Seattle might limit gig companies from booting workers off apps

Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal now has two challengers for the 2024 race to run Washington’s education department.

Reid Saaris, who started national education nonprofit Equal Opportunity Schools, announced his run on Wednesday, joining former state Rep. Brad Klippert, a Republican from Kennewick, who registered with the PDC and launched a campaign website earlier this year.  They both challenge Reykdal, who announced a bid for a third term earlier this year.

The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction oversees state school budgets and statewide education policies. It is a nonpartisan position.

Reykdal, Klippert and Saaris are so far the only people who have registered with the state Public Disclosure Commission, which enforces state campaign finance laws, including reporting contributions and expenditures. The official candidate declaration period for the 2024 election starts next May.

Saaris, who grew up in Bellevue, was a teacher in South Carolina before spending 10 years heading the nonprofit that helped students of color and low-income students enroll in advanced high school courses. On his website, Saaris said his priorities include focusing on tutoring opportunities, student mental health, post-high school education and career development.

Reykdal, who had served on the Tumwater School Board and in the state Legislature before being elected state superintendent in 2016, said his priorities in his third term include increasing support for student mental health, expanding technical education, providing universal access to school meals and fully funding education.

Klippert, who left the state Legislature in 2022 for an unsuccessful bid to unseat U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse, said he would focus on providing more school choices, including some charter schools and online schools; re-examining the state school funding formula; and increasing transparency in school curricula and budgets.

Correction: Feb. 20, 2024. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the date of the filing period of the 2024 election.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the state of Washington to redraw one of its legislative district boundaries after finding that the Central Washington political boundary impairs the ability of Latinos to choose candidates from their own community.

The ruling comes after a coalition of Latino voters early last year sued Washington’s bipartisan Redistricting Commission, contending that the new once-a-decade political maps perpetuate the disenfranchisement of Yakima County’s minority voters.

The legal challenge focused on the commission’s decision to exclude heavily Latino communities in Yakima County that are adjacent to the new 15th District map. Instead, the new district map pulled in more white and rural communities from Grant, Benton and Franklin counties.

In his ruling released Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Robert S. Lasnik found merit in that argument and gave the state until Feb. 7 to adopt new legislative district maps for the region.

“The question in this case is whether the state has engaged in line-drawing which, in combination with the social and historical conditions in the Yakima Valley region, impairs the ability of Latino voters in that area to elect their candidate of choice on an equal basis with other voters,” wrote Lasnik. “The answer is yes.”

As such, “the Court finds that the boundaries of LD 15, in combination with the social, economic, and historical conditions in the Yakima Valley region, results in an inequality in the electoral opportunities enjoyed by white and Latino voters in the area,” he added.

King County voters are heavily supporting the renewal of a levy for veterans, seniors and human services, which was on Tuesday’s primary ballot. So far, more than 71% of voters have voted yes on the levy.

The levy revenue, which has been collected since 2006, has been directed at assistance for military veterans including housing-stability services and mental health counseling; senior centers and programming and assistance for older people; hotlines and advocacy services for survivors of domestic and gender-based violence; and affordable housing and shelter beds, according to the county. 

This week’s ballot measure authorized a six-year property tax levy starting next year: 10 cents per $1,000 of assessed valuation – or $80 for an $800,000 home – with 3.5% increases between 2025 and 2029. Eligible seniors, veterans and people with disabilities would be exempt from the property tax. According to the county, the levy will bring in $564 million over six years.

Earlier this year, the King County Council rejected a levy rate increase to 12 cents per $1,000 of assessed valuation, despite housing advocates pushing for the tax increase to address rising construction costs.

County voters first approved a veterans and human services levy in 2005 and renewed it in 2011. In 2017, the county voters approved the levy after the county added assistance for seniors to the measure.

Voters have narrowed the field in King County Council elections, as results come in following Tuesday’s primary.

Jorge L. Barón and Sarah Reyneveld have significant leads in the race for County Council District 4, which covers the northwest parts of Seattle from Belltown to the city limits. 

Barón, the former executive director of the Northwest Immigrants Rights Project, received about 50% of the vote. Reyneveld, an assistant attorney general for the state, received about 28%. They both lead Becka Johnson Poppe, a King County budget and policy manager, who received 19%. Incumbent Councilmember Jeanne Kohl-Welles, who first took the seat in 2016 after more than 20 years in the state legislature, announced her retirement earlier this year.

For District 8, which covers Capitol Hill, West Seattle, Vashon and Maury islands and parts of Burien and Tukwila, Teresa Mosqueda and Sofia Aragon have significant leads over GoodSpaceGuy. Mosqueda, who is on the Seattle City Council, had about 57% of the vote, and Aragon, the mayor of Burien and executive director of the Washington Center for Nursing, had 37%. GoodSpaceGuy, a frequent candidate for elected office, received 4%. Incumbent Councilmember Joe McDermott, a former state legislator, decided not to run for re-election after 13 years on the County Council.

The top two leaders in each race will face off in the general election in November. County Council members are elected by the voters in their geographic district. The positions are nonpartisan. Also on the general election ballot will be King County Councilmembers Girmay Zahilay in District 2 and Claudia Balducci in District 6. Zahilay, whose district includes Skyway, southeast Seattle, Central District, the University District, Laurelhurst and Ravenna, and Balducci, whose district includes Redmond, parts of Kirkland, north Bellevue and Mercer Island, drew no challengers.

Updated at 4:15 p.m. Aug. 3, 2023 to reflect the latest vote count from King County.

Correction: an earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the year that King County Councilmember Jeanne Kohl-Welles took her council seat.

The Washington Legislative Ethics Board has fined state Sen. Manka Dhingra, D-Redmond, $250 for using public resources at a speaking event where she urged people to register to vote and support pro-abortion candidates.

Dhingra, who is running for state attorney general, must also pay back $92.43 in mileage expenses for the June 2022 news conference in Olympia with Gov. Jay Inslee and others to discuss the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade the day prior, according to the board’s ruling.

The ruling by the board – which helps enforce the state Ethics in Public Service Act – came after complaints against several state lawmakers and Inslee for speaking at two events related to reproductive healthcare after the court’s ruling last year in Dobbs.

The public resources used in the June event included a loudspeaker system and podium from the state Department of Enterprises Services, which among other things oversees the Capitol campus. For various reasons, the other legislators cleared elements of a seven-factor test used to decide whether an elected official is heeding the law.

In a statement, Dhingra pointed out that the Ethics Board has never previously made a ruling on the use of resources by a lawmaker of another state agency, such as Enterprise Services.

“The governor invited me and several other key legislators to this press conference in my capacity as a state senator, to comment on the state response to the Dobbs decision,” she said in prepared remarks. “At that time, ethics rules allowed for mileage reimbursement for official events such as this one. With the rules now changed retroactively, I will be reimbursing the Senate for mileage expenses incurred for this event.”

More than 120 organizations will split $25 million in grants from King County for programs that address disparities in health care, mental health and other issues as part of the county’s efforts to tackle racism as a public health crisis. 

The 123 awardees are community organizations, nonprofits and small businesses, including Black Coffee Northwest, Chief Seattle Club, Wa Na Wari, the Tenants Union of Washington State, Young Women Empowered and dozens more.

According to a press release last week from King County Executive Dow Constantine’s office, the grantees will work to address disparities in health care, mental health supports, maternal health, and healthy aging, as well as food access, youth mentoring, housing, art, nature and outdoors groups, and capacity-building for small organizations that provide services and more. The 123 awardees were chosen from 800 organizations that applied.

In 2020 the King County Board of Health declared racism a public health crisis in the wake of the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on communities of color and the national racial-justice protests that followed the killing of George Floyd by police officers. In the early months of the pandemic, health care workers in King County gathered by the thousands to demand that public officials declare racism and police violence as crises that public health policies should address.

The awards were determined by the Gathering Collaborative, a King County group that formed in 2022 to work toward reversing the continued impact of systemic racist practices and policies that harm Black and Indigenous people. The group was formed as part of the efforts stemming from the county’s 2020 public health declaration that pledged to support “King County and Public Health - Seattle & King County immediately in the work to advance a public health approach in addressing institutional and systemic racism.”

Two projects in Central Washington received federal grants aimed at increasing water storage and supply in Western states.

The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation granted $1 million to the Cle Elum Pool Raise project, which will increase the reservoir’s capacity by 3 feet, adding 14,600 acre-feet of water to help manage habitat and migration for salmon and steelhead. The allocation is in addition to a $5 million federal grant announced last fall. The reservoir level will be raised by 2028, according to the Bureau of Reclamation.

Another $1 million will go to the Upper Yakima System Storage Feasibility Study to help the Kittitas Irrigation District find water-storage alternatives for the region. Both projects are part of the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan.

While these projects have been in the works for decades, Washington state has faced increasing drought conditions in recent years, with a drought emergency declared for 12 counties earlier this week. The state attributed the drought conditions to higher-than-normal temperatures in May and lower-than-normal rain in the late spring and early summer months.

The money for the water projects comes from the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which provides billions of dollars to projects across the U.S. including transportation, roads, ports and broadband.

Twelve Washington counties are now officially in a drought emergency, the state Department of Ecology declared this week, after early snowmelt in May, low streamflows and a lack of spring rain.

The affected counties are Benton, Clallam, Columbia, Jefferson, Kittitas, Klickitat, Okanogan, Skagit, Snohomish, Walla Walla, Whatcom and Yakima. Drought conditions have made fish passage difficult on the Olympic Peninsula, caused wells to run dry in Whatcom County and led to crop losses and low reservoirs in Central Washington.

The state declares a drought when there is less than 75% of normal water supply and a risk of undue hardship, according to the Department of Ecology. The rest of the state remains under a July 5 drought advisory, which is an early warning of a possible drought. 

The emergency declaration allows the state to grant emergency water-rights permits and makes $3 million in emergency funds available to help communities and public entities facing hardships due to the lack of water. 

According to the state, the hot weather through May and June led to the early melting and runoff of the snowpack that supplies much of the water that flows through the state’s rivers. June was also drier than normal, with only 49% of normal rainfall. This water shortage is unlikely to be made up over this summer because of the warm, dry weather expected through October, according to the state.

Washington’s continued job growth has resulted in a June unemployment rate at pre-pandemic levels. 

The rate of 3.8% in June was a drop from 4.1% a month earlier, according to preliminary figures released Wednesday by the Washington Employment Security Department. The previous time Washington’s unemployment rate was that low was February 2020, Employment Security economist Paul Turek said in a news release. 

In the Seattle metropolitan area, which includes Bellevue and Everett, the June unemployment rate was 3%, the same as in May. 

In June the state added 11,900 nonagricultural jobs, including 8,800 jobs in the private sector, according to seasonally adjusted figures released by Employment Security. 

Leisure and hospitality, a sector negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, reported 8,900 more jobs in June, including 5,200 for food service and drinking establishments.

Other sectors reporting job gains included education and health services, with 4,600 jobs. Professional and business services reported an increase of 500 jobs. 

While the state saw solid job growth overall, some industry sectors have seen declining job numbers. Manufacturing jobs fell by 2,500 over the month. Retail trade also reported a drop of 2,800, including 900 jobs in food and beverage stores. 

The information sector, which includes tech jobs, saw a sizable contraction, losing 5,500 jobs between June 2022 and June 2023. Seattle-area tech companies have laid off thousands of workers in recent months. 

However, there was robust year-over-year growth in other sectors. Education and health services and leisure and hospitality also reported in June the most job gains year-over-year, with 32,700 more jobs and 25,200 more, respectively. Government was also among the top three sectors for job growth, with 25,600 jobs. 

Employment security provides seasonally adjusted figures, which account for occurrences such as holiday hiring, to make month-to-month comparisons. The year-over-year figures are not seasonally adjusted. 

The Cashmere School District has committed to bystander intervention training for faculty and students, as well as to other anti-harassment programs, after an independent investigation found students at Cashmere High School harassed a Black classmate using racial slurs at school and in a group Snapchat.

In a Crosscut story that ran last month, the student who made the complaint talked about a pattern of harassment and racist language over many months both at school and in a group chat with multiple classmates.

Four students had been disciplined for discriminatory harassment, including the use of racial slurs, according to the school district. An allegation that a staff member failed to respond or address the behavior was “not substantiated.”

District administrators outlined the results of the investigation and its plans for the future in a letter to the community.

The two-page letter read in part “We have committed to making this unfortunate incident a learning opportunity where we can all elevate our awareness, grow and be better,” and was signed by Superintendent Glenn Johnson, Cashmere High School Principal Craig McKenzie, and other district and school administrators.

Separately from the student’s individual complaint, Cashmere community members also told Crosscut they had ongoing concerns about the school atmosphere, citing one student who wore a Confederate flag as a cape at the annual Senior Parade and students who tore down the high school’s Equity Club posters, which bore a rainbow Pride symbol and messages of inclusion and acceptance.

The student, who graduated in June, said he filed the complaint because he hoped the school would do more for future students about combating bullying and racist and bigoted language.

In its letter to the community, the district’s action items included providing professional development around inclusion and diversity; focusing a student-produced public service video on anti-bullying on language and bystander intervention; and developing a school improvement plan in August around well-being, belonging, and safety with student leaders and staff members.