Podcasts about Washington State Senate

The Washington State Senate has passed a bill imposing a 9.9% tax on income exceeding $1 million, a move sparking heated debate across the state. Proponents argue the tax will generate crucial revenue for public services like education and infrastructure, while opponents decry it as a disincentive for wealth creation and investment. This legislation now heads to the House, where its fate remains uncertain. This new tax has the potential to drive high-income earners and businesses out of Washington, impacting the state's overall economic health. Will this tax solve budget issues, or will it cripple the Washington economy? We delve into the details, exploring the potential consequences for Washington residents and businesses alike.

The Washington State Senate passed the ‘millionaire tax,’ which will have devastating effects on our economy. Stephen Colbert pretended to be outraged about his interview with Texas Senate candidate James Talarico being pulled due to the ‘equal time’ rule. // AOC completely humiliated herself over the weekend at the Munich Security Conference. // The FAA is enforcing merit-based hiring for pilots.

On this episode of Legislative Review: Legislation pertaining to shared leave for hate crime victims and ice-related absences.  Plus bill on private detention centers.  Finally discussion on the Millionaire Tax takes place in the Washington State Senate.

The Washington State Senate approved Senate Bill 5974 to impose stricter eligibility standards on sheriffs and police chiefs and restrict volunteer posses, advancing the legislation to the House after party-line debate. This report was first published by the Washington State Standard. https://www.clarkcountytoday.com/news/stricter-standards-for-wa-sheriffs-approved-in-state-senate/ #WashingtonState #WALeg #SB5974 #Sheriffs #PoliceAccountability #WashingtonStateStandard

In this letter to the editor, Vancouver resident Shauna Walters critiques Sen. Adrian Cortes' legislative record, contrasting his past local tax-cutting actions with his current support for state mandates and income tax proposals in the Washington State Senate. https://www.clarkcountytoday.com/opinion/letter-the-great-reversal-cortes-cuts-local-taxes-then-loads-schools-and-hospitals-with-unfunded-state-mandates/ #ClarkCounty #Opinion #LetterToTheEditor #WALeg #Taxes #EducationPolicy

I am so excited to share my conversation with Kelly Stonelake!Kelly Stonelake is a business operator and technologist with nearly 15 years of experience at Meta, where she held senior roles in product marketing and organizational leadership. During her tenure, she raised concerns about child safety and internal misconduct and faced retaliation after senior leadership chose to conceal risks rather than address them. The gap between Meta's stated values and her lived experience led to a severe loss of functioning and a fight for her life.Following her departure, Kelly became a whistleblower and advocate for stronger protections for children online, greater tech accountability, awareness of autistic burnout and suicide risk, and safer workplaces for marginalized people. Her work focuses on challenging the concentration of power in technology and advancing equity, accountability, and systemic reform.Kelly recently testified before the Washington State Senate in support of SB 5708 on addictive feeds and SB 5784 on AI companions, sharing first-hand accounts of child exposure, data collection without parental consent, and corporate retaliation against those who spoke up.Please visit Kelly Stonelake on Substack at Overturned by Kelly Stonelake .02:16 – 10:40 | From early idealism to the inside of FacebookKelly traces her early interests in journalism, constitutional debate, and technology, leading to nearly 15 years at Facebook. She describes the early years before the algorithmic feed, when the mission felt real and principled. She reflects on Cambridge Analytica, internal decision-making, and how loyalty, good faith, and “doing the right thing” slowly became tools for accumulating power.10:41 – 29:24 | Horizon Worlds, retaliation, and the open secret about kidsKelly recounts her time as the only woman on the senior leadership team for Horizon Worlds. She describes discovering that children were already using the product through adult accounts, being exposed to adults without parental consent, while Meta collected vast amounts of data in violation of federal law. She speaks plainly about misogyny, silencing women, attorney-client privilege used to avoid accountability, and the moment the rollout was paused for “quality” reasons while the truth stayed buried.29:25 – 1:02:00 | The harms parents, therapists, and social workers need to understandKelly lays out, in clear and specific terms, the dangers children face across social platforms:• Sextortion pipelines that move from shame to suicide in hours or days• Relentless bullying amplified by anonymity and disappearing messages• Algorithmic feeds that escalate vulnerability into self-harm content• Drug acquisition through social apps leading to fentanyl deaths• Viral challenges that kill curious kidsShe explains how “teen accounts” and parental controls function as sugar pills. They reassure parents without protecting children.1:02:01 – 1:11:30 | A chapter for parentsKelly speaks directly to parents. Delay smartphones as long as possible. She recommends no social media. Give yourself permission to reevaluate decisions with new information and self-compassion. She shares how technology can exist in a home without extractive platforms, from family computers to creative and educational tools. She names the economic manipulation at play and explains why neurodivergent children face disproportionate risk. This is not a parenting failure. It is a systemic one.1:11:31 – 1:21:53 | Moral injury, refusing blood money, and choosing truthKelly shares her mental health collapse, autistic burnout, and the moment...

The Washington State Senate voted 30–19 to pass Senate Bill 5855, a proposal that would prohibit state, federal, and tribal law enforcement officers from wearing masks while interacting with the public, sending the bill to the House amid ongoing debate over immigration enforcement and state authority. https://www.clarkcountytoday.com/news/wa-senate-passes-bill-banning-law-enforcement-from-wearing-masks-amid-ice-activity/ #WashingtonLegislature #SB5855 #ImmigrationPolicy #LawEnforcement #StatePolitics

Washington State Senate to take public testimony on abortion savings program...South Dakota governor backs religious freedom bill...and Israel recovers remains of final hostage in Gaza.

Today, Thursday, July 10 on Urban Forum Northwest: *Congressman Adam Smith (D) WA-09 Ranking Member House Armed Services Committee, a member of the New Democrat Coalition and the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the dean of Washington's House delegation. He was elected to the Washington State Senate in 19991when he was 25 years old the youngest person ever elected to the Senate and served until 1997. He has been a vocal advocate for working class Americans in his district and the country. He has been an outstanding advocate for the underserved, supporting programs like American 4 Equality/MLK Gandhi Empowerment Initiative. *Hayward Evans, co convener, Seattle King County Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration/Continuation Committee (MLKCC). He has been a candidate for the Board of Directors the Central District Community Preservation &Development Authority (CDCPDA) aka the Reverend Dr. Samuel B. McKinney Center for Community and Economic Development since February and Dr. McKinney's daughter Dr. Lora-Ellen McKinney has been a candidate for the CDCPDA Board of Directors since March. He will comment on why they have not been seated. *Reverend Dr. LaVerne Hall was one of the first employees of Seattle Opportunities Industrialization Center (SOIC) when the program started in the Fellowship Hall of Mount Zion Baptist Church. She is known for being a fierce advocate for the Black Community and she is known for the work she did on the Sojourner Truth Exhibition. She is very concerned about the status of the CDCPDA and the building that was erected to house SOIC in 1974. *Dr. Gregory K. Alex comments on the legacy and leadership of the late Dr. Charles H. Mitchell, a UW All American football player. Dr. Alex was one of four African American UW football players that were dismissed from the UW football team in 1969. Dr. Carver Gayton was the first African American coach in the schools history and took a stand in support of the Black players by resigning. The four dismissed African American players were inducted into University of Washington Football Hall of Fame in 2022. Anthony Long, Executive Assistant & Board Relations Manager, Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI), they are hosting a July 15 event honoring Nelson Mandela's 1999 visit to Seattle. There will be some of the event organizers will be present and Larry Gossett and some students who met him during his visit will share some remarks. There will be performance by Djeliyah Band. MOHAI is hosting the Nelson Mandela Exhibit May 24-September 7. Urban Forum Northwest streams live at www.1150kknw.com. Visit us at www.urbanforumnw.com for archived programs and relevant information. Like us on Facebook.

Today, Thursday, July 10 on Urban Forum Northwest:*Congressman Adam Smith (D) WA-09 Ranking Member House Armed Services Committee, a member of the New Democrat Coalition and the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the dean of Washington's House delegation. He was elected to the Washington State Senate in 19991when he was 25 years old the youngest person ever elected to the Senate and served until 1997. He has been a vocal advocate for working class Americans in his district and the country. He has been an outstanding advocate for the underserved, supporting programs like American 4 Equality/MLK Gandhi Empowerment Initiative.*Hayward Evans, co convener, Seattle King County Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration/Continuation Committee (MLKCC). He has been a candidate for the Board of Directors the Central District Community Preservation &Development Authority (CDCPDA) aka the Reverend Dr. Samuel B. McKinney Center for Community and Economic Development since February and Dr. McKinney's daughter Dr. Lora-Ellen McKinney has been a candidate for the CDCPDA Board of Directors since March. He will comment on why they have not been seated.*Reverend Dr. LaVerne Hall was one of the first employees of Seattle Opportunities Industrialization Center (SOIC) when the program started in the Fellowship Hall of Mount Zion Baptist Church. She is known for being a fierce advocate for the Black Community and she is known for the work she did on the Sojourner Truth Exhibition. She is very concerned about the status of the CDCPDA and the building that was erected to house SOIC in 1974.*Dr. Gregory K. Alex comments on the legacy and leadership of the late Dr. Charles H. Mitchell, a UW All American football player. Dr. Alex was one of four African American UW football players that were dismissed from the UW football team in 1969. Dr. Carver Gayton was the first African American coach in the schools history and took a stand in support of the Black players by resigning. The four dismissed African American players were inducted into University of Washington Football Hall of Fame in 2022.Anthony Long, Executive Assistant & Board Relations Manager, Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI), they are hosting a July 15 event honoring Nelson Mandela's 1999 visit to Seattle. There will be some of the event organizers will be present and Larry Gossett and some students who met him during his visit will share some remarks. There will be performance by Djeliyah Band. MOHAI is hosting the Nelson Mandela Exhibit May 24-September 7. Urban Forum Northwest streams live at www.1150kknw.com. Visit us at www.urbanforumnw.com for archived programs and relevant information. Like us on Facebook. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this Mastery Unleashed episode, Christie Ruffino welcomes Mona Das, a former Washington State Senator, policy trailblazer, and champion for women and diversity. Mona shares her incredible journey from immigrant roots to politics, how she passed 28 bills in just four years, and why she left the Senate to create a bigger impact globally.This conversation is a must-listen for change makers, entrepreneurs, and those looking to own their power!Key Takeaways:✅ How Mona flipped a Senate seat, defied expectations, and made history✅ The challenges of being a woman of color in politics and why representation matters✅ Why she left the Senate and how she's driving change through film, advocacy, and global leadership✅ The power of networking, visibility, and connection to create massive impact✅ Why women must step into leadership roles boldly and unapologetically

Will Trump save Washington from Climate Commitment Act gas tax? The Washington State Senate voted to cap rent increases at 10%. Scandalous allegations at Seattle City Light. REI issued an apology for endorsing Doug Burgum. // Brian Heywood announces two new initiatives, and details next week’s big protest against property tax increase. // MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough was very disappointed to hear that SCOTUS’s immigration ruling actually favored Donald Trump. ‘Shark Tank’ host Kevin O’Leary said he’s willing to live with the economic consequences of putting pressure on China.

The Washington State Senate expanded hate crime protections but left out some extra protections that Republicans had vouched for. An 11-year-old attempted to stab a fellow student at Alderwood Middle School in Lynnwood. No, ICE didn’t target 3rd graders. // LongForm: GUEST: Glen Morgan with WeTheGoverned.com breaks down an ethics complaint he filed against Sen. Emily Alvarado. // Quick Hit: Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) says that the judiciary is violating the separation of power in its efforts to thwart Donald Trump’s agenda. Mahmoud Khalil wrote an antisemitici op-ed. Brown University is losing federal funding.

(The Center Square) – Less than a week after the Washington State Senate adopted a rule change restricting credentialed members of the media from accessing “the wings” and adjacent rooms of the Senate, unless invited by a lawmaker or staff member, journalist Jonathan Choe received his credentials. He was denied access anyway. Choe, a journalist and senior fellow with Discovery Institute's Center on Wealth and Poverty, was denied access to Tuesday's weekly media availability event held by legislative Democratic leaders despite his newly issued one-week pass. The press rule change came after the Capitol Correspondents Association decided to return press credentialing authority to the Senate and House.

(The Center Square) – Less than a week after the Washington State Senate adopted a rule change restricting credentialed members of the media from accessing “the wings” and adjacent rooms of the Senate, unless invited by a lawmaker or staff member, journalist Jonathan Choe received his credentials. He was denied access anyway. Choe, a journalist and senior fellow with Discovery Institute's Center on Wealth and Poverty, was denied access to Tuesday's weekly media availability event held by legislative Democratic leaders despite his newly issued one-week pass. 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_9b85d70a-e2e1-4986-91ae-f33aa8bb4e59.html

How do you talk to young children about a topic as complex and uncomfortable as pornography? In this powerful episode, Kristen Jenson, author of Good Pictures, Bad Pictures, shares how she turned a heartbreaking story into a mission to help families navigate this critical conversation. She explains why it's essential to start these discussions early, before curiosity and online access collide, and offers practical strategies to empower kids to respond safely if they encounter explicit content. This episode is a must-listen for any caregiver seeking to proactively safeguard their children in the digital age.Links Discussed in This Episode |Fight the New DrugConnect with Kristen:Website/Books: www.defendyoungminds.com/booksFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/DefendYM/Instagram: @defendyoungmindsX: @defendYMLinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/defend-young-mindsAbout Kristen |Kristen A. Jenson is the author of the #1 best-selling GOOD PICTURES BAD PICTURES books and producer of the BRAIN DEFENSE: DIGITAL SAFETY curriculum. She founded DefendYoungMinds.com to help parents and professionals raise empowered, resilient, screen-smart kids. Kristen has testified before the Washington State Senate on the public health crisis of pornography and continues to raise her strong voice at international conferences such as the United Nations Civil Societies Conference and the National Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation Global Summit. She is a trusted guest on a variety of media platforms as she speaks up for protecting children from all forms of sexual exploitation.Kristen is the lucky mom of three and grandmother of two, and currently lives with her husband and awfully cute dog in Washington State. She earned a B.A. in English Literature and an M.A. in Organizational Communication. In her spare time, she gardens, listens to books on Audible, and treasures sharing good food with family and friends. Episode Sponsors |The Minimalist Moms Podcast would not be possible without the support of weekly sponsors. Choosing brands that I believe in is important to me. I only want to recommend brands that I believe may help you in your daily life. As always, never feel pressured into buying anything. Remember: if you don't need it, it's not a good deal!Enjoy the Podcast?Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning into this podcast, then do not hesitate to write a review. You can also share this with your fellow mothers so that they can be inspired to think more and do with less. Order (or review) my book, Minimalist Moms: Living & Parenting With Simplicity.Questions |You can contact me through my website, find me on Instagram, Pinterest or like The Minimalist Moms Page on Facebook.Checkout the Minimalist Moms Podcast storefront for recommendations from Diane.If you've been struggling with motivation to declutter or work through bad habits that keep you stuck, I'd love to help you achieve your goals! We'll work together (locally or virtually) to discover what areas in your life are high priority to get you feeling less overwhelmed right away.  For more info on my processes, fees, and availability please contact!Our Sponsors:* Check out Acorns: https://acornsearly.com/MINIMALIST* Check out Armoire and use my code MINIMALIST for a great deal: https://www.armoire.style* Check out Avocado Green Mattress: https://avocadogreenmattress.com* Check out Happy Mammoth and use my code MINIMALIST for a great deal: https://happymammoth.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/minimalist-moms-podcast2093/exclusive-contentAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Washington State Senate has moved quickly to hear a bill upending parental rights. Threats ramp up against schools trying to protect girls' spaces. Meet the mean moms of Newcastle, Washington. Oregon governor claims Portland is “back on track.” 

Disasters like the wildfires in Southern California have destroyed homes, displaced people, and are costing the country hundreds of billions of dollars to recover. It raises the question: how can we proactively invest to protect our communities from the impacts of extreme weather and natural hazards? Washington State has looked to answer this question through its Climate Commitment Act (CCA). Passed in 2021, it has generated and reinvested $500 million across the state to reduce emissions and leverage technology to mitigate harmful and large-scale wildfires and other disasters. We speak to Joe Nguyen, one of the legislative proponents of the CCA, to discuss the program's impact across Washington State and how other states could adopt similar initiatives to keep their communities safe and resilient.Joe Nguyen is the director of Washington State's Department of Commerce. He was elected to the Washington State Senate in 2019 and was chair of the Environment, Energy, and Technology Committee. He also served as vice chair of the Ways and Means Committee.  More Links and Information Check out more Fors Marsh Media Connect or partner with Fors Marsh Learn more about the Climate Commitment Act 

Navy Veteran, first in family to graduate from college, worked as a communications officer for several organizations, Washington State Senate and Archdiocese of Seattle. Leads fitness app called DomumGym since 2021. DomumGym is the ultimate destination for your online gym experience. Connect with fellow enthusiasts, explore trainers and workouts to commit to. CONNECT WITH HIM https://www.domumgym.com/ Subscribe to this channel now!  https://www.youtube.com/user/lunidelouis/?sub_confirmation=1    ---------------------------------------------------- Join our exclusive Facebook group @ https://www.facebook.com/groups/339709559955223  --------------------------------------------------- Looking for accountability to do your morning routine -- join us tomorrow morning, it's FREE:   https://bestmorningroutineever.com/  ----------------------------------------­­­­­­­-------------

On this episode: A conversation with Joe Nguyen, a Democratic member of the Washington State Senate, representing District 34. Senator Nguyen sponsored WA SB 5838, which established an artificial intelligence task force that'll explore different use cases, think through how to address developments like deepfakes, and set the standard for where Washington state goes from here.  483 bills have been introduced in just the first six and a half months of this year. It's not only a huge jump from what we saw last year; it's more than all of the activity we've seen from 2019-2023. As the technology has advanced, lawmakers and advocates are seeking to balance concerns about deepfakes with First Amendment free speech considerations, and beneficial uses of the technology.  Our new Artificial Intelligence Deepfake Legislation Tracker seeks to be a home base for keeping up with the legislative explosion we've seen in states around the country. Launching today, you can use the tracker to follow the latest developments in all 50 states. Try the tracker for yourself: https://legislation.ballotpedia.org/ai-deepfakes/home  Read our report here: https://ballotpedia.org/Deepfake_policy_in_the_United_States,_2019_-_Present  Sign up for our Newsletters: https://ballotpedia.org/Ballotpedia_Email_Updates  Stream "On the Ballot" on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you have questions, comments, or love for BP, feel free to reach out at ontheballot@ballotpedia.org or on X (formerly Twitter) @Ballotpedia. *On The Ballot is a conversational podcast featuring interviews with guests across the political spectrum. The views and opinions expressed by them are solely their own and are not representative of the views of the host or Ballotpedia as a whole.

Today Trae talks with Manka Dhingra, a member of Washington State Senate and a candidate for Attorney General. She shares the history of her legal career and her candidacy for Attorney General. Next, Trae sits with Boyah Farah, an Author. He discusses his journey into writing and his book, America Made Me Black.

Brad Benton has announced his intent to run as a Republican for the Washington State Senate in the 18th Legislative District. https://tinyurl.com/y69z9c4c #BradBenton #CandidateAnnouncement #Republican #Conservative #WashingtonStateSenate #18thLegislativeDistrict #WashingtonStateLegislature #LegislativePriorities #WashingtonState #VancouverWa #ClarkCountyWa #ClarkCountyNews #ClarkCountyToday

What’s Trending: The Supreme Court has made their decision in the case in Colorado against Donald Trump, they have sided in favor of Donald Trump. Democrats are not happy with this decision, some saying the Supreme Court is playing too large of a role in Presidential elections. A Seattle homeless encampment is scheduled to be cleared, the camp has blocked entrances to small businesses and is sending gas fumes and feces downhill to other businesses. // Hamas is refusing to agree to a ceasefire that Israel has agreed to and antisemitic progressives are choosing to attack Israel as a result. Kamala Harris is also calling for a ceasefire but also did not further condemn Hamas, most likely to ease the activists.  // The Washington State Senate has passed three initiatives that range from taxes, schools, and police pursuits. 

The Washington State Senate on Monday morning passed three of six initiatives to the Legislature. https://tinyurl.com/3xdhhzua #TheCenterSquareWashington #SixBallotInitiatives #LetsGoWashington #WashingtonSenate #WashingtonStateLegislature #2024LegislativeSession #IncomeTaxBan #SchoolCurriculum #PoliceChases #ParentalBillofRights #WashingtonState #VancouverWa #ClarkCountyWa #ClarkCountyNews #ClarkCountyToday

Three bipartisan bills from Rep. Kevin Waters are one step closer to becoming law after receiving approval from the Washington State Senate this week. https://tinyurl.com/25dz82t8 #WashingtonStateLegislature #2024LegislativeSession #RepKevinWaters #WashingtonStateSenate #HouseBill2204 #HouseBill2260 #HouseBill1982 #BeverageProducers #CommunityEconomicRevitalizationBoard #RuralBroadbandProgram #LiquorAndCannabisBoard #WashingtonState #VancouverWa #ClarkCountyWa #ClarkCountyNews #ClarkCountyToday

Mark Harmsworth of the Washington Policy Center believes HB 2114, and other rent control measures, would create a hostile environment for property owners. http://tinyurl.com/3jb7458b #Opinion #Columns #Commentary #MarkHarmsworth #WashingtonPolicyCenter #HouseBill2114 #WashingtonStateLegislature #2024LegislativeSession #RentControl #WashingtonStateSenate #PropertyOwners #VancouverWa #ClarkCountyWa #ClarkCountyNews #ClarkCountyToday

In this episode of the Shift AI podcast, Joe shares his unique journey from a tech-savvy business professional to a state senator in Washington, emphasizing his work on technology legislation, particularly around AI and facial recognition. The discussion covers the challenges and opportunities of regulating AI technology, balancing innovation with privacy and ethical considerations. They also explore Joe's personal use of AI tools like ChatGPT to enhance his legislative effectiveness, underscoring the potential of AI to transform governance and policy-making. Summary of topics covered: Joe Nguyen's Path to Politics: Nguyen discusses his journey from a tech professional to a state senator in Washington, emphasizing his focus on technology and AI legislation. Personal Origin Story: He shares the compelling story of his family's escape from Vietnam and their resettlement in the United States, highlighting the impact of this history on his career and public service. AI and Facial Recognition Legislation: Nguyen talks about his work on contentious facial recognition legislation, balancing the need for privacy with technological innovation. Utilizing AI in Governance: He reveals how he uses AI tools like ChatGPT to enhance legislative efficiency, particularly in budget discussions and policy formulation. Concerns and Regulation of AI: The conversation touches on the challenges of regulating AI technology, including biases and ethical considerations. Federal and State AI Policy: Nguyen gives his perspective on federal AI initiatives, including President Biden's executive order, and discusses Washington's role in AI leadership. Mentorship and Influences: He reflects on the influence of his family, mentors, and notable figures like Governor Gary Locke on his career. Future of Work and AI: Nguyen concludes with thoughts on basic income as a response to the transformative impact of AI and automation on jobs. Connect with Joe Nguyen Instagram ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Connect with Boaz Ashkenazy ⁠Twitter⁠ ⁠LinkedIn⁠ Email: ⁠shift@simplyaugmented.ai⁠ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/shift-ai/message

In this episode, we talk to Senator Andy Billig, Senate Majority Leader at Washington State Senate, on how he has spearheaded efforts to integrate environmental stewardship with legislative action in Washington State.Billig's journey in sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) began in 2012, leading to pivotal legislation like Senate Bill 5447, which incentivises SAF production to complement Washington's aerospace and technological sectors. The bill, developed through extensive consultation with stakeholders and aimed at boosting local SAF production, has been well-received for its flexibility and environmental focus. Despite challenges in educating legislators and addressing misconceptions about SAF versus other green technologies, the bill passed with near-unanimous support.Post-passage, significant strides have been made, including SkyNRG's plant establishment and BP's exploration of a SAF production facility, marking progress in Washington State's SAF ecosystem. Billig addresses concerns about the bill's scope and the need for a balanced, data-informed approach to SAF development, emphasising the role of technology-neutral legislation and the importance of market dynamics in resource allocation. He highlights the need for continued education, collaboration, and ensuring the sustainability of feedstocks, reflecting on the complexities of advancing SAF within the broader context of environmental and economic sustainability.If you LOVED this episode you'll also love the conversation we had with Dr Susanne Becken, Professor of Sustainable Tourism at Griffith University, Australia, who discusses various aspects of sustainable travel and its relationship with climate change. Check it out here.Learn more about the innovators who are navigating the industry's challenges to make sustainable aviation a reality, in our new book ‘Sustainability in the Air'. Click here to learn more.Feel free to reach out via email to podcast@simpliflying.com. For more content on sustainable aviation, visit our website green.simpliflying.com and join the movement. It's about time.Links & More:Biography - Sen. Andy Billig New $800M sustainable aviation fuel plant planned for Washington state - The Seattle Times BP analyses SAF production at its Cherry Point refinery - The Daily DigestTwelve announces plans to scale production of SAF in Washington State - Biofuels International Magazine Billig bill to incentivize clean jet fuel, spur job creation clears Senate - Sen. Andy Billig How to rethink tourism and aviation for a greener future - SimpliFlying 

On this topical show, Crystal welcomes Andrew Villeneuve, founder of the Northwest Progressive Institute! Crystal learns about the Northwest Progressive Institute's (NPI) work to advance progressive policies through their focuses on research and advocacy, what's covered in NPI's long form blog The Cascadia Advocate, and the importance of reframing in progressive politics. Andrew then describes how six initiatives bankrolled by a disgruntled wealthy Republican are designed to cause a lot of damage to Washington, how NPI's careful approach to polling has led to successful results, and why NPI is advocating for even-year elections to improve voter engagement and participation. 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 Andrew Villeneuve and the Northwest Progressive Institute at @nwprogressive and https://www.nwprogressive.org/   Resources Northwest Progressive Institute   The Cascadia Advocate | Northwest Progressive Institute   Stop Greed   “Initiative 2113 (allowing dangerous police pursuits to resume) gets certified” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate   “Reject Initiative 2113 to keep reasonable safeguards on police pursuits in place” by Sonia Joseph and Martina Morris for The Cascadia Advocate   “Initiative 2117 (repealing Washington's Climate Commitment Act) gets certified” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate   “Initiative 2081 (jeopardizing student privacy) gets certified” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate   “Initiative 2109 (repealing billions of dollars in education funding) gets certified” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate   “Initiative 2111 (prohibiting fair taxation based on ability to pay) gets certified” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate   “Initiative 2124 (sabotaging the Washington Cares Fund) gets certified” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate   Coalition for Even-Year Elections   SB 5723 - Giving cities and towns the freedom to switch their general elections to even-numbered years.   HB 1932 - Shifting general elections for local governments to even-numbered years to increase voter participation.   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. Well, today I'm thrilled to be welcoming Andrew Villeneuve from Northwest Progressive Institute to the show. Welcome! [00:01:00] Andrew Villeneuve: Thanks, Crystal. [00:01:01] Crystal Fincher: Happy to have you here. For those who may not be aware, Andrew is the founder of the Northwest Progressive Institute and its sibling, the Northwest Progressive Foundation. He's worked to advance progressive causes for over two decades as a strategist, speaker, author, and organizer. A recent focus of his research and advocacy work has been electoral reform. With Senator Patty Kuderer, Andrew and the NPI team developed the legislation that successfully removed Tim Eyman's push polls from Washington ballots - I'm a huge fan of that legislation. And with Councilmember Claudia Balducci, Andrew and the NPI team developed the charter amendment that 69% of King County voters approved in 2022 to move elections for the Executive, Assessor, Elections Director, and Council to even-numbered years - here's to also doing that statewide for municipalities - when voter turnout is much higher in even-numbered years and more diverse. Andrew is also a cybersecurity expert, a veteran facilitator, a delegate to the Washington State Democratic Central Committee, and a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps. Welcome - really excited to have you on and talk about everything that you're doing. [00:02:15] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, thank you. I'm thrilled to be here and can't wait to dive into the conversation. [00:02:19] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. So starting off, what is the Northwest Progressive Institute and what do you do? [00:02:25] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, the Northwest Progressive Institute is a 501(c)(4) strategy center that works to lift up everybody. We try our hardest every day to advance progressive policies that will enable people to lead happier, healthier, more prosperous lives. We just celebrated our 20th anniversary last August, and we have had a lot of success moving policy over the last two decades. We're particularly adept at using research to show people why we need a particular policy - so that could be health care, it could be environmental protection, it could be more education funding. We're not confined to just one issue - we think across issues. But that does mean, of course, that we see all of the places where we're held back. So we look for areas where we can move issues forward simultaneously and that has led us to do a lot of work on tax reform, election reform, and media reform - because those three issues are connected to every other issue. So that's why you'll see us doing a lot of work on fair revenue. on trying to address media concentration, and trying to make sure that elections are fair. Because ultimately, those things do have results, impacts for environmental protection, healthcare, education, foreign policy, every other issue that we care about. I think we're all frustrated by sometimes the slow pace of progress, and so any area where we can link up with another area and make progress at the same time - that's a real opportunity for us. And there's actually a term for this - it's called "strategic initiatives" - comes from George Lakoff. We're big fans of his work. We also do a lot of efforts on reframing. We try to help people understand what frames are and how to use successful arguments so that you don't fall into the trap of debating the other side on their terms. Because we all know when that happens, the best you can do is lose an argument gracefully - you're not going to win the argument. Reframing is key, and we believe that everybody who works in progressive politics needs to understand how to do reframing. So we're always trying to help people figure out - okay, how do we use words that evoke our values and our policy directions and not the other sides'? So that's sort of a taste of what we do. Of course, we could talk for hours about all the specific projects we've worked on, but that is an overall view of what NPI does. [00:04:42] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Also under the NPI umbrella is The Cascadia Advocate, a publication that I recommend everyone listening follow - very informative. What has been your approach with The Cascadia Advocate and what do you cover? [00:04:55] Andrew Villeneuve: The Cascadia Advocate is a long form blog. It was founded in 2004 in March, and so that means it's going to be celebrating its 20th anniversary itself this spring. And what it is - is it's a place where you can find progressive commentary, sometimes even breaking news, on a daily basis. So if you want to find out why we should pass a particular bill in the legislature, or you want to find out what's happening with Bob Ferguson's latest lawsuit - for example, he just sued Kroger and Albertsons because they're trying to merge and create a giant grocery store chain - we cover those things on The Cascadia Advocate. We publish guest essays. We cover a lot of things that the mass media cover - so we'll sometimes critique how they're covering things, but we'll also provide our own original commentary in addition to just critiquing others' coverage. There's a whole mix there. So you're going to find research findings, media criticism, you're going to find book reviews, you're going to find documentary reviews. You're going to find Last Week in Congress, which is our almost weekly recap - weekly when Congress is in session - of how our delegation voted. So this is a place where you can see Washington, Oregon, and Idaho's Congressional delegations' votes. And that's really helpful. If you're too busy to watch C-SPAN every day - I know I don't have that kind of time because I'm trying to move the ball forward on progressive policy - but I do want to know how our lawmakers voted, I want to be informed. And I imagine a lot of other people listening to Hacks & Wonks would also like to be informed about what our delegation is doing. And so Last Week in Congress is something you can read on Sunday morning - takes a few minutes of your time to skim it. And at the end of that skim, you're going to learn a lot more about how our delegation voted that week. So those are some of the things you're going to find on the Cascadia Advocate. I think it's a great publication. It's well-established and we have a superb code of ethics and style guide and commenting guidelines to make sure that we're putting out a professional product. So we're very proud of that. And the name is right there - Advocate, right? So we're not hiding what we're about. You're not going to have to worry - Well, what's their agenda? How will I know what it is? Because we're going to tell you what our agenda is. We're going to be very upfront about that. But we're also going to be fair, even to those that we criticize. So whether that's Tim Eyman - quoting his emails, letting people know what he said - we're going to tell people what the other side is saying. We're not just going to say what we're saying. But we're also going to be very clear - this is what we believe and this is what we're fighting for. And it's not going to be a mystery to any reader what that is. [00:07:11] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - I appreciate it. And as many have seen, have shared links in our episode notes many times - recommend that as part of a healthy local media diet. Now, I want to talk about some issues that you've been engaged with since their inception. One of the big ones that we're going to be hearing about, voting on later on this year are the six statewide initiatives coming in 2024 in Washington state. Can you tell us about these and why they're so important to pay attention to? [00:07:42] Andrew Villeneuve: Definitely. So very early this year, a group called Let's Go Washington, which is funded by a hedge fund manager and millionaire named Brian Heywood - he lives not far from me out here on the Eastside in Redmond - east side of King County, that is. He decided that he was going to go all-in on trying to get the right wing back into the initiative business. For those who have been in Washington for a while, the name Tim Eyman is probably familiar to you - Tim Eyman, for years, has been running initiatives to cut taxes and wreck government in Washington state. His agenda is to drown government in a bathtub, so it's basically Grover Norquist at the state level. And Brian Heywood has come along here after several years of Tim Eyman being out of the initiative business. Eyman's last initiative qualified for the ballot in 2018, and it appeared on the ballot in 2019. And despite our best efforts - it had a really dishonest ballot title that it was hard to educate voters what that was, so even though we raised a lot of money and ran the best No campaign that we could - when I say we, I mean the coalition Keep Washington Rolling that formed - we weren't able to defeat that last Eyman initiative. But we were able to go to court after the election was over and get it struck down. So it never went into effect, - which averted a massive transit and transportation catastrophe, I might add. So fast forward a few years, Eyman has been in trouble with the law because he just blatantly disregards public disclosure law, doesn't care about following it. And he also was double-crossing his own supporters - they just weren't getting the truth from him. And so that's why his initiative factory fell apart - when you're lying and cheating all the time, eventually that's going to catch up with you, and that's what happened to Tim Eyman. So he had to declare bankruptcy. The state won a big judgment against him, and he's been out of the initiative business. But Brian Heywood has come in - and Brian Heywood, unlike Tim Eyman, has a lot of money. And he doesn't need to turn to anyone else unless he feels that he has to, but he hasn't done that yet - he's mainly relied on his own money. So he decided that not only was he going to try to qualify a tax-cutting initiative, but he was going to take aim at all these other laws that the Democratic majorities have passed that he doesn't like. So there's six initiatives that he wanted to get on the ballot this last year, so 2023, that are now we're going to be on the ballot in 2024. And that's because these are initiatives to the legislature, so they go to the House and the Senate first. That's something you can do in Washington - you can either submit initiatives directly to the people, or you can submit them to the legislature. And for those who don't know, an initiative is just a proposed law. So it's like a bill of the people - it goes before the legislature. If the legislature doesn't adopt it, then it goes to the people by default. So an initiative - again, just like a bill, but the people get to vote on it, and it comes from a citizen petition. So these initiatives - last year there was going to be 11, but they pared them down to 6. It's kind of like making up for lost time - We weren't on the ballot for several years, so now we're just going to do a whole bunch of initiatives. The first one that they're doing would repeal the Climate Commitment Act. The second one would repeal our capital gains tax on the wealthy, which is funding education and childcare. The third one would repeal the WA Cares Fund, partly by letting people opt out. Then they have one that would roll back our reasonable safeguards on police pursuits. They have one that would establish a parental notification scheme, which is intended, I think, to jeopardize the health of trans youth in part - which I don't like that at all. And then they have one to ban income taxes. And their definition of income tax is anything that falls under this really broad, adjusted gross income umbrella, which could potentially jeopardize the capital gains tax and other sources of funding for things that are really important in our state. So these six initiatives collectively would cause a lot of damage to Washington. We're talking about billions of dollars in lost revenue. We're talking about good policies being repealed. We're talking about a lot of destruction. And so we're working very hard to defeat these initiatives. We've created a PAC that will oppose all of them. And that joint effort is called Stop Greed - to oppose all six initiatives. We have a website - stopgreed.org - and the operation is already up and running. You can donate, you can sign up for the mailing list. If you want to get involved in stopping the six initiatives, we are ready to have your help because this is going to be a year-long effort. We're going to be working with a lot of other allies, organizations that also share our values to protect Washington. But these six initiatives - the legislature can't reject them and then just have them disappear, they're going to go to the ballots. So we have to be ready for that big fight in November. And they're going to appear at the top - so ahead of president, ahead of governor, ahead of everything else that we're thinking about as activists and civic leaders and whatnot. This is going to be the very first thing that people see underneath those instructions - is these six initiatives. So we're getting ready. And again, we invite others to join us in taking on this challenge so we can protect Washington. [00:12:31] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And this is going to be one of the biggest battles that we've seen in quite some time in Washington state. Those six initiatives that you covered - for those who may not be familiar with Washington Cares, it's basically long-term care insurance that's state provided - trying to meet a need that is massive. Many studies have showed more than half of people over age 60 are going to need long-term care insurance at some point in time for the remainder of their lives. This often is not covered by health insurance, and it is something that has bankrupted people, has left people just in very precarious positions. As we age, as our parents age, this is something that is top of mind for a lot of people. And although no one loves an extra thing to worry about, having the confidence that when you or your family member or friend is in need of care, that they will have access to it is a very, very important thing. In addition to all these other ones - this is our landmark climate legislation, which I've definitely had some criticisms of, but do not support a repeal. I support fixing the areas that need to be fixed. And I think we can't ignore these things. These are some of the biggest pieces of legislation that we have passed that will equip us to deal with the challenges that we face today and that we're going to be facing tomorrow. So really appreciate the effort, the coordinated effort, to make sure that there is a vigorous defense against these. Now, looking at what's going to be involved to beat these - looking at what these ballot initiatives may serve, even beyond their individual goals, is that a lot of times people look to ballot initiatives to motivate a base and to turn out a base. And certainly in Washington state - statewide, Republicans have been not having a good time, have been reaping the consequences of being out-of-touch policy-wise - whether it's on abortion rights to privacy rights, to their views on taxation and things that serve to defund and dismantle our government. What do you see as threats beyond these initiatives individually, but the threat of a motivated conservative voting base here in Washington state in November 2024? [00:14:52] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, I think they're tired of Democratic rule. So they're going to be motivated to turnout because they probably will have Dave Reichert as their gubernatorial candidate - we can't really say nominee because Washington doesn't have a real primary, so we don't nominate people for the general election ballot like they would in other states. But they probably will have Reichert as their candidate, their standard bearer. And that is their best chance to get the governor's mansion since 2012 when Rob McKenna was their candidate in the general election - so I think they're going to be motivated for that reason. I also think the six initiatives are designed to turnout right-wing voters as much as possible - people who are disenchanted with Washington's direction, not happy that we're going a different way than Texas and Florida and Idaho and other states that are Republican-controlled. And so I think that that's an opportunity for them, but it's also an opportunity for us. There can be a backlash to a backlash. And I'm not sure if Brian Heywood and Jim Walsh, who's - by the way, Jim Walsh, the state Republican Party Chair, is the sponsor of all six initiatives. So you've got Heywood and Walsh together - Heywood's the funder, Walsh is the sponsor. I'm not sure if they realize that backlashes can have backlashes. We saw this after Trump came in - there was a backlash to Democratic rule, but then there was a backlash to Trump's electoral college victory. And we saw that play out over the course of four years. It was really, really strong. What happened? You had this mammoth effort to correct what was going on, to have Democrats respond, to say - Okay, well, we're no longer just going to sort of lay down, right? We're going to actually work to turn out people. So we had this huge effort to flip the Washington State Senate in 2017. Then we had this big effort to win the midterms, which saw Democrats get control of the House. And then there was the effort to get the White House back, which also allowed us to get the U.S. Senate back, too, with that runoff in Georgia. So you think about all those sequence of events - how much had to align in order for all those goals to be realized? Because in 2017, Republicans had complete control of the federal government - they had it all - they had the White House, they had the House, they had the Senate, they had the Supreme Court. Democrats had nothing. All we had was some resistance in the states, basically. And we went from that - in the span of three years, we were able to take back the two legislative houses and the White House. We don't have the Supreme Court, but we were able to get the others. And the majorities were narrow, but they were majorities, which meant that we could actually work on progressive policy again. So we were able to pass the American Rescue Plan, CHIPS and Science, we were able to do the infrastructure law. We were able to do a whole bunch of other policies as well - bipartisan postal reform. We did electoral reform to deal with election certification so that we wouldn't have another January 6th. We got marriage equality put in. I mean, there are so many things that happened - I don't know if people remember all those accomplishments. So you think about what we've done federally. And in Washington State, we've been doing the same thing - marching forward - all these laws that Heywood and Walsh want to repeal. So I think they're looking at this as an opportunity to say - It's time to roll back the clock. And that is an opportunity for them. But the opportunity for us is to say - Nope, we're not going to roll back the clock. We're going to keep moving forward. I think doing six initiatives is risky for them. Because one initiative, maybe people aren't going to - they're just not going to rouse themselves as much to care. But six seems like a four-alarm fire for those who are watching from our side. And so it's been really easy for me to - when I explain what's going on, when I make the pitch that we need to stop the initiatives, people are receptive right away. It's not difficult to get people roused and ready to go because they understand six initiatives targeting six progressive accomplishments, whether it's comprehensive sex ed or the climate law or the capital gains tax that's funding education - these are things that we've worked hard on that we're proud of. We don't want them all to be wiped away in the span of one election. So it's an organizing opportunity for us as much as it is for them. And that's the downside of deciding to do so much at one time - is that you're presenting your opponents with an opportunity to do organizing as well, that's sort of a banner opportunity. And they just have to live with that decision - that's the strategy they chose, and so we get to make the most of it from our side. [00:18:55] Crystal Fincher: We've been seeing a number of polls - certainly a lot of discourse and reaction - to whether it's the conflict between Israel and Palestine, whether it is the failure to address climate change, healthcare kind of globally, nationally, to a degree that seems is necessary to actually make a dent in these issues. Do you see motivation in the base, especially the younger progressive voters, as being an issue that may be problematic come November? Or do you think that there are things that can be done to mitigate that, or that it won't be an issue? [00:19:33] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, it's hard to know the future. I always tell people I don't do predictions because predictions are fraught with danger. It's just - you can easily be wrong, and people are convinced that they know what's going on. I take the view that it's hard to know what's going on and that's why we have to do research, so that we can try to understand it better. And I also warn people against the danger of drawing too many conclusions based on what you've seen on Twitter, which Elon Musk now calls X, or Facebook or TikTok or any of those platforms. Those are not representative of public opinion, not even young people's opinions. There are many people who just aren't there. So you can obviously follow some vocal voices and you can see what they're saying - there's nothing wrong with that, checking in - but don't sweep to conclusions about what those folks are saying and say - Oh, well, all Gen Zers are upset about what's happening here or there, because that's the prevailing sentiment on TikTok, right - that's a mistake. That can give you clues as to what people are thinking and feeling, but it's not where you want to draw your conclusions. And polling helps to get a little broader perspective, but it's still a sample. So we do a ton of polling at NPI. One of the things we're known for is our research. And I caution people - you can do enormous amounts of research and still only see a fraction of what you want to see. There's so much you could look at in terms of public opinion, like this issue, that issue, this race, that race - so many detailed, specific follow-up questions you could ask. And in a given survey, there's going to be limitations - you can only ask about so much. We try to do a lot of insightful research, but I'm mindful of the limitations of public opinion research. In the end, you come into every election somewhat unprepared because you don't exactly know what's out there, right? So that's why what I call big organizing, which is a term that comes out of the Sanders campaign and other efforts - big organizing is this idea that we're going to talk to everybody as often as we can, which is hard because how do you have all those conversations? Well, it involves canvassing, it involves actually going out there and doing neighborhood meetings and doing that organizing - having those discussions with people. It turns out even people who are unhappy with politics want to talk politics when they get the right settings - you got a canvasser, who's very understanding, going to somebody's door, having a half an hour long conversation. People actually feel better after they've had that conversation - they're very appreciative that somebody wants to hear from them. So as a movement, I think we need to go out there and have those conversations with folks. And we need to make sure that if people live in areas that are hard to doorbell, that we're finding other ways to reach them. But that all requires investment - primarily time. Money, too, but primarily time because someone's got to go do that organizing, that outreach work. And they've got to be able to go to the door or go to that other setting where they're going to have that conversation. So in terms of getting young people plugged in and engaged, I think it's going to be tough. I think there's a lot of distractions in our culture now, it's very hard to get people to decide - yes, I'm going to vote, I'm going to take the time to do that - especially if you live in a state where they've made voting hard, like Georgia. Washington - we're blessed, because voting is easier here than anywhere else in the country. But we see in odd years, it's still hard to get people to vote. That's why we're so big on even-year elections for local governments, because those even-numbered years, more young people come out. But we've just got to have a strategy for mobilizing people. It doesn't just happen on its own. You can't just sit back and go - Oh, well, we'll just hope that it works out. Nope. You don't let events shape you. You go out there and shape the events with a strategy. And so it's very important that as progressives, we don't just let the Biden campaign do the work. We don't just let the Democratic Party do the work and say - Well, they'll figure it out. We all have to be working together to figure out what the strategy is and then implement that strategy, to the extent that we can agree on what that strategy is going to be. So for those who are not involved in some kind of direct action organization, I would find one - I think that's worth doing. This is a year when democracy is on the line. So getting involved in some way - no matter what the outcome is in November, you're going to feel good that you invested some time in trying to mobilize and turn out young voters and get them to save democracy along with everybody else who's going to be voting. So that's my advice for folks who are listening - find an organization to plug into that's going to do something to help young voters get engaged in this election, turnout and vote, save democracy. Because there's only one way to do that - and that is to reelect President Biden and Vice President Harris, in my view - there's no other outcome that will allow us to make any progress on issues we care about, including trying to bring an end to the violence in the Middle East. What's happening in Gaza is terrible, but that's not going to get better if Donald Trump gets back in. [00:23:58] Crystal Fincher: Now, I want to talk about research - your polling. Local polling is hard - you hear that from a variety of polling organizations, we see it in results that have been really wonky in the past several years with surprising outcomes in several individual states. Polling on a smaller scale - smaller geographies, smaller communities - is a challenging thing. However, you've managed to do quite well at it. We've seen in your polling in the Seattle City Council elections, which looked straight on. You polled previously the Housing Levy, King County Conservation Futures Levy, Senate races, House races - were right on. And so I just want to talk a little bit about your approach and how you put those together, and why you feel like you're seeing better results locally than some other organizations. [00:24:54] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, thank you for that. It starts with a rigorous commitment to the scientific method. One of the things that I think people don't understand about public opinion research is anyone can do it. You don't have to be an objective organization to do objective research. You can be subjective - and we are - but your research has to follow the scientific method if it's going to have any value. And what that basically comes down to is neutral questions asked of representative samples - that's the key. And actually, it's very hard to ask neutral questions of representative samples. The question writing part is particularly fraught with difficulty because there are so many ways to write a question that is loaded or biased and to use language that favors the agenda of the asker. Basically, writing a push poll is easy, writing a neutral poll is hard. And we've seen that over and over again, especially when I look at the work of our Republican friends across the aisle - Moore Information, Trafalgar - these firms are just, I can see their work product and I have deep questions about especially what they're not releasing because I know that what they are releasing is only a fraction of what they're actually asking. But when you ask a question - and you look at a group that does put out all of their work, like Future 42, which uses Echelon Insights, you read through their questionnaire and it's - okay, after the first four questions, which are so simple it's hard to get them wrong. After that, you start going to the rest of the questionnaire and it's biased. It's loaded. The questions are favoring conservative frames. So you're not going to find out what people think if you tell them what to think first - that's one of the cardinal rules that I tell my team all the time - Whatever the topic is, we have to get this question right because we're not going to learn what people think if we don't. You don't want to have worthless data come back. And that really means that you've got to think about - Okay, well, how are we presenting the issue? What are we going to say in the question? And a lot of the times what we'll do is, we'll say - Proponents are saying this and opponents are saying that. So that's one way you can do it. And you have to really go out there and you have to find their words, their frames - so you have to be fair to their perspective. Even if you don't like it, it doesn't matter. As a question writer, you want that perspective represented to the best of its ability, right? So if Rob McKenna has said that the capital gains tax is an income tax - it's an illegal, unconstitutional income tax that will kill jobs and wreck the economy. We're putting that whole thing into our question, because we want people to hear what it is that they're saying. And then we're going to put that up against our best arguments and see what wins. So we've done that and we found that our frames, our arguments beat their arguments. And that's good news. But we only learned that because we actually did a fair question. If we had just said - Oh, well, this is why the capital gains tax is great. What do you think about the capital gains tax? People are going to say it's great. And so we haven't really learned anything other than - yes, people respond to our question prompts in the way that we would want them to. But that doesn't really tell us what people have brought to the table in terms of their own opinions. So that's part of how we've been successful is - when we do polling, we're not trying to gin up some numbers for a particular cause or a candidate. We're not looking to get numbers that just reinforce the conclusion that we already reached. And I think a lot of consultants jump to conclusions, like at the beginning of a race, they'll say - Well, let me tell you how it's going to be. And our approach is we don't know how it's going to be - let's go out and get some data and see what people are thinking and feeling. And of course, we understand that whatever that data is, it's a snapshot in time and that the race could change. So like with the governor's race, we've been polling that and we're seeing some changes - Bob Ferguson is consolidating support, he's not as well known as people who are on the inside of politics might think he is. Nor is Dave Reichart, for that matter. People know who Jay Inslee is. They know who Joe Biden is. They know the top names in politics, but the attorney general is not the governor, and people don't know the attorney general as well as they know the governor. And they don't know Dave Reichert, as well as they know Jay Inslee either. So we're seeing in our polling, the candidates have an opportunity to introduce themselves to voters. And we know that if we ask a neutral question about anything, again, whether it's the governor's race or another race, then we're going to have hopefully an opportunity to find out where people are. And then presenting that data in a way that's responsible, not just dumping the numbers out there and letting people jump to their own conclusions about what do the numbers mean. Even if they were responsibly collected, I think responsible publication includes context for those numbers. What do the numbers mean? Why are the numbers the way they are? What's the explanation for that? So when we release a poll finding, we never just put the numbers out there, we never just dump a poll file out there for people to read. We always provide analysis - this is what we think the numbers mean. And you can read the analysis on The Cascadia Advocate - that's the vehicle for all the poll findings to be released. People, when they want to see our polling, we're going to give them an opportunity to really understand what we're thinking when we saw the numbers - Okay, this is our take. And we always tell people in those analyses - We don't know the future, this is suggestive, it's not predictive. And you should expect that there's a possibility that the poll is off. But, I will say in the 10 years we've been doing research polling, we've yet to have our results be contradicted by an election result. And that's just because we write the neutral questions. And then our pollsters, who I haven't talked about yet, but we work with three different pollsters. And they've all got a strong commitment to responsible fielding - building samples that actually look like the electorate. That's how you get results, too. It's not just the questions are good, but the fielding is appropriate - you're building those representative samples. And then you can hopefully get data that reflects the actual dynamic that's out there. And so when the election then occurs - if the polling has correctly captured the public sentiment that's out there, you should expect to see a correlation. It won't line up exactly. I've had people tell me - Well, your poll was off. The margin was this and your poll said it would be that. I'm like - Polls don't predict, so you shouldn't expect the margins to line up one-to-one or anything like that. But if a poll says such-and-such is ahead of their rival and they then go on to win the election, that's an indication that the poll did understand something about what's going on out there. So that's basically validation in my book. You're never going to get perfect alignment, like the poll has 54% and the candidate gets 54%, and it's off by maybe just a fraction of a decimal or something - that's not going to happen in polling, you don't expect that alignment. So I think that's why we've been successful is that commitment to the scientific method. And we're not going to deviate from that - we're just full steam ahead with that same commitment to excellence. [00:31:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I really appreciate you explaining that. I do think that is a big reason for why your polls have seemed to accurately capture public sentiment. And I appreciate you talking about - you can be a partisan organization and still poll accurately. In fact, it's really critical that the accuracy is there. I think there's this assumption that - Oh, it's a partisan organization - they just want something to confirm what they already believe, to tell them that what they want to happen is popular. And that is a recipe for disaster in the medium and long-term - that sets you up for thinking you're in a different situation than is realistic. And then you don't win campaigns, you don't win ballot initiatives - you have to accurately understand where the public is in order to do anything with that from a campaign perspective, which is really important. And I do see polls from the Chamber where reading through the poll - and I highly recommend every time there is a poll, especially from news organizations, I will say Cascadia Advocate does excellent poll analysis - but most articles and most publications that I see, I always find different things than are encapsulated in their poll write-up when I read the actual poll. Reading the actual poll is a really illuminating thing - and you can see questions asked in very leading ways, you can see one side's argument is presented and another isn't, or one is misrepresented. And those are really problematic things for a poll. Sometimes people do use polls - if they aren't really looking to get information - just as a marketing tactic. But that becomes pretty apparent when you're reading the poll, when you're seeing - they aren't really asking these questions to get informative answers about what the public believes and why. So I think that's been really illuminating. Looking forward, what do you plan on tracking? Are you going to be tracking the six initiatives? Are you going to be polling the statewide races? What is your plan for research? [00:33:13] Andrew Villeneuve: Yes, we're going to be doing all that. The governor's race - we have a commitment to the public that we're going to poll on the governor's race - and no matter what the data is, we're going to release it, that's our commitment. We've polled on the governor's race three times already this cycle. And we're going to do it three to four times again this year. At the end of the cycle, you're going to have gotten six to seven different findings from us - different seasons of data - which will tell the story of the governor's race. How did it start out and where does it kind of end up? When I say end up, I say "kind of" because - of course, the election happens after that last poll. So we're going to have election data soon after that final poll comes out in October and that data will tell us who wins the governor's race. And that's the final word. But until we have that election results, then polling will help us understand what could be happening out there - I say "could," because again, we don't know what is happening until people vote and the election data comes in and then tells us - Okay, this candidate's ahead of that candidate, this is the voices of millions of people. Polls can only give you a peek into what might be happening at the time - that's the best we can do because there's no real way - sometimes people will ask me about sample sizes. This is a fun inside bit of polling. So a lot of people are convinced that the larger a sample size, the better the poll is. Not so. A poll can be perfectly representative if the sample is just 300 or 400 voters - it's not the size of the sample that matters, it's how representative it is. If it reflects the electorate, then it's a good sample. If it is not representative of the electorate, you've got a problem. So you could have 10,000 voters in your sample, which would be huge, right? Nobody has samples that big. But if they're all progressive voters in Seattle, or if they're all Trump voters from somewhere in rural Washington - it's not representative of the electorate and the data's worthless. It can't tell you what's happening in a statewide race. So we'll be polling the governor's race. We'll be looking at Attorney General, we're going to look at U.S. President, we're going to look at U.S. Senate. We're going to look at basically all the competitive statewide races. In October, I expect that we'll have a poll result for every single statewide race. And there are so many that that's probably going to be the entire poll. We're not even going to be able to ask any policy questions because we're going to have six initiatives, possibly a few State Supreme Court races. We're going to have U.S. President. We're going to have U.S. Senate. We're going to have nine statewide executive department positions. Plus, we're going to have a generic question for Congress and legislature. So that's our poll - the whole poll is already written. I already know what's going to be in the poll because there's so much on the ballot this cycle that there's no room to ask about anything else. That's a lot of poll results to have to release. And it will take us some time to ship them all. We're not going to do it all in one day, that's for sure. Because I think what's responsible is to provide that analysis, as I said. So we're not going to do - Okay, here's the entire poll. Goodbye. Enjoy it. No, we're going to take the time to look at each of the results. And so that probably means it'll take us a whole week to talk about all the different poll results. And people are going to say - Why don't you release everything at once? I want to see it all. Well, because we want to give you the context. We want to give you our view on what's happening so that you understand the background, especially if you're not from here - if you're from another state, you're reading this polling, you want to know who are these people, what are the dynamics in this race, why is such-and-such ahead, what's the theory behind that. That context is going to be really helpful to you as a reader, so we're committed to providing it. [00:36:27] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And what polling firms do you work with? [00:36:30] Andrew Villeneuve: So there are three we work with. Public Policy Polling out of North Carolina is the one we started working with first - our relationship goes back over 10 years, and they've done excellent work for us. I'm particularly proud of our 2020 and 2022 polling because those are the two most recent even-year cycles. But in 2020, this was the first time that we went up and down the entire statewide ballot, including State Supreme Court races. And we're the only ones polling on State Supreme Court races. Nobody else does that, I'm especially proud that we do that. Probably this year we're going to poll on them - any that are contested, we'll do at least two rounds of polling - probably May and October. And you mentioned earlier that polling can be tough, especially at the state and local level. And one of the reasons it can be tough is because a lot of people will tell you they're not sure who they're voting for. If the race isn't partisan, then you can have an enormous number of people who say they're not sure - sometimes over 80%. And that can make it very difficult. But you still learn something when you ask people about their opinions - because you'll find out people's familiarity with the candidates, and you will also discover if there's been a change. So like in 2020, we said - Okay, we've learned that no one else polls State Supreme Court races, so let's poll them repeatedly because then at least we'll have data of our own to compare to from different seasons. So in May, we polled them and then we polled them again in October. And that was really valuable to have that comparison and to see just little small changes. What we saw was the incumbent justices like Raquel Montoya-Lewis - they picked up a little bit of support, so that suggested they were actually getting some awareness of their candidacies before the voters. And that was illuminating - so there weren't many people who really knew much about these candidates, but still there were a small number who had heard something and had decided how they were going to vote. And that was an indicator. And that indicator proved to be accurate. It accurately foreshadowed what really did happen in the election. So we're committed to doing that again. And we believe that it's crucially important that people have some data in those races. If you're an observer, data that gives you some inkling of what's going to happen in a race that's so far down-ballot that nobody else is really, frankly, writing about it - I mean, that's gold. These are the things that I wanted back in the day when we weren't doing all this polling. So I've always been of the mind that if it doesn't exist and you really want it, you should create it if you think it's really needed. The other companies we work with - Change Research does a lot of our local polling. They've been working with us in Seattle and Spokane, and they've worked with us in Snohomish County and Pierce County. We've polled all the major counties with them, and we just love working with them. They're great. And then our third pollster is Civiqs. They are more recent on the scene. They're not as well-established as Public Policy Polling - they're a newer company, but they do great work. Their polling in the Senate race last cycle with Patty Murray and Tiffany Smiley - they were the ones who had Murray really way out there ahead and Smiley well behind. When I saw that work - they were dedicated to putting out this really great polling, said - Well, we need to add them to our group of trusted pollsters because they've proved they can do great work. So we've got those three now, and I'm not averse to working with other pollsters that have proved themselves as well. But every pollster we work with has to be committed to the scientific method. We will not accept any work that is done contrary to that method because that will yield worthless data. We don't want to pay for data that doesn't have any value, that isn't collected transparently and with integrity. We love working with all of our pollsters and we're excited to do good work with them this cycle. [00:39:50] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I appreciate that breakdown. I appreciate something you said earlier, particularly as a political consultant. There are several consultants - lots industry-wide, it's an issue - where they have preconceived notions of what's going on and they are looking for confirmation, or they decide that they know what the dimensions of a race are and why people are aligned on certain sides and sometimes stick hard and fast to that. There's a different approach. You can wait and see what the information is. Certainly, we have our theories and ideas, but we learn so much more by actually looking at the data, waiting on the data, not being so devoted or tied to a specific theory or something that must happen. If you leave yourself open to say - I think this might be happening, I'm seeing something happen, I think these could be reasons why - test that, understand the data and research, and see how it turns out. And one thing you mentioned - I think it's particularly illuminating for people who do that - any race, most races, especially if it's not someone at the top of the ticket, is going to have a lot of people who are unfamiliar with the people involved. There are going to be a lot of people who are undecided - just not familiar with an issue, not familiar with a candidate. But when you do poll over time like you do, and when you do see how those people who were initially undecided then wind up making a decision, how they align on those - that can tell you a lot about why people are favoring something or another, who messages are landing with, what is effective and what's not effective. So even if you aren't getting specific data of someone saying - I don't know - polling over time and then once they do figure that out, or sometimes they just end up not voting, right? All of that information is valuable in putting together a picture for why people believe the things that they believe, why people are favoring certain candidates or policies, and how that might translate to other issues or races. So appreciate the repeated polling. Now, I do want to ask you - as someone who does work with polling organizations and hearing a number of nonprofits, other 501(c)(4)s, be interested in that space - what advice would you give to organizations who are potentially interested in working with a pollster to field polls of their own? [00:42:04] Andrew Villeneuve: Well, I guess the top advice I'd give is go seek out people who do it regularly. NPI is always happy to help people find out how we can answer our research objectives. Maybe you're trying to pass a bill in the legislature, maybe you'd like to get a ballot measure passed, maybe you're working on a policy that you think will come to fruition in 10 years and you want to get some initial data - we're happy to help. And of course, you can just go approach a pollster. But in our experience, most pollsters - their goal is to do the fielding and their goal is to get the project turned around and back to you. And then they move on to their next project because that's the polling business. Pollsters specialize in fielding and they do polls every week. They can't really linger on a project for six months and be - Well, we'll help you analyze that data. Their job is to give you the data, not necessarily to help you make sense of the data. Of course, they will try, in a basic sense, to help you make sense of it. If you are like - Well, I don't understand this crosstab, or I don't understand this results, or can you help me with this? - they'll do that. They'll answer all your questions to the best they can. But what is, I think, missing there is the guide. The pollster is going to do the fielding to the best of their ability. But can they actually guide you through all steps of the process? Some pollsters do specialize in providing more of that guidance, but they also charge a lot more. If you want that guidance, if you want that expert hand to assist you at all stages - not just writing the survey, but also deciphering what comes back - you're going to pay more. Lake Research Partners, FM3, other pollsters I can think of - that's their model. They do excellent work. I love them. We don't work with those pollsters as much because we're able to bring a lot of our own expertise to the table. So we work with pollsters that primarily do a really good job of fielding, but they're going to let us design the questionnaire because we want to do that. Of course, we'll take their input and counsel, but we'd like to write our own questionnaires. And so we work with pollsters that are comfortable with that arrangement. But if you're a nonprofit who needs help writing the questionnaire, then going with a firm like Lake Research Partners is going to be a great idea. But you are going to pay a minimum probably of $25,000 for that project. And you can expect to pay as much as $50,000 or more for that assistance and that data. Research - it's something that can be really expensive to collect. So for those who love our research, we do accept donations to keep it going. You can donate at NPI's website. We do put the money that people donate right into our polling, so people do have that ability to support our research budget directly. And we actually use a donation processing platform that has no credit card fees, so the processing platform eats the fees. And the reason they can do that is because people can leave tips for the processor. So regardless of whether you leave a tip or not, though, we get 100%. So it's not quite the same as - well, click here to pay the nonprofit's credit card fees. You can actually just donate. And whether or not you tip or not, we're going to get 100%. And that's very innovative - that's the kind of thing that NPI does. We look for ways to make sure that we're running the most fiscally responsible nonprofit that we can. We try to be very cost-conscious. So when we do an event, it's usually in a public space. We usually source the food ourselves - we find a restaurant that will do a really great job for us, a local restaurant that we want to do business with, and then we bring them in to do the food in a public space. And that allows us to keep the costs under control of that event. When we do a fundraiser, a lot of that money can then go right into our research polling. So if you come to our spring fundraising gala - you buy a ticket - most of your ticket's actually going to go into research and advocacy. It's not going to go into event costs. And that's not something that every nonprofit can say. So for those nonprofits that want to learn - how do we do it? How do we keep the costs in check? How do we practice research responsibly? We're happy to talk and provide advice and guidance. And whether or not you want to take advantage of what our expertise is and work with us on a project, or whether you want to do something yourself - we can help. We can provide you at least with the leads that you need to get started and do your work. But if you are going to be doing research and you haven't done it before, and you're going to work with a pollster and you're expecting them to provide a complete package for you - just be prepared to pay well out of the five figures. [00:46:04] Crystal Fincher: Right. That expertise is valuable. And that is reflected in some of those costs, as you mentioned. Now, I do want to talk about your work this legislative session. The session recently started and there's a lot on deck. I want to start off talking about the even-year elections bill. What is that and why does it matter? [00:46:27] Andrew Villeneuve: So this is a bill that would let localities switch their elections to even years when turnout is higher and more diverse. There's two versions of the bill - one that NPI wrote is in the Senate, and it just covers cities and towns. And the other one, which is based on the one we wrote and is sponsored by our friend Mia Gregerson - which we also support, we support them both - covers a lot more local government. So it's cities and towns, but then it's also ports and school boards and so on. And basically what we're trying to do is we're trying to liberate these important local elections from the curse of super low, not diverse turnout. So we know that in odd years, turnout's been declining - in fact, last year, 2023, we set a record for the worst voter turnout in Washington state history, around 36%. We're getting into special election territory with our odd year turnouts. So that means that in a special election, the turnout's going to be somewhere between like 25% and 35%. Well, regular election turnout in odd years is now approaching that special election average, which is not good. And so to liberate localities from that problem of having their leaders chosen by the few instead of the many, we want to let localities switch into even years - at their option. We're not making them. So we could propose a bill that would make it mandatory. And New York State is actually switching a lot of their localities to even years and it's not an option, as I understand their legislation. But our legislation makes it optional. So that way we could do some pilots to see how it would work here in Washington state. Because there's a lot of folks in the election community who are real skittish about this. Because we've had a system in place for 50 years where local governments go in odd-numbered years for the most part - there's some exceptions, which I'll mention in a second - and then the state and federal is in even years. And they're comfortable with this arrangement. It provides continuity and consistency - every year there's going to be work for our election staff to do. And people should get into the habit of voting every year - I think the auditors are in love with this bifurcated system. And the problem is the voters are not. And so the old saying is, You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. Well, we can schedule the election in the odd-numbered year, but that doesn't mean people are going to vote then. And I think it's wrong to have - in my city, I look at Redmond's turnout percentages, and it's true for other cities too, like Seattle - you can look at the turnout and say, Well, 37% of the voters are picking who's the mayor of our city? I don't like that. I want the mayor being chosen by like 60% to 80% of the voters. And that's what would happen if that election was being held one year later or earlier. It just doesn't make sense that we're having these elections at times when most people aren't voting. We know that if we move them to an even-numbered year, people will vote in them. There are some folks who say - Well, they're down-ballot, so no one's going to vote in them. Not true. When you look at data from other states, or when you look at data from here - because sometimes we have a special election. One of the things you were talking about earlier is the governor's race. But Seattle's actually going to have a special city council election this year - it's an even-numbered year, and there's going to be a city council election right there on the ballot. And that election - you and I can go over the data after it comes back, but I'm willing to say right now, even though I told you I don't like predictions, but I'm willing to tell you, I think the turnout in that city council election is going to blow the doors off of the regular turnout for that same position three years ago. It's going to be like twice as much or something in that territory. And that's because it's a special election in an even-numbered year. And it will be way down the ballot. People will vote for it. So what that shows is that people are still going to keep voting, even after they get past president and governor and these higher-profile positions - they're going to keep going. They're going to keep voting. And that's the benefit of local elections moving over - is they get to ride the coattails of those state and federal offices. And we will hear, of course - people say, Well, you're going to kill local issues. You're going to bury local issues because you're having these elections at the same time as state and federal. So they're going to get drowned or swamped out. And actually, I love paradoxes. And one of the things that's a real paradox in politics is - you might think local issues just can't compete with state and federal. Oh, no. Local issues do very well when they're in the mix. Why is that? Because first of all - if people are not paying attention to begin with, it takes an enormous amount of energy just to get them to care about anything. So if you're a canvasser in Kent and nobody knows there's an election, nobody knows. So you're going door-to-door and you're like - Well, have you voted in the election? What election? What are you talking about? Okay. It's a lot harder to get people to care about the election when they don't know about it and they're not interested and they think it's an off-year. And I hate that term "off-year," by the way. Don't use it, but it's out there. It's used all the time, so people think - Oh, it doesn't matter. My vote doesn't matter. It's an off-year. Well, it's not. Every year is an on-year - but people hear that it's an off-year, so they think it doesn't matter. So they don't vote. And then they're told at the door maybe - if somebody comes to their door, which may or may not happen - but if someone does, they get told, Well, it does matter - but does that conversation actually move them to care? Whereas in an even year, that same person comes to their door - they already know there's going to be an election, they're already primed to vote. So now you're just trying to get them to take action in a race where they're already going to vote - they just need to make sure that when they get to that bottom of the ballot, they're going to check for a particular candidate. So as a canvasser, that makes your life so much easier. And people can still do - we've heard all about, Well, TV ads are going to cost more and radio is going to cost more. Well, that might be true. But local candidates need to be doorbelling anyway. So doorbelling is not going to cost more in an even-numbered year - it's going to be the same price. You're not going to have to worry about that. It might cost a little more to print your literature because you'll be competing with more campaigns. But there are trade-offs, which is if you're a local candidate, you're running for Teresa Mosqueda's council seat that she's given up because she went to the County Council - well, you can go out and campaign with other endorsed candidates, like your legislative candidates. You'll be able to doorbell with them if you want, because they're going to have to doorbell too. So there's opportunities to do joint campaigning that haven't existed before. And you mentioned earlier that King County is moving to even years as a result of our charter amendment. So even if our legislation doesn't pass at the state level for cities and towns and other local governments, we're still going to get data back from the county starting in 2026, because voters have signed off on that already. And I'm convinced that what we're going to see is that folks like Claudia Balducci are going to be running for a four-year term in 2026, and they're going to find all these opportunities to go out and campaign with people. And the turnout in their districts and countywide is going to be much bigger than what they've seen in the past. And this is an opportunity to get people connected to King County government who don't even know that it really is there. So it's very exciting - that's what our bill does is it gives localities the option. They can either do it through ballot measure or they can do it councilmanically if they want. If they do it councilmanically, they have to hold several hearings spaced 30 days apart so that people know that it's happening. So we don't want anybody being surprised by such a change. The way I see it - if this bill passes, let's say Seattle wanted to do it - if they were prepared, they could turn around a charter amendment to the people of Seattle in time for the November general election. Because they have to change their charter - they can't just pass an ordinance in Seattle, because that's a first-class city. So if we pass our bill, it gets signed into law in March or April, then by June it's in effect. And then the City of Seattle can use that law - they could propose a charter amendment and then submit it by August, turn it around. The vote happens in November. By 2025 - by this time next year - Seattle could, in a best case scenario, if they wanted, they could be starting their transition to even-year elections. But first, our bill would have to pass - either the Senate version or the House version, doesn't matter. One of them has to pass. And that has to get signed into law.

What's Trending: two separate shootings occurred on Thursday on King County highways within two hours of each hour.  A new bill has been proposed in the Washington State Senate by Democrats that would ban hostile architecture intended to prevent homeless from staying, another bill would impose harsher consequences for graffiti, and some travelers are becoming more dissatisfied as the Boeing 737 MAX-9 groundings create more delays at airports. // A Texas student was suspended for his dreadlock hairstyle and the principal is doubling down on the decision, and a teachers' union is advocating their withdrawal of support for Biden until he  brings about a "permanent cease-fire" in Gaza. // Several layoffs happened recently at big companies in Seattle like REI and Microsoft. 

On this week's episode of TheFallenState TV, host Jesse Lee Peterson is joined by Senator Karen Keiser—She is the distinguished President Pro Tempore of the Washington State Senate representing its 33rd Legislative District. With an illustrious career in public service, Senator Keiser joins Jesse to discuss her new book, 'Getting Elected is the Easy Part: Working and Winning in the State Legislature.' This engaging conversation unravels the intricacies of the legislative process, offering viewers a unique glimpse into the challenges and triumphs of state governance. Senator Keiser's wealth of experience and wisdom promises to provide valuable insights into the inner workings of the political landscape. Don't miss this episode, where faith, politics, and practical advice converge in a discussion that explores the journey beyond election campaigns. Tune in for a thought-provoking conversation that transcends party lines and delves into the heart of effective governance. They touch on faith, forgiveness, marriage, motherhood, mess, politics, and much more!

On this week's episode of TheFallenState TV, host Jesse Lee Peterson is joined by Senator Karen Keiser—She is the distinguished President Pro Tempore of the Washington State Senate representing its 33rd Legislative District. With an illustrious career in public service, Senator Keiser joins Jesse to discuss her new book, 'Getting Elected is the Easy Part: Working and Winning in the State Legislature.' This engaging conversation unravels the intricacies of the legislative process, offering viewers a unique glimpse into the challenges and triumphs of state governance. Senator Keiser's wealth of experience and wisdom promises to provide valuable insights into the inner workings of the political landscape. Don't miss this episode, where faith, politics, and practical advice converge in a discussion that explores the journey beyond election campaigns. Tune in for a thought-provoking conversation that transcends party lines and delves into the heart of effective governance. They touch on faith, forgiveness, marriage, motherhood, mess, politics, and much more!

Episode page with video, transcript, and more My guest for Episode #215 of the My Favorite Mistake podcast is Congressman Adam Smith (D-WA). I'm very honored to have him here. Rep. Smith represents the 9th District of the State of Washington. He was reelected to his 14th term in 2022 and has been the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee since 2011. He served as chair of the committee from 2018–2022 when the Democrats controlled the majority in the US House.  The Congressman is also the author of a new book, available now, Lost and Broken: My Journey Back from Chronic Pain and Crippling Anxiety. In this episode, Rep. Smith shares his favorite mistake story about his first-ever campaign and election, for Washington State Senate. What assumption did he make about what would make a successful campaign strategy? Did he adjust and recover in time? Mark's New Book - "The Mistakes That Make Us" We also discuss the journey described in his book, a journey back to physical and mental health. What mistakes did he make and what mistakes does Rep. Smith say are common in healthcare? How did he learn not to beat himself up for mistakes and why is sharing mistakes so important to him? How can the rest of us avoid similar mistakes related to health and healthcare? Mark's New Book – “The Mistakes That Make Us” Questions and Topics: Asked on June 1st: Is the U.S. avoiding the national mistake of a debt default? In the book, you share some mistakes… why is it helpful to do so? For readers to realize our elected leaders (like all people) make mistakes? How have you learned to not beat yourself up over mistakes? Is it a mistake to not want to see a psychotherapist? How do people know when they should seek help for mental health concerns?? Tell us about the perceived need for a politician to keep mental health problems quiet… going back to VP nominee Thomas Eagleton… a year before I was born, getting replaced as the nominee after past bouts of depression were revealed… Is the public getting more accepting of admissions of mental health issues? Doctors failed to get to the root cause of your problems by just pushing pills? You CAN get better — it was a long journey to find the right caregivers? Tell us about your book Lost and Broken — how did it come to be? Did it help you process that stress? From the book: “My own reelection campaign in 1994 presented challenges, as I have described, but I learned from them. I made mistakes.” — what were those? Did it get easier to run as the incumbent over time? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/favorite-mistake/support

The Washington State Senate and House of Representatives are at odds over a bill that would make possession of hard drugs a misdemeanor rather than a gross misdemeanor, with the Senate arguing that the stronger penalty is necessary to combat the opioid epidemic and save lives. https://bit.ly/3zTWazT #SenJohnBraun #WashingtonStateLegislativeDistrict #2023LegislativeSession #SenateBill5536 #SB5536 #WashingtonStateSenate #DrugPossessionLaw #WashingtonStateHouseOfRepresentatives #SupremeCourtsBlakeDecision #WashingtonState #ClarkCountyWa #ClarkCountyNews #ClarkCountyToday

Democrats in the Washington State Senate have proposed Senate Bill 5770, which would increase the limit on annual property tax increases without voter approval from 1% to 3%, drawing criticism from Republican lawmakers. http://bit.ly/41tvAt2 #SenateRepublicanCaucus #WashingtonStateLegislature #2023LegislativeSession #SenateBill5770 #SB5770 #SenLyndaWilson #SenJohnBraun #StateAndLocalPropertyTaxes #VoterApproval #MajorityDemocrats #TaxIncreaseProposal #WashingtonState #VancouverWa #ClarkCountyWa #ClarkcountyNews #ClarkCountyToday

The middle housing bill passed the Washington State Senate this week. It would allow duplexes and townhomes in neighborhoods now dominated by single-family homes. But where the density goes is still being negotiated.

The Washington State Senate is set to debate two Democrat-sponsored bills that would place new restrictions on gun ownership, but members of the Senate Freedom Caucus vow to defend Second Amendment rights, calling the bills an attack on constitutional rights. https://bit.ly/3Um80MM #WashingtonStateSenate #SenateFreedomCaucus #SencondAmendmentRights #2A #DemocratSponsoredBills #SevereNewRestrictions #GunOwnership #WashingtonStateLegislature #2023LegislativeSession #WashingtonState #ClarkCountyWa #ClarkCountyNews #ClarkCountyToday

Funding in the proposed budget continues the state's $1 billion commitment toward the bi-state project to replace the Interstate 5 Bridge over the Columbia River; $138 million would go to the project. https://bit.ly/40MYLa7 #TheCenterSquareWashington #WashingtonStateLegislature #WashingtonStateSEnate #TransportationBudget #Interstate5BridgeReplacement #GovJayInslee #MoveAheadWashington #WashingtonState #VancouverWa #ClarkCountyWa #ClarkCountyNews #ClarkCountyToday

The Washington State Senate has passed a bill that would boost criminal penalties for drug possession but allow people to avoid jail if they engage in treatment and services.

The Washington State Senate is considering a change to the legal blood alcohol limit, which could have big impacts; there are new laws that hospitality operators need to be aware of in 2023 so the Washington Hospitality Association held a webinar that covered what you need to know; This year, the legislature is considering a thirteen million dollar boost to tourism. For more information, go to: https://wahospitality.org/Subscribe to Washington Hospitality Industry Podcast on Soundwise

Bo Shuff serves as the Executive Director for DC Vote having been promoted from Director of Advocacy in June of 2017. Bo has spent the last twenty years on the front lines of both electoral and advocacy politics. From being a member of the Gore election team in Florida in 2000 to being on the staff of HRC from the Lawrence decision through the 2006 Marriage Amendments, Bo somehow finds himself engaged in some of the hottest political moments. In addition to organizational advocacy work his electoral efforts led to a progressive majority in the Washington State Senate and, as Campaign Manager, the election of Mayor Muriel Bowser. He joined DC Vote in 2016 with an eye to achieving full equality for the residents of the 51st State, Washington DC.https://www.dcvote.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this midweek show, Ryan Packer returns for a round-up of regional transportation issues with Crystal. Ryan's efforts to raise public awareness around traffic safety issues through in-the-minute reporting of cars hitting pedestrians and bicyclists sparks conversation about the Legislature's aim of changing driver behavior through bills currently under consideration and their funding of bike and pedestrian safety improvements in last year's transportation package. They then address the issue of the Columbia River Crossing Megaproject being pushed forward with a decades-old scope, an uncertain funding plan, and non-consideration of climate change or equity. Finally, Crystal and Ryan highlight the disconnect observed in two regional planning bodies with the Puget Sound Regional Council adopting a transportation plan unaligned with our 2030 climate goals and the Sound Transit Board making decisions uninformed by transit rider experience. 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 Ryan Packer at @typewriteralley.   Ryan Packer Ryan Packer has been covering transportation and land use at The Urbanist since 2015. Their work has also appeared in the Seattle Bike Blog, BikePortland, and PubliCola. They don't own a bike.   Resources “State Proposals Aim to Lower Traffic Deaths by Improving Driver Behavior” by Ryan Packer from PubliCola   “Navigating the Move Ahead Washington Transportation Package with Ryan Packer” from Hacks & Wonks   “Washington State Is Losing Control of the Columbia Interstate Bridge Replacement Megaproject” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist   “Adopted Regional Transportation Plan Isn't Aligned With 2030 Climate Goals” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist   “Elected Leaders Must Press Forward With Study of SR 99 and I-5 Everett Link Alternatives” by Stephen Fesler from The Urbanist   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. Today, I am excited to be able to welcome Ryan Packer to the show, who's been covering transportation and land use at The Urbanist since 2015. Their work has also appeared in Seattle Bike Blog, Bike Portland, PubliCola. They don't own a bike, but they cover transportation and related issues as well or better than anyone else in the region - an absolute impactful reporter that we have here. Welcome to the show, Ryan. [00:01:07] Ryan Packer: Thanks so much for having me. [00:01:09] Crystal Fincher: So what got you interested in the first place in reporting on these issues in particular? [00:01:16] Ryan Packer: Basically it was being a transportation user in Seattle. I worked for a restaurant company close to downtown and lived in Capitol Hill, and basically all the ways to get to work that the City was trying to encourage people to use - walking or transit - were unpleasant or infeasible basically. And once you start picking at threads as to why that is, you quickly learn all the different elements of the transportation system that most people aren't aware of - what I like to call the government ecosystem around transportation - and all the ways that it's very broken. [00:01:59] Crystal Fincher: Definitely very broken. One of the things that you've become known for is the unique style of reporting that you have for pedestrian-involved collisions by cars and other vehicles. How did you get started doing that? And what is the kind of feedback that you've received about your reporting there? [00:02:22] Ryan Packer: Yeah, so I basically started noticing that there wasn't a lot of in-the-minute reporting on people getting hit by cars, basically - people walking or biking. Essentially The Seattle Times, or daily newspaper even - in Washington or elsewhere - is only going to cover someone getting hit when ultimately it leads to someone's death. And I started to think about how this leads to a disproportionate - started to think about how this leads to a wrong perception in public at large, in terms of how safe it is to walk around and bike around. Obviously it's not intended to scare people or make people not want to walk or bike, but just to give people an accurate read of how often this is happening. Because the information is out there and once I started pulling it out and realizing this is happening right around the corner from me - I might not have even known this had happened - the reception has been pretty positive in terms of people wanting this information, wanting to know what's happening particularly on their own neighborhood streets. [00:03:41] Crystal Fincher: And there's a lot of action being talked about in response to the crisis that is pedestrian and bike safety. What is being talked about - I guess we'll start off at the state level - just in terms of safety, and then we can talk about general, other transportation-related issues, but what's on the docket there? [00:04:04] Ryan Packer: This session is not a big transportation year, but the traffic safety crisis is the big transportation issue. And so there are a number of bills that are being considered and most of them are trying to directly go after driver behavior. And so we have a lot of bills that are aimed at, say, specific types of drivers. There's a bill to lower the blood alcohol content threshold for a DUI from 0.08 to 0.05 - making people think a little bit more closely about how much they're drinking when they get behind the wheel of a car. There's a bill to target 18 to 25-year old drivers who don't have to take a driver education course - 18-year old doesn't have to take a driver's education course that their 17-year old sibling does. It doesn't make a lot of sense and it shows in the data in terms of the crash rates for young adults like that don't end up taking that course. There's a bill to target older drivers - a little bit less prescriptive - but there's some data that suggests that once you hit a certain age, your capabilities behind the wheel should be assessed a little bit more frequently. A bill to give people a warning label on their car, before they purchase it, in terms of - This vehicle is large and more likely to severely hurt somebody walking or biking if you hit them. And that bill would also impose an additional fine if you were involved in a crash like that. And so all these bills are looking at individual behavior, what I would call bad driver targeting. Ultimately this is just one aspect of the sort of national best practices that everyone's moving toward in terms of what's called a safe systems approach. But the important thing to note - while everyone's talking about driver behavior this session - last session was the transportation investment year. And you actually had me on the program to talk about the Move Ahead Washington package last year. But just to go through what we know about it since then and what it's going to do, it includes a lot of money for cities to ask for for bike and pedestrian safety. The problem with that is it is relying on people to raise their hands and also doesn't require that the funds go to the most impactful areas. So for example, a city like Kent doesn't have to request funds for the intersection, say, that the most people are getting hurt at. They can say, Oh, we want to do a project over here. And there's not a lot that the state can say, Oh, you should do something different. They have to pick the projects people are asking for. But there's another very important provision in that bill, which is a new complete streets mandate for state highways. And so we're getting into a mandate - sort of a blanket change - it's going to be much more impactful. It basically says that any time that the State Department of Transportation goes out to fix, or repair, or maintain a state highway - they have to look at whether or not that state highway is up to current standards - whether or not it has sidewalks, bike lanes, and whether drivers are currently driving really the appropriate speeds on that highway. So the Legislature allocated $1.5 billion in Move Ahead Washington to overall highway maintenance, so it's a lot of money but it's also not a lot of money in terms of how much maintenance our state highways need. But since the passage of that law, the State Department of Transportation has announced that they expect to use about half of that amount to upgrade safety infrastructure for people walking and biking on state highways - about $750 million, which if it ends up coming to pass would be the biggest investment in safe infrastructure in statewide history - possibly in a lot of states. [00:08:42] Crystal Fincher: And that was some positive news, hedged positive news. Seems like we're making progress but there is so much to do that sometimes it feels like we're trying to mop up the ocean a little bit. You talked about some of the best practices and some of the bills going after one dimension of that, which is driver behavior. What are the other recommended best practices? What are things that legislators should be talking about? [00:09:12] Ryan Packer: One element that has not quite made it to the Legislature is vehicle design in terms of - I talked a little bit about that warning label - but in terms of actually requiring that cars not be designed to hurt people is one aspect of this sort of safe systems approach - the actual design of our vehicles. It's gotten larger over the past couple decades - the trend toward SUVs, which has led to negative direction in terms of the pedestrian and cyclist injuries and fatalities. And so when you're talking about that, you're talking about something that would impact everyone on the road as opposed to the so-called bad driver. Even if you're putting a warning label - that's putting the onus on individuals like - Oh, you bought this car so you should know what it's like, as opposed to this car is on the market and it's a systemic issue in terms of offering these for sale. And so, but once you start to get into sort of how many different drivers would be impacted, the political will to actually make the changes is diminishing. For example, in terms of driver's education - when you talk about making drivers age 18 to 25 do the driver's ed course, that's one change but a 24-year old who is tested in another state can also just go ahead and transfer their driver's license into Washington without having to do that driver's ed course. Or a driver who's 35 and maybe needs to have that driver course again. Roger Millar, the State Secretary of Transportation, likes to note that the last time that he was tested for his driver behavior was in the 1970s and that there's been a couple of changes in state laws since that time - and that's true for a lot of people on our roads. But once again, that would apply to a lot of people getting back in the queue for driver's testing. [00:11:10] Crystal Fincher: Does road design play a role in the safe systems approach? [00:11:15] Ryan Packer: Absolutely road design plays a role. It's a key component, and that's what I was getting at with the complete streets requirement doing a systemic look at whether our state highways are designed to standards. There's not really a requirement for local jurisdictions to do that - cities like Seattle have complete streets ordinances, but there's a lot of ways that they can get around those. But you're talking about the need to - number one, make sure that people are driving at the appropriate speeds - one of the biggest factors in terms of whether or not someone is likely to be hurt or even killed in a crash is the speed that they're going. And you often have cities lowering speed limits, but the design speed - the speed that drivers feel like they can appropriately go on a road - may still be a lot higher. And so you have a lot of streets where those speeds remain very high. And then you also have the issue of distance for crossings for pedestrians - whether or not someone is likely to be able to safely cross that street is a big determinant of how safe it is, and whether or not there's safe infrastructure for people to walk along it or bike along it. One thing I like to always notice is - one of the biggest impacts that adding protected bike lanes to urban cities is - is the impact on pedestrians. You're often - one, separating cars from pedestrians with another lane in between them which is always great and makes things safer, but you're also adding protected turns - making sure the drivers aren't turning across the bike lanes - also great for people walking. So these kind of have these compounding effect, where it improves everything for everyone on the street not just someone on a bike. [00:13:15] Crystal Fincher: Now there are a few other things going on in the Legislature, even besides some of these pedestrian-related and safety-related enhancements. One of those issues is one that they thought they dealt with and maybe mostly wrapped up last year, but that has come back with a vengeance - that a lot of people are looking at with concern - and that's the Columbia River Crossing Megaproject. Where does that stand, and what has happened that they need to tackle now? [00:13:48] Ryan Packer: So this project has been around for almost two decades - it's a needed project to replace the two spans of the I-5, between Washington and Oregon - one of which was built in the 1910s. The previous attempt to replace this bridge, which is called the Columbia River Crossing, included seven miles of highway expansion, five interchanges, light rail as a component - several sort of huge projects within projects - that made the project very expensive and expansive. Ultimately in 2013, it was the Washington State Senate that didn't want to pony up the money for that project - in part because of light rail's inclusion, in part because of a opposition to having tolls from the Washington side to go into Oregon. That project languished for several years until it was restarted by Governor Brown and Inslee in 2019, and has been moving forward - but the key thing to remember with this is that we're still using the federal approval from the Columbia River Crossing, even though we've now rebranded it with a very flashy campaign called the Interstate Bridge Replacement, or the IBR. It has the environmental approval of the Columbia River Crossing and that includes the scope - and so the seven miles of highway, five interchanges - it basically is still in there. And we went through a whole process to look at how we might tweak that, whether or not we might include climate change as an actual purpose and need to address with this project, or whether we might want to include equity as an actual thing to address. Ultimately they decided that that would disrupt the project schedule - they're very intent on replacing this, starting construction by 2025 - it's not entirely clear that's going to happen, it being 2023 already, but that's what they're aiming for. And at the end of last year they just came up with a new project cost estimate based on all the new tweaks that they want to do to this thing, and it could end up costing about - $7.5 billion is the high end estimate. It would ultimately be the most expensive single highway project in the Pacific Northwest and among the top 10 in the nation. And so the question is whether the scope is too wide and expansive for - what we're talking about is a very needed bridge, not a highway. [00:16:55] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And with that expanded cost estimate and the now inflated cost that we've seen, that puts them at least a billion dollars under budget - and there's a question about where that billion dollars is coming from. Where does that stand? [00:17:11] Ryan Packer: So they have a financial concept plan that assumes that they're going to get a lot of money from the federal government - the bipartisan infrastructure bill included a mega-grant program, kind of orchestrated by Washington Senator Maria Cantwell, that kind of had the IBR in mind when they were looking at this grant program. And so they're counting on an incredible amount of money from the federal government - around $2-3 billion - which is wild. They've already gotten $1 billion from the State of Washington in last year's Move Ahead Washington package, but they're banking on Oregon chipping in another billion dollars this year - which would get them to have that matching funds for the federal grants. Interestingly enough, new governor of Oregon Tina Kotek released her budget very early this year and didn't actually have a billion dollars in it for that project, which is very interesting because it was a very big priority of her predecessor, a very big priority of sort of her old colleagues in the Oregon Legislature - and so she clearly sees it as not one of the top priorities. She's currently allocating a lot of money for housing and not highways. [00:18:41] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, an interesting conundrum which has definitely been scrutinized and continues to be challenged - because of the broadness of the scope - does it require that many lanes, that much impact on the local area? You talked about equity being put aside in terms of - because they wanted to stick to their timeline. And certainly people in that region who are familiar with the impacts of the type of pollution that's created by cars being spewed in the neighborhood and what those health impacts, like asthma and other things, are for local communities and schools there in that area. [00:19:25] Ryan Packer: So that also gets into the issue of tolls, which I mentioned were a sticking point with the old project. They're banking on a lot of money also coming in from tolls. The first point with that is obviously we don't quite know what the actual impact on traffic volume on the bridge is going to be from those tolls, and so it has a - do we need to have all that capacity to - if we're going to put the tolling on the bridge, what is that relationship going to look like? But also, as we've seen in Washington with the SR99 tunnel and some of the other tolling programs that the state has undergone in the past couple years, sort of banking on a high number of toll users to pay back your project is not necessarily the most sound financial plan. [00:20:20] Crystal Fincher: It is not, as we have learned in those other situations that you referenced. I also wanted to touch on one of our regional bodies at the moment - the Puget Sound Regional Council. And we have a number of bodies that are involved in transportation planning, a number of regional bodies - this is one of them - but a number of these have also talked about their commitment to addressing climate change, to reducing greenhouse gases, setting targets and we have a 2030 target that they're attempting to hit. And recently they announced that they are not on track to hit the 2030 climate goal. Where do they stand on that, and are they talking about anything that will put us back on track to meeting those targets? [00:21:09] Ryan Packer: Yeah, so this is a body that not a lot of people pay attention to - it's the four county - King, Snohomish, Pierce, and Kitsap County - regional planning body. Its biggest role is figuring out where to allocate federal funds, and so it's a conduit for a lot of federal money - and so that's how it's how it gets the power that it does. Ultimately they have to approve a regional transportation plan that kind of looks at the entire region's goals around transportation. They did that last year, and originally it was just looking at the climate impacts by 2050 - sort of the long term goals around reducing transportation emissions. Thanks to a lot of the leaders on the regional council, including the president - King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci - they were like, Hey, we should actually be looking at 2030 to see if we're on track or we have to do a lot more work. And that analysis just came back and shows a pretty big gap in terms of where we're expected to be - 13%, which is a huge emissions gap. It doesn't sound huge, but it's - when you talk about the emissions of the entire region. And they also looked at sort of some models around how to fill that gap. And that's the frustrating thing about their models - which is basically they showed that transit, expanding transit, is not really going to close the gap. And in terms of - because our growth strategy as a region is not quite going to catch up to where we need to be by 2030 in terms of having actual people close to transit. First of all, should give some direction to our local leaders in terms of what they should be doing around transit access and station planning. But also the model seems a little bit behind the times in terms of being able to actually account for sort of the actual behavior of people. It also noted that if we put a hold on sort of the roadway expansions - which add capacity, add cars, add emissions - that it would - their models are showing that that wouldn't have an impact. And a lot of people are questioning that, including Claudia Balducci [00:23:48] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, a lot of us questioning that - with some of the justification that they're giving essentially being we add lanes but that's gonna help traffic. And if people spend less time in traffic, then that's going to neutralize the emissions that come from the increased traffic somehow. [00:24:05] Ryan Packer: The same arguments that we've been hearing for a couple of decades - just haven't borne out. [00:24:09] Crystal Fincher: Yeah - kind of challenging there. Also Sound Transit, another regional body that is very involved in our regional transit system - they operate our light rail and heavy rail Sounder system. Where do they stand in terms of climate goals and their kind of overall operation? [00:24:33] Ryan Packer: Ultimately, Sound Transit isn't really charged with making sure that the region's holding to its climate goals. They're being asked to build a regional spine to our transit network, which is - it's very expensive. It's gonna be a lot of years of work to get that sort of spine from Everett to Tacoma. And ultimately, it's not going to be as impactful as it could be if regional government - cities, counties - don't do the maximum to ensure that people are living by the stations, people can access those stations. And so that's one way that the sort of siloed system of our transportation ecosystem in central Puget Sound is not optimizing outcomes in terms of climate and also just all those other more immediate impacts - livability, air quality, things like that. Sound Transit is tasked with building the system, and the way that its political board is structured - the incentives are basically to make sure that your community is getting some transit and not that the region as a whole is set up for success. One way that that's epitomized is the planned deviation over to Paine Field in Everett - that a lot of people are questioning the sort of utility of making a detour on light rail to go to an airport that not a lot of people are really going to be able to utilize by the time it's done - and so, it's adding a couple like 10 minutes to every trip to Everett, as opposed to other ways to serve that. But it's seen as - taking away that would be seen as bad for Everett. [00:26:30] Crystal Fincher: And this is a challenge that we see with this board overall and some of the confounding decisions that are made. What is the composition of this board, and what kind of investment do its members have in - personal investment - in public transit? [00:26:47] Ryan Packer: The board is made up of local leaders from around the region, so ultimately you have people whose investment in transit is tied directly to their own performance as an elected official, not necessarily their own experience as a transit rider. It's not clear how many of our transit board members are actual daily transit riders or, in terms of their ties to the overall transit community. And so, like I said, it's all about making sure that you're delivering the projects for your city. And so there's just a lot of sort of bartering and siloing. [00:27:26] Crystal Fincher: Overall, with your perspective on transportation and transit in the region, what do you think are the most important things, I guess, on the docket for people to address and ways to address them? What would your words of wisdom be for those involved in the policy making? [00:27:45] Ryan Packer: I think the first thing I would say is that people involved in transit decision making should get out and ride transit - see what it's like - use that experience to actually make decisions. And get away from the map on the screen, in terms of looking at the actual impacts. I think a lot of people are getting very cynical about the decision making processes in central Puget Sound at all levels of government - from the City of Seattle to the highest echelons at Sound Transit - in terms of where the priorities of the decision makers are. I do think we see that party shifting a little bit, possibly - even at the City of Seattle level - toward people-centered projects, but ultimately the status quo bias is so embedded into - a lot of these - I don't want to say infrastructure, but the actual decision making processes - that it's very hard to turn that ship very quickly at all. [00:29:05] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much, Ryan, for your time today. Thank you for just enlightening us - and your coverage - it's just been so impactful. I know that even for people who follow these issues and like you talked about - looking at the data, seeing maps on the screen and this happening - it's just impactful in a different way to see it reported in live time. And just the way that you get around our region and connect the dots on how what we do across the region impacts each other, and how we should be addressing transit and transportation overall. So thank you very much. [00:29:48] Ryan Packer: Well, thanks so much for all that you do, Crystal. [00:29:50] Crystal Fincher: Thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler, our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng, and our Post-Production Assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks, and you can follow me @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered right to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

The Washington State Senate has passed a bill that would eliminate advisory votes from the ballot. The legislation now heads to the House of Representatives for consideration. https://bit.ly/3JXiCOP #TheCenterSquareWashington #SB5082 #SenateBill5082 #WashingtonStateLegislature #NonBindingMeasures #VoterOpinion #TaxIncreases #Elections #WashingtonStateSenate #HouseOfRepresentatives #Legislation #AdvisoryVotes #WashingtonState #ClarkCountyWa #ClarkCountyNews #ClarkCountyToday

Guests: Mark Moyar, Sally Pipes, Ken Calvert, and Daniel Himebaugh '04 Host Scot Bertram talks with Mark Moyar, William P. Harris Chair in Military History at Hillsdale College, about his new book Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965-1968, the second of his planned three-part series on the War. Sally Pipes, President, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy at the Pacific Research Institute, discusses what to expect in 2023 from the health care sector. Ken Calvert, Professor of Ancient History at Hillsdale, takes us back to talk about Cicero, Cato and the defense of the Roman Republic. And Hillsdale grad Daniel Himebaugh '04 tells us about his experiences at the College and working as Leadership Counsel for the Republican Caucus of the Washington State Senate.    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On today's midweek show, Crystal welcomes Senator Manka Dhingra, Chair of the Senate Law & Justice Committee, to preview the tough issues her committee will take on in the upcoming legislative session. Senator Dhingra walks through her data-driven and community-informed approach to legislating and how this lens guides her thinking on revisiting the Blake decision fix, a temporary solution put in place by the Legislature in 2021 when the Washington Supreme Court struck down the state's drug possession law as unconstitutional. Despite widespread recognition of the need for a public health approach to substance use disorder, Crystal and Senator Dhingra lament the unfortunate political truth that the public is often ahead of elected officials and that the Blake fix will likely not be based on best practices.  The two then discuss the pushback from some in law enforcement interests in response to bills that restricted their use of high-speed vehicle pursuits and sought to hold officers liable for taking wrong actions. Senator Dhingra stands by these policies that solve the issues of unnecessary bystander deaths and community demands for reduction in police violence. Finally, the show wraps up with what a trauma-informed criminal justice system could look like, where implementation of the 988 crisis system is, and Senator Dhingra's delightful tradition of introducing legislation from teenagers in her district. 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 Senator Manka Dhingra at @Dhingrama.   Senator Manka Dhingra Manka Dhingra is Deputy Majority Leader of the Washington State Senate. She brings two decades of experience as a prosecutor to her role as Chair of the Senate Law & Justice Committee. She also serves on the Senate Health & Long Term Care Committee and Senate Ways & Means Committee.  In November 2017, Dhingra was elected to the Senate by the constituents of the 45th Legislative District, the first Sikh legislator in the nation. Since then, she has sponsored and passed legislation addressing a wide range of issue areas, including: curbing domestic violence and sexual assault, preventing firearm violence, providing property tax relief for seniors and people with disabilities, prosecuting financial fraud, and reforming the criminal justice system with an evidence-based approach.  During her time in the Senate, Dhingra has helped pass legislation and funding to transform the Washington State behavioral health system, reorienting it around prevention rather than crisis response. She continues to strive to ensure that Washingtonians with behavioral health needs get the treatment they need and deserve. As a member of the Special Committee on Economic Recovery, she is helping the state craft an economic plan to lead an equitable recovery from the COVID economic downturn. She also serves on several task forces dedicated to reducing poverty, reforming the criminal justice system, improving equity in state government, and providing a sound and fair fiscal footing for the state.  Dhingra continues to serve as a Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney with the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office. As Chair of the Therapeutic Alternative Unit, Manka helped develop and oversee the Regional Mental Health Court, the Veterans Court, and the Community Assessment and Referral for Diversion program. As a mental health and crisis intervention expert, she has also been an instructor at the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission for the 40-hour Crisis Intervention Training for law enforcement officers to reduce the risk of tragedy and improve the response to people in crisis.  Outside the courtroom, Dhingra is a community leader and anti-domestic violence advocate on the Eastside. She co-founded Chaya, an organization that assists South Asian survivors of domestic violence and led the organization's work to end systemic violence through education and prevention. She also serves on the board of Hopelink.   Resources Senator Manka Dhingra | Washington Senate Democrats   “With Dhingra's Win, Democrats Take Control of the State Senate” by Hayat Norimine from SeattleMet   Q & A: The Blake Decision | ACLU of Washington   “In Last-Minute Move, Legislature Adopts New Approach to Drug Possession” by Paul Kiefer from PubliCola   “WA lawmakers try to thread needle on drug possession, to mixed reviews” by David Kroman from Crosscut   “Washington Voters Want to Decriminalize Drug Possession and Fund Substance Abuse Resources” by Anika Dandekar with Data For Progress   State v. Blake: ESB 5476 and behavioral health expansion | Washington Health Care Authority   “Not all crimes merit high-speed chases that risk bystanders' lives” by Manka Dhingra in The Seattle Times   “Pursuits and Fatalities in WA since 2015” by Martina Morris from Next Steps Washington and Washington Coalition for Police Accountability   2021-2022 Washington State Legislature Policing Bills Explainer | People Power Washington   “State leaders prepare for implementation of the 988 call line” by Shane Ersland from State of Reform   “Meet the students who fought for free menstrual products at Washington schools — and won” by Sara Gentzler from The Olympian   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. So today I'm absolutely thrilled to have joining us the Deputy Majority Leader of the Washington State Senate, Manka Dhingra. Welcome. [00:00:47] Senator Manka Dhingra: Thank you so much. It is such a pleasure to be here with you. [00:00:50] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely a pleasure to have you - have followed your work and admired your work for quite some time. So you are also the Chair of the Senate Law & Justice Committee, you've done a lot of work. I just wanted to start off with - what was your path to the State Senate and what have you been working on? [00:01:11] Senator Manka Dhingra: So I'll just say my path to the State Senate has been extremely unusual. I don't know anyone else who came into politics the way I did. I, as a young person, knew very early that I wanted to go to law school and that I wanted to be a prosecutor. I got involved in gender-based violence early on because my grandmother used to help survivors of domestic violence back in India. And so I went to law school, became a prosecutor with King County. I actually created and ran the first ever Therapeutic Alternative Unit where we really took a look at alternatives to incarceration, crisis intervention. I helped train law enforcement in the 40-hour crisis intervention training at the Criminal Justice Training Center. And I considered myself a good Democrat because I voted. And then we had our 2016 national election. And for the first time in my life, I was actually having an Election Night party at my house because I really wanted my children to see the face of the first U.S. woman president. Clearly the night did not go as I had planned. And so I went to my first Democratic Party meeting that December. And when I went there, I can tell you that the room was full - packed - with women. When I looked around that room, I recognized so many of the PTSA moms. And most of us were there, again, for the very first time because we felt we had to do something. And I didn't know what that something would look like. And a very good friend of mine who was on city council saw me there and she said, We have to have coffee. And so we sat down for coffee and her first question was, Do you want to run for office? And my response was, I don't think I'm qualified. And she literally fell off her chair laughing. And later I realized what a cliché my response was because apparently that's what all of us women say - we think we're not qualified. So she kind of worked on me and we had a Senate seat that was available. And February 14th, I announced I was running for the Senate. So my entire political engagement from the time from my first meeting to me announcing for Senate was two months. [00:03:25] Crystal Fincher: Wow. Well, and then you ran in a district where your victory was certainly not guaranteed - very competitive race - where you were successful and victorious and a first yourself, the first Sikh member of our state Senate. How did you use all of your lived experience in the Senate and how was your first term? [00:03:56] Senator Manka Dhingra: So the election was exciting because my seat actually flipped our State Senate. So our Senate was controlled by the Republicans and when I won, Democrats got in control. So the first session was actually pure chaos because we'd had gridlock in Olympia for so many years because we really couldn't pass meaningful bills. We had a session that would go into special session year after year because budgets couldn't be agreed upon. The year I was running, there were three special sessions and they still did not have all their budgets passed. And so when I won, normally people have orientation or some kind of onboarding. But when I won - because of the change - we had new Chairs, all this legislation that had been blocked for so many years like the flood gates had opened. So it was a very exciting time because I think we just passed such amazing progressive legislation and really were this beacon of light for the entire country on what a progressive legislation could look like or what a progressive state can look like. But I got to tell you, I was kind of lost in the mix there. But luckily I was able to hold my own and was very proud of the nine bills I passed my first session. [00:05:16] Crystal Fincher: And what were some of those bills? [00:05:17] Senator Manka Dhingra: So a lot of those bills were things that had really irked me for a very long time as an attorney and as a prosecutor. So there were a lot of bills around helping survivors of domestic violence, there were bills around sexual assault, around trafficking, and I had a Medicaid fraud unit bill, work around behavior health because I have been very concerned about mental illness and substance use disorder in our state. And normally when you're a first-time legislator, they do this thing on the Senate floor where your first bill - people actually kind of tease you a little about it or kind of give you a hard time. And when they looked at all my bills, they were all of such serious matters that they couldn't figure out which one should be my first bill. And so actually the Medicaid fraud unit was my first bill because that was the least serious about my other bills. But this was legislation that I knew that had to be fixed and we needed to do it. And frankly, I think the reason why I was so successful is because most of my bill ideas come from people who do the work and are able to really articulate what the problems are and then have the solutions because they're the experts in that field. And so I have maintained that manner of doing my work - is really making sure I hear from the people on the ground doing the work. [00:06:42] Crystal Fincher: And you have built that reputation of being very in touch with the community, of reaching out to stakeholders for your various bills, making sure that you speak with, inform, get feedback from people who are involved with and impacted by legislation you're proposing and the issues you're trying to address. One such issue was spurred by the Blake decision - that the Supreme Court found in our state - that essentially decriminalized personal use possession. And because of some challenges that that presented, like a potential patchwork of different laws passed by different cities all throughout the state, the Legislature decided to take action to try and pass one uniform policy all across the state. What was your approach to that and where did that end up? [00:07:30] Senator Manka Dhingra: Thank you. That is really the issue and the question that has been - people have been interested in for the last two years. Any time legislation is required, my question always is why? And what you gave in your question was really one of the reasons why we knew that legislation - is because we wanted a uniform way of making sure enforcement is the same for people, that they're not treated differently because they're using at a different intersection down the street. So that's why we wanted to make sure we had state legislation. This decision came out in the middle of session, so the timing was not optimal. And then it was very important to me to have a solution that is based on best practices and that is practical. So the original bill that I had was actually based on what the policy of the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office was, along with a lot of the other prosecuting attorney's offices around the state. Because what we found at that time is - a lot of people doing this work had realized - that dealing with substance use disorder, it's not a criminal justice issue, it's a public health issue. And treating it like a criminal justice issue is what has really led us to where we are today. But you have to make sure you're focused on getting people into the treatment that they need. And so I was really trying to come up with a solution that said you have to have public health lead. And you also have to understand that while using the substance shouldn't be illegal, if there's criminal activity around that - like theft, criminal trespass, possession of weapons - that is still a criminal offense, but really being able to focus on treatment. So after a lot of negotiations, because I'll tell you, elected officials are very nervous of criminal justice issues. And I come from it differently because I practiced for 17 years. And we unfortunately did not get a bill that was based on best practices. We came close, but not quite. So what became the law of the land is that law enforcement was going to offer diversion the first two times that they came into contact with an individual. And then only after that would they refer that for a criminal case. And we took this opportunity to really provide a lot of resources for treatment - so we ensured that we had substance use disorder navigators who can help get people into treatment, we provided funding for treatment like Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, to wraparound teams like HOST - Homeless Outreach Stabilization Teams, PACT - these assertive community treatment models. So really making sure that those resources go hand-in-hand, because if people have no place to go and they don't have treatment, nothing's going to really work. I also wanted to make sure that because we were creating this in the middle of session, that we had an expiration date. So I insisted that this law expire in three years. And we created a committee or task force made up of a wide variety of individuals - people with lived experience, people in the treatment community, housing people, law enforcement, prosecutors, defense - everyone who deals with this issue to come together to come up with recommendations. So those recommendations have officially been made. And our law expires this 2023, so we as the Legislature have to actually pass another substance use disorder law to make sure that we're, again, pushing ourselves to doing things that are based on - with best practices. [00:11:16] Crystal Fincher: Now the bill did not end up - at that time what passed - was not what you were ultimately happy with and didn't earn your vote at that time. But you did say that - because of some of those things that were funded, you really wanted to focus on getting those implemented and working across the state, because it's important to - if someone is going to make a referral for treatment or for services, that those services be available. And we were in a situation where those were not available in sufficient quantities around the state and people may not have been able to get their needs met. Where do those stand today? How far have we made it in terms of implementation and availability of services? [00:12:02] Senator Manka Dhingra: So I'll just say - on paper - the funding, the availability of services looked amazing. And then COVID hit. And one of the biggest barriers became COVID, because we weren't really able to implement everything that we wanted to. We had inpatient treatment services that had to be dramatically reduced because of social distancing - they had to limit their bed capacity. And so it's very challenging to talk about how successful or not successful this program could have been because it was greatly hampered by COVID. And we know from years and years of data and just knowing how humans behave - that when there is a huge incident like COVID - people do tend to self-medicate because of anxiety and depression. And we saw that. We saw use of alcohol and drugs go up exponentially because people were dealing with trauma. And so the combination of factors made it a lot more challenging. And so the resources weren't able to be deployed as timely as we would have liked. Now we're in a position - with this summer, we were able to do statewide deployment of the substance use navigators, so now they're around. We have funded a lot more options for law enforcement assisted diversions. So we have this program set up, but unfortunately we also had a lot of inpatient treatments that actually closed - because of COVID and their not being sustainable. The other issue also became is - there are a lot of individuals who really feel that there has to be an option for court-directed treatment - the court has to force you to do treatment. And so one of the things we had talked about is - if you want the option of that, you still have that through Drug Court, Mental Health Court, Veterans Court - if people engage in other criminal activity in addition to substance use disorder. We also have a civil commitment statute - we have Involuntary Treatment Act - we have assisted treatment where if you really want it to be court-ordered, you can do it through the civil system. And so we were really hoping to ramp up our civil system to do that. And again, due to COVID and what happened with our judicial system, we weren't really able to get there. So I would say where we are now from when the bill was passed - not as far along as we would have liked. And we simply haven't had the time to give these programs the setup that they actually needed. So in an ideal situation, I would have liked to see one more year of us working under this bill to really see what's working and what's not, and then come up with a different solution. But unfortunately we don't have that time and COVID did make things more challenging in terms of implementation. [00:15:00] Crystal Fincher: So in terms of these programs and what was funded and addressing the capacity and now increased staffing issues with a lot of these services, is there going to be a push for increased funding? Does the existing funding already cover the implementation? What action needs to be taken from the legislature to ensure that in another year's time we are where we do want to be? [00:15:24] Senator Manka Dhingra: So absolutely the funding needs to continue and it will. The cities and the counties that do have the programs up and running - because it was a gradual start - have actually shown really positive results. We are seeing individuals getting the help they need. We have had law enforcement in those areas actually appreciate the resources that have been provided to the community to do this work. We also have to take a look at - how do we staff inpatient units? The way we pay them for per bed usage doesn't really work when you have pandemics because a third of the beds can't be used. So if you're only paying them for the beds, they can't do full staffing if they're not allowed to use a third of their beds. So we really have to rethink what that payment for treatment looks like. And there've been some really interesting ideas on integration, and paying for the whole person, and paying for programs rather than for each beds. And that's what COVID really taught us - being really creative on how we are supporting some of our community clinics, so I think you're going to see some really exciting stuff coming in on more integrated community-led efforts. Our federal government, in the last two years under President Biden, has really made a lot of federal dollars available for us to do this work. And Washington is really set up very well to take advantage of these federal dollars. I think it's still an exciting time and - it always gets darkest before the light, but I do think we are going to be turning the corner on the opioid epidemic. [00:17:06] Crystal Fincher: I hope so. And so now you're going to be taking up this legislation again - you're forced to - and many people were supportive of the sunset and revisiting of this legislation this session. It looks like there, once again, is a mixed variety of opinions on the right way forward this session. And it looks like there are a growing amount of people, supported by what looks like changing public sentiment, or absolutely a number of polls in support of a public health approach as opposed to a criminalized approach to substance use disorder and possession of personal amounts. Is there the opportunity this session to move towards a full public health approach and move away from criminalization of personal possession of substances? [00:17:59] Senator Manka Dhingra: I wish I could tell you there was. This is unfortunately the truth in politics that I've learned - is that normally the public is way ahead of elected officials. Over and over again, I've heard from the public that when they see their loved one, their neighbor, their friend, or even the stranger struggling with substance use disorder, they want treatment. The first response isn't to send someone to prison. And so the recommendation out of this committee - it's actually called SURSAC [Substance Use Recovery Services Advisory Committee] - was for decriminalization of personal use. And so the bill that I will be sponsoring is based on the committee's recommendation, because I think it's really important to honor that work. That work and their conclusions are based on best practices, it's data driven through looking at what has worked around the world - not just in the United States - because we know this is a worldwide problem. We don't have the votes for that in the Senate or in the House. So I'll have my bill, which is based on best practices and data. We are going to have another bill by Senator Robinson, who is going to take a lot of the treatment recommendations coming out of that group, but it does make possession of personal use a gross misdemeanor. It encourages diversion, but that's where it's at. We're going to have other individuals who may want to make it back as a felony - I don't think there's appetite at all to have it be a felony because that has failed so miserably. And I know there's some interest in making it a misdemeanor. All of those have issues, right? No one is going to agree on one version of it, but I think the best decisions are always the decisions that are made when they're data-driven. I don't think our legislature is there. I don't think the Blake fix is going to be evidence-based or data-driven. It will criminalize personal drug use with a lot of options for diversion. And the hope really is that the prosecutors, the judges are in a position to make those referrals. The hope really is that community resources come in and are able to help people outside of the criminal justice system. I'm a little disappointed, but that's human nature. All you can do is continue to make the case on trying to do things that work. [00:20:40] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. [00:20:41] Senator Manka Dhingra: But people are driven by fear. [00:20:43] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And appreciate your continued work to continue to make the case and for standing by that when it comes to voting. Is there the opportunity with this to implement another sunset - for as you said, as we get more infrastructure set up around the state, accounting for the COVID delays and challenges, that maybe we get to revisit this in another couple of years? [00:21:08] Senator Manka Dhingra: You know, I'm not sure about that - we'll have to see how it works. The reality is you can have whatever laws you want - it depends on what implementation looks like. So when the Blake decision came out, the current individuals who were charged with drug possession cases - all those cases had to be dismissed. And if they were in custody, they had to be released. Now, I was very curious to know how many of those individuals currently existed, because I had heard and know that most of these cases weren't being prosecuted - that they were actually being deferred. And that was actually true. People thought the Drug Courts would close - they didn't. There were very few Drug Courts that actually had individuals that were only there for drug possession cases, because the culture of enforcement has changed so much. Because the people that do that work know that having someone go through the court system or look at incarceration does not improve the substance use disorder. It actually makes it worse. And so practically, there were not people in Drug Court to any significant degree when this decision came out. And that's why I tried to tell people - that there was already that recognition in our criminal justice system that said, We're not prosecuting these individuals, they're being offered diversions at the time of booking. Or they end up pleading guilty to a reduced sentence and finish that time in jail and leave. So there is a disconnect between the laws on our book and what is being implemented. And I think all we can do is actually make that community treatment program really robust and provide those resources, and destigmatize substance use disorder so that people can actually feel comfortable going for treatment and acknowledging that they have a problem. [00:22:56] Crystal Fincher: That makes sense. Another issue that has been an issue that has been talked about throughout the community has been those surrounding police pursuits. High speed vehicle chases - I suppose some may not be at high speeds - but pursuing people who they suspect of fleeing because of some crime or being wanted for a reason. And lots of talk in the community and data and evidence about the injuries and deaths caused by police pursuits - and really weighing whether the risk of pursuit is worth it in cases where someone is not wanted for a violent crime and people's health and wellbeing seem to be in immediate jeopardy, as opposed to a property crime or something else like that. What is the work that you've done on that? And do you anticipate that being an issue? Where do you stand on that? [00:23:53] Senator Manka Dhingra: I go back to the way I deal with legislation - I start off with what is the problem you're trying to solve? So when it came to police pursuits, the question was - what is the problem we're trying to solve? And the problem we were trying to solve is data that came out that said 50% of the people that are killed during police chases are individuals that have nothing to do with the incident. These are innocent bystanders who get killed. And that number is at 50% in the state. That is an unacceptable number. So we took a look and said, OK, how can we reduce that number? And so the police pursuit bill that was passed by the Senate and the House and signed into law is one that's actually based in best practices. It was based on a policy that very closely mirrored what a lot of our cities were already doing. So we do have some cities that had very similar policies and others that frankly were not good partners in doing this work. And so we passed that. There were a few cities who didn't really have to change their policies because that is what their official policy was. And there were others that were forced to change their policy. And this is exactly what you mentioned, Crystal - it is about doing that analysis. We made sure that if it's a domestic violence case, you can pursue the vehicle. If it's a case involving violence, you can pursue the vehicle. If it's a DUI, you can pursue the vehicle. But when it comes to property, we said, No, you can't - because there are other ways to catch an individual in today's day and age. And guess what? We haven't had innocent people dying since this policy was enacted. So did we solve the problem of not having 50% of the fatalities be uninvolved? We absolutely did. We do not have innocent people dying in vehicle pursuits. And I've heard criticism that, Oh, people are just fleeing and not getting caught. And I've asked the question, Are they not getting caught in that instant? Are they getting arrested the next day or a few days later? Guess what? They're being arrested, they're just arrested a few days later. And now they're being charged with a felony - attempting to elude - because they fled. So I know that there are cities and law enforcement agencies that want us to go back on our vehicle pursuit bill. And I have asked them for data - because I do tend to be data-driven - and I've said, Show me how many people have not been caught because of this data. The only data they can show me is the number of pursuits is up. And I'm like, And what happens the day after? Because when they share the stories with me, they always end with, Oh, yes, and we caught the guy two days later or the next day. And so again, I think for those who want us to change our policy, I come back with what is the problem you're trying to solve and where is the data supporting that? And I have not seen the data that tells me that this is the wrong policy. [00:26:53] Crystal Fincher: Well, and I appreciate the approach you take in being very data-driven because really - there's a lot of conflicting information out there. There's a lot of people who sometimes are scared just by change. And so looking at what the situation actually is based on evidence makes a lot of sense. This was an issue with a number of bills around public safety in prior sessions where there - in 2020 - where a number of accountability bills passed. And then following that, some seeming cold feet amid pushback from some law enforcement officials and others saying, Well, you have prevented us from being able to do our jobs and you're putting public safety at risk by holding us more accountable. What was your take on that, and on some of the legislation that rolled back some of the accountability progress that was made? [00:27:53] Senator Manka Dhingra: When people started saying - Oh, the Legislature prevented us from doing our work, my question was - No, we made sure you can be held liable for taking wrong actions. If they choose not to act because they're afraid of liability, that is not the Legislature preventing them from doing their job. It's that they have to relearn how to do their job. Or go back to best practices that they were taught - but over time, those practices have kind of gone away because you just kind of start doing what everyone else does and not really focus on best practices. And the bottom line is this. We had to do all of that work because of George Floyd. And the years and years and years of Black people telling us that they're being killed at the hands of law enforcement and frankly, the world not listening - until we had COVID, was stuck in our house, didn't have any new Hollywood movies coming out or new TV shows coming out - and we had to watch the video that was captured. And finally acknowledge and say, Yes, what people have been saying is true and real. We, as elected officials, have to do something about it. So it comes down to, again, what is the problem that we were trying to solve? And the problem is that Black and Brown men and women are treated unfairly with law enforcement. And when you see that so blatantly and so starkly that you cannot make excuses for it anymore, like we have been for decades, you have to do something and you cannot do business as usual. There has to be accountability. And like you said, change is hard. People don't like making change. But unless they do it themselves, it is thrusted upon them and that is - the job of electeds and the Legislature is to make sure we are standing up for each and every human being. I represent cities like Duvall and Woodinville, Redmond, Kirkland - each and every one of these cities had a Black Lives Matter protest - down in Duvall, Woodinville, Redmond, Kirkland. I was there at all of them. This is something that our population demanded and the Legislature provided. And it's going to take a while for people to make the changes, but these are changes that are needed. We are an outlier in the United States when it comes to fatalities at the hand of law enforcement. No other country has that rate like the US does. And it's time we took it seriously and put in practices that are going to prevent it. [00:30:46] Crystal Fincher: Agreed. And as you talked about before, lots of times the public is more in tune with data and reality - because they're living it - than some of the elected officials. We just saw in these past elections in November where we had a county prosecutor race where people with two very different views were running. One focused on more punitive punishment measures, focused a lot on criminalization and focusing on that. Another one who's saying, Okay, we're not going to not follow the law, but we need to follow the evidence and start to pursue policies, or continue the path of pursuing policies like diversion that have been shown to be more successful in helping people get on a productive path to not commit any more crimes and to reduce the amount of people who are victimized. As you continue through this path of various legislation in this session, what is your message to people who do say that police accountability gets in the way of public safety? [00:31:54] Senator Manka Dhingra: And I just say that is absolutely not true. Holding someone responsible for bad actions has nothing to do with public safety. Public safety is about your perception of safety. You can talk about domestic violence and I can tell you, and I'm going to say mostly women - because we are talking mostly women who are victims or survivors - they have not felt safe in their house for decades. And people will not say that that is a public safety issue because they're thinking about what happens when they walk down the street, not what is happening in their own home. When we talk about sexual assault, it's a different concept of public safety. When we talk about trafficking, it's different. And so we have to - when we talk about public safety, it's not about property crimes. It's about individuals feeling safe - at home, in their school, or out in the street. And so we have to be focused on human safety and them feeling safe in whatever environment they're in. Right now when people talk about public safety, they're only talking about car thefts, and thefts from businesses, and graffiti, and seeing people using drugs on the street - that's not public safety. Those all tend to be public health issues and systems that aren't funded appropriately. And frankly, the systemic racism that has occurred in this country for generations that has allowed these wealth inequities. So we have to talk about public safety as the human feeling safe. And I can tell you - it is women, women of color who are most at risk of being victims of public safety, but we don't talk about that. I do. And that is how I frame these issues is - we have done a terrible job when it comes to investigating, reporting, prosecuting sexual assault. Same thing about domestic violence, same thing about trafficking. And when you take a look at the ills in our society, it comes down to gender-based violence. It comes down to our children being raised in households where they see domestic violence, the trauma that occurs through there. So public safety is a lot more complicated than seeing there's a rise in their concerns about public safety - because when you really take a look at the holistic concept of public safety, there isn't. And I'll just say for decades, crime in our country has been reducing. Then the last three years, because of the pandemic, you've seen a rise in violence and a rise in crimes, but overall, when you take a look at trend over decades, we are at a downward trend. It is still the best time to live in America right now than it ever has been. That is actually true. Technology is there to help us, we have more access to resources, there are more people being fed, and there are more people who are actually safe. So let's try to change that conversation on public safety because the sound bites are not based in reality. [00:34:55] Crystal Fincher: They really aren't. And it looks like by these - once again - most recent election results, the public recognizes that and wants to move towards more evidence-based solutions. I also want to talk about - you talk about who are most often victims of crime. And when we talk about victims, so often it's in the context of, Well, victims would want this person punished. And what are you going to say to the victims if this person doesn't spend a whole bunch of time in jail? But it seems like we engage less on - how do we actually best support victims? How do we do that? And how can we do better? [00:35:32] Senator Manka Dhingra: That is such a great question. Thank you so much for framing it the way you just did because that's absolutely true. People - because of TV shows - mostly have this image of this victim who's like this innocent, fragile, vulnerable person who has never done anything wrong in her life. That is not who the victim is. Victims are as complicated as any single human being. And many times when you take a look at a victim of crime, especially in our society, they're not strangers. You normally know the perpetrator of violence, and there's that connection. And so when you talk about what the victim wants, it isn't necessarily punishment or prison time for 20 years. It is much more nuanced and much more complicated. As I mentioned, I used to run the Therapeutic Alternative Unit, and we really used to make sure - we were the first in the country, actually, to not have any criminal history that's a bar to participate in this program. But I insisted that part of this program, we have a victim advocate. And that when there were crimes involving victims, that the victim's voice would be part of what the resolution is. And I cannot tell you - over and over again, when you provided victims the resources and the services and you explained the program, they wanted that defendant to go through that program. Because they want that person to get better, they want to make sure that what happened to them doesn't happen to anyone else. And when the victim feels supported and has resources on their own, they can actually deal with their own trauma and move on - because no one wants to hold on to that hurt and that anger. It is not good for anybody. But unless we as a society can provide those resources and that support, the victims aren't going to get better. And when they don't, you just have that cycle over and over again. And one of the bills that I'm really proud of - I passed a couple of years ago - and it was about making sure that if you are a survivor of domestic violence, sexual assault or trafficking, when you are on your path to recovery, you can get your criminal history, your convictions expunged. And the reason I really wanted that bill is because - trauma exerts itself as a reaction, not just as a memory. And so there are so many people in the criminal justice system who are survivors - they're survivors of violence. And they're engaging in the criminal justice system because of that trauma. And we don't have a criminal justice system that is trauma-informed. We're trying to get there. But being trauma-informed means you have to understand that anyone coming into that system may and most probably has suffered trauma. And unless you deal with that underlying trauma, you're going to continue on that cycle. So I think there's a lot more work we need to do in being trauma-informed throughout our criminal justice system. [00:38:31] Crystal Fincher: Well, I appreciate that and appreciate your work. And also, your work on the 988 system. Can you explain what that is and where that stands in terms of implementation? [00:38:43] Senator Manka Dhingra: Absolutely - you're asking about my favorite bills. I've been working with the mental health community for a very long time in my other job as a Senior Deputy Prosecuting Attorney. And one of the things people have wanted for a very, very long time is a mental health crisis line. Because it's not illegal to be mentally ill, yet we call 911 and have law enforcement show up. And so 988 is a national number that went live in July. And we took this opportunity in the state of Washington to create an entire crisis system around 988. So right now, if anyone who needs help - if they're suicidal or in crisis, that's a mental health substance use disorder crisis - they can call 988. The 988 phone number is actually staffed by mental health professionals - individuals who are trained in how to deescalate and help with situations. And so we made sure that we provided funding for the people responding to the calls - that they had the credentials needed to do this work. We made sure that these hubs of 988 are actually going to - in the next few years, they are going to have a mobile response team that is made up of community mental health professionals along with peers. We are connecting 911 and 988 in the sense that there's cross-training - because a lot of the calls that come to 911 are actually mental health calls. So we want them to be able to transfer those calls through 988. And there may be times when a call comes into 988, but there's a weapon involved or a gun involved, and they need that help from 911. So we're working on cross-training and some kind of cross-mobilization. But what we have found is - from other states that have done some of this work - is that when you have a mental health professional answering these calls, 90% of the calls are able to be resolved. The 10% that need someone to show up for them - 7% can be handled with a mental health professional going out along with a peer, and only 3% need law enforcement. And so being a lot smarter about how we are responding to people in crisis - because they don't need to go to jail, most of them don't even need to go to an emergency room. We also took this opportunity to set up a structure where we can have more technology and data. We would love to do a bed tracking system, so someone who needs help - the 988 operator can take a look and know that there is a bed available for them, that they can connect them to treatment. Come January, our state mandates next-day appointments. So if you call the crisis line, your insurance or Medicaid - whatever it can be - is mandated that the next day you are going to go see somebody. And that's going to be a game changer because you're making sure people get the treatment they need when they need it. So I am super excited about this system. More work to be done on it, but we are well on our path to do it. We - normally, in the state of Washington, while we can be proud of so much, we are not the state that is in the top 10 for mental health services, but our 988 bill is the national model in the country. And I have to say, I was very proud - with Representative Orwall who sponsored the bill, and I - both of us got an award, actually a national award, recognizing us for our 988 bill. So very, very exciting time and so much more to come on this. [00:42:20] Crystal Fincher: Excellent. And what do you say to people who are concerned that - who are trying to avoid a situation that may be escalated, especially with some of the challenges that law enforcement have in responding to and deescalation, deescalating situations - whether it's people of color, or disabled people, or people in crisis - that calling 988 could result in a law enforcement response or an involuntary confinement for behavioral health treatment. [00:42:53] Senator Manka Dhingra: When I said the numbers on the percentage of calls and the manner in which they're dealt with, what you find is when you have the right resources right at the beginning, you don't need law enforcement, you don't need civil commitment because you are able to, again, use your motivational interviewing skills. You're able to offer people services and support. That next-day appointment is critical. Because if they're willing to go see someone - a doctor, a nurse, a mental health specialist, whoever that person may be - they don't need to be involuntary treatment, ITA'ed as they call it, because they're going in for treatment. So you have to make early intervention options available as much as possible. There are always those individuals who may need a high level of care, so you have to make sure that you are able to meet them wherever they are - but you got to make sure you're providing early intervention. I will have a bill next session that actually sets up these facilities called 23-hour facilities. And so the hope really is that those individuals who can't wait for the next-day appointment, that we are actually able to take them to these 23-hour facilities where the hope really is that they're there for 23 hours - because they can't stay there longer than that - and then you have to have a transition plan on how you're going to get them connected to other services and support. And that's what we have found is that - the right intervention at the right time - really, people want help, that's why they're calling. They're not calling because they actually want to kill themselves. It's because they're like, Help me, I'm afraid I'm going to do this. And so you have to provide the help that they're asking for. [00:44:31] Crystal Fincher: Much appreciated. I appreciate you taking the time to go through all of this with us today. As we close, I wanted to talk about one of my favorite things that you, or any legislator does - and that is working with youth. How do you do that? And what were you able to accomplish? [00:44:49] Senator Manka Dhingra: I love working with our youth. When I first ran for office five years ago - at that time, my kids were 13 and 15. And I used to coach Destination Imagination, and Math Team, and a lot of teams. And so I had to tell them that, Hey, I'm going to run for office, so I'm going to have to step aside from coaching these teams. And the teens were like, Can we help? And I'm like, Yes. So I had 250 teenagers helping me on my first and second campaign - no one had heard, seen so many teenagers working on a campaign. And so my promise to them was - I will continue engaging with them. So I sponsor bills that have been brought to me by teens every year for the last five years. And my favorite bill for next session is going to be one - is one - that's been brought to me by teens in my district. And that's around eliminating gender-based pricing. They literally went to Target and Costco and took pictures of a bike helmet that's pink in color and the exact same helmet - same company, same everything - that's blue in color. And the blue helmet is for $20 and the pink helmet is for $25. And they even did that with adult diapers. I didn't know this, but apparently women's adult diapers are much more expensive than men adult diapers - no clue why. So I'm going to have that bill next session - I'm super excited about it. But these teens are the ones that made sure we now have menstrual products in all our schools and college bathrooms. We no longer, in Washington, pay taxes on menstrual products. And it's not just this stuff they care about - they care about access to mental health treatment and services, and substance use disorder, and criminal justice reform. You name it, and these teens want to make positive changes. And I cannot tell you how excited I feel looking at the next generation. [00:46:44] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And this isn't even the first bill that they've brought to you. In fact, we have better access to menstrual products because of youth bringing up legislation, correct? [00:46:54] Senator Manka Dhingra: Absolutely. They really want to make sure that they can change the world. And that bill came about because of a conversation I was having with some of the teens. And the teens in the Redmond High School said they have menstrual products in their school. And I knew that teens in Kent and Moses Lake did not. And they started talking about how that's just not fair - that our school districts in more affluent communities are actually providing menstrual products than schools that are not in affluent areas. And guess who needs it more? And so just the fact that these teens think about access - and think about who is getting services and resources and who isn't - is just heartwarming for me. And the fact that they're willing to fight for others. So yes, all schools in Washington and colleges provide menstrual products in bathrooms now. [00:47:51] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And if people want to learn more about the work that you're doing or support legislation that you have, what's the best way for them to get engaged? [00:48:00] Senator Manka Dhingra: The best way is to email my office, or get a hold of me on social media, and subscribe to my newsletter. If anyone is interested in any particular bill or issue, my office can help you get connected to how to get more information. But check out our website, leg.wa.gov - they have a lot of resources on how you can follow a bill, how you can sign up to testify. Our hearings are all hybrid, so you can testify on an issue from the comfort of your home or your car - as long as you're not driving. And if you don't want to testify, you can send in written testimony or simply show your support for a bill or opposition to a bill - and all of that gets counted. And democracy is not an individual sport - it is a team sport. You got to play and you got to be part of a team - and that's the only way we make our world better. [00:48:56] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you so much today, Senator Manka Dhingra, for joining us and for sharing all of the work that you're doing. [00:49:02] Senator Manka Dhingra: Thank you so much. This was a great conversation and I loved absolutely chatting about these tough issues with you. [00:49:09] Crystal Fincher: Well, thank you and we will stay in touch. Thank you all for listening to Hacks & Wonks. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler. Our assistant producer is Shannon Cheng, and our Post-Production Assistant is Bryce Cannatelli. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks, and you can follow me @finchfrii, spelled F-I-N-C-H-F-R-I-I. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered right to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave us a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

KVI's John Carlson interviews Republican candidate for Washington State Senate, Ryika Hooshangi, (45th Legislative District in Redmond) about her campaign against incumbent Democrat, Manka Dhingra. Hooshangi cites the police pursuit reform law passed by Dhingra and Democrats in the 2021 Legislative session, Hooshangi says her three election priorites are public safety, education and affordability, Hooshangi says Dhingra and Legislative Democrats have neglected school kids and educational achievement after Gov. Inslee and Democrats caved to teachers unions and shut down schools during COVID, why "asynchronous" learning is "discriminating against working families". Her campaign website is www.ryika.com/

Desperate Democrats go after DeSantis on Hurricane Ian response. Kamala Harris says Hurricane Ian relief will be based on "equity" then ignores questions on what she meant. Buck says, "Kamala Harris sounds like someone who gives HR seminars." Bill Maher and guest want Democrats to dump Kamala, but think they can't because of identity politics. Go to VolunteerFlorida.org to help the citizens of Florida. Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis has announced more than $20 million raised. Every bit counts. Brazil polling was way off, going to runoff after media said leftist would win easily. C&B remind that polls just look at one snapshot in time. Seattle Times, Starbucks and the Seattle Seahawks send Washington State Senate candidate Tiffany Smiley cease and desist letters over recent ads. She has the Democrats rattled.Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuckSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Desperate Democrats go after DeSantis on Hurricane Ian response. Kamala Harris says Hurricane Ian relief will be based on "equity" then ignores questions on what she meant. Buck says, "Kamala Harris sounds like someone who gives HR seminars." Bill Maher and guest want Democrats to dump Kamala, but think they can't because of identity politics. Go to VolunteerFlorida.org to help the citizens of Florida. Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis has announced more than $20 million raised. Every bit counts. Brazil polling was way off, going to runoff after media said leftist would win easily. C&B remind that polls just look at one snapshot in time. Seattle Times, Starbucks and the Seattle Seahawks send Washington State Senate candidate Tiffany Smiley cease and desist letters over recent ads. She has the Democrats rattled.Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuckSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hugh covers the news of the morning in The Rundown. Today's guests: Rep. Mike Gallagher, Congressman from Wisconsin-08. Kathy Barnette, Pennsylvania Senate candidate. Carle Sands, Pennsylvania Senate candidate. Tiffany Smiley, Washington State Senate candidate. Josh Mandel, Ohio Senate candidate. Jonathan Swan, political reporter, Axios. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal suspend operations in Russia, the Washington State Senate passed a bill to classify gig workers as contractors with benefits, and leaked Nvidia source code is being used to sign malware. MP3 Please SUBSCRIBE HERE. You can get an ad-free feed of Daily Tech Headlines for $3 a month here. A specialContinue reading "Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal suspend operations in Russia – DTH"