Mostly Bad News

Morning Fizz February 17, 2011 at 8:30 am Morning Fizz

1. Hundreds of protesters marched from downtown up Pine St. around 7 pm last night to protest King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg’s decision not to prosecute SPD officer Ian Birk in the August shooting death of Native American woodcarver John T. Williams.

Photos, Copyright Sean Balch 2011

2. Spotted in Olympia yesterday: Former mayoral candidate Joe Mallahan.

3. The state house and senate have reached a budget deal to address the $1.1 billion shortfall for the final two quarters of the 2009-2011 biennium. (Next up the $5 billion shortfall for the 2011-13 biennium.)

By tightening eligibility requirements and scaling back stipends respectively, the deal preserves the Basic Health Plan (subsidized health care for the poor) and the Disability Life Line (help for people who can’t work due to disabilities), although at diminished levels.

While the budget is mostly bad news—a $25 million cut to K-4 class size reduction funds and tightening eligibility to the children’s health care program—there was some good news for Seattle: The $700,000 in state liquor revenue that helps the city cover things like the winter shelter, crime prevention, and domestic-violence prevention programs was restored. The money, $6 million overall for cities statewide, had originally been swept out of the dedicated fund and shifted back to the state patch up the rest of the budget.

4. At a briefing for the city council’s public safety committee yesterday afternoon, officials with the Seattle Police Department and the city attorney’s office said that SPD took actions against just two properties under the city’s new chronic nuisance property law, which allows the city to abate properties with a high number of nuisances like drug dealing, prostitution, assaults, and robbery, last year, but plans to step up the program in 2011.

The two properties were a motel on Aurora that was ultimately shut down and sold at auction, and a Belltown apartment building where SPD required the building owners to increase security.

The reason the city pursued so few cases in 2010, according to a report on the first year of the ordinance, was that SPD decided a property would have to have twice as many nuisance violations as the ordinance stipulates “to ensure that if the abatement actions went to court, there would be ample evidence to support the nuisance declaration even if some of the nuisance activities could not be proven by a preponderance of the evidence,” the standard for criminal prosecution. This year, the city will go back to the lower bar, and is expected to take action against more properties.

5. U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA, 1) couldn’t have been too happy about yesterday’s surprising news that former state GOP chair Luke Esser got a gig lobbying for the lefty Service Employees International Union 775.

The SEIU traditionally does heavy lifting (and spending) for Democrats in the governor’s race. Inslee is expected to run for governor in 2012 against Republican Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna. Esser is a longtime ally and confidant of McKenna.

Nothing for Inslee to worry about. The SEIU tells PubliCola that Esser has a small contract to lobby Republicans in the state legislature on home care issues. (The SEIU represents home care workers.)

The SEIU has worked with Republicans before, including GOP consultant Brett Bader, to lobby state legislators (such as then-senator Esser) back in 2004.

“Obviously that didn’t affect our aggressive support for Gregoire,” SEIU spokesman Adam Glickman says.

6. As we reported yesterday, state Rep. Eric Pettigrew’s (D-37, S. Seattle) bill to prioritize teacher evaluations over seniority when it comes to layoffs is not going to make it out of committee. (Today is the cut off in the house for policy bills and Pettigrew’s bill, the subject of a testy hearing on Tuesday, isn’t even going to come up for a vote.)

“There was a choice to be made and the Democrats decided to stay with the status quo instead of doing what’s best for students,” says Shannon Campion, Executive Director of Stand for Children, a group that backs Obama-style education reforms such as tying teacher evaluations to student testing. “We were having conversations with Republicans [about compromise amendments] and they supported them, but the Democrats are in control, and they decided not to bring it to a vote.”

A Republican cosponsor, Rep. Cathy Dahlquist (R-31, Enumclaw) said she was disappointed: “We need the best teachers in front of students and anything that would facilitate that is a good thing.”

The main compromise amendment was actually proposed by a Democrat, Rep. Tim Probst (D-17, Vancouver). We have a call in to Probst.

The bill had 10 cosponsors including seven Democrats and three Republicans.

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http://www.twitter.com/joeszi Joe Szilagyi

Which building in Belltown?
Guest

Inslee doesn’t represent district 7.
Mikos

“Inslee is expected to run for governor in 2012…”
Based on the first ever Christmas card I received from him, he’s already running.
gloomy gus

The P-I reports it as a building “in the 2300 block of Fourth,” which means….the Franklin! Owned by the fellow who owns the Croc land as well. The P-I says:

“The second property, a 36-unit apartment building, has experienced an 82 percent drop in 9-1-1 calls since the owner was served with a declaration and began meeting with police, according to the report. Police had documented 21 nuisances within 10 months prior, including robbery, assault, harassment and drug activity. Police have been meeting with the apartment owner since October.

One main problem was tenants often would sell their keys to other people, who would use the building to sell drugs or engage in prostitution. Also, the building’s front and back doors had been destroyed. In January, the owner installed metal doors that require keycard access. The keycards can be deactivated if they’re given to unauthorized people.”
gloomy gus

The P-I reports it as a building “in the 2300 block of Fourth,” which means….the Franklin! Owned by the fellow who owns the Croc land as well. The P-I says:

“The second property, a 36-unit apartment building, has experienced an 82 percent drop in 9-1-1 calls since the owner was served with a declaration and began meeting with police, according to the report. Police had documented 21 nuisances within 10 months prior, including robbery, assault, harassment and drug activity. Police have been meeting with the apartment owner since October.

One main problem was tenants often would sell their keys to other people, who would use the building to sell drugs or engage in prostitution. Also, the building’s front and back doors had been destroyed. In January, the owner installed metal doors that require keycard access. The keycards can be deactivated if they’re given to unauthorized people.”
gloomy gus

The P-I reports it as a building “in the 2300 block of Fourth,” which means….the Franklin! Owned by the fellow who owns the Croc land as well. The P-I says:

“The second property, a 36-unit apartment building, has experienced an 82 percent drop in 9-1-1 calls since the owner was served with a declaration and began meeting with police, according to the report. Police had documented 21 nuisances within 10 months prior, including robbery, assault, harassment and drug activity. Police have been meeting with the apartment owner since October.

One main problem was tenants often would sell their keys to other people, who would use the building to sell drugs or engage in prostitution. Also, the building’s front and back doors had been destroyed. In January, the owner installed metal doors that require keycard access. The keycards can be deactivated if they’re given to unauthorized people.”
gloomy gus

The P-I reports it as a building “in the 2300 block of Fourth,” which means….the Franklin! Owned by the fellow who owns the Croc land as well. The P-I says:

“The second property, a 36-unit apartment building, has experienced an 82 percent drop in 9-1-1 calls since the owner was served with a declaration and began meeting with police, according to the report. Police had documented 21 nuisances within 10 months prior, including robbery, assault, harassment and drug activity. Police have been meeting with the apartment owner since October.

One main problem was tenants often would sell their keys to other people, who would use the building to sell drugs or engage in prostitution. Also, the building’s front and back doors had been destroyed. In January, the owner installed metal doors that require keycard access. The keycards can be deactivated if they’re given to unauthorized people.”
Annoyed

Pettigrew’s bill going down was good news not bad. Reality triumphs over spin. There was no money for increased teacher assessments and more importantly no agreement on what those assessments looked like. There was no accompanying mechanism to be sure that principals are competent to do assessments (hint, given what I see in this district many are NOT) and furthermore the biggest district in the state, Seattle Public Schools, has just moved to a 4-tier teacher rating scale that promises to get rid of deadwood. This assessment was agreed to by both the Union and Administration. But the new rating scale needs a year or two to shake out the kinks and Pettigrew’s bill would have destroyed any realistic assessment of its effectiveness.

Frankly I am tired of seeing Shannon Campion’s name. She and her local Stand for the Children organization are shrill, they are as sloganeering as the unions they want to abolish, and they aren’t even a WA grassroots organization. Just an outpost of a big D.C. PAC.
Buy My Vote

WEA wins again, kids lose again to big campaign donations from the teachers union. Where is the outrage by the parents? Why do bad teachers with years of tenue get to keep their jobs while excellent teachers with great evaluations with less tenue get the boot? No wonder people are becoming so disgusted with both politicians and labor unions!
Trevor

The SEIU/ Inslee connection in Fizz this morning is a real stretch.
Michaelp

Of course, the real question now:

Who’s going to run for Congress in the 1st? I’ve heard a couple names…should be fun!
Michaelp

Of course, the real question now:

Who’s going to run for Congress in the 1st? I’ve heard a couple names…should be fun!
ivan

“Bad teachers with ‘tenue’ “? Who says they are bad teachers? Who? Where is your evidence that this is the case? You don’t have any, and you can’t produce any. All you have is bullshit, and poor spelling.
ivan

Most of what these two clowns write is a real stretch.
Natehc

This is an oversimplification.

The Seattle Schools District is implementing a teacher evaluation system. Pettigrew’s bill would have stopped that implementation.
http://manywordsforrain.blogspot.com/ Mr Baker

I’m a parent; it’s the devil you know v. the devil that has a record of spotty performance in other states lobbying hard to emulate the privately run Texas Prison system.
ratcityreprobate

Josh Feit and Seattle Times Editorial Board big losers at House Education Committee.
ivan

Not to mention the Senate Education Committee, where Chair Rosemary McAuliffe wouldn’t even schedule a hearing, even in the face of an e-mail campaign by the League of Education Voters.

The reformies and their lackeys, which include Josh,will try to spin this as a “victory for the status quo”and themselves as the forward-thinking agents of change. The facts are otherwise. The teachers, the school districts, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and the Legislature all worked out an improved, more multifaceted evaluation process that resulted in Senate Bill 6696.

SB 6696 isn’t punitive enough for the reformies, and doesn’t implement their union-busting agenda quickly enough, so they wrote this bill, got their unwitting dupe Pettigrew to co-sponsor it, union-hating corporate shills like Carlyle to promote it, and good little puppies like Josh to say it had “bipartisan support,” and therefore must be good legislation.

The Legislature didn’t buy their bullshit, and neither will most public school parents.
ivan

Not to mention the Senate Education Committee, where Chair Rosemary McAuliffe wouldn’t even schedule a hearing, even in the face of an e-mail campaign by the League of Education Voters.

The reformies and their lackeys, which include Josh,will try to spin this as a “victory for the status quo”and themselves as the forward-thinking agents of change. The facts are otherwise. The teachers, the school districts, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and the Legislature all worked out an improved, more multifaceted evaluation process that resulted in Senate Bill 6696.

SB 6696 isn’t punitive enough for the reformies, and doesn’t implement their union-busting agenda quickly enough, so they wrote this bill, got their unwitting dupe Pettigrew to co-sponsor it, union-hating corporate shills like Carlyle to promote it, and good little puppies like Josh to say it had “bipartisan support,” and therefore must be good legislation.

The Legislature didn’t buy their bullshit, and neither will most public school parents.
Papi

People in glass houses shouldn’t throw unnecessary commas.
Reformie Lackey # 494949

so dude what is the evaluation process the teachers support?
ivan

The evaluation process in the pilot projects provided for in the language of SB 6696, and the process in SEA’s latest contract with Seattle Public Schools. Both of these documents are online, so you can read them for yourself.
ivan

The evaluation process in the pilot projects provided for in the language of SB 6696, and the process in SEA’s latest contract with Seattle Public Schools. Both of these documents are online, so you can read them for yourself.
Education Voter

If they can’t muster support for total reform, they at least ought to let schools designate a limited number (2, 3, 4?) of the very best low-seniority teachers as “protected teachers”, or franchise players, who can be kept, regardless of seniority rankings.
ivan

And who is to decide who those are? How are they to decide? How do we ensure that the process and the criteria are exactly the same from school to school?

What you suggest is flat-out unworkable, and always has been, because it is 1) subjective, 2) subjective, and 3) subjective. Subjective will never work. It will lead to lawsuits and six-figure judgments. This is why the Association of School Directors testified against this bill. It is why the Principals’ Association testified against it. It’s not like “solutions” like this are new or anything.

Principals and School Board directors are the ones who would have to IMPLEMENT such a process. Are they somehow unqualified to come to that conclusion? Are you going to tell me they’re in bed with the unions to defend and protect incompetent teachers? Are you going to tell me they don’t give a damn about children?

Because that’s what the reformies are saying. To hear them talk, only THEY care about the children, and everybody else is part of the corrupt system and the status quo.

Well, it’s bullshit. Stand For Children and the League of Education Voters are a bunch of snake-oil fakers, and if you pay taxes in this state, you should thank the legislators who called bullshit on these bullshitters, and look with a much more critical eye on those legislators and media lackeys who supported them

Viva La Cola!

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