Archives for September 2011

Please join us tonight for an evening of politics under the influence at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally.

We meet every Tuesday at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00 pm, but a few folks show up earlier for a quiet dinner.

Can’t make it tonight? The Tri-Cities chapter of Drinking liberally meets every Tuesday night. Tonight the Bellingham Chapter also meets at 7:00pm. Tomorrow night at 7:00pm, the Burien chapter meets. And next Monday, the Olympia and the South Bellevue chapters of Drinking Liberally meet at 7:00 pm.

With 225 chapters of Living Liberally, including thirteen in Washington state and six more in Oregon, chances are good there is one near you.

1) Crime is down in the city, but we’ve seen some horrible incidents with the police in recent years. How do we ensure public safety and not have those sorts of things happen in the future?

We make certain the Office of Professional Accountability, and the related civilian Auditor and the seven-member civilian Review Board, have the tools and resources necessary to thoroughly investigate complaints of misconduct.

This may seem insignificant, but we should transform the public face of the OPA—printed materials that explain the process of investigations, notification and update letters and the office environment. The current OPA environment—website, printed materials, offices—express a strong police orientation. Instead, the OPA environment should be professional, neutral and welcoming. First impressions matter.

As we have heard from the past four civilian OPA Auditors, the quality and thoroughness of OPA investigations are not the issue. The real issue, as identified by current Auditor Anne Levinson, is what we don’t know. Some in the city believe that our police officers use force far more often than is reported. My office will soon ask the City Auditor and the OPA Review Board to examine this issue and conduct independent research of arrestees to determine whether force was used during their arrest and whether the arresting officers properly completed required “use of force” reports. This type of external, proactive examination will identify problems and will also help build public trust and confidence in the Police Department.

Turning to crime prevention, emerging evidence indicates that we should shift away from the policing of people, but not all people, to the policing of place. This would be a major shift in American policing.

This change is necessary because crime is geographically concentrated and anchored at micro places. Crime is not randomly distributed across a city. In Seattle, using 16 years of crime data, researchers have found that about 50% of reported crime is found at just 5% to 6% of our street segments. More than 20% of crime in Seattle is concentrated at just 1% of street segments.

Changing to policing place would have dramatic impact in reducing crime and improving police-community relations. Inherent in the “policing of place” is a strong community-based orientation; police officers working with the community to resolve problems, rather than police officers arriving to just arrest people or “enforce the law.”

This strategic shift would transform the Police Department. It would give officers a strong sense of mission. A spirit of innovation would take hold as officers digested crime data and worked with community members to design appropriate intervention tactics.

2) Now that the Viaduct is coming down, what should the waterfront look like?

The central waterfront should become a place that celebrates Seattle’s maritime and industrial history, honors our Native American heritage, reconnects the city with Elliott Bay along key east-west corridors, and provides a series of public places where individuals and families can enjoy parks, pedestrian promenades, outdoor restaurants and views stretching from Pike Place Market to the stadium district. Port of Seattle operations and jobs must be protected.

3) As the great recession drags on, the city budget is still hurt. What do we need to cut, what do we need to keep, and do we need to raise more money via taxation?

We should adopt an outcome-based budgeting philosophy so we understand why we are investing in particular projects and what we are achieving. Unfortunately, we don’t really know what many of our investments are producing, especially when it comes to human services, youth and family, and crime prevention expenditures. A much stronger performance orientation is needed in city government.

We should continue to protect human services and public safety programs as our highest priorities. For example, one of the best crime prevention programs in the country is the Nurse Family Partnership (NFP), a 30 year effort to link specially trained nurses with first time mothers living in poverty. Seattle currently provides funding to reach about one-third of the eligible moms in the city; two-thirds of those who qualify do not receive services. Yet, the NFP has consistently shown through high quality research that it can reduce criminal behavior, strength the families involved and save government tens of thousands of dollars. We should fully fund the
NFP.

I helped craft the renewal of the Families and Education Levy that is on the November 8 ballot. If passed by the voters, this measure will nearly double the amount of funding for highly targeted intervention efforts for our most at risk public school kids. This tax increase is justified because continuing to accept the status quo in public education where nearly half of our students are at great academic risk will only cost much more long into the future.

4) With its budget shrunk at least until the end of the recession what should Seattle parks look like?

We need to maintain our parks so they are inviting and accessible to all. Funding for parks maintenance has suffered in recent years because of the economic slump. In 2008, I worked with Councilmember Rasmussen to craft a Parks levy for the November ballot. That measure passed overwhelmingly.

There are discussions under way to identify other Parks funding options.

5) What is the Seattle’s role in education and public transportation given how important they are to the city, but that other agencies are tasked with them?

With regard to public education, our role is to make certain that Seattle students receive a high quality education. The City has many opportunities to influence the direction and policies of the Seattle School District— Families and Education Levy, joint use agreements for school playgrounds and parks, collaboration between the Council and the School Board.

City services should be aligned with the policies and outcomes of the School District. For example, we do this now with the Levy that is designed to provide academic and support services consistent with the District’s goals and with police services at specific District buildings.

SDOT is responsible for city streets and bridges and we work closely with King County and state agencies related to Metro bus services and state highways that traverse Seattle. We have good relationships with these other agencies; witness the new regional transit service principles for allocation of Metro service that eliminated the old and flawed 40-40-20 rules.

Looking forward to this Ken Burns special next week:

There is another statewide poll result released by King 5 today. This one is for the 2012 Attorney General race between King Council members Bob Ferguson (D) and Reagan Dunn (R). Like the gubernatorial poll I wrote about earlier, 523 registered voters expressed a preference.

A total of 388 had a preference, of which 207 (39%) went for Ferguson and 181 (34%) went for Dunn. Some 27% had no preference—hardly surprising since both politicians are mostly known in King County. The normalized percentages are 53.4% for Ferguson and 46.6% for Dunn. But the poll has a very small effective sample size.

The Monte Carlo analysis of a million simulated elections finds Ferguson winning 825,042 times to Dunn’s 165,625 victories.

If an election was to be held today, we would expect Ferguson to win with an 83.3% probability. Of course, the polling results are not “significant” by traditional criteria.

I suspect that this poll is biased in favor of Ferguson. My reason is that the largest share of undecideds probably come from outside of King County, where there is low name recognition for both candidates. Therefore, what we see is likely dominated by Democratic-leaning preferences within King County. A small countervailing bias might arise from the better name recognition outside of King County for Reagan Dunn, on account of his late Mother, Rep. Jennifer Dunn (R). Still, Ferguson gets a few points advantage out of the poll at this stage of the election season.

The contrast between this race and the gubernatorial race is interesting. At first glance, it might seem concerning that Ferguson (D) leads Dunn (R) for Attorney General in the same poll that finds current Attorney General Rob McKenna (R) leading Rep. Jay Inslee (D) for the Governor’s race. Rather than spelling doom for Inslee, I think this just shows that McKenna has much better name recognition statewide, and even within King County. The position of Attorney General can be high-profile, and McKenna has certainly not been bashful about taking advantage of it to raise his profile. And while Inslee has been very popular in the 1st CD (winning by double digits in every one of his last six reelection bids), he hasn’t nearly the name recognition outside of his district.

In sum, Inslee is a little better off than today’s poll suggests, and Ferguson is a little worse off than today’s poll suggests. Both races are probably closer to 50%-50%.

Update: As Richard Pope points out in the comment thread, the numbers in the post didn’t match the headline. The headline is correct. I screwed up typing Inslee’s number into a database, and the error spread from there. All fixed now.

A new poll is about to be released in the Washington gubernatorial race between Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA-01) and state Attorney General Rob McKenna. The poll surveyed 532 registered voters and was conducted on behalf of KING 5 by Survey USA. KING 5‘s Robert Mak gives a brief overview of the results.

0f the 532 surveyed, 404 436 had an opinion: 170 202 (32 38%) supported Inslee and 234 (44%) supported McKenna. The undecided group made up 24.1 18%. I did my typical Monte Carlo analysis using a million simulated elections at the observed percentages. Inslee “won” 11,474 136,028 times and McKenna “won” 987,293 856,218 times.

The results suggest that, if the election was held today, McKenna would win with a 98.9 86.3% probability. Note that since McKenna’s probability of winning is less than 95%, the lead is not considered “significant” by traditional statistical reasoning.

It is, of course, too early to panic over this poll, particularly with 24 18% undecided. Nevertheless, this poll puts McKenna in the lead. Last week a poll from Strategies 360, a Democratic consulting firm, showed a similar lead for McKenna, 46% to 39%. I generally ignore polls from partisan consultants or polls commissioned by campaigns, but the similarity in results is noteworthy. The previous “real” poll for this race was from Survey USA in late June and showed Inslee with a small, non-significant lead over McKenna, 47% to 44% (my analysis is here).

Mac points out for today’s poll:

McKenna’s early lead can be attributed in part to his strength in the Puget Sound area. In King, Pierce and Snohomish counties, he’s even with Inslee at 41% each, which is significant for a Republican candidate. As expected, McKenna picks up votes in more conservative eastern Washington with a 59%-25% advantage.

Inslee has, apparently, lost ground to McKenna on both fronts: in June he was up 49% to 42% in Seattle and McKenna was up 51% to 41% in eastern Washington.

This race is being touted as the hottest Governor’s race in the country, and the best G.O.P. gubernatorial pick-up opportunity in the nation. It’s certainly living up to the hype!