The anti-business Jay Inslee followers on the Washington State Building Code Council voted last Friday to impose new commercial building restrictions which will make owning and leasing commercial property more expensive (and those costs will be passed on to consumers). The councilmembers, who are appointed by Governor Inslee, voted 11-3 to ban heating and cooling systems which use natural gas, thus requiring contractors to install more expensive climate systems.  One councilmember, Spokane County Commissioner Al French, was outspoken about how the councilmembers are chosen and how the council’s decision will have a significant impact on the lives of many Washington residents.

“One of the criticisms I’ve had of this board for a long time is it’s not accountable,” French said at the meeting. “It’s not accountable to the Legislature, it’s not accountable to the public, and yet they make decisions that are far reaching.”  Commissioner French said these decisions should be approved by the legislature, not by a board of Governor Inslee’s environmental contributors and supporters.  (Spokesman Review and Revised Code of Washington)

City of Seattle officials suddenly cleaned up a couple homeless encampments because they were near where President Joe Biden was staying in downtown Seattle when he visited the Pacific Northwest last week.  These are the same City of Seattle officials who have spent most of the past two or three years ignoring the pleas of residents and small business employers about the encampments in their parks and on their sidewalks.  According to Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office, the move was to protect the safety of the president (who is constantly surrounded by dozens of Secret Service agents and hundreds of police officers while staying in a well-protected suite three of four hundred feet above street level).  When citizens (who don’t have similar protections) have stated their concerns about the safety of their children or workers, the city’s political leaders ignored them and placed even more restrictions on removing the encampments.  (Seattle Times)

Former Bremerton High School football coach Joe Kennedy is in the national spotlight again today as the U.S. Supreme Court heard his lawsuit against the Bremerton School District for terminating his employment because the assistant coach held a voluntary prayer at mid-field following games.  The court is reviewing the previous decision made by the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals, which sided with the school district.  Many members of Coach Kennedy’s legal team are optimistic since they believe the Supreme Court has sought to rule on this case because a majority disagree with the lower court’s ruling.  A decision by the Supreme Court is expected before its terms ends in June.  Shift had an exclusive interview with the coach’s lead attorney, Mike Berry of the First Liberty Institute, last January immediately after the Supreme Court announced it would hear the case. (Kitsap Sun and Shift’s Newsmaker Interview)

A Seattle Times editorial stated that a group of Kirkland residents (“Keep Kids Safe”) should halt its lawsuit to stop King County from purchasing the former Northrup Way La Quinta Inn and turning it into a permanent homeless shelter.  Keep Kids Safe’s primary concern is that the former hotel is adjacent to a school and its playground, and is within a couple of blocks of three other small schools and day cares.  Residents are concerned that none of the homeless will have any type of background check before moving into the neighborhood.  King County Executive Dow Constantine has used the region’s homeless crisis (which was caused by his own and others’ liberal policies) to enlarge the King County government through purchasing and running ten 10 former hotels as homeless shelters along with providing staffing to get residents into social services.  A majority of the purchased hotels are outside the city of Seattle.  Throughout its hotel buying spree, the county has attempted to complete the transactions without community involvement in the process.

The Times’ primary argument for why the Kirkland residents should drop their lawsuit is that a 128-room facility, full of homeless individuals (many of whom are suffering from mental and chemical dependency issues) is more safe than pot shops and adult bookstores. The Times made this bizarre argument because “Keep Kids Safe” has asserted that homeless facilities should have the same buffer zones that confine where marijuana dispensaries and adult entertainment businesses may be located. The Times’ goes on to make another strange assertion, that the homeless facility is just as safe as a hotel full of paying guests.  Keep Kids Safe continues to seek support for its grassroots efforts and lawsuit.  (Seattle Times and Keep Kids Safe)

A new “tiny house” village remains empty as a liberal turf war rages over who controls and receives funding from taxpayers.   The 40 newly constructed homes were built in the Rainier Beach neighborhood by the controversial Low Income Housing Institute (co-founded by the divisive former Speaker of the Washington State House of Representatives Frank Chopp) after it received promises from the Seattle City Council for public funding.  Since then the new Regional Housing Authority has taking over the public funding purse strings and its leadership does not feel obligated to keep the promises previously made by city politicians. These 40 empty homes are the latest symbols of Seattle’s failed liberal policies.  These policies put politics before compassion and have created the homelessness problem in Seattle. Now liberal officials are wasting the money they demanded to solve the problem while sadly (and predictably) many people continue to suffer. (Danny Westneat/Seattle Times)

Vancouver Fire Marshal Heidi Scarpelli said that fires set by homeless individuals are tying up more of the department’s resources and that many blazes are difficult to fight. The marshal said her department had to fight 100 more transient fires in 2021 than it did the previous year. Currently the wet weather is helping to keep many of these fires from spreading into larger fires, but Marshal Scarpelli is concerned about what could take place during the dry summer months. (The Columbian)

Rapes, assaults, and car thefts have all significantly increased in Spokane County since the passage of the Democrats’ anti-police package in the Washington State Legislature.  In the year since April 15^th, 2021, reported rape cases increased by 63%, aggravated assaults grew by 21%, and stolen vehicles rose by 53% over the previous year.  Police agencies point to the Democrats’ soft-on-crime legislative package, which they passed during the 2021 session, as one of the primary reasons for the dramatic increase in crime. As crime continues to impact his Spokane constituents, Senate Democrat Leader Andy Billig received criticism for not allowing a floor vote on a bill (SB 5919) police departments supported during the recently concluded 2022 legislative session.  The Spokane Business & Commercial Property Owners Council criticized Billig for not allowing a floor vote on SB 5919, which would have allowed police officers to pursue suspected criminals and have more flexibility to detain suspected criminals. (KHQ, CenterSquare, and Washington Legislature Bill Summary)

Shift’s Newsmaker Interview was with Republican legislative candidate Tawsha Dykstra Thompson, a recently retired Bellingham police officer who is running against first-term Democrat Representative Alicia Rule in the 42^nd Legislative District (Whatcom County).  Tawsha Thompson and her husband Jay, a Whatcom County Sherriff’s deputy, made news last February when he was one of two officers shot while responding to a neighborhood disturbance.  Thompson’s experiences during the ordeal were told in this local media story. From our interview, it is obvious that Thompson is not only extremely knowledgeable about the Democrats’ disastrous 2021 police reform package (“The liberal majority in Olympia does not want to hold criminals accountable”), but knows far more about most of the issues than many of the legislature’s long-time incumbents.  Thompson shared her thoughts about her husband’s recovery, public safety, the Long-Term Care payroll tax, the state income tax on capital gains, the recent floods in Northwest Washington, and on the failure of the Democrats to help low- and middle-income households with any type of tax relief (gas, sales, or property). (Click to read full Newsmaker Interview)

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