Republican Senate Leader John Braun stated that due to the Democrats moving forward several of their liberal bills before last Friday’s policy legislative cutoff (bills had to be passed out of their original committee), “criminals are coming out ahead so far this session – more than students, parents, homebuyers or taxpayers.”  The GOP leader briefly outlined several bills which have cleared policy committees in a Centralia Chronicle op-ed, before he described how the Democrats appear to be unconcerned that that their disastrous 2021 anti-police package has unnecessarily turned thousands of Washington State residents into crime victims.

In the Senate, the Chair of the Law and Justice Committee, Senator Manka Dhingra (D – Redmond), refused to hold a public hearing on two bipartisan bills (SB 5034 and SB 5352) which would have lifted many of the 2021 police pursuit restrictions which allowed 3,100 suspected criminals (according to the Washington State Patrol) to flee police questioning in 2022 (an average of 8.5 a day) and free to commit more crimes.  Instead Senator Dhingra’s committee passed a useless bill (SB 5533) which forms a “work group” to waste more time studying the police pursuit issue.  The group will be formed with members mostly selected by far-Left Democrats and will likely accept more bogus studies to advance their anti-police political agenda.  Senator Dhingra has been heavily criticized (even by Democrats) for presenting a faulty study to justify her-soft-on crime policies, especially on police pursuit legislation.

In the House, 20 Republicans and 20 Democrats co-sponsored a bill (HB 1363) which lifted nearly all of the 2021 police pursuit restrictions.  Yet last week the Democrats on the House Community Safety, Justice, & Reentry gutted the bill to again restrict police officers from pursuing suspected criminals in several crimes, including vehicle theft.  As Senator Braun wrote, “the only pursuit-related bills still in play would essentially tell criminals that they can keep stealing cars and catalytic converters and using stolen cars to smash storefronts, without fear of being pursued.” (Centralia Chronicle, Q13 Fox News, and Washington Legislature Bill Summary)

Senator Marko Liias (D – Edmonds), who has a history of insulting anyone who dares to question any of his radical ideas, continued his insolent behavior in a Seattle Times op-ed he co-wrote with fellow extreme Senator Joe Nguyen (D – West Seattle), on their legislation to allow minors to have transgender procedures without notifying their parents.  Most readers will recall that Senator Liias’ insults got him into trouble last year when he was forced to apologize to Oregon’s Democrat Governor Kate Brown on the Senate floor after he said it was “a joke” that she say anything regarding an export tax he wanted to impose on gas refined in Washington but sold in other states, including Oregon.  Liias then said Governor Brown was a lame duck governor seeking to become relevant by opposing his tax plan. Senator Liias’ poorly developed gas export tax was hastily shelved after many states joined Oregon in stating they would retaliate with export taxes of their own which would target Washington State residents.

Senator Liias is again resorting to insults as his latest poorly developed piece of legislation (SB 5599), to allow minors to have transgender procedures without any parental notification, is receiving strong opposition from the public.  When the Senate Committee on Human Services held a public hearing on the bill on February 6th, 4,743 members of the public registered their views on the bill and 4,646 (98%) stated they were opposed.  Democrats on the committee ignored the public’s outrage and passed the bill.  It now awaits action in the Senate Rules Committee.

In the op-ed, Senators Liias and Nguyen called opposing parents “extreme voices” and then stated the parents made  “false claims” about how the bill allows minors to receive life changing surgery without their parents’ consent.  They fail to mention that 98% of public (including a few members of the LBGTQ community) registered their opposition to the bill.  To Senators Liias and Nguyen, these people are “extreme voices.”  We should note that while the senators wrote that these people made false claims about parental notification, just a couple of paragraphs later in the op-ed they actually wrote how minors can receive the transgender treatment without the parents being notified. (Seattle Times, Shift, and Washington Legislature Bill Summary)

Seattle voters passed a social housing measure (Initiative 135) last week to offer housing assistance to anyone making up to 120% of the area’s median income ($144,000 for a family of four), yet there is no money available to begin the program. The initiative is currently passing by a 57% – 43% margin with a relatively low turnout rate of about 33%.  Initiative backers say they purposely left out a funding mechanism from the measure, but say it will cost at least $750,000 to open an office.  The City of Seattle is $223 million over budget now, and city council efforts to fund the initiative last year were unsuccessful and the city charter prohibits the city from providing funding until the next budget process at the end of this year.  Because the city’s debt kept them from funding the program, Representative (and former House Speaker) Frank Chopp (D – Seattle) is seeking ways to force state taxpayers to fund the program. (Crosscut, King County Elections Department, and Seattle Times)

Quick note – another example of liberal policy failures is that both the City of Seattle and the Seattle Public Schools are both encountering huge financial debt.  The city is at least $223 million in debt and the school district is $277 million in debt (adds up to an even half billion dollars of liberal mismanagement).  Evidently handing out millions of dollars to buy votes from liberal special interests groups and growing large and unnecessary bureaucracies, while at the same time enacting radical policies which cause taxpaying businesses and families to move out of the city, is not a sound financial plan. And we haven’t even mentioned that Sound Transit already has more than $50 BILLION in cost overruns and has reduced the percentage of operating costs riders are responsible for paying from 40% to 5%.  Either government programs will need to be cut or taxes will need to be dramatically increased to pay for the liberals’ massive budgetary failures. If history is any indication, liberal politicians and their special interest groups will soon start labeling all taxpayers “greedy” for protesting against steep tax increases. (Crosscut, Seattle Times, and Washington Policy Center)

Skagit County leaders and farmers are upset with Seattle City Light salmon recovery proposals, as the utility seeks to relicense three dams on the Skagit River which had previously killed all fish runs.  The dams provide 20% of Seattle’s electricity.  (Again, it is interesting that wealthy urban environmental groups which seek to tear down dams on Southeastern Washington’s Snake River, despite the massive increase in salmon passing through those dams, yet they are silent about dams that provide them with cheap power yet prevent any fish from migrating up stream.)  City Light officials are currently in negotiations and have proposed several measures which would eliminate farmlands in Skagit County, and this has several locals upset.

Skagit County Commissioner Peter Browning said, “We would like them to leave Skagit County to us. Let us make the decisions.”  A group, Skagit Upriver Neighbors has been formed to protect Skagit County residents from the harm the City of Seattle wants to impose on the region.  The group’s founder Dave Hallock said, “(Seattle’s behavior) feels so arrogant to me, so inappropriate to me. And I felt like it was important to resist what we felt was inappropriate.” (KING5 News and Skagit Upriver Neighbors website)

Emboldened criminals continue to cause more victims, as liberal politicians refuse to ease their restrictions on police pursuit rules.  Two suspects are being sought for six daytime armed robberies of Tacoma businesses that have occurred in the past week. (MyNorthwest)

The liberals on the Spokane City Council have inserted their own “spy” into closed-door labor  bargaining sessions so they know what is taking place. This comes after liberals successfully used the courts to overturn a voter-approved measure to make public all City of Spokane contract negotiations with unions representing government employees.  In the liberals’ latest demonstration that they are entitled to special privileges other citizens are not allowed to experience, the five liberal members of the council passed a motion to insert a ”liaison” into the contract negotiations conducted by Mayor Nadine Woodward’s administration and the unions. The liaison is to report back to the city councilmembers in secret, behind closed-door meetings.

Since the five councilmembers who supported the city council measure all receive large campaign contributions from the unions, it is fair to say the councilmembers sought this inclusion to help the union members receive even larger paychecks and better benefits which the taxpayers (who don’t have a seat in the room) must fund.

Why shouldn’t the public have access to the exact same information as the councilmembers?  After all, it is their tax money funding the contracts that are negotiated.

In 2019, voters approved Proposition 1 by 77% to force the city to open contract negotiations to the public.  Yet at the end of last year, the Washington State Supreme Court overturned the measure (in a lawsuit filed by the liberal government unions), thus keeping the negotiation secret. (Spokesman Review, Spokane County 2019 election results, Washington Policy Center, and Spokane Public Radio)

Shift’s Newsmaker Interview was with Representative Tom Dent (R – Moses Lake), who is in his fifth term representing Central Washington’s 13^th Legislative District (all of Kittitas County, most of Grant County, and the northern portion of Yakima County).  He owns his own small aviation company which provides pilot instruction and aviation services for local farmers.  He is also a cattle rancher.

Representative Dent shared his thoughts on the important agricultural issues being discussed in Olympia, including the bi-partisan riparian (buffer zones along streams) bill he helped negotiate. He expressed his concern that urban Democrats will not support much needed reform to the state’s current agriculture overtime wage laws, which threaten the existence of many small farms and has already caused smaller paychecks for farm workers. He stated his frustration over the Inslee Administration’s failure to follow the law by not providing a process for farmers to be exempt from the higher fuel prices caused by the governor’s cap-and-trade law, after the Democrats promised farmers they were exempt from this new tax.  The representative highlighted his bill to help reduce childcare costs by lifting some of the unnecessary restrictions which state government has placed on workers. Representative Dent closed with his support for law enforcement and outlined legislation important to the state’s aviation community. (Click to read full Newsmaker Interview)

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