State Sen. Joe Nguyễn to head WA Department of Commerce

Mayor Bruce Harrell held a press conference Friday morning to welcome the five City Councilmembers-elect to City Hall in advance of the Jan. 2 swearing-in ceremony.

Councilmembers-elect Rob Saka, District 1; Joy Hollingsworth, District 3; Maritza Rivera, District 4; Cathy Moore, District 5; and Bob Kettle, District 7 stood with Harrell on the seventh floor of City Hall to emphasize their commitment to collaboration and transparency.

“We have some excitement and some energy on the kinds of things we want to do together,” said Harrell. “And I trust that they will lead with integrity, with passion, with intelligence.”

In his remarks, Harrell said that he expects to work with the new Councilmembers on public safety, homelessness, affordable housing and basics like constituent services and fixing potholes.

All five incoming Councilmembers ran on platforms that largely aligned with Harrell’s priorities, especially when it comes to public safety, where they promised to hire more police, expand the newly launched dual dispatch pilot program, address the drug crisis and more. Harrell endorsed Saka, Hollingsworth, Rivera and Moore in the general election.

The Councilmembers-elect also benefited from the backing of business and real estate in the greater Seattle area, which spent more than $1 million on their campaigns through independent political committees.

Each Councilmember-elect gave brief remarks Friday morning.

Saka re-emphasized his public safety goals and noted the historic moment they’re a part of with such high turnover on the Council. According to the City Archivist, the last turnover of five Councilmembers in a single election in the body’s modern history happened in 1970. There were larger turnovers between 1886 and 1910, but the Council’s size and term lengths were different, making it an apples-to-oranges comparison.

Hollingsworth said she’s been meeting with community and public safety groups in her district, City Hall staff and others to get up to speed before she’s sworn in. “We know that this process will take time. We know that everyone wants a sense of urgency. But we also understand that it’s a process.”

Rivera said she was humbled by her election and that she is “looking forward to getting this city back to the vibrant state so our kids are really thriving here, as well as all of us.”

Moore said she’s been working on assembling her team, recognizing the role that Council staffers play in Councilmembers’ success. She said one of her top goals is to get sidewalks in every neighborhood, a particularly pressing issue for her North Seattle district.

Kettle reiterated the message of collaboration and his goals to foster it within the Council body and with the mayor. “Ultimately, it’s about leading with compassion, but then also wisdom and having balance. Balance is, like, my new favorite word, and I’m looking forward to leading with that balance.”

The five electees join District 2 Councilmember Tammy Morales and District 6 Councilmember Dan Strauss, who were reelected to second terms in November along with at-large Councilmember Sara Nelson, whose first term ends in 2025.

One of their first tasks in January will be to appoint a replacement for at-large Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, who was elected to the King County Council in November and begins that new role at the start of January.

Let’s Go Washington announced Tuesday it is submitting petitions for an initiative to loosen restrictions around when law enforcement officers can engage in vehicle pursuits.

The group, which is funding a series of proposed conservative ballot measures, said it turned in more than 400,000 signatures to the Secretary of State’s Office for Initiative 2113. That’s the third of six proposed initiatives the group is bringing to the Legislature but expects will be up for a statewide vote next November.

In a statement, Let’s Go Washington founder Brian Heywood said, “Communities across the state are suffering impacts of rising crime while lawmakers tell them not to believe their eyes.”

“Local police, mayors and city councils should not be stuck with a one-size-fits-all policy that keeps police from doing their job,” he added. “Handcuffing police is a failure and regular Washingtonians are paying the price.”

In 2021, lawmakers tightened the circumstances around which law enforcement officers can engage in police pursuits. The law was one of roughly a dozen measures to change policing after the deaths at the hands of police of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Manuel Ellis in Tacoma, among other people of color.

Lawmakers in the Democratic-controlled Legislature last year then loosened the new restrictions a little, but it has not dampened criticism from conservatives.

I-2113 would allow pursuits when officers have “a reasonable suspicion a person has violated the law” in instances where “pursuit is necessary to identify or apprehend the person, the person poses a threat to the safety of others, those safety risks are greater than those of the pursuit, and a supervisor authorizes the pursuit,” according to the ballot measure summary.

Washington raised another $370.6 million in its final carbon auction of 2023, bringing the total to slightly more than $2 billion in the first year of the state cap-and-invest program, the Ecology Department announced Wednesday.

Carbon-emitting corporations bid every three months on state allowances for the pollution emitted by their facilities. The winning bidders all pay the same price on those allowances after the auction. The “settlement” prices in the first few Washington auctions were $48.50 for roughly one metric ton of carbon for the first quarter of 2023; $56.01 for the second quarter; $63.03 for the third; and $51.89 for the December auction.

Of the total $2 billion raised through the program, $1.82 billion goes toward environmental investments and another $376 million will go to gas and electric utilities to help ratepayers, especially low-income families.

The cap-and-invest system passed by the Legislature in 2021 is aimed at decreasing carbon emissions to a small fraction of their current levels by 2050.

In addition to clean energy investments, the program has made driving gas-powered vehicles more expensive. It has raised Washington’s price at the pump from 15 to 50 cents per gallon, depending on who is calculating. Republicans have been slamming Gov. Jay Inslee over those increases and a conservative group has been gathering signatures to send an initiative to the Legislature to get Washington out of carbon pricing.

Washington has traditionally had some of the nation’s highest gas prices due to various geographical and economic factors outside of the cap-and-invest program.

For the program’s first two years, the Legislature appropriated $2.1 billion in cap-and-invest revenue for numerous climate mitigation projects. On Monday, Inslee said the state expects to collect $941 million in additional cap-and-invest money in the first half of 2024, bringing the overall income to roughly $3 billion over the system’s first 18 months and adding that much to be spent on climate projects. 

Inslee’s supplemental budget request includes: 

- A one-time $200 credit to the utility bills of roughly 750,000 low- and moderate-income households in Washington. 

- Speeding the transition from diesel school buses to electric school buses across the state. 

- Installing electric heat pumps in low-income multiple-family homes, replacing gas furnaces.

- Providing matching funds for competitive federal grants to bring clean-energy jobs to Washington. 

- Converting a large diesel ferry into a hybrid fuel/electric ferry. As Washington’s ferries are breaking down in increasing numbers, Inslee also said on Monday that future cap-and-invest income could speed up replacing the old ferries with new hybrid ones.

CORRECTION: Fixes the amount raised in the most recent action and how it was distributed.

Republican State Sen. Drew MacEwen has officially joined the race for the 6th Congressional District seat that will be vacated by outgoing U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer.

MacEwen, of Shelton, is the first Republican to register a campaign for this seat with the Federal Election Commission, which oversees federal campaign finance laws. Three Democrats – Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz, State Sen. Emily Randall, D-Bremerton, and Jefferson County Commissioner Kate Dean – also have launched campaigns for the seat.

MacEwen, a U.S. Navy veteran, has been in the state Senate since January 2023 after he was elected to replace retiring State Sen. Tim Sheldon, D-Shelton. Before being elected to the state Senate, MacEwen represented the 35th District in the state House of Representatives between 2013 and 2022.

Washington’s 6th Congressional District covers the Olympic and Kitsap peninsulas and stretches into parts of Tacoma. The next elections for the U.S. House of Representatives will be in 2024, and the newly elected representative will start a two-year term in January 2025.

Sound Transit on Tuesday announced the resignation of CEO Julie Timm. Her final day at the regional transit agency will be Jan. 12, just 16 months after taking the position in September 2022.

The announcement comes on the heels of Timm’s performance review by the Sound Transit Board last week. The review is not yet public, but board members had recently expressed disappointment in the agency for not taking sufficient steps to avoid cost overruns and delays on its multibillion-dollar work to expand the Link light-rail system, according to reporting by Publicola.

In an email to the Sound Transit staff, which was shared with Crosscut, Timm wrote:

“For the past several months I have been struggling to balance the needs of long-distance care and support for my aging father with the intense requirements of leading Sound Transit as CEO. Over the past week in collaboration with board leadership, I came to the difficult, but I believe the correct, conclusion that my family needs more of my focus.”

In a press release, Sound Transit said Timm is moving back to the East Coast to spend time with family. The release continued, “Since joining Sound Transit in September 2022, Timm has overseen a renewed emphasis on the rider experience as Sound Transit approaches the opening of several new extensions, starting with East Link next spring.”

The Sound Transit Board expects to appoint an interim CEO in the coming weeks.

The agency is in the midst of its next phase of expansion, which will extend the existing line north to Lynnwood and south to Federal Way and build new light rail across Lake Washington from Seattle to Bellevue and Redmond.

Sound Transit is also in the planning stages of its third phase of expansion, which was approved by voters in 2016 as a $54 billion ballot measure. Once completed it will connect Tacoma to Seattle to Everett and build new lines in Seattle connecting West Seattle and Ballard to Downtown. The agency's most recent financial plan estimates it will spend $148 billion on operations and new construction between 2017 and 2046.

Update: This article was updated to clarify Sound Transit's estimated operations and construction costs.

The group Let’s Go Washington on Tuesday announced it is submitting signatures to put on the ballot a parents’-rights initiative that could be decided by voters next November.

Fueled by a big donor, Brian Heywood, the conservative group is aiming to qualify half a dozen proposed initiatives to the Legislature by an end-of-year deadline.

The proposed parents-rights’ initiative, Initiative 2081, would let parents and guardians of public-school children review curricula and student records, including disciplinary and health information, according to a summary of the proposal. Among other things, the measure would allow parents to opt their children out of sex education.

“A parent’s right to care for their child is foundational to strong communities and a functioning society,” Heywood said in a statement. “Parents are the primary stakeholder in raising children. No government employee can care about or love a child like their parent.”

The citizen sponsor of I-2081 is state Rep. Jim Walsh, R-Aberdeen, who is also chairman of the Washington State Republican Party. Let’s Go Washington gathered more than 420,000 signatures, nearly 100,000 more than needed to qualify, according to the group.

The proposal comes after loud opposition by conservatives to a comprehensive sexual education law passed a few years ago – and later approved by voters. A law passed earlier this year, Senate Bill 5599, has also rankled conservatives.

That new law expands an existing statute allowing organizations that provide services to unsheltered youth to hold off on notifying a guardian or parent if there are compelling reasons, such as neglect or abuse. SB 5599 added protected health care services as a reason to delay notification. Such services include reproductive health care and gender-affirming treatment. The bill quickly became a target in the national culture wars.

I-2081 is an initiative to the Legislature, and if it qualifies, lawmakers in the Democratic-controlled Legislature can either choose to pass it during the upcoming legislative session, which begins in January; take no action and let I-2081 go to the ballot; or pass an alternative proposal, which would send both I-2018 and the alternative to a vote of the people.

Last month, Let’s Go Washington submitted signatures for I-2117, an initiative to the Legislature that seeks to repeal Washington’s carbon cap-and-trade system.

A new state auditor’s report says only 26% of Washington children enrolled in Medicaid are being tested for lead exposure, even though the federal government requires them all to be tested twice between their first and sixth birthdays.

“Although Washington has multiple factors that can increase a child’s risk of lead exposure, most children with the highest risk have never been tested,” said the performance audit report issued Tuesday.

Children in areas with more risk for lead exposure were tested at higher rates; however, some counties with elevated risk tested the fewest children, according to the report. The auditor also notes that the state does not have an adequate process to make sure children are getting the required testing.

As the report notes, Washington children may not be as much at risk as children from more industrial states, but no level of lead exposure is healthy for kids. The auditor’s office did make some positive findings, including connecting better community outreach with higher testing levels.

Report recommendations to the Washington Department of Health and the Health Care Authority include:

– Make sure health insurance companies involved in Medicaid have a clear understanding of testing requirements.

– Increase awareness of lead exposure testing among health care providers.

– Implement a state monitoring process for lead testing.

– Assess lead exposure risk at the community level, at least annually.

The Health Care Authority responded to the report saying it is working on improving education, outreach and test monitoring structure. They also promised to look into mandatory tracking.

“Please thank your team for their work on this audit. We will use the information and recommendations as an opportunity to improve. Many improvements are well underway,” concluded the DOH and HCA response, which was also signed by David Schumacher, director of the Office of Financial Management. 

Yakima, Benton and Chelan counties have settled a 2021 lawsuit filed by Latino voters and advocacy groups over the county’s voter signature verification process.  

The voters and the League of United Latin American Citizens and Latino Community Fund of Washington sued elected officials in the three counties in May 2021, alleging the three counties’ signature verification process violated the federal Voting Rights Act. According to the complaint, Latino voters in the three counties were several times more likely to get their ballot rejected due to a mismatched signature.

Benton and Chelan counties reached a settlement with plaintiffs in October. Yakima County was the sole defendant in the suit long enough for a trial date to be set before ultimately reaching a settlement as well last week.

Under the settlement, the three counties will conduct mandatory signature verification training for county auditor election staff. County election staff must also complete cultural competency training every two years. Finally, ballot materials will now include language on a ballot’s security sleeve that outlines signature verification requirements, cure processes and other terms. 

The settlement with Yakima County notes that the county already meets some of the settlement terms, including providing significant verification and cure-process language and Spanish-language voter registration information.

Counties admit no wrongdoing in their settlements. In a statement to the Yakima Herald-Republic, Yakima County Auditor Charles Ross said he felt his elections office followed state law, that the complaints were “meritless” and that the county settled this suit from a “business perspective.” 

Washington Healthplanfinder, the state’s health insurance exchange, will offer a few days of extended phone hours through Jan. 15, including some weekends, as deadlines approach to get health coverage through open enrollment for 2024.

People who sign up by Dec. 15 will get coverage starting on Jan. 1. Those who sign up by Jan. 15 will get coverage starting on Feb. 1. About 232,000 people were enrolled for 2023 health insurance through the program. 

The health insurance exchange’s website is https://www.wahealthplanfinder.org/ and the customer support center is available at 1-855-923-4633.

According to the state, about 75% of people who are getting coverage through Washington Healthplanfinder could lower their monthly premiums by comparing plans, including checking their eligibility for assistance through the state subsidy program, Cascade Care Savings.

Regular business hours for the customer support center is 7:30 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday through Friday. Extended call center hours are:

• Dec. 15, 7:30 a.m. to midnight
• Dec. 16 (Saturday), 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
• Jan. 14 (Sunday), 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
• Jan. 15, 7:30 a.m. to midnight

The call center will be closed on Dec. 25 (Christmas Day), and Jan. 1 (New Year’s Day).

People can also get assistance signing up through the exchange at no additional cost through independent brokers and health insurance navigators.

Earlier this year Washington became one of the few states to make coverage available to all of its residents, regardless of citizenship or immigration status. While federal subsidies are not available to undocumented adults, those who qualify by income could be eligible for Cascade Care’s state subsidies.

Washington’s Department of Labor & Industries handed a Yakima orchard $290,000 in fines after two workers died in tractor rollovers this summer, the safety agency announced today. 

The agency issued Borton & Sons five willful serious citations for the two deaths, citing them for failing to ensure a rollover protection system was being used and that workers wore seatbelts. Willful violations are given when L&I believes employers knew or should have known the safety standards, but failed to make sure they were being followed. 

Farmworker Gilberto Padilla died on May 7 as he was driving a tractor between orchards, according to the inspection summary. The vehicle rolled after he drove over front counterweights that had fallen off. About a month later, on June 8, Oscar Rodriguez-Olivera died in a tractor rollover after he made a sharp turn traveling down a hill, according to L&I.

In both deaths, the protection system to prevent workers from being crushed in a rollover was not in use, according to L&I. Nor were the workers wearing seatbelts. L&I officials stated they had directed Borton & Sons to ensure the proper use of rollover protections and seatbelts after the first death. The agency also cited the company for allegedly altering the scene of the second fatality before an L&I inspection began.

“Using a rollover protection bar and seat belt is such a simple way to save workers’ lives. These incidents should not happen,” Craig Blackwood, assistant director for L&I’s safety and health division, said in the press release. “Orchard owners have the responsibility to make sure workers use safety systems. If Borton & Sons had been vigilant, these workers might be alive today.”

Borton & Sons has a history of safety citations and penalties violations, according to data collected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The fruit grower is contesting the 2023 fines. 

L&I issued more than $14.7 million in fines last year to companies for violating health and safety laws. A recent Crosscut investigation found the agency later reduces many initial penalties, and sometimes struggles to head off repeat safety violations even after a worker has died.