's a safe thing, right - is when I first moved here to Seattle, there was a person who came here with me, who I had been involved with. When they came here, they were abusive in very many ways - emotionally, physically, psychologically. It was the physical abuse that finally was able to remove them, to get a no contact order - however, they violated it. They finally left the Seattle area around 2013. But especially running for office, we have found him on the website, on the socials, sort of finding me again after all this time. It's interesting because first of all, there really isn't protection order resources or domestic violence resources across state lines. There really aren't spaces to go where - you can't point to someone states away and say that this person is causing harm because it's on the internet. There was a event that the campaign was gonna go to where there was information that led us to believe that there was a credible threat to my safety. And so the campaign went, but I did not go. And I think when you do something like run for office, there are some folks who are like - Well, you signed up for that - but you don't really, right? And I guess I'm sharing my own story because it's the safest. However, I share this story because the dynamics of it is replicated every day, all day. Sometimes it's not because someone is in different state. Sometimes it's because folks have a different cultural background where they're not able to get like services - say, get emergency shelter, emergency motel, or income. You have to make a written statement that's signed that you are experiencing these things. And if it's family, if there's other sort of cultural pieces people may not feel comfortable doing that. So how do we have folks who have that experience be able to support having a framework in place that's going to be centered in intersectionality and inclusiveness? There's some folks who - this is impacting them financially in ways that are not documented because they're having to take more sick days, or because it is making them more sick, it's increasing their chronic health issues, or their productivity goes down at work. So how do we have supports in place where folks can understand those dynamics so folks are not getting verbal warnings from their boss, folks are not having less hours put on their schedule, folks are not having to then take time off of work to go to the hospital because they're having increased health issues. There are some folks who they do have property damage - when the physical altercation that led to this person finally being removed from my space at that time, they used my laptop in the event. And I was going to school - I didn't have money to buy another laptop. The only recourse would be to try to get this person to pay for it through a legal process - I didn't have money to go through that legal process, that person didn't have money to pay for a new laptop. There really wasn't any resources available to help me get another laptop, even though it was part of this event. A lot of that required other qualifications for me to have that I just didn't have at the time, and a lot of which - because this person wasn't physically living in my home, which definitely doesn't stop these sort of things from happening. So when you do have property damage or property loss, and the only option is to go through a legal process - and you may not have money for that, you may not be able to take time off for that, you might not be able to get child or dependent care for that - what do you do? And so these are the sort of pieces where running for city council, running for office, doing this work is coming at this not just because I want to be on the dais or - yes, there's a policy pieces that's really important - it's because there's this lived experience here, either individually or in my community or in the work that I've done, where I really would love to see a governance system where we are bringing in that actual reality, that grounded reality of how intersectionally we experience the outcomes or the bottlenecks or the gaps in our policy, in our investments, and in our understanding and framing of the issues. [00:35:53] Crystal Fincher: So you alluded to it a little bit before, but I wanna talk about housing and homelessness. And one thing called out by experts as a barrier to the homelessness response is frontline worker wages that don't cover the cost of living. Do you believe our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages for our area? And how can we make that more likely with how the City bids and contracts for services? [00:36:17] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: You know, I think the really sad thing is that our nonprofits - nonprofits are operating in large part through funding from a larger entity, whether it is the City, whether it's usually the federal government - nonprofits need to be able to pay their staff, not just a living wage or a thriving wage, but a Seattle wage, right? The average person working in emergency or directs housing and social services right now is making between $50,000 and $55,000 a year. But a median one-bedroom apartment - if you were gonna have it as be three times your rent, it's about $1,651 a month. And the National Alliance to End Homelessness just put out a report where they suggested that the staffing component of the Homeless Assistance Grant is increased. But they said that it's a national issue and that in order for across the country, even just direct social service workers and homeless emergency shelter workers to be brought up to being able to pay for the average one-bedroom apartment, it would take 4.8 billion, with the B, dollars to do so. And so by nature of being a nonprofit, where is that gonna come from for a nonprofit? I mean, definitely going back to the task force for progressive revenue, we can look at the wage and equity taxes and see where that is. But really for a nonprofit, that's not gonna be really the case. What we really need is to redistribute - when we talk about reallocating funds, we also need to reallocate the funds in a city with such a high wealth disparity. And so I believe that part of the progressive revenue - we really wanna address, say, ensuring that we have even housing and services for folks so that we can end the crisis of who we could physically see outside, we also have to address what's happening in housing instability, economic injustice, labor injustice of folks who are only one paycheck - if that - away from also physically being outside. And as someone who worked in direct social and housing services, I know that I worked with folks and also experienced situations where folks already were outside - they could not afford their rent and are receiving the same services. My quick story for that that I've been saying is that I remember having to get a conflict of interest waiver 'cause I had to take my client to DSHS. But when I looked at their letter, their DSHS caseworker was the same as mine. And so when we're looking at - oh, where's all the money going? If we only have these like, at minimum, 14,000 people outside, why are we using all this money? Well, because it's not just these 14,000 people who are needing these services, it's even the people who are providing the services that need the services. And so we really need to, as a city, actually not just talk about, but actually put to action economic and labor justice for this and other industries. But we also need to make sure that they are unionized and that they're able to collectively bargain for what they need for the future as well. [00:39:25] Crystal Fincher: Now on almost every measure, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals, while we're experiencing devastating impacts from extreme heat and cold, wildfires, smoke, floods, you name it - it's here. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet those 2030 goals? [00:39:46] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: You know, when people ask this question, I always start off with saying - across living in seven states, that I believe I've experienced every type of natural disaster except for a tsunami, a sinkhole, and a typhoon. And yes, it does also include volcano eruptions, hurricanes, earthquakes, mudslides - all of those different sort of things - I have been through it. I always said I was just unlucky. As I got older, I realized it's because of climate disaster. We know that the climate disaster is human-made. It's based on consumption. We also know that the human-made climate disaster can be concentrated to a very select few people, who are in an owning class of organizations or businesses, or sort of other sort of production means that is contributing to this - whether it's shipping, whether it's fossil fuels, whether it's even folks who rely on that. The airline industry, I saw that Washington State did just pass a law to start to move towards green aviation fuel for planes, so we're not using all the gas, but even then - really in this Green New Deal, there's a couple of things. Number one, we need to really look at the building efficiency and energy performance pieces. We need to make sure that we are having Green buildings, that we're retrofitting for Green buildings - going back to those resources questions, we need to make sure we have the resources to help folks move towards having more Green buildings because we know that not everyone is going to be a multimillionaire or have a corporation where they can fund that on their own. The second piece is that we really do need to divest - in all ways, in all spaces - from fossil fuels. And not just the fossil fuel organizations themselves, but those who are hyper-reliant on fossil fuels. If there is an organization that is resistant to divesting from fossil fuels, then it is in our best interest to consider alternatives to using those services or patroning them. We also - I would really love to see how we address the deforestation of our urban forest, that is the city that we lived in. We have lost so much of our tree canopy that it is causing not only these sort of high heat zones that are really harming folks, but we also see them happening along the lines of segregation and redlining. There is increased impacts of environmental racism and injustices leading to folks, especially during the wildfire season, having to go to the hospital because of exacerbations of their asthma - that is leading to other chronic health issues, that is only going to lead to public health crises down the line. And there's so much more even from there, right - reducing our reliance on individual transit, which means that we have to really invest in our public transit infrastructure so it's reliable, so that the workers and operators are able to get everything they're asking for in their current collective bargaining and they're able to be paid a Seattle wage, and that we are able to make sure it's accessible to all people. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's a lot - we didn't just get to climate disaster in the last couple years, really - this has started since the industrialization period. We know it's really picked up since the 1970s, but that means that we're going to have to really work double time to make sure that we are able to have a sustainable future for life. And that's not being - I mean that literally - like so that we can actually continue to live as humans on the planet, 'cause that's where we're at. [00:43:26] Crystal Fincher: That is where we're at. Now you talked about transit - right now, we are in a world of hurt when it comes to transit, particularly reliability. Some of that is because of shortages of operators or mechanics, but people are having a harder time finding buses that arrive on time or sometimes arrive at all. Understanding that Sound Transit is a regional organization and King County Metro is a county organization, what can the City do? And in your role as a city councilmember, if you're elected, what can you do to stabilize transit reliability? [00:44:03] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Yeah, it goes back to what I was saying earlier - you know, if elected a city councilperson, it's not just my job to do what I can and legislate within my purview. It is also my job to advocate and amplify what is happening in my district and in my city. And so that is the biggest piece of how we can have the multiple pathways towards shared goals in this case. If it's outside of my purview, that doesn't mean like - Oh well, I guess I can't do anything - but no, I'm supposed to go and advocate and say - Yo, what's going on with the 40 bus because it is taking, is like 20 minutes behind, or what's going on with, you know, the light rail and being able to get there, or what's going on with the E line. And I would continue to do that. I mean, advocating to King County Metro in terms of its accessibility and its affordability and its reliability is something I've already done in multiple ways - and it's on record of what I've done. But I definitely think what's really important here is going a little bit back to the climate justice conversation is - if we really truly want to reduce our reliance on vehicles, especially vehicles that are using gas, and we want folks to use more public transit, that's gonna, first of all, require like Complete Streets and making sure we have a pedestrian focus, if not pedestrians and public transit centered streets. But we also have to make sure the public transit is going to be a competitive option to having a car. And as someone who can't have a car because of my disability, I can only have public transit unless my partner drives me - and he works four tens a week, so most of the time I'm taking transit. You know, there has been situations, especially going east to west in District 5, where if I were to be able to drive a car, get an Uber, I can get there in 15 minutes. If I was to take the bus, I have to take two different transfers and get there in 45 minutes - if that. And so if we're in a situation - it's multifaceted with the infrastructure, where it's going, the operators - how much they're getting paid, their labor standards, are they getting breaks? Are they - do they feel safe? Are they getting medical for sitting all day? And is it affordable? You know, I talk a lot about first mile, last mile as a disabled person - can I get to a bus stop within a mile from my house, if I can walk a mile? Can I get to my destination within a mile from my bus stop, if I can walk that mile? What is the multimodal transportation going to look like? We really need to look at all of these different factors and the city councilmember's job is to advocate and amplify that to whatever level is needed and work together to get those solutions for your community as much as possible. [00:46:58] Crystal Fincher: Now I want to talk about the economy. The City of Seattle has a vibrant business community - some of the largest corporations in the world are headquartered here and nearby, but also just a ton of small businesses - lots of entrepreneurs, micro businesses, especially in the district. What can you do to better support small business in District 5? [00:47:22] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Well, I can tell you as a small business owner, too - it's really hard out here, right? Because there's so many different factors looking at, even just from the perspective that I have, with having staff where I have to make sure I have payroll every month and everything like that, right? The first thing I'll say is we know from the state and the city that we have a significant equity issue with public procurement. I am a business that relies on public procurement in a lot of ways. We need to make sure that we are actually putting the actions in place for public procurement and other equity for business owners. We have the Washington Women and Minority Business Enterprise certification that continues to need funding - to provide the grant funding, the infrastructure and supports needed for those businesses and others - that we can advocate to work for at the city and at the state level. Another thing I think is really important for businesses that have brick and mortar is I absolutely 100% believe in density, increasing housing density, increasing the amount of affordable housing that we have - 'cause we don't wanna just be putting housing in for housing sake and then be charging like $3,000 a month and people can't live there. But making sure we have affordable, accessible housing. One of the things that I've seen and folks have been really concerned about is you have these sort of small businesses that their commercial lease is maybe in the $1,000 a month area. Then they say - Hey, we're gonna build a development, but don't worry, we're gonna have retail space for you once the development is done. And if they can survive however long it takes to build this building - because they have to continue to be in operation - but then when the commercial leases or the retail spaces come online, they're in the $3,000 or $4,000 a month - three to four times increase of how much they're able to pay. And so they can't pay that and so those businesses just go away forever. And this is why folks get upset when they go from having a small coffee shop or a small diner or a small bookstore or a small grocery store in their neighborhood, and then the building goes up and now they have a Trader Joe's or they have a non-unionized Starbucks or they have something like that that shows up - someone who can afford those $3,000 to $4,000 rents. And so we need to also have a right-to-return put in place. We need to make sure that businesses, especially the smaller businesses, are able to have the supports they need if they are displaced, similar to like with renters - if there's a displacement where they will not be able to operate their businesses anymore, that they will be able to help. And I wanna be very clear. When - I think a lot of times in the city, and what's really important about this question for me, is when we talk about businesses in Seattle, I think folks are thinking about the big businesses. They're thinking about the Amazons - heck, they're thinking about the restaurants that have multiple chains, right, and they sell different sort of things - that they're not gonna be as impacted, right? They're impacted, sure - 'cause the pandemic is pandemicking and that's impacting everyone. Especially when we're talking about JumpStart Taxes, right - we're talking about businesses that are making $8 million or more a year. And I'm talking about businesses like myself and other folks in District 5 - I'm talking about like $500,000 a year or less, right? Like I'm not talking about the same people. Even if you're thinking about - if you have staff, if you have a commercial lease, stuff like that - even a million dollars a year, which would be - I think I would just feel like I was sort of like, like the "In the Money" song would start playing if I ever hit a million dollars a year gross sales. But that's not common. When I talk about what is needed for small businesses in this district, I'm talking about those folks, right? I'm talking about the people who might be living in, around, above their business, who is - just like you can live paycheck to paycheck for your rent, living paycheck to paycheck for their business to make payroll, that have services or goods that they provide that the pandemic created this huge gap where they were not able to do that anymore, especially if they're a performer and needing stages to perform or something like that, or gallery space. Especially folks who are at the intersection of being, you know, what they call economically disadvantaged businesses, so they don't make a lot of money. Folks who are non-binary, trans, femme of center folks, folks who are a part of the LGBTQIA+ community, folks who are disabled, folks who are veterans - especially if they do not have the sort of veterans supports and services that you could get otherwise, especially if they, how service connected they are or what length of service they've had, 'cause that can vary. There's a lot of folks who really need help and that's where really understanding what's happening on the ground can come into play when we're making these investments in these policies to make sure that we are centering folks who are the most intersectionally impacted, and that we are not continuing to center folks who are, you know, in a completely different space and continuing that regressiveness in even the investments that we make. [00:52:48] Crystal Fincher: I also wanna talk about a related issue of childcare. It doesn't just affect parents - it affects businesses, it affects everyone in our community because it impacts people's ability to participate in the economy and just make their bills. We recently got reporting and research that shows that now childcare is more expensive than college on an annual basis. It's many people's number one or number two expense who have families. What can you do to lighten the burden of childcare costs and availability for residents in District 5? [00:53:24] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: What we've seen across the country is that when it's subsidized, either through local governance, state governance, federal governance, or through the employer - and really preferably a mixture of both - it can have an astounding effect on affordability. Really, it's one of those multifaceted issues, right - where we also need folks to be able to do, like to work the childcare. They're another industry that's woefully underpaid, as well as our teachers in our education systems. We need to make sure that we have childcare that's multilingual, multicultural, that is going to have disability justice and universal accessibility standards, that we have dependent care that can also support folks who have dependents who are not children - which is not always considered, whether it's elders or whether those are folks who are adults who may or may not be children, but they still require dependent care - that can make it really hard to go to work if you are unsure how they will be able to move throughout their day without some sort of support, without putting them in somewhere like a group home. Especially for adults, I would love to see what it would look like to have clubhouse-style day programs that are moving towards having that disability justice approach, if it's for disability. Or having it be something cool, like maybe free education and learning about trades, so that we can increase the pipeline of folks going into the trades or just certain things like that. But really when it comes down to affordability and second, it comes down to employer cooperation. We need to make sure that if, say, someone does get sick and you need to take care of your family - really, I know it's a federal law, but FMLA is just not very helpful. Again, one of those actual reality experiences, right - the policy, great intention, impact not so much. And so we can't really rely on things like FMLA or even the Paid Sick and Safe Time - which you can go through very, very quickly, depending on what's happening - to help if there's an emergency, if you can't get childcare that day. Childcare in the United States is going for anywhere between $700 if it's subsidized to about $2,500 a month. That's rent. People can barely afford their rent now, let alone a whole other rent. And so we really need to find ways to subsidize this down to as free as possible, so that is just one area that's not concerning for employees. But again, just like I said with housing, we don't just wanna be building housing for housing sake - we wanna make sure it's actually going towards the taproot of the issue. We don't wanna just be having childcare, independent care for the sake of it. We wanna make sure that the people who are in there is going to be able to have the economic and labor justice, and that's gonna actually meet the intersectional, multilingual, multi-ability, multicultural reality of our district and our neighborhoods. And that's what I would be fighting for. [00:56:33] Crystal Fincher: Now, as we close today with this final question, there are a lot of people trying to consider who they should vote for - between you and your opponent. When you talk to voters who are trying to make that decision, what do you tell them? [00:56:48] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: If you look at my opponent, Cathy - Cathy, again, has one of those resumes that's very out in front and I think it leads a lot of folks to wonder like - Why you? Right they're, you know, they're a former circuit court judge, been sort of in that space for a while. But there's also a piece of that where I ask folks to really consider the archetypes of things - you know, what is really the archetype of what makes a good candidate or a viable candidate? A lot of folks are like - Well, are you knocking the doors? You know, are you a homeowner? Do you have the money? Look, here's the point - I'm a renter, I've had to work 40 hours a week doing this because I don't have money to just take off of work. I come from what they call network impoverishment. Folks have been like - Can you ask your family for support? I'm like - I'm the person they come to that gives support, I don't have that. If I don't work, there is no one's house for me to go couch surf at. I'm a transit rider, I am a multiply disabled person, I understand what it means to have to fight for your Medicare, to have to have $200 copays. A lot of those both-and pieces - yes, I rent a single-family house in Greenwood, but the reason why it's affordable is because it's sinking into this ravine in the backyard - and as I look up in the ceilings, there's cracks in the foundation. You know, there's a lot of these different sort of pieces where if we want to talk policy, right - and I go back to helping, being a part of passing the six-months advance notice on rent increases, co-organizing and passing one of the nation's first bans on sub-minimum wage, working with legislators on fighting for lifting the cap on special education, fighting to make sure that youth continue to use the bus for free, finding out what's a taproot issues, fighting for making sure that we have disability justice implemented throughout our cities, that we are actually holding - not just saying a thing, but doing a thing if we really truly care about race and social justice. We want to talk about policy process, how to move that forward, how to work with people, how to make sure you find multiple pathways towards shared goals, the policy theory and the process - I got that. And me and Cathy can go - you know, we can really match that up. What I bring that's different is that wisdom of lived experience - not just for myself, but in all of the folks I've worked with as a consultant, as a commissioner, as a direct social service worker, as a youth leader across seven different states throughout the nearly 40 years of my life. And I truly believe and have seen success in the toolkits that I bring, that when you bring both the knowledge and the wisdom together - where you are both taking into account how the lived experiences of those most intersectionally impacted can be amplified in voices in leadership, into policy, into solutions, into leadership, into investments, to true equity - you will see progress. And if you focus on that, you don't get caught up by the minutiae, you can move forward. I have seen and worked with a lot of different folks, processes, organizations, piece - in this city - where we get caught up in the minutiae. I've been successful before in being able to move things forward in a smaller way, but you make the white paper and you give the recommendations and you look at it and they put it to the side. This being the next natural step of being able to have that voice, that conduit for my community on the dais is one that I really truly hope to bring to this community in a way I haven't before. And I'm always happy to chat with folks, get coffee, have a Zoom meeting and talk about some of the other things that I've done because as you can tell, there's so many stories and so little time. [01:00:27] Crystal Fincher: There are. Well, thank you so much, ChrisTiana ObeySumner, for taking the time to speak with us today about your candidacy for Seattle City Council District 5. Thank you so much. [01:00:39] ChrisTiana ObeySumner: Thank you. [01:00:40] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app - 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.

Last week, a group of 22 county prosecutors from around Washington filed a lawsuit against the Inslee Administration's state Department of Social and Health Services. https://tinyurl.com/5n7hssbm #WashingtonStateRepublicanParty #ChairmanJimWalsh #GovJayInslee #DepartmentofSocialandHealthServices #lawsuitfiled #countyprosecutors #mentallyillcriminaldefendants #chargesdropped #WashingtonState #VancouverWa #ClarkCountyWa #ClarkCountyNews #ClarkCountyToday

A coalition of 22 Washington state counties and the Washington State Association of Counties are suing the Washington Department of Social and Health Services over the department's administration of behavioral health services. According to the lawsuit, filed in Pierce County Superior Court, the department failed a fundamental obligation by refusing to provide mental health services to conversion patients. Despite court orders and state laws requiring DSHS to provide such treatment, the department asserted that it is no longer obligated to evaluate or treat patients whose criminal charges are dismissed, citing a federal judge's orders in a separate case. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/washington-in-focus/support

On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by metro news columnist and opinion editor for The News Tribune in Tacoma, Matt Driscoll! They discuss numerous counties suing Washington state over behavioral health failures, the importance of a raise for Tacoma City Council and other public servants, Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward's shady association with Christian nationalist Matt Shea, devastating wildfires and smoke across Washington, and the backstory of Pierce County Village and a recent veto override. 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, Matt Driscoll, at @mattsdriscoll.   Resources “Most of Washington's counties are suing the state for refusing to provide necessary behavioral health treatment under state law” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate   “More than half of WA counties have filed suit against the state for behavioral health failures” by Shauna Sowersby from The News Tribune   “Tacoma City Council is getting a big raise. Think they don't deserve it? Think again” by Matt Driscoll for The News Tribune   “Spokane mayor says she didn't know Matt Shea would be at Christian nationalist concert headlined by Matt Shea's Christian nationalist buddy” by Nate Sanford from Inlander   “Destructive fires swept through Spokane County last weekend, killing two and leaving hundreds without homes” by Samantha Wohlfeil and Nate Sanford from Inlander   “How behind-the-scenes politics helped win approval for Pierce County homeless village” by Shea Johnson from The News Tribune   “In rare move, Pierce County Council overrides executive veto on homeless village zoning” by Becca Most from The News Tribune   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. Today, we are 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: metro news columnist and opinion editor for The News Tribune in Tacoma, Matt Driscoll. Hey! [00:01:08] Matt Driscoll: Hello - thanks for having me once again - it's always a pleasure. [00:01:11] Crystal Fincher: Thanks for coming back. We love our super informative and inside look into Pierce County whenever you're on - always a pleasure. I wanna start off talking about something that a lot of counties got together to do this week - and that is sue the state of Washington. Why are they suing and what's happening here? [00:01:32] Matt Driscoll: It's part of a long-running failure in our state mental health system involving folks who enter the criminal justice system and then get referred, one way or the other, to either competency evaluations or to stand trial, then flipped over to a system of civil commitments. This lawsuit involves 22 counties coming together to sue the state, claiming that the state - at facilities like Western State Hospital - is failing to provide the services to folks who do flip into that civil commitment area. And recently DSHS, Western State has been refusing a lot of those patients because they say they've been working to make room for folks who fall under the Trueblood settlement, which was the State Supreme Court ruling that basically - found that the state has an obligation and needs to do more to provide the competency evaluations and those sorts of things and potential restorative services to make someone able to stand trial. So it all involves folks who enter into the criminal justice system, then get referred to behavioral health, mental health stuff, and basically just the state's long-running failure to be able to provide the kinds of services and beds that those folks need and they deserve. It's all very complicated. It's just another indication of the state's continued failure to provide those services and beds. We've been talking about this for a very long time. It's very clear that it's still a total failure on the state's part, at least in my opinion. [00:03:01] Crystal Fincher: As you said, we've been talking about failures in this system for years - have heard some shocking and horrifying stories over the years. This is an issue that has been one of the biggest dogging Governor Inslee's administration during this term. And not to say he's absolutely the cause of all of these problems - I'm sure some of them were definitely inherited, there's a lot of challenges within this system. And as they point out, there have been recent investments to try and deliver on that settlement in the Trueblood decision, to try and turn the corner and get out of this crisis. One of the challenges here that they brought up is that there seems to be a conflict in that Trueblood decision - something that essentially is breaking this current system. As the Governor's office pointed out in their response, the Trueblood decision actually prevents them from taking new civil commitment clients. And that's one of the things that the counties are saying - Hey, they shouldn't be doing. So this almost seems like partly a corrective measure or seeking order to say - There's a conflict here - this order is essentially grinding this system to a halt. Once again, we're trying to fix it - we need some order. Do you know if there's some other entity that can take these civil commitments? [00:04:15] Matt Driscoll: Just to be 100% clear on this, I am by no means an expert on the intricacies of the state's behavioral health system - it's supposed to work and it's not working. That being said, it's another one of these massive gaps that we see so often in our system. You're right about the horror stories, going back to the Trueblood decision - you still hear, to this day, stories about folks who end up in jails for long periods of time, even before they've stood trial, waiting to have services available at somewhere like Western State where they can even get a competency evaluation. Think about the human rights aspects of that - of people being warehoused in jails, awaiting these court-mandated evaluations - that's the problem that Trueblood's intending to fix. On the same token, we've clearly got all these folks who shouldn't be in the criminal justice system. As the governor pointed out and others pointed out - in defense of the state, if you will - the referrals for these civil commitments are way up in recent years. I forget the statistics off the top of my head, but I think it might be like 40%, so we're seeing more and more of these folks being flipped out of the criminal justice system intended to send to the civil commitment system. It's just not working and there's a huge gap. And we can talk about how complicated it all is, and the way it gets siloed, and all the ways it's supposed to work, and the way it's not working - we have a wholly inadequate behavioral health system in our state. Decades and decades of underfunding - we've never acknowledged, we've done some piecemeal stuff. I certainly give the state and the Inslee administration credit for recent investments, but the bottom line is that this is piecemeal drops in the buckets trying to patch up a system that is just wholly unprepared to meet the demands of today. And people are suffering because of it. [00:05:54] Crystal Fincher: People are suffering, their civil rights are being violated, and some of these are resulting in horrific abuses in these overworked, sometimes unaccountable systems. This is happening against a backdrop of several employees within DSHS calling for the head of DSHS to resign. How does this even get untangled? It's time for major, systemic, urgent action beyond what we've done - clearly, what is already happening is not enough. [00:06:25] Matt Driscoll: One thing that the counties point out in the lawsuit is because these civil commitments are not being accepted or in some cases being discharged, you've got public safety issues. You have folks who the system has determined would be best served by ongoing treatment and civil commitments essentially being released. And that's, again - wherever you fall on the debates of how the state should be handling the interaction of criminal justice and behavioral health, it's just a bad scene all around. As a state with as many resources as Washington, we should be ashamed - similar to our public education system. A left-leaning state with progressive lawmakers and clear Democratic majorities - the fact that we are so clearly failing on this stuff is a black eye and again, people are suffering because of it. [00:07:10] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I also wanna talk about a recent decision from a commission in Tacoma that's going to take effect soon to increase the salaries, by a pretty significant amount, of the Tacoma City Council. And you wrote a column about this this week, which I thought was very timely and appropriate and a conversation that a lot of cities are having and more will continue to. And that's - these raises are absolutely justified and should go further when we look at the scope of responsibility involved in these positions. What did you talk about in your column? [00:07:46] Matt Driscoll: This has been an issue for me for a long time, as someone who's followed City Council government in Tacoma. At the root of the problem, it's that historically - City Council in Tacoma, third largest city in the state - it's considered a part-time job, it's paid as such. The reality of it is that anyone who served in that position knows it's not a part-time job, it's a full-time job. When I started at The News Tribune, councilmembers were making $40,000. Considering the challenges that Tacoma faces, I think there's lots of room for critique. People can see these raises and think about job performance - Do these guys deserve raises? But that's not really what it's about, right? It's about our system of government and who has the ability to run for office and serve under kind of the framework we have set up. We have historically considered this a part-time, low-paying position. If you're an average person in Tacoma with a family or financial responsibilities, the idea of signing up for what you're paid for as a part-time job that's clearly gonna be a full-time job and still trying to meet any of that - it becomes impossible. It severely limits the pool of candidates that are available. [00:08:56] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - several perspectives are left out. Beyond that, we're asking them to do such an important job. The things we talk about every week on this show - from public safety to economic development to land use policy and educational decisions - every thing that touches your life, we're asking them to do. It's wild to me that in the same society, we will justify $100 million salaries of CEOs of companies, yet cities and organizations with comparable budgets we're asking to settle for $30,000, $50,000. When we look at how important the job is and the expertise and commitment that it really does require, there's no getting around the fact that this is definitely a full-time job, especially - when it's done right, it's beyond a full-time job. I think most people can agree, no matter what your political affiliation, that it's not. We also are talking about shortages in several of these sectors too, so we need to pay people more for the work that's being done if we wanna expect better results. [00:10:00] Matt Driscoll: And it's like, regardless of what you think about the current council's job performance, what do you want your City Council person to be? Do you want it to be someone who is dedicating 20 hours a week to it and juggling a bunch of other stuff, or do you want somebody who's able to attack it like a full-time job and dedicates the time and energy it takes - both to be responsive to citizen concerns and do the homework that it takes to make good policy decisions? This isn't to call out any particular City councilmembers over the years, but I think if you've closely observed City Council here in Tacoma, you can see folks are learning these issues as they go and they're asking these questions, and a lot of times you'll be - Oh my God, that's a pretty obvious question. Do you want someone who has the time to dedicate to the job? And even more than that, do you want to make this a job feasible for some people to take on, or do you want to make this a job that only a few fairly privileged, essentially wealthy or better off folks can take on? For most people, the question is the latter. I think historically the idea of making Tacoma City, or a city council, and even the State Legislature part-time is that it would allow average people to serve in democracy - that's one of the ideals there. But in practice, I think what it really does, particularly these days, is it severely limits the type of people who are able to feasibly serve in office. You see that in some of the races that we've got going this year in Tacoma, particularly on the Jamika Scott District 3 race, where she's a local community activist and artist. She's more of an average person - she doesn't have a bunch of money, she's not the executive director at some nonprofit. For an average person to make the commitment to run for office and find the time to doorbell, it's a huge commitment - full-time plus work for part-time pay. [00:11:50] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - completely agree. I want to talk about another city - the City of Spokane and the activities of its mayor. The mayor and Christian nationalist extremist, former State Representative Matt Shea, attended a TPUSA event where they were just talking about a bunch of extreme, out-of-touch things while the ashes of neighborhoods were still smoldering nearby. What happened here? What is the reaction? [00:12:23] Matt Driscoll: Mayor of Spokane, Mayor Woodward, appeared at an event - Matt Shea was involved, Christian nationalist organization. She was apparently invited on stage for prayer, and Shea was there and prayed for her. And of course then all hell broke loose because of Shea's background and the backgrounds of some of the other folks involved. Of course, the mayor immediately said - Didn't know Shea was going to be there, wasn't my intention, I'm disgusted by all his views. It turns out maybe she'd been to events with Matt Shea in the past - I think a lot of people really didn't buy that excuse. But the bigger thing here, really, is yet another instance that illustrates the complexity and tension in the Republican Party. Lawmakers on the right who are "the good ones" or "the saner ones" - and there are a lot of Republicans, on the whole - in Pierce County in particular, Bruce Dammeier, JT Wilcox, leaders that I disagree with fundamentally. This tension between trying to be one of those not-extremist conservatives, but then the votes relies to some extent to courting the more extreme elements of the party. What ends up happening is these leaders awkwardly, unsuccessfully try to find this middle ground where they can not alienate the extreme elements of the party while not appearing extreme themselves, or maybe not even being "extreme" themselves. But it just never works and it ends up looking dumb. And this is just another example of that where they try to have it both ways - they try to disavow the extreme elements of the party, but then they still rely on extreme elements of the party for the support they need to win elections and serve in office. I certainly have no sympathy for the mayor of Spokane. It was very predictable that this would happen. If you find yourself at white nationalist organized events or religious extremist organized events, it's very easy to not get on stage or not do that. She signed up for it. She got what she deserved. I don't think it's probably the last time we'll see something like this either. [00:14:20] Crystal Fincher: I don't even view the situation as there being extreme elements within the party - that is the party, that is the base, that is now the mainstream of the party. It's beyond local party activists - these are their leaders. There is a nostalgia that I see, especially from national political pundits, wanting to still give credit to those moderates - those moderates are enabling the extremism. They are enabling this extremism that in public they try and distance themselves from. Even though she tried to say - Oh, I had no idea, she's been to an event just like this before. Even if she had no idea Matt Shea was there before, which no one buys, she got up there, saw him there and gave him a hug, and allowed him to lay hands on her and pray. Heard right before - them talk about the "problem with homosexuality" - obviously there is no problem with homosexuality, that's an extreme belief. That is the party - several electeds within the party, donors within the party, the people making decisions about the platform on the party. I made the bad decision of watching that Republican debate. I saw a lot of people going - Oh, these are extreme beliefs. They're not targeting the average American anymore - they're really fine with disenfranchising the average American. They are speaking to that base that's going to elevate people like this to these elected positions and hope for treatment as moderates in the media. This is an opportunity in Spokane to once again point out that these are extreme beliefs. These are beliefs that our Supreme Court has rejected, our State Supreme Court has rejected - and that we don't want. Clearly she knows that. She wasn't really sad about it happening, or else she wouldn't have appeared with him before and been chummy. They want to be able to do this behind closed doors. And lots of people will cite JT Wilcox, who I know lots of people have good relationships with - people like that need to contend with who the party is today. You're affixing your name to that label? - you can be what you are without that label. If you are attaching that label and participating in that, this is what you are enabling. [00:16:24] Matt Driscoll: Where do the folks like the JT Wilcoxes or the Bruce Dammeiers go within this party, right? If they are the moderates they claim to be, the Republican Party depends on that support. If they try to find that middle ground, then it ends up working out like this. Again, I don't have any sympathy for it. I wrote a column in the Trump years and I've just halfway defended folks like JT Wilcox and Bruce Dammeier about why they hadn't condemned Trump. What JT Wilcox will tell you - I'm a local guy and I stay out of national politics. And that's fine, I have a lot of respect for JT as an individual. But can you see what's going on? And do you have the backbone to stand up and say - This is wrong, this is not what I represent - even if it means that you might get voted out, or that you might not be in office, or that you might make your life more difficult. What we see most of the time is elected officials, politicians - they're not willing to do that. They're not willing to disavow or distance themselves from this stuff because they don't want to risk their jobs as an elected official or their powers - and maybe some of them genuinely do it out of the hope that if they just stick it out long enough, they'll be able to course correct on that party. That's a flawed idea. Whether you agree with Chris Vance or not, the way he describes it is pretty accurate at this point - it's the base of the party and folks need to make their decisions on whether that's the party they agree with. What we see, more times than not, is folks trying to have their cake and eat it too. [00:17:56] Crystal Fincher: Chris Vance made the decision to not affiliate with that label - if that's who's standing beside him, then he needs to move to a different place. On both the Republican and Democratic side, that affiliation with the party comes with tremendous resources - an absolute resource advantage over someone who is running as an Independent or with a minor party - everything from voter file access, which is useful, important information about voters from public sources and from private commercial sources, information like that is very helpful to a campaign. Things like donations and structure and endorsements and volunteers - those kinds of things are often built-in to the support of a party. It is a challenge to run outside of a major party. There were some character-defining moments for a lot of these people - maybe if they would have seen this rising extremism take over the mainstream of the party, maybe we don't find ourselves here. That attachment to power also can be corrosive - if you see something that is turning your stomach, it's not okay to stay silent, no matter which party you're a part of. [00:19:03] Matt Driscoll: Yeah, this continues to be a character-defining moment. These leaders still have the opportunity - they can still come out and say - This is wrong. And continually they don't. I don't really expect that to change. The opportunity still is there for them to take a stand. They don't, because if you alienate the base of the party, you're gonna be out of luck. And Chris Vance, for all his wisdom, is out of luck. He ran for office a couple cycles ago, and he lost badly - can't be a moderate conservative without the support of the Republican Party and if you alienate the Trump support, you're out of luck. [00:19:40] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, part of what made this so scandalous in the first place and so offensive to people is that this was happening amidst really destructive fires that swept through Spokane County last weekend. We see the 20,000 acres at that time up in flames, 265 structures destroyed, including a ton of homes, two people killed that we know of, lots of people not knowing what to do. Spokane City Councilmember Zack Zappone showed a picture of the street where his parents live - all of the houses were burnt down - his parents lost their home, his uncle lost his home. Just feel for everybody involved in that situation - I can't even imagine - it's just so totally devastating. [00:20:21] Matt Driscoll: On the human level, on the individual level - that loss, the death toll is staggering - just a lot of thoughts for everyone going through that. For a long time in my life, we talked about climate change and we talked about the problem it presented. It was academic, right? We saw the video of the polar bear with nowhere to go. When I started at The News Tribune, there wasn't really a summer smoke season. And now it's late August - it's the smoke season - it's a reality of life now. And then I think about my kids - I got a 16-year-old daughter, a 12-year-old son, 8-year-old daughter. It's really heavy to think about the impacts that we've seen from climate change and the way it's escalated. History is so long - a lot of times it's difficult to track the change, right? - it feels long. But with this devastation that we've seen that's tied to climate change in recent years and that trend - it's just really depressing - in Western Washington now, and this will probably be our reality moving forward. It's heartbreaking. [00:21:24] Crystal Fincher: This has not been normal for me my entire life. The warnings from climate scientists - we did not heed them for decades, and here we are - it's scary. The reality is this is as good as it's going to be for a while. This is actually going to get much worse. It's up to us and what we decide to do now - it's gonna get worse before it gets better. Are we gonna choose to make it better or not? This is a tangent - I'm on an age divide - you look at polling, and I'm right there on the divide where opinion splits. I talk to people on the older side of that divide who are more complacent, who don't necessarily feel the urgency. And then those on the younger side - and it's 15, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, especially working in politics - you see things like slogans, "fighting for our lives, fighting for our futures," and those are slogans to some people. What does it look like when you are literally fighting for your life? What does it look like when you don't want to see this kind of destruction happening everywhere? We're not even talking about the hurricane in Southern California and Nevada - this is all wild, and we're seeing increasingly wild things across the globe. This is only going to accelerate. It's decisions like whether to build a new freeway or not. It's decisions like whether to invest in and build out pipelines for gas and coal. At every level of government, at every level of power - decisions are being made every day - we can't afford for more hurt right now. We're seeing activism, we're seeing direct action. These stakes are high, and I just wish more people understood and felt that. It's just really hard right now. There are a lot of different interests. These are the consequences. [00:23:00] Matt Driscoll: There is one thing that gives me any glimmer and hope in this - is the younger generation. The stakes are exactly as you described for them. I think of my kids and the world that we've left them - the idea that this is baseline. How much worse do you want it to get? I'm not going to chalk this up to human nature, but you mentioned complacency. It's a little crazy how easy people grow accustomed to something like smoke season now. Are we cool with just getting used to this? Are we all right with that? It feels like a lot of people are. Maybe it's just my nature, but I have a lot of empathy for people in general, 'cause it's hard, man. It's hard out there being a person. It's hard to support yourself. We haven't made it any easier in the United States. There's a lot that just goes into surviving. Asking people to think above and beyond that, it's a big ask - and it's also unfair. We lay a lot of this climate change stuff, this environmental stuff on the individual - like you shouldn't be watering your grass, or you should buy an electric car. Those things are good, but it almost gives the real culprit - the governments and the fossil fuel companies - a pass. We end up guilt tripping each other - How long was your shower and stuff? If we really want to do something about this, it's gonna take exactly what you talked about - reimagining transportation, not building freeways, being willing to say - Yeah, traffic's bad right now, we're not gonna build another freeway, we gotta figure this out a different way. Or we have the capacity for a new airport, but air travel's terrible and it's one of the biggest causes of greenhouse gases - we're gonna figure something else out, and it's probably gonna be difficult in the interim, but we just don't have a choice. We never want to make that choice. We always want to push it down the road a little bit, make a little bit of improvements. This incremental change - the incremental change is not going fast enough. It's gonna take drastic measures. It's gonna take major changes to the way our life. It's gonna take just major restructuring of the way we do things. We still get to make the choice. It's just that one of those options results in stuff like we're seeing now. [00:25:09] Crystal Fincher: The final thing I want to talk about today has been the topic of discussion in Pierce County for quite some time, a hot topic on the Pierce County Council - and they've gone back and forth. It's this Pierce County Village, which is the county trying to solve one of the problems, one of the crises that it's dealing with - homelessness - and looking at building a, what is it, 265-unit building to house and service people who've been experiencing homelessness and try and get them on a path to housing stability. But oh, it is not simple, and there have been some twists and turns. What is this and what has been happening? [00:25:50] Matt Driscoll: Yeah, it's a very Pierce County story - I really love it for that, 'cause it is very complicated. What the county wants to do - and by the county, I mean the County Executive Bruce Dammeier and his administration - is permanent supportive housing. It's housing designed for chronically homeless individuals. It's not like an apartment building-type situation - it's actually individual homes in a community. The County Executive's office became enamored with this model - it has had some success, from what I understand, in Texas - and they wanted to bring it back to Pierce County. This was a number of years ago. They started the process of potentially looking for a location for it, which proved really difficult because it's a major project. They eventually settled on a piece of land out in the Spanaway area - it's got some wetlands, it's got some concerns around it. They ended up choosing a provider to run it - Tacoma Rescue Mission. What they want to do is use about $21, $22 million in federal COVID money to build this site and then let Tacoma Rescue Mission run it. To make it feasible, they changed some zoning. Broadly, it's an idea that has widespread support. It's something that the Democrats, liberals have supported for a long time. I support it, I think it's a good idea. Providing permanent supportive housing, 200-some-odd units of it, it's a good idea. But the details of it have become very tricky. There's some questions about - was the Rescue Mission kind of baked in as a provider even before they saw it for applicants? Are they pushing too hard on this specific piece of land? There's challenges now to the zoning changes. It is very complicated. It's moving forward, but it's got some significant hurdles to clear. The most recent development is the County Council changed the zoning to make it possible - that was challenged by a couple of places, and that's where things stand. [00:27:34] Crystal Fincher: I just want to point out for those who are not familiar with Pierce County politics, Pierce County Council - the Pierce County Executive is a Republican. And what's the split on the Council now between Republican and Democrat? [00:27:46] Matt Driscoll: It's a slight Democrat majority - I believe it's 4-3. The only reason I hesitate is because Tacoma has nine, Pierce County has seven - I always have to do the math - it's 4-3, 4-3 leaning Dems. [00:27:56] Crystal Fincher: I always get confused with the numbers. You look at a city like Burien and the mess that they're going through with their majority on their council - this is a different kind of situation. Sometimes where you have a Republican executive saying - Hey, we think this can work, there's a model somewhere, let's go learn about it - actually engaging in trying to have a solution, the conversation is starting with action, and what are we going to do? There was a piece this week in The News Tribune going through public records - looking at this model, one of the controversies starting out was that this trip was taken with the Tacoma Rescue Mission and went on this learning, fact-finding mission to see what Austin's doing up close, to see if it's something that could be feasible here. And the contract to do this that was competitively bid ended up going to the same person, which made - the same organization involving this person - making some people go - Wait a minute. Was the fix in on this contract? - especially looking at some of the scoring of the bidding. That seems like maybe it was cooked a little bit in favor of this, but then you have other people saying - This is a pretty normal way that something like this progresses. How did you see this? [00:29:09] Matt Driscoll: Yeah, Pierce County is a big county, but just small-town style - I love this stuff, there is so much depth to it. At the center of this, you have the county, which has access to $21, $22 million in federal funds to do something about homelessness. The county executive wants to give that to Tacoma Rescue Mission, which as you point out, won a competitive bid to build this facility. The idea is that through philanthropic fundraising and just what the Rescue Mission does, they'll be able to fund it moving forward. What makes it slightly different is you've got a Republican county executive saying - We have to do something to serve this population, to house this population, and the answer is permanent supportive housing - which is a little outside the box for conservatives. The County Executive's Office believes that, with this one-time investment, the government can step back. Then you get into questions of Duke Paulson from the Rescue Mission going on these trips even before the bids start being taken - lo and behold, the Rescue Mission wins the bid, LIHI was the other bidder. There was a competitive bid process - they did go through steps, but naturally it raises questions of - Was that kind of procedural? Was that legitimate? When it all comes out in the wash, it's a very Pierce County thing - there's reason for concern of - was this the outcome everyone wanted from the beginning? You can make the answer that - yeah, yeah, clearly it was. I think they went down there, they got this idea in mind, they thought the Rescue Mission would be a good place to run it, and that's where they ran with. On the other end of the spectrum there, I think it's important to keep in mind that the Rescue Mission has a long history of serving homelessness in Pierce County. Regardless of what you believe about the religious aspects of Rescue Mission does, they're a well-respected organization in Pierce County when it comes to serving the homeless. Pierce County is a small place. Should we not expect the County Executive's Office to have a close working relationship with one of the primary providers of homelessness in Pierce County? It raises a lot of questions about backroom deals. It's important to keep in mind at the end of the day, they are trying to do something good. I think it's good that we're asking these questions. It's good that we have this coverage. My colleague, Shea Johnson, just delivered a big package on this this week - it's really well done, folks should read it. It's small-town politics and they're trying to do something good, but there are a lot of questions along the way. [00:31:21] Crystal Fincher: Including questions about the site that has been determined for this. Siting is always a major issue, especially when it comes to siting things that are going to serve the homeless. People have a lot of feelings about this - some don't want it to happen at all, but a site was chosen. This site that was chosen - in the Spanaway area - there may be some environmental concerns. Sometimes things look very black and white from a simple explanation, but it is not infrequent in these situations where you have multiple issues, multiple interests, multiple people who ultimately want good things having different perspectives and having issues impact these groups and these stakeholders in different ways. Is it okay to move forward on a site? We just talked about having to take urgent action to mitigate climate change, to not - continuous sprawl, destroying local ecosystems - that seems to be the major issue in first passing this and then the repeal of the passage over the veto of the Pierce County Executive of the zoning for the site. They could still move forward, but wouldn't have future flexibility attached to this use without another change. [00:32:36] Matt Driscoll: You're right. The Rescue Mission has cleared certain hurdles at this point - the reversal of the zoning change wouldn't affect them - they're vested, they can move forward provided they continue to check the boxes in terms of all the sorts of things they'd have to do to make it happen. The ways that this is potentially getting derailed has a lot to do with politics. At the center of what we have going on here is a dispute on the Growth Management Act. And one of the reasons that this was interesting from the beginning is you had a Republican county executive proposing a major facility to serve the chronically unhoused - the most difficult population to serve. He wanted to put that in rural Pierce County. Normally what happens with something like that is it gets smack dab in the middle of Tacoma, right? Because none of these outlying, more conservative areas want anything to do with that. So the very fact that he was willing to acknowledge that it would be advantageous to put a facility like this somewhere in the more rural parts of the county where - assuming his base is out there - that took some guts and there's been a lot of pushback on that. But you also see attention here where the county executive is saying - Look, in order to build the type of housing we need to serve the unhoused, we need to build facilities like this in areas that are potentially sensitive. That's a broad description, but I think that's what it comes down to. The zoning was challenged and the County Council is getting advice that there might be something to those challenges, particularly the second one has them a little bit worried. They went back and changed the zoning to get out of trouble, to quash those challenges. You have a much broader debate about land use and sprawl and what we should build where, and you've got familiar conservative talking points of - like we need to make it easier for people to build wherever they want. Then you've got kind of Democrats on the Council saying - You know, zoning matters, we have to protect these areas, we have to limit sprawl. But does that then mean that all the stuff that we build ends up being dense, transit-oriented? One of the elements that the county executive's office would say is appealing about this model is because it is more individual homes, it's not a warehousing situation, it's a community. This tension over growth management and how much flexibility should we create to allow this to be built in areas that are designated as sensitive or more rural - I don't know. [00:35:01] Crystal Fincher: You're doing a fantastic job explaining it. This is a complex issue that takes some time to talk through. One of the reasons why I do this show is so we can talk through it and really come to an understanding. I really appreciated that package in The News Tribune this week that gave really helpful background and context to what's happening. The final element is that the viability and success of this relies on private fundraising - it does seem there's some money out there. The flags raised with this repeal of zoning is that this may make fundraising for this property more complicated, more challenging - seeing as that there may not be the flexibility moving forward, or the seeming collaboration, or green light that some people may have previously thought was there. Who knows what's gonna happen? Do you see this likely being built? What do you see moving forward? [00:35:55] Matt Driscoll: I'm not exactly sure how much of that I buy from Tacoma Rescue Mission and its supporters - I've got a lot of respect for that agency - I know Duke well. What we're seeing here is they're trying to maintain as much flexibility as possible to move forward from a development standpoint, as advantageous to what they wanna do in the future. The bottom line is they could build what they propose to build, provided they clear the necessary hurdles as it speaks. So I don't know how sympathetic I am to the idea that they need additional flexibility to build even more on sensitive areas or whatever - or we need to change the zoning across the whole county to make this thing possible - but I could be wrong on that. But in terms of its overall prospects, one other thing I would note that makes this interesting is because there is another political element in this question about funding. The Democrats on the Council, to their credit, support such an idea. They really leveraged the County Executive and Republicans' desire to build this thing into passing a behavioral health sales tax, which could potentially go to fund something like this, or something much like this, down the road. That's another element of that - the support for this village ultimately hinged on Republicans being willing to support them and passing that - they needed a super majority. So that's another interesting wrinkle on this. And one of the reasons I love this issue - because it's just so Pierce County - it's politics and power and relationships, but I think everyone is trying to do a good thing. We're trying to build permanent supportive housing. We're trying to protect sensitive areas and limit sprawl. So your broader question - Will this thing get built? I have no idea. When it initially went through, I probably would have put it at maybe 70/30. The package that Shea Johnson put together really illustrates the desire and the support to get this thing together. It has bipartisan support. Everybody wants to build 200-some odd units of permanent supportive housing. There's the desire locally to do it. I do think that politics in Pierce County requires Democrats and Republicans to work together to do things. There's not a potential here in Pierce County for Democrats to just do everything the way they want to do it - that's not gonna happen - you're gonna have to work together in some regard. And here you have an opportunity to work together to build what could be a really important project for the area. [00:38:09] Crystal Fincher: Makes sense to me. Well, we will continue to follow that - certainly a lot to follow and a lot left to see as it develops. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, August 25th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is the incredible Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today is metro news columnist and opinion editor for The News Tribune in Tacoma, Matt Driscoll - always great insight and information from Matt. [00:38:38] Matt Driscoll: It was wonderful to be here once again - like I think I said last time - I always enjoy the opportunity to come on here and play exotic Pierce County man for the listeners up north. Again, I feel like I - there's so much to get into with the homeless village and I appreciate your time, your willingness to dedicate some time to it and talk about it. I would just recommend folks read the package 'cause I don't really feel like I did it justice - it's very complicated, it's been going on for a long time, but it's really important for this neck of the woods. So thanks for having me on. [00:39:04] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And we will link that in the resources in the show notes and online. You can find Matt on Twitter @mattsdriscoll. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can find me on all of the platforms @finchfrii, that's two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the podcast - to get the 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 - we'll talk to you next time.

"The executive branch is simply failing", State Senate Republican Leader, Jon Braun (R-Centralia), tells KVI after the State Dept. of Social and Health Services (DSHS) is sued by 22 Washington counties. KVI's John Carlson calls the lawsuit, "one of the biggest scandals in Washington." Braun points out that in 2014, it took 35 days for subjects to receive competency services and in 2023 it takes 135 days. The lawsuit involves mental and behavioral health services that are required by courts for the criminally accused. Braun itemizes the administrative failures of DSHS and the lack of attention by Gov. Inslee, why the WA Legislature is partially to blame, and concludes: "if it doesn't say climate change on it, the Governor's not interested."

6am hour -- gauging the public reaction to the Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee this week, what two voter focus groups by Fox News and CNN had to say about the top performing candidates, the irony that left-wing "excessive bail" activists are silent about the $200,000 bail Donald Trump had to post for a non-violent crime charge, the Trump booking photo and a curious connection to the failed indictment of former top Republican Congressman Tom DeLay, is the Georgia legal case against Trump strong? 7am hour -- another case of news reporter intimidation in Seattle by "stop the sweeps" activists, the irony NY's governor supported "sanctuary city" policy and now demanding a Biden bailout for too many illegal aliens in NYC, a WA candidate for governor makes campaign promise to create a Housing Department in laughable effort to create 'affordable' housing, the improbably story of the summer movie "Summer of Freedom" continues, NE Seattle Little League team loses in Final Four game. 8am hour -- "one of the biggest scandals in Washington", GUEST: St. Sen. Republican Leader Jon Braun tells KVI about failings of Gov. Inslee's DSHS to supply mental and behavioral health for criminal defendants, why the WA Legislature is partially to blame, those that don't get timely treatment are usually released back into the public, "if it doesn't say climate change on it, the Governor's not interested", "the executive branch is simply failing"; GUEST: economist, Steve Moore reminds KVI listeners of the historical quote "crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant" , Moore attended this week's Republican debate in Milwaukee, BREAKING: Seattle hookah lounge fatal mass shooting was a birthday party...now suspected of being gang related confrontation that escalated to shooting.

6am hour -- Kirby Wilbur in for John Carlson: how SeaFair hydro racing and Blue Angles air show are a major untapped potential for Puget Sound families, WA felony jail sentences fell by 47% in five years tells the story of why WA violent crimes have been setting records, the requirement in the proposed Apple TV streaming rights deal that Pac12 school refused to accept and subsequently decimated the league when UW and Oregon decided to leave for the B1G (Big 10) Conference, WA drivers are under attack from Gov. Jay Inslee, why hybrid electric ferries are much more expensive than WA officials previously believed, Oregon's plan to give drug addicts a phone number to call for treatment didnt work as intended and occurred while street homelessness in the Portland area went up 29%. 7am hour -- Kirby Wilbur in for John Carlson: Biden nominee backfires over radical climate change agenda, the ludicrous claim Biden's nominee for a federal government post made about climate change and baseball (MLB), what is the future of the Apple Cup sports rivalry with UW's departure to the Big 10 (B1G) Conference?, Democrats think they're going to run on economic issues in 2024. 8am hour -- Kirby Wilbur in for John Carlson: why COVID was a "sham-demic" with public health bureuacrats protecting China and hurting school kids with remote learning, how COVID policy can favor Republicans in 2024, Seattle transplants just don't seem to grasp the crime/drug addicted homeless problems and/or SeaFair, GUEST: candidate for WA governor, Dave Reichert, explains what he's been doing to help use DNA in solving crimes, what Reichert would do to reduce crime in WA after the recent spikes over the last few years, ( DCYF Ross Hunter not being listened to, are being assaulted), how the legalization or lack of drug possession law impacts WA's crime surge, emphasize retaining and recruiting LEOs, DSHS is unable to house criminal convicts with mental health issues, how difficult it could be for a Republican WA governor to reform and improve the state bureaucracies that have been run by Democratic-appointed governors for decades, why WA government/Gov. Inslee should do something immediately about gas prices, Reichert says no one is listening to ag workers and farmers (reichertforgovernor.com)

GUEST: candidate for WA governor, Dave Reichert, explains what he's been doing to help use DNA in solving crimes, what Reichert would do to reduce crime in WA after the recent spikes over the last few years, how the legalization or lack of drug possession law impacts WA's crime surge, emphasize retaining and recruiting LEOs, DSHS is unable to house criminal convicts with mental health issues, how difficult it could be for a Republican WA governor to reform and improve the state bureaucracies that have been run by Democratic-appointed governors for decades, why WA government/Gov. Inslee should do something immediately about gas prices, Reichert says no one is listening to ag workers and farmers.

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.

Today – we're turning our attention to the ongoing financial struggles faced by many families here and across the country in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.  And later – In the heated arena of American education, a new contender emerges, "Moms for Liberty", described by leader Johanna Carveth as a group of “liberty-minded” parents advocating for their right to influence what's taught to their children.Support the show: https://www.wenatcheeworld.com/site/forms/subscription_services/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What's Trending: A mass shooter who was released is now back in jail, A Nebraska state senator has a meltdown and Rep. Michelle Caldier returns to the Republican caucus. // NAACP is on a media blitz against Ron DeSantis and Tim Scott announced his presidential campaign. // WA AG, DSHS fined additional $122k in neglect case.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, I look at Washington Governor Jay Inslee dropping line item vetoes that would require the state's DSHS to notify communities and Indian Reservations of moving level three violent sex offenders to halfway houses. Also, congratulations to Joey B. and the DoD on killing a random farmer and calling him an AQ commander.Become a patron! sign up at www.patreon.com/tylermorganshow for access to bonus content and more!Support our partners:American Pride Roasters coffeeBlue Collar Beardsmen beard oilCheck me out on YouTube!Watch live on Twitch!Support the show by donating or buying merch at www.relentlessdaring.comBuy me a cup of coffee! www.ko-fi.com/tylermorganshow Venmo me @RDMP84Follow me on social mediaTwitter @FakeTylerMorgan @RDMediaPodsFacebook @RelentlessDaringParler @RelentlessDaringInstagram @RelentlessDaring  Email tyler@relentlessdaring.comAd music and intro music used with permission from Purple Planet www.purple-planet.com  Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Monologue: Washington and Idaho governors exchange blows The Interview: Marysville police chief Erik Scairpon explains how their drug use crack down is faring and how drug legalization will impact policing.The Interview: Curtis Houck (Managing editor, Newsbusters) on the Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon newsLongForm: State Senator Mark Mullet (D-Issaquah) explains the Democrat breakdown on drug criminalization. He blames Democrats — not Republicans.Quick Hit: Attorney general, DSHS fined for withholding documents.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alexander Jay waited for nearly a year behind bars at the King County Jail before being transported on March 3 to Western State Hospital for mental health treatment.State law, as well as federal and superior court orders mandate inmates like Jay who are deemed incompetent to stand trial due to mental illness must be moved to a state psychiatric facility within seven days. In Jay's case, it was 299 days since King County Superior Court Judge Johanna Bender signed the order for treatment.Jay is charged with assaulting a Harborview nurse at a Seattle light rail station in March, 2022, and then stabbing a woman at a Seattle bus stop the same day. In August, Jay was charged with murdering a man with a piece of rebar on Capitol Hill hours after assaulting the two strangers.Jay's case underscores a problem uncovered by the KING 5 Investigators in the series Mentally Ill, Waiting in Jail – hundreds of people with serious mental illness stuck in jails across Washington without access to trial or treatment.The case gained more attention after Judge Bender ruled the state agency responsible for providing the psychiatric help, the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS), was in contempt of court for the delays. Bender sanctioned DSHS $250 per day for “willful failure” to “timely admit Mr. Jay to inpatient competency restoration treatment.” Bender ruled the money should be paid to Jay, with a responsible party as a custodian, until being transported to Western State.The total for Jay added up to approximately $75,00Support the showSign Up For Exclusive Episodes At: https://reasonabletv.com/LIKE & SUBSCRIBE for new videos every day. https://www.youtube.com/c/NewsForReasonablePeople

6am hour -- landmark hearing this morning at the Supreme Court of Washington (SCOW) for oral arguments on Gov. Jay Inslee's capital gains tax, VA school superintendent fired after an elementary school teacher was shot in the classroom by a 6 year-old with a gun, 4 stories in less than a week of stolen cars used in crimes around rural Western WA, scrutinizing the WA Legislative bill known as "middle housing" that would strip local zoning control away from cities and give that zoning control to state government officials, the "middle housing" zoning bill is an attempt to ban "single family zoning" in favor of tri-plexes/quad-plexes/even six-plexes on a single lot, Democrats in the WA Legislature are proposing a new bill that would be the equivalent of the one-time Biden Administration "disinformation governance board". 7am hour -- GUEST: WPC's Jason Mercier previews this morning's Supreme Court of Washington (SCOW) oral arguments hearing on Gov. Jay Inslee's hotly disputed capital gains tax law that a lower court has ruled un-Constitutional, AG Bob Ferguson is appealing the swift legal blow to Inslee and Democrats who badly want to tax rich stock holders in Washington, SPD officer hits and kills pedestrian who was in a cross-walk while responding to 911 call, could or should the officer be charged?, GUEST: State Rep. Travis Couture (R-Allyn) updates the story about a proposed sex-offender half-way house in Tenino WA, Coutoure was in a DSHS meeting about the sex-offender housing yesterday and reports a cease and desist order is now filed against the proposed sex-offender half-way house, Coutoure is digging deeper in the WA bureaucratic policy of using private companies to over-see transitional housing of convicted sex-offenders released from McNeil Island state penitentiary but still required to be under state supervision as part of their release. 8am hour -- digging deeper into the ranks of WA Legislative Democrats who are pushing the "middle housing bill " HB 1110 that would take local zoning decision control away from cities and put the state government in charge, the Bothell WA lawmaker who has become the Democrats' point-person in the Legisalture on zoning issues proclaimed "local control is garbage" in 2022, another red flag from the WA Legislature involving HB 1333, HB 1333 would establish a domestic extremist commission,WA Democrats really don't like it when taxpayers are reminded that they raised taxes, NOW: a breaking news situation in the WA Legislature, Senate Democrats are pushing to block tax hike advisory votes that were approved by voters in I-960. GUEST: St. Sen. Jeff Wilson is trying to urge WA voters to oppose SB 5082 which Democrats are trying to pass.

We learn more about Power BioPharms, their mission is to naturally produce exceptional, small-batch, cannabinoid-rich products which consumers believe, trust and depend on. Chelsie has been recognized as a Super Lawyer in the Cannabis practice area and comes one this week to talk about the DSHS recent enforcement letter and also laws and opportunities in TX cannabis reform with the new 88th Legislative session as lawmakers consider new options with CBD , and other Cannabinoids.

This is Part II of our conversation on the Cambodian community with Jennifer Huong, a DSHS-certified Khmer interpreter and one of the founders of the Khmer Health Board Member. She was born in Kampong Cham, raised in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, escaped to Thailand refugee camps in 1981 and resettled in Salem, Oregon in mid-July 1983.  She has been advocating for the community for the last 30 years as a Cultural Mediator/Caseworker and Medical Interpreter. In this conversation, you will  Understand how unprocessed trauma manifestsHear how the lack of community spaces can lead to further isolationLearn how a complex healthcare system can undermine the care that clinicians are trying to provide and what it means to listen and ask about items not on the initial “agenda” Next Steps: Sign up on Healthcare for Humans website to join our community Subscribe and share this episode to help clinicians care for diverse communities better Follow Raj on Twitter

Part I of our conversation on the Cambodian community with James Heng, a DSHS-certified Khmer interpreter and Khmer Health Board Member. In his free time, he organizes concerts and entertains the Khmer community in WA state.In this conversation, you will  Understand the trauma many Khmer hold that you likely never think aboutLearn the perils of using a family or staff for interpreting without thinking twiceHear why there's such a stigma around mental health or being open to a diagnosis of mental health disorderWe also  cover food, substance use and traditional practiceNext Steps: Sign up on Healthcare for Humans website to join our community Subscribe and share this episode to help clinicians care for diverse communities better Follow Raj on Twitter

Dr. Lori Pfingst, senior director of poverty reduction for the Washington Department of Social and Health Services, touted the feasibility and benefits of implementing guaranteed basic income in Washington state during a Friday hearing of the House Housing, Human Services & Veterans Committee. http://bit.ly/3iALL6T #TheCenterSquareWashington #GuaranteedBasicIncome #CashPayment #IndividualismHouseholds #DrLoriPfingst #WashingtonDepartmentOfSocialAndHealthServices #DSHS #VancouverWa #ClarkCountyWa #ClarkCountyNews #ClarkCountyToday

On this Salcedo Storm Podcast: Dr. Jennifer Shuford is the Interim Commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services. Dr.Shuford received her medical degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and her Master of Public Health from Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Shuford was a practicing infectious disease physician in Austin prior to joining DSHS in 2017. Dr. Shuford served as the chief state epidemiologist and infectious disease medical officer before being named interim commissioner.

Feliks Banel on the long-term effects of PNW smoke and ash // Maggie Haberman, author of Confidence Man // Hanna Scott on DSHS lawsuit over the death of Charlie and Braden Powell // Dose of Kindness -- neighbors make sure injured famer's crop gets harvested // Gee Scott on Netflix passwords/ scary movie // Yejin Choi, UW Prof and MacArthur Genius, on teaching artificial intelligence // Rachel Belle on the death of the scrunchy's inventor/ Anna May Wong to appear on quartersSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this midweek show, Crystal chats with Jeff Manson about his campaign for State Representative in the 36th Legislative District - why he decided to run, how the last legislative session went, and where he stands on issues such as COVID response and recovery, housing affordability and zoning, homelessness, guaranteed basic income, public safety, drug decriminalization, and climate change. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Jeff at @VoteJeffManson.   Resources Campaign Website - Jeff Manson: https://www.votejeffmanson.com/   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. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Well today, I am very excited to welcome to the program, Jeff Manson, who's a candidate for the 36th District State House seat. Welcome, Jeff. [00:00:49] Jeff Manson: It's great to be here, Crystal - thank you. [00:00:51] Crystal Fincher: It's great to be here, it's great to see you. We were in the IDF class of 2010 together. [00:00:59] Jeff Manson: Yes we were - 2010 forever. [00:01:01] Crystal Fincher: 2010 forever. So I'm thrilled to have you on here and to have this conversation, excited to see you again. So starting off, what made you choose to run? [00:01:12] Jeff Manson: Yeah - great question. So, I'm an administrative law judge with the state, I'm a labor leader, and a disability community advocate. As a state administrative law judge, we resolve disputes that people have with state government - so I see every day how underfunded government affects people, including the most vulnerable individuals in our state. So I'm running for State Representative to fund the services and infrastructure that we need and utilizing progressive revenue sources. I've been fighting for progressive values since the fourth grade, when I co-founded my elementary school's Earth Club after reading a book for kids on the environment - it was 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth and each page described an environmental problem and then what a kid could do about. And I did most of the things and it really taught me not only about environmental issues at a young age, but also that one person can make a difference - if you get off your butt and start doing stuff, you can make incremental differences and possibly take that to scale. So since then I've developed a track record of effecting progressive policy change. I was lucky to go to law school at Seattle University, where I did an emphasis in poverty and inequality law, and I represented people with disabilities as a young attorney. But I saw them struggle with our legal system - there's just a lot of systemic barriers, especially for people with disabilities to accessing justice. So I gathered legal and disability experts and people with disabilities, and we wrote a guide for judges on how to accommodate people in legal proceedings. And then, when I saw the negative effects of corporate and wealthy donations on our democracy, I became a leader with the group that brought the Democracy Voucher program to Seattle City elections. And it took about a decade - we had to change state law first, and then we tried to go to the ballot and decided not to, then we did go to the ballot and we failed, and then we went to the ballot again a couple of years later and were finally successful - and it's been a really successful program. And then in my own profession, our salaries were stagnating, we were having issues in our workplace. But we were not allowed as - even though we're state employees as administrative law judges - we were not allowed to collectively bargain for almost 40 years. So a few years ago I organized my colleagues and we successfully lobbied the Legislature - my own representative who I'm running to replace, Representative Noel Frame, sponsored the bill. And we successfully got collective bargaining rights for administrative law judges. And in the few weeks before COVID shut everything down, we got 85% of our judges to sign union authorization cards. So, and now we're unionized, we've got a contract, we got a salary increase, and last year I was elected as President of WFSE Local 562. So I'm a restless personality - always seeing problems and trying to fix them and pulling people together to fix them - and I can't wait to hopefully be elected so I can work for the people of the 36th doing the same stuff in the legislature. [00:04:33] Crystal Fincher: Yes, and it is exciting to have watched you do all of this over the years and get the opportunity to - see so many more people get the opportunity to see all of the work that you've done and how helpful that has been. You just mentioned COVID. Right now, we're still dealing with COVID, but trying to move forward with COVID - sometimes lurching forward prematurely in how we're dealing with COVID. And so it seems like - to a number of people still - there still needs to be more done to mitigate COVID. I was just - a friend just yesterday came down with COVID. Lots of talk about - hey, we have the tools to address this, we have therapeutics and Paxlovid - and she and others that I've known have had challenges even accessing that with COVID, in addition to testing and some of the financial mitigation things. Should we - should the Legislature be doing more to keep us safe from COVID, and if they should, what should be happening from the legislative point of view? [00:05:44] Jeff Manson: Yeah, it seems like two steps forward, one step back - or sometimes two steps forward, three steps back - depending on the season. It's been a long couple of years - I guess we're on 26 months now. And yeah, this isn't over. I don't know about you or the listeners, but it seems like more people that I know have caught it in the last few weeks than in the couple of years prior to that. And yeah, so it isn't over. Ideally this would be handled at the federal level, and I think the federal government has done some things right and some things not right. And our federal system, I think, makes it more difficult - when we first had the vaccines last year, I waited my turn until my category came up and then I went online to try to find a place, and it was just a mess to just find - it's like, can't you just tell me where to go. I'll drive to Yakima - I'll totally drive to Yakima if that's my assigned place - just tell me where to go instead of giving me 20 websites to click on, all of which say it's full. If the federal government had just taken it over, it may have run more smoothly, but we have this decentralized form of government in this country where the states were in charge and then they would turn it over to the counties. And I think we've seen some of the flaws in that system, especially when there's a crisis. I think federalism creates - we have the laboratories of democracy or whatnot - but in a crisis where you have emergencies declared and you need quick responses and top-down efficiency, that decentralized system doesn't work very well. So I think from the Legislature - what the Legislature can do - is still provide the resources that people need, who are not able to stop quarantining. In my job, we adjudicate unemployment benefits appeals, and that's most of what I'm doing right now - we still have a big backlog. And there's still lots of people who are not comfortable leaving their homes, either because of their own health situation, or that of someone else in their household, or of a parent they care for in another household, or because their child is under five years old. And it's one of the main reasons a lot of people aren't going back to work yet. And why we have a - we talk about supply chain issues, but we have a labor supply issue in almost every industry right now. And people aren't able to go back to work 'cause they don't feel safe doing it. So for those who can't, I think we need to continue some of the safety net programs that we had for a year, year and a half, but many of which have expired. And then beyond that, I think a lot of it is communication - there are free tests that - I bought a test at a grocery store, it was 20 bucks when it's like - oh, wait a minute, I could have ordered one of these if only I had known to go to this website and then do this and then do that. I think our state and our county health departments could help with that communication - that does require funding though, and the state provides a lot of that funding. [00:08:56] Crystal Fincher: All right. Well, you talk about what the Legislature has done here in our state. We just got done recently with a session where there are some things that happened that were great and other things that were pretty disappointing. What was your evaluation of this past session? What would you have done differently than our Legislature did? [00:09:19] Jeff Manson: Yeah, there were, like any session, there were highs and lows. Some of the high - we got a transportation package which was good. It wasn't a perfect transportation package, but it does fund a lot of really good things, including transit, bike, and pedestrian infrastructure. We got - for education, it's still just a - we haven't fully funded education in my mind yet, but we did take a step in the right direction. Teachers got a COLA [Cost-of-Living Adjustment], we got more funding for school counselors and nurses and social workers. But there were also some disappointments - there were some environmental bills that didn't pass. We had electric vehicle subsidies that didn't pass and there were some other environmental bills that we'll need to take up next year. And I think we have a housing crisis in the state - but in particular in Seattle, it's a regional housing market, but we see it acutely here in Seattle. And I think leaving housing decisions to the cities hasn't worked and there is a place for the state to step in. And I know Jessica Bateman, Representative Bateman, had a bill. There were a few different versions of it before it died, but I think we need to - I support the concept of the state directing changes in zoning and we should - that should be a priority next session. [00:10:49] Crystal Fincher: Should we be increasing zoning density in single-family neighborhoods? [00:10:53] Jeff Manson: I think in some of them - the devil will be in the details, but I think - we're at tens of thousands of housing units behind where we need to be. People are moving here and staying here faster than we're building housing units. And the result has been increased housing prices. We're seeing housing prices increase across the country the last year or so, but Seattle has been seeing this much longer than just the last year. And the result is that people are being priced out of the City or onto our streets. And so we need to - we need more housing stock. We need it - and of every type - we need more large apartment buildings in transit corridors, we need more duplexes and fourplexes. And the City of Seattle has taken some steps in recent years to add density, which I've supported - more ADUs [Accessory Dwelling Units], some up-zoning in urban villages. But a lot of cities elsewhere in the region haven't done the same, so I think state action is needed to prod that along. And ADUs and DADUs [Detached Accessory Dwelling Units] - I think that's great and for those who are able to afford to build one or renovate for one - it's wonderful. But the first year after that change, we saw an increase of about 300 ADU and DADU permits than the previous year. And 300 housing units - that's one large apartment complex, it's just a drop in the bucket. It's great, but we need to attack this from all angles, but it's just a drop in the bucket compared to the tens of thousands of units that we need over the next several years. [00:12:39] Crystal Fincher: Do you support the social housing initiative that is currently gathering signatures in the City of Seattle. And do you think that's an approach that could be taken statewide? [00:12:49] Jeff Manson: I'm very intrigued by it - I've not read the actual initiative, but I understand from what I've read, that it's a model that's been used in Europe, especially in Vienna. So I'm very intrigued by the idea and excited about the idea. I think we need to try as many things as we can and see what works. I need to see how it pencils out and what it looks like before I make a decision about whether I'll support it at the ballot or not, but I really like that we're having the conversation. And if it does look like it's a model that could work, then I think it should be expanded to the rest of the state. I do - we were talking about the market rate housing and supply and demand, which is a big part of housing affordability. But I really think that there is a significant - government should also be responsible for subsidizing and directly building housing units. We need both the free market and the commons to take responsibility for housing people - and whether that's traditional public housing, or Section 8, or subsidies - the government needs to be stepping up to the plate. And the state provides a lot of the funding for those - cities and counties make a lot of the micro-level decisions, but the state provides funding for the Housing Trust Fund. This last session, we put money in for about 2000 units of supportive housing, which is great - it may not be enough, but it's great. But we really need government being part of this market. There's the free market, but it should be - we should have a safety net of housing, just like we have a safety net of food assistance for low-income people and disability benefits for people. We need a housing benefit, so to speak, and government role in that space. [00:14:42] Crystal Fincher: And part of our housing problem, housing affordability problem, is one of the root causes of homelessness. And we are experiencing a crisis of homelessness. What are you proposing, that you can do as a legislator, to help make a tangible difference? [00:15:05] Jeff Manson: Yeah, and it really comes back to funding. There can be - there's some at the edges, we can tweak policies to help with homelessness, but really it's a funding issue. We need more funding for more housing options, and that's really at every level - that's emergency shelter, it's tiny homes, it's supportive housing as I mentioned, and it's other public housing that I mentioned. But we have an acute crisis right now, and we need to get people off of the streets and into some sort of shelter that is safer for them and safer for all of us. And then longer term, increasing our housing stock will reduce the root cause, which is evictions - a lot of people are homeless. They were not born homeless - most of them. They, at some point, lost their housing or lost their support system. So yeah, it's really about funding and our state government has been, I believe, chronically underfunded for decades. And really that gets back to our tax structure. We have the worst tax structure in the country, where the lowest-income people pay the most and the wealthiest pay the least, and it's completely upside down. So we need more progressive revenue sources to fund things like housing and everything else that we feel like we need as a society. [00:16:30] Crystal Fincher: There are currently about 30 cities across the country piloting some form of a guaranteed basic income program - a set amount of money each month targeted to low-income households just to help take care of basic needs. And with it showing results in everything from health outcomes, to educational outcomes, to public safety outcomes. Do you support a guaranteed basic income? [00:16:58] Jeff Manson: I love the idea and I think we should continue experimenting with it. And actually, I am in the public benefits arena where everything - a lot of things are means-tested - unemployment benefits aren't, it's an insurance program. But in my office, we adjudicate food assistance, TANF [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families], state disability benefits, Medicaid - and these are all means-tested programs. And maybe I'm going to get myself in trouble with my union because I'm going to propose putting us out of work. But what we do is try to figure out whether people qualify for these programs. Somebody will be getting - say, $182 per month in food assistance. And then they get a letter that reduces it from $182 to $165, so it's gone down $17 a month. They request a hearing, they come to the hearing. And so now we have this whole hearing about whether they should have their benefits reduced by $17, and then I issue a decision and then it's implemented. And this is all after the person shows up in a building, they fill out paperwork, they go to their doctor or they go to their landlord to get supporting documentation, a financial worker and sometimes a social worker with DSHS looks it up - so we've got all of this expense for the bureaucracy of determining how much this person should - just give everybody $200 per month of food assistance. Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, you, me, everybody - and is $200 the right amount? I don't know, but I think the concept of UBI [Universal Basic Income] has helped sort of change the conversation about this. There is so much bureaucracy around a lot of these means-tested programs, where if you just gave it to people, we know that almost everybody spends it in the way that we think people should spend it, which is on their basic needs. I think we saw this with the refundable childcare tax credit at the federal level - I don't think we would have had that conversation if it wasn't for Andrew Yang and him talking about UBI in the previous presidential election - even Mitt Romney was on board with a refundable child tax credit for everybody, which gives it to people who have children, who are the ones who need it. And it was too bad that it hasn't been extended, but I think all the studies have shown that it's been better than just about anything to reduce child poverty in this country. So wherever - actually having UBI like Andrew Yang was talking about is incredibly expensive, and so I wouldn't want to flip the switch and necessarily devote resources to giving everybody thousands of dollars per month right now. But I do think the concept is a good one for changing our approach to a lot of these public benefits. It is also demeaning as hell to go through the process of getting public benefits. You jump through all these hoops just to prove that you're poor enough, or disabled enough, or fleeing domestic violence enough - to get the paperwork necessary to prove that you're fleeing a domestic violence situation is awful. It's retraumatizing just to get what you need to survive on the street, because we don't have public benefits that really house everybody. Most of the benefits and most of the people I see in hearings in King County are unhoused people trying to get benefits - just to eat, much less get a job or whatnot. [00:20:26] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, that is the current situation and it is a shame, and we can do better. Another area where we can and have to do better is in keeping people safe. It's a concern that a lot of people have - people are looking at crime - wondering if they're going to be victimized and wondering if we're doing the right things about it. What can you do in your capacity as a state legislator to make people safer? [00:20:55] Jeff Manson: Yeah, no, it's a real issue, and it's something I feel - I live in Greenwood, I ride the E line downtown and it's an adventure every time. I've had stuff stolen and I've been doorbelling for about a month now, and it's what I hear more than just about anything. I think it's - as Democrats nationally - we're out of practice talking about crime. You know what I mean? Crime has been much lower - even now - over the last 20 years, 30 years than it was in say the 70s and the 80s. And now that it's ticking back up, and not just ticking back up, but accelerating back up here and nationwide, I think we're trying to figure out how to talk about it again. But it is going up and one of the basic public duties is to protect citizens. And I think it goes back to underfunded government, both on the services side and the criminal justice system side. On services, I think if you give people housing and you provide mental health supports, addiction supports, and provide access to community and to both government and individual support, then that's the root cause of a lot of crime. And we have not been - part of what we're seeing now is the results of under-investment in our government supports over the last several decades. So I think first and foremost, we need to get people housed and give them the support they need for their own individual recovery. I do believe housing needs to come first because anyone who's trying to take a step towards recovery, whether it's mental health or addiction, is just not gonna be able to take that first step if they are in fight-or-flight mode, 24/7 on the streets, and more vulnerable to the kind of crime we're talking about than the rest of us are. But once they are housed, then there's at least the opportunity to be able to get them services that they need. I also think we need more funding on the criminal justice side. Our courts have a two-year backlog in criminal trials, we don't have enough prosecutors or defenders or investigators or paralegals or social workers or mental health therapists. And we also have a police force, law enforcement that at least in Seattle has seen a lot of people leave. And I have mixed feelings about law enforcement, especially the last couple of years - after the murder of George Floyd, there was a big movement to increase accountability and oversight of police, which I 100% supported. We can not have law enforcement killing Black and Brown people and not having any consequences. So I supported the reforms from two sessions ago and was opposed to many of the attempts to roll those back this past session. But, while we do need accountability, while we need training, and while we need independent oversight, we still do need law enforcement - often they're responding to things that others could respond to. Maybe we don't need law enforcement to respond to every mental health crisis, but we do still need police officers and Seattle Police Department is down about 25% of their officers. They have homicide detectives who are now responding to 911 calls. So I do think our whole criminal justice system, including alternatives to incarceration and mental health supports, all need funding. And as a public servant myself, I see underfunded government in my line of work, and I think we should fully fund my public service, just like we need to fund the public servants who teach in our schools, and public servants who try our cases, and the public servants - the police, firefighters, first responders, who are the frontlines of our criminal justice system. [00:25:06] Crystal Fincher: Well, and you bring up an interesting point there in - looking at police and having them to respond to certain things, also looking at alternative responses or things that get more to treating the root cause. When, just as a general approach to crime, do you think - right now the majority of our resources are going into responses to crime pretty much after they've happened and trying to figure out are those right resources there, whether it's police or in the criminal legal system, to have it there. And we have severely underfunded alternative responses that get more to the root causes. So should we be shifting that priority in how we allocate our resources towards prevention and keeping people from being victimized in the first place? [00:25:58] Jeff Manson: Yes, but I think we can do both, and. I think it's all of the above. And I think after - a couple of years ago there was the slogan, Defund the Police. And I think it - I never thought that was the best slogan at the time or now, but I think the intent behind that for a lot of people who said that was - we should be funding alternatives to police response, and alternatives to incarceration, alternatives to solely punitive response - which I am 100% in support of. I don't think, and as someone who thinks government's underfunded and as a progressive Democrat, I don't think it's a zero-sum game. I don't think in order to fund something, you have to take away from another government service. I think law enforcement - just like firefighting, just like roads and electricity - are just a basic government resource that should be funded at a basic level. But in terms of where we should be directing new resources - should be towards those alternatives and getting at the root cause of a lot of crime. We have an acute crisis right now in that people call 911, or call the police, and they literally don't get a response. That's an immediate right now, this year, this month issue. While, on the other hand, the reason we're having an uptick in crime is that over the last couple of decades, we haven't invested in all this stuff to prevent the crime. So you need both - you need to attack the acute problem right now, but you also need to lay the groundwork and start investing in the social infrastructure to prevent crime in the future. And also when we talk about alternatives to incarceration, Drug Court is amazing - anecdotes say this, but studies show as well that those who successfully do Drug Court, it is a life-changing experience. But you don't get into Drug Court unless a police officer arrests you first. So I don't want to suggest that we start arresting people in order to get them into treatment that they need. But often it is the mechanism that gets them into where they need to go. I mean, Drug Court is hard - people talk about it - when I say people, people who may come at this from a different perspective than me - it's like, oh, that's the easy way out. It's just handing them services instead of actually being tough on crime or whatnot, but Drug Court's hard - you have to make regular court appearances, you have mandatory treatment, regular drug tests, and if you slip up you're back to jail. But those who graduate, who actually get all the way through, actually stay clean and get housed and become productive members of society. And we need to expand that opportunity - and things like LEAD, Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, is another great program that - we hear the stories of how it's successful, but also the studies show that it actually has good outcomes and the amount of money invested is less than jailing somebody. But it is law enforcement that is assisting that diversion - it's that interaction with law enforcement that is allowing that to happen. So - [00:29:22] Crystal Fincher: Well and that brings up an interesting question. So in your perspective, should addiction, or even possession, be criminalized? Is that the best approach, or should we be treating it like a public health problem? [00:29:33] Jeff Manson: No, it's absolutely a public health problem. Yeah, it's - if you're pulled over and you've got half a ton of meth in your truck or something that's different, but yeah - simple possession, just being an addict - that is, these are people who are sick and they need treatment, just like someone who has COVID or cancer. It is a public health problem, and I very much believe in a harm reduction approach to addiction. But I do think that a lot of the property crime that we're seeing and other kinds of low-level criminal activity is the result of addiction. It doesn't mean that all addicts commit crimes - not all homeless people commit crimes, it's a unfair stereotype - but a lot of the criminal activity that we're seeing - packages stolen from porches, windows being broken in small businesses - a lot of that is people trying to feed their addiction and that's not an excuse for the behavior, but it is an explanation of the root cause of a lot of what we're seeing. [00:30:47] Crystal Fincher: And seemingly a roadmap to how to reduce the occurrences of crime committed as a result of addiction or dependency - that if we solve the root, then we also solve for the crime in many of those instances. I'm also wondering - we need to make such dramatic progress in terms of our approach to climate change, in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, in mitigating the impacts that we're already feeling and that those who are most marginalized are feeling most acutely. And just starting off, our transportation sector is the biggest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions, so it seems like any solution needs to start there and it needs to be substantive. What would you propose, especially that impacts transportation-related emissions, to reduce those and help meet our climate goals? [00:31:54] Jeff Manson: Yeah, you know what? I was in fourth grade and I read the environment book, I remember explaining climate change to my parents and it was news to them - this was 1990, so it was news to them. I remember telling them - look, this is my future, mom and dad. And now I'm realizing now it's our present, right? And it's going to get worse, even if we do all the things right, it's going to get worse. But we've got the smoke from forest fires in our summer days, our few summer days here in Seattle, we can see the glaciers get smaller and smaller on the mountains every year. I have a family member who was essentially a climate refugee, who was living in a more tropical area and two Category 5 hurricanes left her without housing. She fortunately had the supports necessary to relocate, but this is scary. Fortunately, Washington State has been arguably the leader among the states in tackling climate change. Unfortunately, that's nowhere near close enough, but we should continue to push that envelope and be on the forefront as a state, not just for our own sake and doing our own part, but also to be a model for other states and other countries - look, here's what you can do. And not only is it not devastating to your economy to make these transitions, but it actually can make an economy more resilient if you do it the right way. So in terms of the things we need to do, we had a transportation package this last session. I don't think we need to wait another 10 years for the next transportation package, which has sort of been the model - it's 6 to 10 years between transportation packages. There was no gas tax increase on this last one. Some of it was federal money that was passing through, so I think there's an opportunity - maybe not this next session, but within the next couple - to do another transportation package which should be very heavily focused on climate-friendly infrastructure - transit and other alternative modes of transportation. We have the Link Light Rail coming through the middle of the 36th a decade from now, right through Interbay and into Ballard. And we need to make sure that - first of all, that happens, but also that it happens in a way that we have a light rail system that people are actually going to ride. And I think that means having light rail underground under the Ship Canal. We just saw that the Coast Guard is saying that any bridge would need to be - I think it's 205 feet above - and I saw the drawing - [00:34:36] Crystal Fincher: Gotta accommodate those mega-yachts. [00:34:38] Jeff Manson: You gotta accommodate the mega-yachts. [00:34:40] Crystal Fincher: That's a big priority. [00:34:41] Jeff Manson: And maybe - I don't know if there are other vessels that would also require it or not, but there's an easy solution here, guys - go under the Ship Canal. It's not that deep, and actually it turns out that a tunnel is not that much more expensive than going above ground than we thought it would be. It's not that tunneling got cheaper it's that we're realizing the cost of going above ground is even more expensive than it used to be. And now with the bridge height needing to be that high, it's probably even more expensive. So, if the state needs to provide additional funding in order to make that happen, then let's do it. If we can find funding from some other third party source, that'd be great. But I think this is going to be - this is a hundred year decision, right? Like wherever this line goes and wherever these stops go, those stops will still be there a hundred years from now. We have to get this right now and we can't just say - oh, interest rates went up by 0.5%, therefore we need to remove a stop or we need to do it this way or that way. By going underground, it also allows the light rail to go west of 15th Avenue - right now, the proposals are along 14th, but that's not where people want to go. The historical downtown Ballard, which will still be the historical downtown Ballard a hundred years from now, is about six blocks west of where they're wanting to send it. If you go underground, then you're not having to destroy all those buildings and we need to provide the funding for that. Whether that's a transportation package or some other source, I don't know, but - [00:36:18] Crystal Fincher: If you do get the opportunity to vote on a new transportation package, or help shape it - will you vote or support a package that includes highway expansion? [00:36:29] Jeff Manson: Not if that's the overwhelming priority of the money - what the priority needs to be - green infrastructure and transit. And representing the 36th - my duty would be to do the best that I can for the 36th District. And we already have two highways - we don't need anymore. Now would I absolutely never vote for something that expanded a highway? Sometimes you have to make compromises - there are also - I would be open to an argument about a freight corridor or something. Maybe there's a one particular spot where there needs to be an expansion. But overall, my philosophy is - the place that we are the farthest behind from where we should be is in terms of our transit system. We are 40 to 50 years behind where we should be on transit. [00:37:19] Crystal Fincher: What more can we do to help meet our goals? We've taken actions, but we're still behind our goals. We need to catch up and accelerate. Is there anything else we can do outside of our transportation system? Action that you could take to help make that change? [00:37:39] Jeff Manson: Yeah, there's a lot we can do. And our own goals are reduced carbon emissions by about half by 2030 - we're almost to 2030. It sounds weird to say that, but we're talking about - I would be in a legislative session in 2023. Those policy - the laws would take effect summer of 2023 and the actual effects of those policies won't even start until 2024, and then we're only basically five years away from 2030. So we have to do whatever we're going to do now. There are some things that did not pass this last session, which is where we can easily just start off - electric vehicle subsidies didn't pass - we should do that in order to encourage the electrification of our vehicle fleet and people's cars. There was a bill to require climate impacts to be part of comprehensive plans and the Growth Management Act that didn't pass - something we should look at. Other opportunities to move towards more electrification of homes - some of those bills didn't pass. So it was just a lot of opportunities to invest in our electric grid. We already have one of the less carbon-emitting electric grids since we have so much hydroelectric power in this state, but if we're going to electrify homes and vehicles, we are going to need more electrical capacity than we have historically. So that means we're going to have to expand our electric grid, and we really have an opportunity to model for the nation and the world on how you can build an electric grid that is totally carbon neutral. We can build more wind farms, more solar power, and the transmission lines to get it to population centers. We need to move - we need cleaning up the electric grid and moving things towards electricity that are not currently electricity. That's about 90%, probably, of our carbon goals - transportation being electric and investing in transit, and then electrifying pretty much every building, vehicle, or tool that we have is really the key to solving climate change. [00:40:10] Crystal Fincher: Well, and as we conclude our time today and are wrapping up, what is it that you think sets you apart from the crowded field of candidates that you are competing against in the 36th and how will voters' lives feel different as a result of you being their elected representative? [00:40:31] Jeff Manson: Well, I think I bring two things to the race primarily. One is - I have been doing, doing, doing to solve problems like this since I was a kid. I am not comfortable sitting still when I see a problem - I want to fix it. And I know that sometimes it takes a decade or more, it often takes working with a lot of other people. And I've been following that model for 30 years now, since I was 10 or 11 years old. And that's - I think that's the model of action that we want in a legislator - someone who sees a problem, is motivated and works their butt off to try to solve it, and is able to bring people together to do that. And I think I have a track record of doing that with progressive causes over the years. And I think the other is just an expertise in state government. I literally see how state laws and state budgets affect thousands of people every year and know at a granular level, how a turn of phrase in a statute can affect the outcome in an individual's case, or how a reduction in the state disability benefit by 20% results in changes in people's lives. And I think that perspective and being able to bring those stories of the people in my hearings into the Legislature and being able to speak to it from the perspective that I've been in, in my day job, could make a real difference. And besides that, I just love the 36th District. I've been there - I've been in this district for 15 years, it's a beautiful place, wonderful people - for those who could still afford to live in it. And would just really be honored to represent the 36th District in the Legislature and would just be such a joy to solve problems for people in the district. [00:42:28] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much for joining us here today. [00:42:31] Jeff Manson: Thank you, Crystal. [00:42:32] Crystal Fincher: I thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks on KVRU 105.7 FM. The producer of Hacks & Wonks Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. Now you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks & Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. 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 - we'll talk to you next time.