After the Governor Jay Inslee’s staff first admitted that a “technical glitch” caused the state to shortchange Pierce County on its COVID vaccine allotment, the state is now backtracking on its errors since the county’s allocation has become a hot political topic.  In an April 8^th News Tribune story, a spokesperson for Inslee’s Department of Health conceded that “a technical glitch with the ordering form” caused the county to receive fewer vaccines than they were supposed to receive. This resulted in the county residents receiving only 25.4% of their 1^st shot and only 16.6 receiving both shots, while the state averages were 31.4% and 20.0%, respectively. Pierce County Executive Bruce Dammeier sent many messages to Governor Inslee asking for the state to provide his county with its proper allocations.  On Monday, the governor moved the county (along with Cowlitz and Whitman counties) back to Phase 2, which made the state’s admitted shortfall of vaccines to Pierce County the source of contention.

As the result, Governor Inslee now characterizes his DOH’s previous admission of failing to deliver the proper number of dosages as “misunderstandings and misrepresentations about the vaccine allocations to Pierce County.”  The governor has since even denied the county the vaccines it was due before the Inslee administration’s errors to help combat its current high infection rates.  Many people are suspecting the governor of playing political games in allocation of the vaccine, since Executive Dammeier is considered a Republican frontrunner for governor in 2024.  If people besides the governor and his partisan staff were involved in the decision-making process, then these suspicions could be removed.  But instead, the governor and his co-conspirators in the Democrat’s legislative leadership continue to stubbornly keep legislators and local elected officials from being involved in major health decisions after more than 400 days since Jay Inslee first declared an “emergency” to allow him rule over all Washington, without those pesky elected representatives involved. (The News Tribune)

Republican legislative officials assert that since seniors, who are the most susceptible to the serious effects of COVID-19, have had ample opportunity to receive the vaccine, the state should allocate dosages to stop the spread of the virus. The GOP lawmakers believe more vaccines should be sent to the three counties (Pierce, Cowlitz and Whitman) the governor recently moved back to Phase 2. Republican Senate Leader John Braun states, “let’s rethink how we’re evaluating the situation. I think if we do that, we’ll see that we can open up more quickly, very safely and reduce some of these other risks associated with the pandemic.”

Republicans also suggest that the state should re-evaluate the data used to determine whether a county should be moved back or forward in the phases. They suggest using “hospital capacity” instead of hospitalization rate of COVID patients (i.e. the number of hospital patients who are being treated for COVID) as a data metric.  House Republican Leader JT Wilcox claimed, “Our hospital capacity is very strong. I think we (Pierce County) are at about 78 percent of ICUs filled, and of course Pierce County has a good deal of emergency medical capacity there as does Whitman County and as does Cowlitz County.” Yet the governor refuses to listen to any other opinion besides his own, as he continues to ignore Republican legislators and local health officials’ opinions and suggestions during his 400+ days of one-man rule. (KOMO News)

The state has finally changed the hours for its vaccination sites to allow working people more opportunity to receive the shot.  State-run facilities will now be open until 8:00 PM twice a week. Washington State Department of Health Secretary Umair Shah said he made that move since members of the Latino community said that their work schedules made it difficult to receive the shot – and we are sure that people from all working-class backgrounds had the same difficulties with the previous hours, but a shorter time schedule worked best for all of those state employees who are so supportive of Jay Inslee’s campaigns. (KUOW)

Governor Inslee has signed legislation that bans private detention centers, like the one serving the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Tacoma.  It is the local Democrats’ latest effort to make it difficult for federal officials to enforce federal immigration laws, because rules are bothersome things for some of their voters.  Since the Democrats do not have the public support to alter the nation’s immigration laws, local Democrats continue to impose restrictions on federal authorities to keep them from enforcing the law.  The Democrat bill (HB 1090) will require the Tacoma ICE detention center to close when its current contract ends in 2025. It currently holds 200 inmates, which is low due to COVID concerns.  (KNKX Public Radio and Washington Legislature Bill Summary)

PubliCola reveals how much the City of Seattle paid to reserve all the rooms at a downtown hotel during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, and that the city paid as much as $2,600 for nights actually stayed at the hotel.  The city contracted with the Executive Hotel Pacific Seattle to rent all of its 155 rooms for a three-month period, starting in mid-March 2020.  The hotel was designated to be used to quarantine first-responders, health care workers, and other city employees.  The rates were determined by normal “seasonal” rates with cost climbing as summer approached.  While PubliCola states that the city paid “full price for all rooms,” our math reveals that the negotiated rates were approximately 50% of full price. The article states the hotel chain currently charges $144 for rooms in Vancouver, B.C., our quick research shows that the Seattle rate fluctuates around $200.   For March, the contract rate was $303,000 ($63.06 per room per night), April was $339,000 ($72.90 per room per night) and May was $526,000 ($109.47 per room per night).   Yet, since the city only used a small percentage of the rooms, the cost per night of rooms used was exorbitant.  PubliCola reports that for one 4-week period, only 127 total room nights were used.  Thus, the city paid $2,618 per night stayed. The city now has an agreement with the hotel to house homeless individuals. (PubliCola and City of Seattle’s contract with Executive Hotel Pacific)

After mounting public pressure, it appears the City of Seattle will be cleaning up one of the homeless encampments near school property before in-person instruction begins next week.  On Wednesday, the city posted warning notices at the encampment on Miller Playfield, near Capitol Hill’s Meany Middle School, informing residents to remove all property by 9:00 AM tomorrow morning.  All residents have been informed on multiple occasions that the city will move them into housing, including the Executive Hotel Pacific mentioned in the story above. (MyNorthwest)

There are many stories about how the governor’s arbitrary ruling to reduce economic activity in three counties he doesn’t like has negatively impacted the lives of Washington residents.  It will severely impact small retailers and hospitality businesses, which will have to once again limit their capacity to just 25%.  It will also impact major social events such as weddings.  One Pierce County bride’s wedding is taking place this Saturday, one day after the county is to be moved back to Phase 2.  She said that she and many of the guests were fully immunized, but the governor’s office informed her that she needed to severely reduce back the number of guests expected at their outdoor ceremony. (MyNorthwest)

The controversial – and supported by local liberals like Ben Stuckart – non-profit Jewels Helping Hands is again in the news due to its latest shelter operation in a Spokane residential neighborhood. The non-profit organization first attracted controversary in 2019, when it became known that one of the leaders of the organization had been recently convicted of embezzlement.  Jewels had just been awarded a quickly arranged $740,000 city contract to operate a homeless “warming center”, weeks before winter arrived. The city has since ended its relationship with the troubled organization due to the city’s investigation into allegations made against the group’s leadership.  Now the landlord (Women’s Club of Spokane) of Jewels Helping Hands’ latest shelter claims it was misled about how the group planned to use the building. The Women’s Club believed Jewels would only operate for a few days and not be a longtime tenant operating a 24/7 homeless shelter in the residential neighborhood.  The Women’s Club now feels its hands are tied and have encouraged neighbors “to call the cops on us” to enable the grou to remove Jewels as a tenant due to nuisance laws. (Spokesman Review and Shift

Governor Jay Inslee is using the COVID pandemic as an excuse to give more money to his campaign contributors in state government employee unions, despite them not losing a single paycheck (in fact received a pay raise) while others lost their jobs or their businesses due to Inslee’s so-called “emergency”orders. The governor says “our state employees have gone through a lot” as he adds more funds to their pension system, and he is forcing those who have lost wages, their jobs, and even their businesses to pay for it.  Governor Inslee does not care about those who have suffered during his one-man reign, he just wants to make sure his buddies in the state employee unions are financially rewarded (with our tax money) for funding his and other Democrats’ campaigns. (Click to read full Shift article)

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