Feb 18, 2023
On this Hacks & Wonks week-in-review, political consultant and hostCrystal Fincher is joined by Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank!They discuss the landmark passage of Seattle’s Social HousingInitiative 135, what it says about Seattle voter preferences andexpectations of candidates running for localoffice.
They also discuss the continuing candidate announcements forSeattle City Council, with two moderates announcing theirintentions to run this week. Several candidates in the field haveavoided sharing their positions on the issues most important toSeattle voters. Crystal and Robert analyze how that may impacttheir races and what voters are expecting from candidates thisyear.
In the wake of a pedestrian in a crosswalk being killed by an SPDofficer who was responding to an overdose call, Robert and Crystaldiscuss whether it’s appropriate for police to respond to everyoverdose call in addition to the fire department, especially whilethe department says they are short-staffed. They also cover theadvancing bipartisan legislation that aims to expand the conditionsunder which police can pursue fleeing vehicles despite theircontinued harm to innocent bystanders, while Democratic Reps. Reedand Farivar and Sen. Dhingra oppose this bill in favor of anevidence-based approach that prioritizes increased safety foreveryone.
Robert and Crystal close the show with a discussion of the woefulstate of education funding in Washington state. Despite theMcCleary decision that affirmed Washington state’s paramountconstitutional duty to fully fund public education, districts arestill relying on levy funding to address existing fundingshortfalls and considering closures of schools, while experiencingchronic understaffing in several areas and consideringdestabilizing school closures. As Robert discussed in The Urbanistop-Ed he wrote, this is a result of legislative inaction on schoolfunding and the taxation of extreme wealth, the failure of alllevels of government to address increasingly unaffordable housing,and too many school board directors who are failing to act in theinterests of students with urgency.
As always, a full text transcript of the show is available belowand at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’s co-host, Robert Cruickshank, at @cruickshank.
Resources
Social Housing Is Winning by Rich Smith from The Stranger
Seattle Mayor and Majority of Council Mum on SocialHousing by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
Who's running for Seattle City Council in 2023by Melissa Santos from Axios
Andrew Ashiofu Stresses Lived Experience in D3 Seattle CouncilPitch by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
Tech Lawyer Rob Saka Announces Bid for Seattle City CouncilDistrict 1 by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger
Seattle Subway Leader Efrain Hudnell Announces D3 City CouncilBid by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist
Twitter thread from Rep. Julia Reed (D-36) exposing the fault lines around policepursuit policy
Overdose Patients Can Become Violent”: Fire and Police Respond toQuestions About Pedestrian Death by Erica C. Barnett from Publicola
In pursuit of good policy: Washington legislators debate validityof the data used to justify 2021 police reformsby Guy Oron from Real Change
Opinion: Everyone (Especially Urbanists) Should Care About theCrisis Facing Seattle Schools by Robert Cruickshank from The Urbanist
Gov. Inslee weighs in on potential Bellevue schoolconsolidation by Farah Jadran from KING 5
Lawmakers in Olympia narrowing down which bills will moveforward by News Staff from KIRO 7
Transcript
[00:00:00]CrystalFincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm CrystalFincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On thisshow, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gatherinsight into local politics and policy in Washington state throughthe lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenesperspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what youcan do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast - get the fullversions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek showdelivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpfulthing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks &Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show arealways available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episodenotes.
If you missed our Tuesday midweek show,transportation reporter Ryan Packer joined me to discuss regionaltransportation issues - including our traffic safety crisis,legislative bills and funding, the Washington-Oregon InterstateBridge Replacement bailout, and the disconnect between and withinour regional planning bodies.
Today we're continuing our Friday almost-liveshows where we review the news of the week with a cohost. Welcomeback to the program, friend of the show, today's cohost: Chair ofSierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and one of the bestpolitical strategists on the West Coast, Robert Cruickshank.
[00:01:29]RobertCruickshank: Oh thank you, Crystal, for having me.It's always an honor to be here and a pleasure to talk about allthese issues happening locally with what I think is one of thesmartest minds in Washington.
[00:01:38]CrystalFincher: Thank you so much. I am very excited totalk about our first topic this week - big news locally,regionally, and really nationally. Initiative 135 in the City ofSeattle for social housing is passing, will pass. What do you thinkof this? What will this do? And what does this mean forSeattle?
[00:02:02]RobertCruickshank: As President Biden would say, I thinkthis is a BFD. It, as you said, is watched around the country.There have been state legislators in California, Hawaii, New York,who have commented on this favorably, wanting to bring it to theirstates too. It is a crucial tool in the toolbox for solving ourhousing crisis. We need more housing. We need more affordablehousing. And places in Europe - Vienna being a notable example -have shown that social housing can help solve that by having apublicly owned and operated system of housing that's available topeople at affordable rents and also at middle income rents. Andwhat that does is it helps have the system be self-supporting. Andof course, the renters run the place themselves. They'reresponsible for self-governance, which I think is a huge missingpiece that you see in at least American housing, where there'seither the owner-occupier or you pay rent to a landlord and youdon't really control your own surroundings. This is a great middlesolution that works for so many people in the middle, in a citywhere we're losing our middle class. This is a way for teachers andnurses to be able to stay in Seattle as well as people working inthe coffee shops and working in the bear-time industries.
It's also, I think, a huge victory forprogressives in Seattle. This was not something that was championedby the City. In fact, the City did not want to fund this during thebudget process last year. They got no support from establishedleaders until late in the process, really. This is something thatcame out of grassroots organizing - it started as a response toCharter Initiative 29 back in 2021, which was an attack on homelessfolks. And a group of organizers led by Tiffani McCoy thought -let's do something better. Let's put a competing initiative on theballot to actually solve this - that evolved into the socialhousing initiative. I also think it's a huge, huge defeat for TheSeattle Times. There was no official No campaign. There was nowell-funded organization or effort trying to stop this, so TheSeattle Times became the de facto No campaign. Their editorialsagainst it were the things that you'd hear on the doorsteps or onthe phones when you're talking to undecided voters - who would citethose talking points - so they were easily debunked. But The Timesreally went all out to try to stop this from happening, and theylost in a low turnout election in February. I think a lot of peoplewouldn't have been surprised had this failed - thinking it'sFebruary, not enough progressive folks show up, maybe if it hadbeen on the November ballot, it might have passed. But it's passingby a healthy margin now. Once the remaining ballots are countedthat margin is almost certainly going to grow. So it's a strongmandate for building more housing and building affordable housingas a solution to our dire housing crisis.
[00:05:02]CrystalFincher: Absolutely. And the crisis is dire. Ithink a clear message sent is Seattle residents realize it. It is acrisis and they expect action. And in the absence of action thatthey were expecting from our local elected officials, whocollectively have not done much - done enough, I should say - toaddress this crisis, they're willing to act themselves. I do wantto just highlight and commend the House Our Neighbors coalition,which was the campaign behind this - from getting signatures andqualified on the ballot to passing this initiative - organizing,getting people together. Just really, really appreciate that.Appreciate the role of the King County Democrats played in helpingthis - I think that's a great model of seeing how local parties canimpact their communities and local politics. To your point, thiswas not supported by really the Democratic establishment, right?This was not a conservative versus progressive issue. This was nota D versus R issue. This is one of those issues that we have seenin Seattle - where you have establishment Democrats versus moreprogressive, more community-led people. And we've seen that turnout less favorably than this many, many times. And so I just thinkwe're seeing - we saw the Tukwila Initiative succeed, we saw this,we're watching Renton happen right now. We're looking at an erareally where the community is coming together and demanding moreand expecting more and a big deal.
And I think the message that elected officialsand candidates need to take away from this is that they're behindwhere the public is. They are lagging and not understanding theurgency, the desperation, and the fear that so many people have.This was basically characterized by a lot of people as some fringe,super extreme, lefty initiative that lots of people didn't evenfeel like they needed to pay attention to because they just nevertook it seriously. And that was a mistake. And these are not wildlefty fringe beliefs - this is the mainstream. We saw in this firstcount where over just about half of the voters were over 55 yearsold - we're talking average age approaching 60 in this election -and over half of them wanted to see social housing. We're just in adifferent era and people need to wake up and smell the coffee herebecause - as I've said many times before, as have you - voters areexpecting action. And especially in the context of so many of theselocal elections, especially in the City of Seattle, with the numberof candidates declaring and being really vague about what they door don't believe, and trying to not offend people - which has beena recipe for inaction over the past decade - in Seattle politics,definitely. That is at odds with where the entire Seattleelectorate is - not just younger people, not just lefties, theentire electorate - and people need to recognize that.
[00:08:37]RobertCruickshank: I think that's right. And I thinkthat's particularly true of housing where - currently in City Hall,there seems to be an attitude among most, but not everyone, that wehave to tread slowly and carefully when it comes to solving thehousing crisis. There are some great leaders on the City Council -Tammy Morales, Teresa Mosqueda - who are pretty bold about, we needto use a comprehensive plan to upzone huge swaths of the City. Butthe rest of the City government seems hesitant. But they'reignoring where the public's at - the polling statewide showsthere's 71% support for the missing middle housing bill. Thatsupport is also high here in the City of Seattle. And what you'reseeing with social housing, which isn't exactly upzones but it'sdense housing that will be built for social housing, is strong,strong support for action. There is not anywhere close to amajority - in Seattle at least - among voters for maintaining thissingle-family, low-rise, low-density NIMBY attitude that seems topredominate certainly among the way the media talks about housingand too often the way the City talks about housing.
I think this vote is going to resonate throughout2023. Obviously, what I-135 did is not fully fund social housing -they weren't able to do that at the same time the initiative forfear of running afoul of the single subject rule. So they wentahead and created the authority, gave a little bit of money tostart that authority up. And then they're going to work with theCity to try to get it funded. And if City Hall doesn't try to fundconstruction of social housing, they'll come back to the ballotagain. All these council candidates who are declaring in the lastfew weeks, even the last few days, are going to have to be on thespot now because voters went ahead of them and said, No, weactually want social housing to happen. Now we expect you todeliver. And this is going to be an issue throughout 2023 and allthese campaigns, and that's a good thing, right? They're having tonow respond to where the public actually is, not responding to aSeattle times narrative of - Oh, people are cranky, they don't wantnew density, we want NIMBYism everywhere. That's not where thepublic is at, at all.
[00:10:39]CrystalFincher: Absolutely, and I'm excited to see wherethis is going to go. I'm excited to see these candidates andelected officials be put on the spot and have to answer. And I'mtrying to have some grace - it is early in the campaign cycle,they're working on this stuff - but if this were to continue laterin the cycle, as we've seen in previous cycles, there's really anarrogance about it. It's really feeling that you're not accountableto the voters and really being straight with them about what youbelieve, who you are, what you're doing, or that you have anobligation to act on their behalf, and to deliver on the mandatethat they have provided. So I'm eager to see how this continues.I'm eager to see that now that this has passed - we saw TammyMorales attempt to provide some funding that the rest of thecouncil, many of the rest of the council, did not agree with. Butwith this new council coming up, assuming Tammy is reelected - isthis something that she can lead on and helping to provide fundingand making this happen?
I just think my final thought on this for now isreally another explicit message that Seattle residents expectgovernment to be part of the solution. This is - we hear so manytimes that - the market needs to take care of itself. We can't stepin and do this. This is really big and really problematic - I don'tknow that government can address this. It has before. It iselsewhere. And if we don't interrupt the cycle of what's currentlyhappening, we're just going to price everyone out of Seattle. Wehave a lot of people who have been laid off recently, who arefearing being laid off soon, who are making well into the sixfigures - who are largely saying, We don't know that we cancontinue to afford to live in Seattle. Even for those who haven'tlost their jobs - looking at the prospect of potential instabilityfinancially saying, Is this responsible? Do we need to preemptivelyleave? Because without a massive - making $200,000+ - can youresponsibly afford to live in Seattle? It's really a challengingsituation that is long past time needing a response to and Seattleresidents acting on that.
[00:13:05]RobertCruickshank: And it wasn't that long ago that itwas affordable to live here. 10 years ago - housing prices - youcould buy a house in Seattle for less than $400,000, three, fourbedrooms. You could rent a two bedroom apartment for $1,200 orless. It was relatively affordable. And it just happened rapidlybecause we hadn't kept up with building enough housing. We hadn'tbeen providing enough affordable housing. And I think voters arefed up. They want their government to act. And I think one of thebig takeaways from I-135's passing is - voters are going to solvethis if our government doesn't.
[00:13:37]CrystalFincher: Absolutely. I do want to talk more aboutthe candidates that are running, particularly in the City ofSeattle and in King County. We saw a few new announcements thisweek. Who has thrown their hat in the race and what are theytalking about?
[00:13:51]RobertCruickshank: So it feels like January, earlyFebruary was when the progressive candidates jumped out and we sawpeople from Maren Costa - who's a climate activist coming out ofAmazon, and fought Amazon, was fired by Amazon - running inDistrict 1. A number of great people jumping in in District 3,people like Ron Davis in District 4. But now we're starting to seethe empire strike back a little bit. Rob Saka announced this weekfor District 1 in West Seattle - he's a tech lawyer perceived to bepretty close to the Harrell administration. A couple of days later,we had Tanya Woo announce for District 2 against Tammy Morales -running, try to be a more corporate-friendly, business-friendlycandidate. What's interesting is these candidates are trying tohave it both ways. They are clearly saying things that they thinkwill appeal to the business community, will appeal to the politicalestablishment, but also trying to say things that sound somewhatprogressive. But the result is it's a word salad. All these, all oftheir launch documents - you go to their websites, their pressreleases - they're not really saying anything of substance. They'rejust trying to say a bunch of words that they think will get votersto like them.
And that's alarming to me because as we justtalked about, we're facing multiple crises in the city and we needcandidates who are willing to step up and provide bold solutions.And instead, what we're starting to get are candidates who werehemming and hawing and tried to be super vague about what theyreally believe - sound progressive enough, but also reallybusiness-friendly. And all these candidates remind me of is JennyDurkan - when she ran in 2017 with the same type of messaging -very clearly corporate-friendly, but also would say a few thingsthat sounded progressive, just enough to get the progressive voterscomfortable with her. We elected her and it was a disaster. So Ithink as these candidates start to announce and they'll have a tonof money behind them, it's going to be really, really important forthe voters to push them pretty hard, to say - no, we're not lookingfor nice words, we're looking for actual solutions that'll help endthe problems that we're facing in the city.
[00:16:08]CrystalFincher: I felt disappointed - really, personally -at a lot of these announcements. We are talking - these things arecrises now because they've been building for years. They've beengetting worse for years. We're not dealing with new issues. We'redealing with neglected issues. It's no secret how communities felt.We've been talking about, debating about, having a public discourseabout homelessness, about taxation, about public health, publicsafety for years. Very few people are undecided fundamentally onthese issues. What really is the differentiator is - where do youstand and what do you want to do? What might make you moreeffective at doing what you want to do than others who want to dothat thing? But instead, we're not hearing people who haveparticipated in this discourse over several years - at leastthey're acting as if they haven't - some of them have. But we'rehearing them just say, Did you vote for initiative I-135? Are youplanning to? Well, it's interesting and I haven't decided yet. Okay- after several months and coming to the point where you are goingto run, you know how you're going to vote. If you don't know that,you don't know so many other things that are required for runningin this city. There's no special knowledge that you get once youget elected and there's no enlightenment that rains down upon you.It just is more accountability.
And so I want to know where someone stands. Youtalked about Jenny Durkan. We heard that from Jenny Durkan, thesame kind of - Well, I'm interested. I'm not sure. I want toconvene community and listen to what they have to say and then I'llmake a decision. I want to evaluate where our taxes are being spentand see where we can cut and blah, blah, blah, blah. We heard thatfrom Ed Murray. We heard that from the leadership that we have beenfrustrated with, and that have led to this situation where issueshave been neglected because of inaction for so long that now theyare crises. Ed Murray talked about the homelessness crisis. JennyDurkan did. Bruce Harrell did. But in the same kind of way. And soI'm just wondering - after seeing this so many times, are theybanking on - well, it worked for Ed Murray. It worked for JennyDurkan. Seems to be working for Bruce Harrell in some things wherehe seemed to sound more progressive on the campaign trail than howhe's governed on certainly some issues. Are they thinking - well,it worked for them. It can work for me too. And let me just try notto offend the majority of Seattleites who are progressive whilestill making my high-earning corporate supporters - keeping themcomfortable and winking and nodding that, Yeah, everything will befine. I'll be good for you. I just need to say this stuff to makesure that I don't freak out the rest of the voters. And votersdeserve better. The City deserves better. And we can't continue todo this same thing over and over again. I think voters are gettinghip to that fact, which is why we see election results like we sawthis week.
[00:19:28]RobertCruickshank: I think that's right. And I thinkthere's a common political strategy that consultants will telltheir candidates - Don't offend your, don't say anything that mightalienate some voters. Be wishy-washy. Don't take a bold stand.That's pretty traditional advice. And it tends to be wrong. Youtend to see that in fact, the people who win are the ones willingto take a stand, and willing to talk directly to voters, and showvoters that they are willing to fight for what's right. And I thinkyou're going to see that here in 2023. I think coming out of thepandemic, coming out of the rebellions of 2020, I think that CityHall has become very skittish and hesitant. They've been through alot, but they're also not really stepping up to lead - aside from afew exceptions here and there. And unfortunately, starting to seesome candidates who are trying to align themselves with certainlythe mayor's office - adopting that same sort of wishy-washy - We'renot going to stick our necks out. I don't think that's where thepublic's at, at all. I think the public wants to see solutions.They want progressive solutions to housing, to homelessness, topublic safety. And I think candidates who understand that and arewilling to talk in a smart, approachable, sensible way about thesethings will do really well in 2023. It might surprise some in theestablished class, it might surprise some of the media, but itshouldn't surprise voters who are clearly asking for that.
[00:20:58]CrystalFincher: Absolutely. I think another dynamic thatis interesting is that we heard the leaked comments from MayorHarrell in that police department briefing, where he basically saidhe was recruiting against existing councilmembers. What he wasn'tbanking on, it sounds like, is the number of open seats that werethere. So we have a number of candidates who I think were recruitedand started off trying to run as clearly opposition candidates tothe candidates that they thought that they were going to be runningagainst. And so I'm wondering if they thought that they would beable to get away with being more moderate, conservative - inopposition to some of the incumbents. That's not what ended uphappening. These are open seats. And when having - I will also say,just as a consultant watching this happen over and over again, asyou've probably seen - if you have one loud oppositional person,especially who's a moderate or conservative, running againstsomeone who's more progressive, pretty often they will get throughprimary just because they oftentimes consolidate their base moreeffectively than several other candidates there. And so they'll getthrough a lot of times, they won't make it through to the general,but we see that dynamic.
Things turned out to be different - there areopen seats. And so they don't have someone that they can just say,No, I don't like that. I don't like this. I don't like that. Theyhave more pressure to come out with their own vision, to define whothey are and what they want to do, and paint a positive vision, layout a plan for what they want to do. Seems like some of themweren't prepared to do that. And in a primary, being in the middleis not a good place to be - especially in an open seat, crowdedprimary. You need to talk about who you are and what you're doing -because lower turnout elections, really consolidating a base in aprimary is really important. And people have to be able to know whoyou are, number one, and then identify what you stand for to see ifthey align with you. If everyone sounds kind of the same, thatbecomes a really difficult job and you see big vote splitsthere.
So it's going to be interesting - just in thisopen seat context - to see how this plays out, how many more peoplewind up getting into the races. I think we'll see a number of otherannouncements in these various districts and for King CountyCouncil. But it's going to be really interesting to see the resultsof who stands up and defines themself - really interesting just inthe lead up to Initiative 135 - seeing the difference in SeattleCity Council candidates and King County Council candidates forpeople who were willing to say yes or no to whether they were goingto vote for Initiative 135 and the ones who just wouldn't give ananswer. And for so many other issues - Do you think we need to hiremore police? Yeah, maybe, perhaps. We need to look at it. We needto explore and examine. We probably need more. How many more? Idon't know. I'll check with community. All these really, like yousaid, mealy-mouthed wishy-washy things. They got to do better andthey got to do better soon.
[00:24:31]RobertCruickshank: Yeah, a couple of quick thoughts onthat. I think that this is going to be a change election, and someof these candidates were running expecting it to be a changeelection that would work in their favor - that they would be, thatthe sort of moderate center would be the opposition bringingchange. The fact that so many people are leaving the City Counciltotally undoes that strategy. And now it's a change election,potentially, with the change people seek as a way from a City Hallthat isn't solving their problems. And that is a huge opening toprogressive candidates who can now run as change agents withouthaving the baggage of being in office during four really turbulent,difficult years. So I feel like progressive candidates have a hugeopening here in 2023 to offer genuine, concrete, specificsolutions, to not be afraid to speak directly to voters, to not beafraid to put themselves out there. And I think voters will respondreally well to that.
You also mentioned police. And I think - 'cause Iknow this is something we wanted to talk about today as well. It'sclear that one of the strategies that these more centrist moderatecorporate candidates are planning to run is - we need to hire morecops. In fact, there's been reports out there that those folks arecooking up a ballot initiative potentially for November - to try toforce the City to hire, spend even more money hiring even morecops. And it just flies in the face of the facts. There's anational shortage of officers. Even in cities that fell all overthemselves to shower love on the police departments during themiddle of 2020 while the rest of us were trying to hold themaccountable, they're facing shortages too. And it's not becausepeople said unpleasant things about the cops, not because peopleare holding them accountable, it's not because we're not payingthem enough. For the last two years, City Hall has been showeringpotential recruits with money and they're not coming in the door -they're not coming in the door anywhere in the country.
I think part of that is because we haven'treformed the departments. I think you see a lot of potentialrecruits look at policing and say, I don't want to work in aninstitution where violent racism is not only tolerated, it'sexpected. You look at the rank and file of the current SeattlePolice Department - these are people who elected Mike Solan, afar-right Trump acolyte, as their president for SPOG in January of2020 - well before the George Floyd protests began. It's adepartment that has resisted reform for years. So obviously this iswhere the defund the police movement came out of - if they willresist reform, we have to go to more extreme solutions. The publichas said - Well, we don't really want that. Although the public hasstill very consistently said, We also want funding for alternativesto policing. There's a huge opening here again for progressives tocome in and say, Look, we need to be using our police resourcesmore smartly than we are right now. They shouldn't be chasing afterpeople in mental health crisis - that's where King County's CrisisCare Centers Levy coming up in April is also hugely important - tostand some of that up. But we have to be smart and have an honestconversation that we can't just shower money on recruits who aren'tshowing up, because fundamental problems in the way policing in thecity and in this country is done and we haven't tackled it. Andyou're not going to solve those problems just by try to get moreofficers into a broken institution. Your potential officers aresaying, No, I'm going to go do something else with my life.
[00:27:59]CrystalFincher: Absolutely. And we aren't reckoning withwhat's coming from police. We have had several instances, includingnumber from SPD officers, saying the money isn't the problem. Themoney isn't the problem - coming from them. Yeah, sure. You can trygiving us more of a signing bonus, but that's not going to help.And irresponsibly - when someone's saying money's not the problemand you have a shortage of money - spending it on something that isnot going to get results, hearing from the horse's mouth that it'snot going to get results is really confounding and confusing.
I think that - to your point, we have to look atusing the resources more effectively, more efficiently. We talkabout efficiency and driving best practices in lots of other areasof government and business, but we seem to exempt police from that.Is patrol really the most appropriate place? The City's own studies- lots of City studies - have shown that the majority of time thatpatrol officers are spending is not on addressing unlawfulactivity. They've shown that a majority of calls that they'reresponding to are not critical emergency calls. So why do wecontinue to act as if that's the case, to deploy as if that's thecase? We need to be more effective in how we utilize our existingresources. And it seems like there's an unwillingness to evenentertain that conversation. There is an explicit unwillingnessthat has come out of - it seems like the Seattle Executive's office- for that in ignoring their own studies and research that they hadstarted. And really not engaging with - we need to look at howofficers respond, what they're responding to, and responding to themandate from Seattle residents to have more appropriate responsesto different things. And when we're not doing that, we seeeverybody unhappy for all of the reasons. You're not respondingeffectively to anything because you aren't looking at how you canbe more effective. Where if we were looking at that, we couldpotentially be doing really well in some areas and supplementingother areas with resources that have a better chance of solving theroot cause.
But we keep on entertaining this revolving door,very punitive approach where - Okay, someone is in a behavioralhealth crisis, but we're going to go ahead and arrest them, putthem in jail, which is going to further destabilize them. They'regetting out - they still don't have a home, they still don't have ajob, they have less of a likelihood to get that. And now a lot ofways and ticky tack things that they have to now adhere to. And ifthey don't then they just continue in that spiral. We have to getsmarter about public safety. We have to talk about public safetymore comprehensively. It's more than policing, even for those whoare saying it definitely includes policing. You can't say it isn'tonly policing. It's very shortsighted. It flies in the face of allthe data we see. And we admit that all the time. We talk about howimportant education is. We talk about how important addressingpoverty is for good outcomes. We talk about how important all thatis and putting people on a correct footing - because we understandthat that has a direct correlation to how people are able to builda life, participate productively in society, whatever that means,and to not have to resort to illegal activity, or have options solimited that that's what they choose.
We know what to do. It's just a willingness to doit. And we need to stop allowing people who are not invested in thehealth of our communities dictate this narrative that runs counterto the health of our communities and the safety of our communities.Listen to the people who are there - they're telling you what theyneed, but our leaders and our media - lots of our media - continuesto ignore that.
[00:32:12]RobertCruickshank: It's like housing. We talked earlierthat the public - in both polling and now the results of I-135 -clearly support solving the housing crisis with things like socialhousing. They want something done that's positive and constructive.The polls show the same thing on public safety. I think we'll see,in the Crisis Care Centers Levy that King County is running inApril, the same thing. That is setting up a system where you seesomeone on the street, or on the bus, or wherever in mental healthcrisis - a danger to themselves, maybe danger to others, you callit in. And rather than a cop showing up, you get trainedprofessionals who understand how to handle mental health crisisshow up - and take them not to jail, but to a crisis care centerwhere they're going to get treatment. It works even in states likeArizona - like a purple state like that - the system works reallywell. Bringing it to King County is essential because then not onlyare people going to get the care they need rather than being dumpedin jail where their situation is going to get so much worse, theymight even pass away as we've seen in recent months. But you alsofree up the police to respond to things that you want them torespond to. You want cops responding to someone breaking the glassdoor of your local small business. You want cops showing up to adomestic violence incident. You don't want cops showing up tosomeone in mental health crisis. And you don't want copsnecessarily showing up to every time someone has an overdose.
And I know this is something else that's been inthe news this week. The Community Police Commission, after thehorrific incident a few weeks ago where an officer struck andkilled someone speeding in their vehicle near Westlake on their wayto an overdose call. It turns out that Seattle Fire has a policywhere they want an officer at every overdose call. The CommunityPolice Commission said, Where does this policy exist? Why do youhave this? What is your justification for this? It doesn't makesense. It is a waste of police resources. And as we're seeing, it'sa danger to the community. Someone who's overdosing, someone who'sin crisis - they need help. And Fire Department responding isexactly what you want. If for some unknown reason there's a needfor police backup, because something else is happening in thatsituation - case-by-case basis, sure. But to have a policy whereyou're going to take an officer off of patrol, or off of somethingmore important and go to a call on an overdose - an overdose callis important. It doesn't need an officer there. It doesn't need aguy with a gun showing up. It's usually a guy, as we know, showingup to this. It's a waste of resources. It's dangerous to thecommunity. People are getting killed now because of this policy.It's time to reevaluate that as a part of a larger reevaluation ofwhere are we using our police resources?
[00:34:51]CrystalFincher: Yeah, it's based on no data. And in themidst of what they're characterizing as a shortage of police, whyare they sending them out to these calls? There's no evidenceshowing that people who are coming out of an overdose situation areinherently dangerous. If that was the case, we'd be seeing that inhospitals around the country. But in the same way that hospitalstreat that - and if they need backup, then they call for it - whywouldn't the Fire Department be doing the same thing? It looks likethe Fire Department has been complicit in this thing and saying,Well, we've seen that. But in response to being asked, Really, wehave seen people be violent? That's a regular problem? Can you showus any data demonstrating that? None of that has been provided todate. So why are we doing that? And again, looking at how we deployour existing resources in the midst of a shortage, why is that apriority? We've been making that decision while we were also makingthe decision to not investigate sexual assaults of adults. How doesthat make sense - that we're going to rush to and respond to anoverdose that's already being handled, that most other citieshandle with just a Fire response - this seems to be really outsideof best practices and what is generally accepted as normal acrossthe state. It's just really confusing to see why this is happening.And I hope that's something else that is being examined.
Also being examined is - how appropriate and whenit is appropriate to pursue people in police chases - this is aconversation in the Legislature that has been ongoing. We've talkedabout this on the program before, but this legislation looks to beadvancing. And it's really interesting - we saw this week a pursuitin Kent that ended in a crash, we saw two pursuits in the last twodays in California end in fatalities - one of an innocentpedestrian standing by, a number of others ending in crashes. Weseem to not be reckoning with how frequently these things areending in property damage, and in loss of life, or severe injury topeople innocently standing by. And we have to acknowledge that theimpact is the same as if some external person came and murderedthem, or someone came and stole their car. This is harmful topeople in the community. And what has never happened has beensaying - You can't pursue vehicles. They can pursue. They have beenpursuing. They pursue quite frequently, as we've been payingattention to this in the news more closely recently. But this is adebate that they're currently having. What's your view on this?
[00:37:56]RobertCruickshank: When I'm out on the streets myself,sometimes I'll notice that an ambulance comes by and they'respeeding to a call, someone's life is in danger. But they'redriving quickly, but deliberately and safely - they're taking careto not endanger anyone around them. If I hear a siren - it's apolice car coming by - I notice they drive much more aggressively,much more quickly, with apparent less regard for people aroundthem. I think that just speaks to the cultural problems we see inpolicing - a lack of care and commitment to public safety foranyone other than the officers themselves. And I think it speaks tothe larger problem we face here. You have a concern created byright-wing media and by some police themselves who just don't likethe idea of being held accountable, or having any restrictions ontheir operations - who are complaining about laws passed in 2021governing police pursuits. And as you said, they don't preventpolice from pursuing. It has to be a specific situation wherecertain criteria are met - how it should be. And they're trying toloosen that.
And in fact, just yesterday, a bill to loosenrules around police pursuits made it out of a House committee.There are a few people who stood up against that. I want to shoutout to them. Newly elected Representative Darya Farivar, from herein the 46th, was the lone Democrat to vote against it - kudos toher. Newly elected Representative Julia Reed is not on thatcommittee - she's from the 36th district - but she had a reallygood series of tweets yesterday where she called us out and said,This isn't just coming from Republicans, it's coming from some ofmy fellow Democrats - and I'm not okay with this. We need tocontinue the fight for fixing things that are broken in our publicsafety process. So kudos to Representatives Reed and Farivar - itjust seems to me that we need more leadership like that. Too manypeople go to Olympia to play the game, but they showed up to win.And I really appreciate that. They may not be able to stop thisbill from going through and weakening important rules around policepursuits, but at least they're standing up and speaking up publiclyand trying. And we need to see more of that in Olympia.
[00:40:02]CrystalFincher: We absolutely do. I thank you for bringingthem up. I also want to highlight Senator Manka Dhingra, who we'vetalked about on this show and we interviewed her before. She'stalked about - in a lot of areas - that this flies in the face ofevidence and of data that show this is dangerous. And an increasein crime, an increase in vehicle deaths are not at all related towhether or not police can pursue people in different instances.Really it looks like the increase in car thefts is really tied toan increase in the value of used cars. But we're really seeing alot of data flying back and forth, accusations, and people saying -Well, it's for this reason, it's for that reason. Why are we tryingto expand this when we don't have solid data or evidence onanything? And to Manka Dhingra's credit, what she has said is thatshe does not want to bring this up for a hearing on the Senateside, but she is proposing that - Hey, we're hearing a lot ofthings fly back and forth. We do need to determine what bestpractices are across the country - what is happening, what isworking. And so we can study this and find out what the facts are,particularly for us on the ground here in the state. But standingstrong and saying - Look, I know that people want to do this in thelaw enforcement community, in some elements of the law enforcementcommunity - because to be clear, others have already taken steps tolimit police pursuits because this is a best practice and they haverecognized that it not only puts the public at risk, but it alsoputs their officers at risk - to have just a no holds barred, chaseeveryone whenever you want, even if they just steal some toiletpaper from the corner store.
So it's going to be interesting to see how thisproceeds, particularly in the Senate. But I do hope that people,that a lot of times - we are not bashful about telling ourrepresentatives and our electeds our opinions when we disagree withthem. But I appreciate calling out ones who are fighting for us andones who are representing where we stand and what we want - and letthem know that you appreciate that, that you have their back -because right now, they're being bombarded by other people and byother lobbies who don't feel the same and who are trying topressure them with tactics - threatening, battles in the media,challenging that, all that kind of stuff. So make sure that you areengaged in these. We will include links in the show notes to helpyou see where you can get involved, help contact them. But this isa really important thing that is happening. I hope that is notsuccessful, but don't know. We'll see, because to your point - thisis a bipartisan effort. And it's just hard to understand why,particularly after we saw residents across the state reject thekind of reasoning in last year's November elections - votersprovided a pretty clear mandate and Republicans tried to make thesearguments and actually ran on reversing this. And voters said noacross the board to a degree that they rarely do. It's just reallyconfusing to me that - especially the Democrats who support this -would then turn around and say, Okay, but we need to do thisanyway. Another example of what we talked about earlier of ourelected officials being behind where the public is at.
[00:43:44]RobertCruickshank: Yeah, and I think we see this often inthe Legislature, unfortunately - a leadership in the DemocraticParty in Olympia that is out of touch, unwilling to step up andsolve problems. I think you just flagged it correctly. They won anelection in 2022, despite being hammered on these issues. They notonly protected their swing seats, they picked up a few more. Sothere's no real urgent mandate from voters, there's no threat totheir position for doing this - from making it easier for cops todrive unsafely in police pursuits, but they're doing it anyway.
We also see - in education - where theLegislature is really falling down. Thankfully, Marysville's passeda school levy this week - if they hadn't, they're talking abouthaving to dissolve the district. But then the whole McCleary casewas designed to make it so you don't have to rely on the local levyanymore. What's turned out is that the Legislature continues tounderfund schools. Schools are potentially closing in Seattle,Bellevue - I think we're going to hear about more districts facingthis. And the Democratic leadership just isn't engaged on this.There is a bill to try to fully fund special education. There's acap on the number of students who can receive special educationservices, even if - that the Legislature will fund, at least. TheState Legislature has a cap on how much funding they'll provide forspecial education. If your district has more than 13.5% of itsstudents who need special education services, the Legislature willnot fund above that. In Seattle, 16% of students need services. Inrural districts, it's as high as 20%. And those are undercounts.The district is pitted - pits students against each other - sayseffectively, In order to serve special education students, we gotto take money from somewhere else. And so 25 legislators sponsoreda bill in the House to eliminate that cap and fund that this year.And a number of people showed up to the House AppropriationsCommittee hearing last week - myself included, at least virtually -to testify in support - all of a sudden to discover a proposedsubstitute bill that guts all of that. Says actually, We'll raiseit slowly and we'll only implement it over five years. So they'renot going to solve the financial problems that schools face. Alarge part of school deficits is because of underfunding of specialeducation. But the legislative leadership of the Democratic Partyis just - it's not a priority for them. They don't seem to reallycare about public education, even though, once again - polls showthe public cares about it.
So you have a Democratic leadership in Olympiathat feels pressure to change laws around police pursuits becauseof media pressure, but not really pressure from the public.Certainly not a majority of the public. A few loud voices on theright, but that's not a majority. But the things that the publicreally does care about, especially education, are just not gettingsolved. And it's a sad state of affairs in Olympia where theleadership - and I think it's a leadership problem - isn't in touchwith what the voters want or need.
[00:46:47]CrystalFincher: Yeah, it's a real challenge. I appreciatethat you had an excellent piece that ran in The Urbanist earlierthis week talking about this, but this is really a comprehensiveproblem that's been a while in the making that has a lot ofdifferent causes. And you talked about a number of issues that arecontributing to this - including housing, including our tax system- but really looking at the responsibility of our Legislature tohandle this. What needs to happen at various levels of governmentnow to address this, and what impact might this have on schooldistrict elections that are coming up?
[00:47:27]RobertCruickshank: Yeah, excellent question. The problemsfacing our schools - it's like a perfect storm of three differentthings. The Legislature underfunding our schools, cities making ithard for families to stay. When families get priced out andfamilies leave, then your enrollment starts to drop. And then theschool district itself is mismanaged, is very top-down - notoriousfor not responding to the public, notorious for not really caringabout what parents and families want - of all backgrounds, of allincome levels. So these are all coming together to create a realcrisis. In Seattle, if you lose public schools - the schools andneighborhoods start to close, and that just accelerates decline. Itaccelerates families leaving. It accelerates people who say, Idon't want to move to Seattle, right? It works against what we'retrying to do at the city and state level in terms of making iteasier to build housing and recruit more families and keep familieshere. If you're not going to provide schools for them, you're goingto make them go out of their way to get their kids to school -you're undermining all of that work.
One of the things I think we need is leadershipin the Legislature, and it strikes me that - we have great leaderson housing in the Legislature - you can look at Jessica Bateman,Nicole Macri. They are champions on housing, and that's great - Ilike that. There are champions on the environment. We don't seem tohave a champion on public education in the Legislature right now.There are people who support it and care about it, but no onereally has made it their core issue that they're going to fight onno matter what happens. And that's weird to me, because publiceducation touches so many of their constituents. It's well-liked,universally popular. Polls show that the public wants it. So weneed to have champions step up to save our public schools toprevent these closures. I think there's an attitude in Olympiaright now that says, Well, enrollment's declining - not much we cando about that. That's terrible, right? We should want everyone inthe public system. That is where - we not only educate all of ourkids, that's where we do the work of building a better society. Wewant to undermine racism and privilege and inequity? Bring all thekids into the public system, teach them all together how to beanti-racist - rather than turning the public schools into a defacto safety net, which is what's happening.
The other thing the Legislature can do is pass awealth tax. It has widespread public support - two-thirds ofWashington voters want to tax the rich to fund things, includingpublic schools. Do that this year. But that's a situation where aSenate Democrat - in this case Christine Rolfes, Chair of theSenate Ways and Means Committee - hasn't brought that bill up for ahearing yet. She is someone who's thinking about running forstatewide office next year. Does she really want to go statewidehaving blocked a wealth tax? That seems unwise. But we'll see whatthe Democratic leadership in Olympia wants to do. Do they takepublic education seriously or not?
[00:50:21]CrystalFincher: Yeah, it seems very unwise. And this isanother issue that Democrats, especially in battleground districts,ran talking about public education, ran talking about how importantit is. This is following a number of teacher strikes that happenedat the beginning of the year, where they called out how criticalthese issues are and they're at nearly unsustainable levels now.They are short staffed when it comes to special education. As youtalked about, there are situations where even in a fire drill,there wasn't enough staff to safely evacuate all of their students.This is hazardous in many different ways.
And I also want to call out, just as we arelooking at this - this is 2023. And this year, not only are wegoing to be seeing city council elections and mayoral elections,but school board elections - which so often get overlooked, but areabsolutely critical to addressing this issue. I hope that we see adeeper examination of school board races across the board - inSeattle, across the state. This is critical. And I also want tocall out - it's also critical because our public schools are wherea number of - I don't just want to say conservatives, but likefascists, have designated a battleground. We're seeing attacks ontrans people existing across the country, and absolutely here too.We're seeing efforts to ban books on everything - from issues thataddress the LGBTQ community to BIPOC communities. They are reallytrying to use the schools to outlaw people, to make it illegal toexist. And this has worked in so many other places. We havedistricts - I'm here in Kent, the Kent School District - candidateswho were endorsed by Democrats, one former Chair of the 33rdDistrict Democrats voting against teachers' unions, voting to takethem to court, voting to ban books, right? This is something that'shappening in these elections because they go so unnoticed. Lots ofpeople do not pay attention or examine, so someone with reallyextreme, harmful ideologies who does not want to acknowledge thehumanity or the right of everybody to exist and learn and thriveare flourishing. And this is how they're getting their footholdinto power and into local government. And then they make it ontocity councils and into the Legislature and into Congress. We haveto pay attention to these things. What's your take on what's atstake in these elections?
[00:53:10]RobertCruickshank: I appreciate you saying that, becauseschool board is hugely important. And it is something that I thinkthe progressive movement generally isn't paying enough attention to- school boards in particular, but also public education. And Ithink we need to change that here in 2023 for the reasons youmentioned. I think it's also true in Seattle where thankfully we'renot seeing efforts to ban books. The previous school board did in2015 think about trying to sue teachers when they went out onstrike - thankfully they got strong public pushback against that.But I think the problem we have in Seattle, for example, is aschool board that is disengaged - that isn't really willing to stepup and do the work to fix the district, to take on persistentmismanagement, and to rebuild the district in a way that powerdevolves to the community in ways that are equitable. And I thinkyou have four seats here in Seattle that are up for re-electionthis year - that's the majority of the board. And there are a fewof us parents who are working to try to figure out - who's outthere, who's willing to step up and run. And it's hard - it's anunderpaid job. You get $4,000 a year, essentially, with no realsupport and a lot of work. But it's important and rewarding workthat has to be done because public education is just one of thoseabsolutely crucial things to the future of our society.
And the right understands this. They get thatvery, very clearly. The corporations understand - that's why theywant to privatize the system - because there's a lot of money init. The right understands because there's a lot of power in it. AndI think progressives need to make 2023 the year that - inWashington State, at least - they really deeply engage on this. Wesaw around the country last year in 2022 - where progressives didengage on school board races, they did really well. A lot ofparents in places like North Carolina or Michigan, Texas mobilizedto stop these right-wingers who wanted to use school districts andschool boards to attack other kids. And those progressivecandidates by and large did well. I think it's important for us inWashington State, whether you are in a district where thoseanti-trans, anti-critical race theory people are coming in, orwhether you're in Seattle where the problems are different - youjust have a school board that isn't really focused on doing the jobproperly. We as progressives need to really get our act in gear onthis and take public education and school boards super seriouslythis year.
[00:55:28]CrystalFincher: Yeah, absolutely. And issues like specialeducation, issues about letting police back into schools are on thedocket this year. And if we don't step in and make our voicesheard, make our preferences heard, other people certainly will.Like you said, conservatives have understood for a long time.They've understood the importance of the courts at a morefundamental level than progressives have traditionally. And theyunderstand the role of public education - in just our society andhow it shapes - so I hope we continue to pay attention to that.Appreciate all of your insight here. We'll also link that op-edthat you wrote and include that in the show notes.
And I just want to thank everybody for listeningto Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, February 17th, 2023 - this yearcontinues to evaporate. Hacks & Wonks is co-produced by ShannonCheng and Bryce Cannatelli. Our insightful co-host today is Chairof Sierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and politicalstrategist, Robert Cruickshank. You can find Robert on Twitter@cruikshank, that's C-R-U-I-C-K S-H-A-N-K. You can follow me onTwitter @finchfrii. Follow Hacks & Wonks @HacksWonks. You can catchHacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts- just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure tosubscribe to get our full versions of our Friday almost-live showsand our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you likeus, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a fulltranscript of this episode and links to the resources referenced inthe show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
