Tag: state senate

Democratic Party, Elections, Environment, legislature

Longtime Legislator Carlyle Says He’s Going Out on Top

www.senatedemocrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2021...

By John Stang

On Monday, longtime state Sen. Reuven Carlyle, D-Seattle, announced that he won’t run for re-election. In an interview with PubliCola, Carlyle said he has “a deep sense of fulfillment” and is “taking the luxury of going out on top.”

He is the second Seattle state senator to announce that he won’t seek re-election, following Democratic Sen. David Frockt (D-46), who announced his retirement in October.

Seattle’s liberal legislators have gradually shifted further left over time, a trend that led to rumors that Carlyle would face a primary challenge from someone on the left. (As PubliCola reported Thursday, Rep. Noel Frame, D-36, has said she will seek the seat Carlyle is vacating.)

Carlyle said his party’s ongoing leftward tilt (at least in the Puget Sound region) had nothing to do with his decision to leave. Citing his margin of victory in 2018, when he won 89 percent of the vote, Carlyle said he wasn’t worried about reelection. As of Thursday, he had $135,000 remaining in his campaign account, according to state Public Disclosure Commission records.

Instead, Carlyle pointed to the 2021 passage of the Climate Commitment Act  as a crowning achievement of his legislative career. The Climate Commitment Act places a cap on greenhouse gas emissions while creating a program to auction off emissions allowances to large polluters. It took Carlyle several years to get the legislation passed, after first facing a hostile Republican-controlled Senate, then opposition from moderate Democrats in swing districts after his party took over the Senate in 2018.

Carlyle said his biggest unfulfilled wishes are eliminating the death penalty and bolstering the state’ data privacy laws — efforts that have passed the Senate, but stalled in the House.

“We won the Super Bowl of climate activities,”  he said.

The 2021 law requires the state Department of Ecology to create a system by 2023 capping the state’s annual industrial carbon emissions, a cap that slowly decreases over time—from almost 100 million tons in 2018 to 50 million by 2030 and 5 million by 2050.

The state will auction off parts of the overall annual limit to large polluters—those that emit 25,000 metric tons or more of greenhouse gases annually four times a year, and companies will be allowed to trade, buy and sell those allowances. The state estimates that about 100 companies produce that quantity of greenhouse gases, including the oil, cement, steel and power industries, and predicts that the auctions will raise about $500 million a year for projects aimed at reducing carbon emissions (and alleviating the impact of climate change) across the state.

Carlyle also sponsored a bill in 2019 that will phase out all coal-fired electricity in Washington by 2025 and eventually phase out natural-gas power as well. The new law sets a goal of 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2045. Over the past several years, Carlyle said, “we have passed the strongest suite of climate change legislation in United States history at the state level.” Continue reading “Longtime Legislator Carlyle Says He’s Going Out on Top” →

legislature, Police

Last-Minute Bill Would Limit Police Traffic Stops
State Sen. Joe Nguyen (D-34)
State Sen. Joe Nguyen (D-34)

By Paul Kiefer

When video of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota police officer Kim Potter killing 20-year-old Duante Wright during a traffic stop started to circulate across the country, Sen. Joe Nguyen (D-34, West Seattle) realized that the slate of police reform legislation that went before the Washington State Legislature this year had a noticeable hole. “We talk all the time about driving while Black,” he said, “and for some reason, it just didn’t connect with me that we should just prevent cops from using minor violations as a way to stop and question people.”

In a last-minute effort to build momentum for next year’s legislative session, Nguyen wrote a new bill—just one page long—that he hopes will curtail opportunities for minor traffic stops to escalate into arrests or shootings. In its current form, the bill only prevents police officers from stopping drivers for eight common moving violations, including improper turns, driving with expired tags, and driving without a valid license. “A lot of the work that we’ve been doing has been focused on police tactics and accountability measures,” said Nguyen, “but this bill is about trying to stop the confrontations in the first place.”

“If an officer approaches every stop with the mindset that they are looking for dangerous people, they will act in ways that potentially confirm this ‘danger bias’ during the traffic stop—potentially leading to deadly consequences.”—Seattle Inspector General Lisa Judge

The bill is based on similar legislation that Virginia’s legislature passed last year, which lawmakers in that state said would effectively end the use of so-called “pretext stops”—traffic stops in which a police officer uses a minor moving violation as an excuse to detain a driver they suspect of a more serious crime.

The Washington state supreme court initially ruled pretext stops unconstitutional in 1999. However, in a related decision in 2012, the court backtracked by recognizing so-called “mixed-motive stops,” wherein an officer may stop a driver whom they suspect of a more serious crime if they have a serious, “independent” intent to also address a moving violation. The introduction of the “mixed-motive stop” effectively reversed the court’s 1999 decision, because disproving an officer’s claims about the motives for a traffic stop is exceedingly difficult.

Seattle Inspector General Lisa Judge, who leads audits of Seattle Police Department tactics and discipline, told PubliCola that she’s aware that community members and officers consider minor traffic stops to be “inherently dangerous,” both for the officer conducting the stop and for the driver, and particularly for drivers of color. “Given the significant concerns all around, it begs the question why police continue to stop vehicles for low-level, oftentimes civil, violations,” she wrote in a text. “Is the inherent risk of that encounter devolving to use of force or a death worth writing a ticket for expired registration or a broken taillight?” Continue reading “Last-Minute Bill Would Limit Police Traffic Stops” →

Drugs, homelessness, King County, legislature, Morning Fizz, Transportation

Hostile Architecture at the Library, Needle Exchange Ban in Federal Way, and a Roads-Heavy Transpo Bil

1. The Seattle Public Library spent nearly $40,000 installing slanted steel sculptural grate covers above the grates outside its Ballard library branch to prevent unsheltered people from sleeping there. The grates open onto the parking garage, and are a warmer place to sleep than the nearby concrete sidewalks or the grass in Ballard Commons Park, a nearby park and plaza where homeless people also live.

According to library spokeswoman Laura Gentry, the new grate covers, which consist of steel plates pitched at a steep angle to the ground, are meant to “prevent people from placing items or sleeping on the grate due to the public safety risks involved.

“In particular,” Gentry continued, “the Library sought to prevent two regularly recurring incidents: 1) unsafe items, trash and human waste falling through the grate into the parking structure below and 2) the grate getting completely covered so that air could not flow through it, which creates serious safety hazards. Proper air flow is critical for fire safety, and is especially important during a pandemic.”

The sidewalks around the library, and the nearby park, have been a constant source of complaints by housed neighbors who argue that tents in the park are unsightly and that the people inside them pose a danger to children and others who use the park.

Two years ago, SPL took a similar action to deter people from congregating near the Ballard library, installing a series of bent metal pipes at a cost of $10,000 to serve a similar purpose. (At the time, library communications director Andra Addison said the purpose of the pipes was to address “unattended items left overnight in those areas, smoking, food and beverage waste, feces, urine and discarded needles” in response to neighborhood and patron complaints.)

Both installations are examples of “hostile architecture”—elements, such as the “anti-homeless spikes” some cities install on railings and benches, designed to prevent people from lingering in a space or using it for something other than its intended purpose, such as sleeping. In a 2019 photo essay, the New York Times described hostile architecture as “ways of saying ‘don’t make yourself at home’ in public.”

According to Gentry, “the Library has no additional plans to install similar elements at other libraries.”

2. After nearly an hour of public comment, much of it from residents arguing that needle-exchange programs encourage addiction by providing clean needles to injection drug users (an argument that makes about as much sense as claiming the availability of glassware encourages alcohol abuse), the Federal Way City Council voted Tuesday night to suspend a 10-year-old program that provides overdose-reversal drugs, counseling, and access to treatment in addition to clean needles.

As a needle exchange opponent put it during public comment, “If you give them needles, they’re gonna shoot up and they’re gonna die—it’s not the AIDS or all the other things that’s killing them, it’s the drugs.”

The resolution, which refers to needle exchanges as “hypodermic needle giveaway programs,” extends a voluntary suspension of the program by King County Public Health give an 11-person committee time to meet and decide whether to allow the program to operate and, if so, under what conditions. “It is our collective belief that handing out needles in parking lots does not further the goal of treatment or helping those they serve,” the resolution says.

Hysteria over the program ramped up, according to reporting in the Federal Way Mirror, after a local woman did a “stakeout” of a needle exchange van operated by the South County Outreach Referral and Exchange (SCORE). The van responds to people who call the program requesting service. The woman said she requested, and received, 100 needles without turning any in—proving, at least to some residents who oppose the program, that the “exchange” program is really just a needle giveaway.

As an opponent put it during public comment, “If you give them needles, they’re gonna shoot up and they’re gonna die—it’s not the AIDS or all the other things that’s killing them, it’s the drugs.”

Needle exchange programs prevent the spread of communicable diseases such as HIV and hepatitis and provide health-care workers an opportunity to meet with drug users who may be isolated and lack access to health care and other services. (It is beside the point that, as another anti-needle exchange speaker said last night, that “the thing with AIDS is that AIDS is treatable now, and hep C is curable.”)

Since the 1990s, needle exchanges have been common (and are no long especially controversial) in cities; the programs King County funds in Seattle also offers medical care including vaccinations, hepatitis and HIV testing, and abscess treatment in addition to clean needles and Narcan.

Back in 2016, a countywide task force recommended that the county work quickly to stand up two safe consumption sites for drug users, including one outside Seattle. Nearly five years later, the county and city have made no visible progress toward that goal; banning a longstanding needle exchange program marks a significant step in the opposite direction.

3. Last week, environmental and transit access groups were disappointed by the House’s proposed transportation package. This week, their disappointment continued when the Senate Transportation committee unveiled an even more conservative plan on Tuesday. While the House package dedicated just 25 percent to multimodal projects, the Senate allocates even less to that side of the ledger, with just 1.7 percent of the total going to multimodal projects.

The Senate Transportation committee unveiled its new transportation package, “Forward Washington,” at a work session Tuesday. The Senate’s package will generate $17.8 billion in tax revenue over the next 16 years, most of it coming from gas taxes, a new cap-and-trade program, and electric/hydrogen fuel cell vehicle tax, and state bonds.

Transportation accessibility groups and environmental groups say the plan is only a slight improvement over previous packages, like 2015’s roads-heavy “Connecting Washington,” and doesn’t advance the state’s transit infrastructure in a meaningful way

City leaders from around the state showed up to the session to support the package, including the mayor of Issaquah, Mary Lou Pauly; the package includes $500 million to widen SR 18 through the city.

Continue reading “Hostile Architecture at the Library, Needle Exchange Ban in Federal Way, and a Roads-Heavy Transpo Bil” →

income inequality, legislature, State of Washington, Taxes

Capital Gains Tax, Stalled in Previous Sessions, Moves Forward

By Shauna Sowersby

As another major cutoff date in the Washington State Legislature approaches, the once-controversial capital gains tax appears to have more momentum this year than it has since the idea was introduced nearly a decade ago. 

The bill, which is headed for a likely Senate vote today, would impose a 7 percent tax on capital gains—profits on the sale of assets such as stocks—over $250,000.

Legislators have until March 9 to pass the proposed capital gains legislation out of the Senate where it was originally introduced. A variety of factors have changed the prospects for a capital gains tax since similar  measures were initially floated in 2015.

The most obvious factor: the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Senate Majority Leader Andy Billig (D-3, Spokane), tacking to Democrats’ agenda, told PubliCola the bill has more momentum this year than he has seen in previous years for two reasons: uneven economic recovery and a child care crisis that has been “revealed and exacerbated” by the pandemic.

In order to deal with those issues, Billig said, legislators have two goals in mind. First make the tax system more fair. And second: “increase support for families and workers with child care expenses.”

Each year, the first $350 million in revenues from the tax would go into the Education Legacy Trust Account, which would help support schools and access to education. The rest of the anticipated revenue would be put into a new Taxpayer Relief Account. 

Support PubliCola

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We know there are a lot of publications competing for your dollars and attention, but PubliCola truly is different. We cover Seattle and King County on a budget that is funded entirely by reader contributions—no ads, no paywalls, ever.

Being fully independent means that we cover the stories we consider most interesting and newsworthy, based on our own news judgment and feedback from readers about what matters to them, not what advertisers or corporate funders want us to write about. It also means that we need your support. So if you get something out of this site, consider giving something back by kicking in a few dollars a month, or making a one-time contribution, to help us keep doing this work. If you prefer to Venmo or write a check, our Support page includes information about those options. Thank you for your ongoing readership and support.

An updated fiscal note issued by the Office of Financial Management reported that only about 8,000 taxpayers would pay capital gains taxes. Those who would owe the tax would have their first taxes due in 2023, producing estimated revenues of more than $522 million, with revenues expected to climb to more than $609 million by 2027.  

There could be other reasons the bill has more support now than in the past. 

A staffer for the Senate Democrats believes there’s been a shift in narrative. The pandemic has laid bare the class divide in the state, the Democratic source said, and Washington state residents have begun to realize the upside-down tax structure is unfair for the working and middle class.

Small business owners are speaking up. During a press conference earlier in the week, Karla Esquivel, owner of the Andaluz boutique in Columbia City, added that the tax would help customers because fixing the regressive tax code would allow them to ultimately have more spending money, which in turn would be beneficial to local businesses.

Another reason the bill actually has a chance to pass the Senate—historically, the place where it hits the skids—is because Democrats have control of the chamber, which was not the case until 2017. Moreover, in the past, some Democrats such as Sen. Steve Hobbs (D-44, Lake Stevens) have been against the capital gains tax. The balance appears to have shifted somewhat, although not entirely. With the debate front and center, some of those Democrats who still find themselves on the fence may have a harder time avoiding the issue.
 Continue reading “Capital Gains Tax, Stalled in Previous Sessions, Moves Forward” →

criminal justice, legislature, Police

Police Accountability Is On the Agenda in the Upcoming Legislative Session
Washington State Capitol (Credit: Creative Commons)

By Paul Kiefer

On December 24, Washington State Reps. Debra Entenman (D-47) and Jesse Johnson (D-20) filed legislation that would set statewide restrictions on law enforcement tactics, including bans on chokeholds, tear gas and the use of unleashed police dogs for arrests. Less than a week later, state senators Manka Dhingra (D-45) and Jaime Pedersen (D-43) filed a related bill that would expand the jurisdiction of the state’s Criminal Justice Training Commission (CJTC), a group appointed by the governor that has the power to certify and decertify law enforcement officers—to give or revoke their license to work as a law enforcement officer in the state.

In the upcoming state legislative session, another half-dozen members of the house and senate Democratic caucuses plan to add their own bills to the pile of state-level reform proposals that, if passed, could dramatically reshape the role of the state government in law enforcement accountability.

Support PubliCola

If you’re reading this, we know you’re someone who appreciates deeply sourced breaking news, features, and analysis—along with guest columns from local opinion leaders, ongoing coverage of the kind of stories that get short shrift in mainstream media, and informed, incisive opinion writing about issues that matter.

We know there are a lot of publications competing for your dollars and attention, but PubliCola truly is different. We cover Seattle and King County on a budget that is funded entirely by reader contributions—no ads, no paywalls, ever.

Being fully independent means that we cover the stories we consider most interesting and newsworthy, based on our own news judgment and feedback from readers about what matters to them, not what advertisers or corporate funders want us to write about. It also means that we need your support. So if you get something out of this site, consider giving something back by kicking in a few dollars a month, or making a one-time contribution, to help us keep doing this work. If you prefer to Venmo or write a check, our Support page includes information about those options. Thank you for your ongoing readership and support.

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The Dhingra-Pedersen bill is the key to many of the proposed reforms. Under current state law, the CJTC has to wait until a law enforcement agency fires an officer before considering whether to decertify that officer, which allows officers facing misconduct charges to move to new jurisdictions before they can be fired. The proposed legislation would expand the commission’s powers, allowing it to decertify law enforcement officers at its own discretion, including officers who retire or resign in lieu of termination.

The bill would also require law enforcement agencies to report any serious use-of-force incidents to the commission, as well as any preliminary misconduct allegations or criminal charges of which their officers are found guilty. The commission would use that information to identify officers whose misconduct is bad enough to merit decertification.

“Tactical restrictions, a duty to intervene or report excessive force—those things become meaningful when you have a way to enforce a statewide standard.”—State Sen. Jamie Pedersen (D-43)

While the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, the group representing the state’s law enforcement leadership, has not publicly opposed the expansion of the CJTC’s power, Pedersen told PubliCola that some in police leadership have argued that the proposal stifles their voice in police discipline. But Pedersen added that expanding the power of the CJTC might help break down some barriers to accountability posed by local police unions. “One of the big problems in the current system is that almost all policy enforcement happens on a local level, and therefore is subject to the collective bargaining process and the arbitration process,” he said. “But tactical restrictions, a duty to intervene or report excessive force—those things become meaningful when you have a way to enforce a statewide standard.”

The bill would also reduce those sheriffs’ and police chiefs’ roles in the CJTC itself, by increasing the number of commission seats reserved for community members from 2 to 5, while decreasing the number of seats reserved for law enforcement representatives from 10 to 6.

While some of the proposed restrictions, such as a ban on “hot pursuits” in police vehicles, could stir up resistance from SPD, the inclusion of a ban on tear gas could also place the department in a legal bind.

The police tactics legislation filed by Entenman and Johnson would create a new set of statewide standards that the CJTC could enforce. Three of the eight tactical and equipment restrictions included in the bill are already part of the Seattle Police Department’s manual—bans on neck restraints; firing at moving vehicles; and intentionally concealing a badge. But those policies have not spread to many other departments statewide, so the legislation would hold those departments to the same standards as SPD.

While some of the proposed restrictions, such as a ban on “hot pursuits” in police vehicles, could stir up resistance from SPD, the inclusion of a ban on tear gas could also place the department in a legal bind. In July, Judge James Robart, the federal district court judge who oversees police reform in Seattle for the Department of Justice in an arrangement called a consent decree, ruled that Seattle couldn’t forbid officers from using tear gas during protest response; if Entenman and Johnson’s bill is successful, Seattle could face a choice between following state law and following orders from a federal judge. Continue reading “Police Accountability Is On the Agenda in the Upcoming Legislative Session” →

Elections

Charging “Ethnic Discrimination,” Dems Seek to Stop Vote on 37th State Senate Appointment

Members of the 37th District Democrats have filed a lawsuit seeking to prevent the King County Council from voting to fill the state Senate seat left vacant by the election of Sen. Pramila Jayapal to Congress in November. [UPDATE: According to Knoll Lowney, one of the attorneys representing the Democratic Party members seeking to stop the appointment of a new 37th District state senator, a judge has rejected the Democrats’ request for a temporary restraining order. The order would have enjoined the King County Council from appointing a successor to Pramila Jayapal, who was elected to represent the 7th Congressional District last month. Lowney says that more than who ultimately gets appointed, “it’s critically important that we not have a process that is flawed.” The next hearing in the case is scheduled for December 23; the county council could vote on Monday, or decide on their own to wait.

Original post follows.]

The plaintiffs, calling themselves Democrats for Diversity and Inclusion, argue in their complaint that the appointment process was effectively rigged to preclude certain precinct committee officers (PCOs) from participating, leading to the nomination of Rory O’Sullivan, the white former chairman of the district, to represent the majority-minority 37th in the Senate. The King County Council is ultimately responsible for appointing legislators to fill vacant seats, but they typically follow the lead of the PCOs. However, they are not required to do so, and have diverged from that practice in the past, as Josh Feit pointed out on PubliCola this week.

In addition to stopping the vote scheduled for Monday, the lawsuit seeks to force the King County Democratic Central Committee to hold a second vote, this one including all the appointed PCOs (PCOs who were appointed by other PCOs, in this case PCOs from parts of the district that are more heavily populated by people of color) excluded from the process, and submit the list of candidates that results from that process to the council for a decision. (According to the lawsuit, 115 PCOs were excluded from voting; of the 106 who were eligible under the disputed rules, 82 voted.)

In 2012, the 37th was created explicitly as a majority-minority district, and the second- and third-place runners-up in the PCO vote were Puget Sound Sage director Rebecca Saldana and Shasti Conrad, both women of color. Another woman of color, NAACP leader Sheley Secrest, was also in the running. The lawsuit claims the exclusion of the appointed PCOs constitutes deliberate “ethnic discrimination” that led to the choice of O’Sullivan instead of one of the many people of color on the ballot. “The 115 PCOs who were illegally disenfranchised represent more than 40,000 registered 37th District voters in precincts that are primarily African Americans, Hispanics, immigrants and People of Color,” the proposed order says.

It continues:

In total disregard for state law and party rules and to create a favorable electorate for certain candidates, former KCDCC Chair Richard Erwin delayed the nominating caucus until the terms of all 115 appointed PCOs expired, but before the party organization could reconvene to appoint replacement PCOs. KCDCC then refused all appointed PCOs their right to vote in the nominating caucus, something that is unprecedented in the history of the 37th District. Such procedural gamesmanship is not permitted. Party rules explicitly mandate that the nominating caucus include both elected and appointed PCOs. Furthermore, federal and state law prohibit KCDCC from disenfranchising and discriminating against appointed PCOs.

A hearing is reportedly under way right now in King County Superior Court; I’ll post an update when the court issues a ruling on the case. Read the full complaint here, and the proposed order enjoining the county council from voting here.

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