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Freshman Rep. Jamie Herrera Beutler (R-WA-3) got a little attention today from the national press. And, um…it wasn’t exactly a profile in political courage.

The original story comes from The Columbian (my emphasis):

Who should be informed of the opportunity to meet with their elected officials? Who decides how that should happen? According to U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Camas, she does.
[…]

On Friday The Chronicle in Centralia received a phone call from Herrera Beutler staffer and Communications Director Casey Bowman informing the newspaper of the meeting. Bowman asked that a meeting announcement not be placed in the paper. However, he did invite the paper to cover the event.

The Chronicle refused his request and published an announcement in Saturday’s paper.

The reason for not publishing an advance notice of the meeting was the fear that people from outside the immediate area could come and “just yell” at the congresswoman “whatever’s on their minds,” Bowman said Friday.

Perhaps Herrera Beutler can get together with Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA-8) and charter a G.O.P. Coward’s Club.

– Several cities have shifted to smart cards for transit purchases, so adding the ability to use your smart card to pay for parking would be fantastic.

– Every military operation we take on has legitimate criticism. Rush Limbaugh is clearly not the one to provide it though.

– Well, in news that will shock exactly no one, at least one of the images featured on Erickson’s tumblr is fake.

– Some signs from Westlake.

– How many galaxies are in the universe?

Publicola announces the Friday Jolt winner of the day:

Anyone who’s thinking of running against US Rep. Dave Reichert.

US Rep. Dave Reichert tainted his reputation as a green Republican—one of the Democrats’ big problems when taking him on—by voting for a coal bill today that will weaken coal ash regulations and take the EPA completely out of the picture.

Reichert goes from a pale green to ashen….

– it’s wrong-headed to think that voting down a fee will somehow make driving affordable.

– Maybe now we can raise taxes on the richest members of society.

– You see a certain amount of commentary complaining that the young people involved in the Occupy Wall Street protests should put down their signs carping about student loans and big banks and go get a job. What the commentators don’t say is that no one is willing to hire them.

– The freeloaders who don’t pay federal income taxes.

– This sort of vigilante justice will probably become more common in the Internet age, so let’s at least try to get the right people.

– It was especially nice to see the handful of cartoonists pretending to care so very much about [Steve Jobs] , but just not enough to know he’d been a Buddhist for decades and in fact made several speeches about how it guided his life and career and how imagining he’d be in front of St. Peter

Obama on Tuesday (via The Washington Post):

“Folks go around saying ‘Obamacare.’ That’s right — I care,” the president said at a fundraising luncheon in Dallas on Tuesday. He added of Republicans: “That’s their main agenda? That’s your plank? Is making sure 30 million people don’t have health insurance?”

Indeed. But Obama just scratches the surface. The Republican agenda includes elimination of Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, the insurance and security components of social security, public education, student loan and financial aid programs, abortion, environmental protections, food protections, safety standards, and, of course, unions.

Oh yeah…and the middle class.

Taken altogether, the Republican “utopia” seems like something out of a Mad Max movie.

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?

I applaud and empathize with the police and other first responders, and know from firsthand experience just how tough these jobs are. However, like any other public employees, law enforcement workers need to be accountable to the public. Given the recent spate of widely publicized incidents, and the deep mistrust of the Seattle Police Department in some communities, the current accountability system is clearly not working. We need to work proactively to restore trust in our police, especially among immigrant, refugee and communities of color. At the same time, SPD also has a responsibility to openly and honestly review their training and examine an internal culture that is clearly not serving the city as well as it can.

I will push for and support an end to any and all law enforcement training programs that have contributed to the unacceptable rash of SPD incidents involving abuse of power. The Office for Professional Accountability has not been an effective tool for review of police actions; it needs a mix of civilian and law enforcement representation and subpoena power to better review SPD actions. And SPD must undertake a thorough review of its training policies and procedures to ensure that, in the course of a difficult job that often requires split-second decisions, officers have instilled in them cultural awareness and the tools needed to maintain public safety, de-escalate confrontations, and treat civilians with courtesy and respect.

I also support a greater re-emphasis on community policing, and programs that enable officers to build relationships with neighborhood watch groups, residents, and business owners and employees.

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

Now that construction of the downtown tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way viaduct is underway, over the next several months city council will face the next phase of the debate: how best to use the newly available waterfront acreage that removal of the viaduct will create. I believe that the final plan must meet several critical objectives:

It must meet critical infrastructure needs. We need to not only replace the aging seawall, but anticipate the climate change-induced rising water levels of coming decades.

It must make the waterfront accessible to the general public. Plans should emphasize public access over private development. The downtown waterfront must be usable by all residents, workers, and tourists, not just those who can afford to pay a price.

It must be affordable. Given Seattle’s budget constraints, and the possible additional costs of tunnel construction itself, this is not the time for the city to once again opt for an expensive mega-project. One preliminary plan costs nearly a billion dollars. This is simply not realistic or wise. Seattle can not afford a blank check for waterfront development.

It must preserve waterfront jobs. The waterfront plan will almost certainly create tourism-related jobs, but it should not do so at the expense of the existing, well-paying jobs of Seattle’s working waterfront.

It must be accountable. The plan has specific budgetary and completion benchmarks. Council must not only approve the plan, but continue to exercise oversight to ensure that both the tunnel and the waterfront reconstruction come in on time and in budget.

It must ensure that public safety is an integral part of the overall landscape design. The present Freeway Park design has made it an instrument of criminal activities and neighborhood concern. The waterfront landscape design elements must avoid repeating similar design problems.

Once such a criteria is agreed upon than the city can move forward with incorporating fun elements like a venue for waterfront concerts, arts and cultural sites that showcase the indigenous historical contributions of first nation people and those of ethnic origins, immigrant and refugee groups who now call Seattle home.

This is a rare opportunity to remake one of the most visible parts of Seattle. We need to do it right. On council, I will work hard to ensure that any plan meets these goals and delivers a downtown waterfront worthy of a world class city.

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?

The Seattle City Council recently voted unanimously to place a $60 vehicle license fee increase on the November ballot. I urge voters to reject this proposal as being the wrong plan, at the wrong time, to achieve the wrong goals.

It’s the wrong plan. The proposed car tab increase is an extremely regressive flat tax that will disproportionately hurt the poor and unemployed.

It’s the wrong time. We are in a struggling economy. King County Council has already voted to impose an additional $20 car tab hike that will also affect all city car owners; the city council already imposed its original $20 car tab assessment months ago; and the city council has also put a doubling of the Families and Education Levy on the November ballot.

It’s the wrong goals. The $204 million to be raised by the car tab hike during the next ten years will be divided primarily among transit projects (49 percent); road repair and maintenance (29 percent); and bicycle and pedestrian projects (22 percent). All three of these areas are misjudged. The car tab hike is being widely promoted as a “transit measure,” but that’s misleading. Instead of buses or light rail, much of the money is dedicated to two streetcar projects, given the overwhelming demand for more bus – not streetcar – service; this is an unconscionable misuse of scarce transportation taxing authority.

It’s time to balance our support for these transportation modes with other transportation needs. Both the bicycle/pedestrian funding and the streetcar lines are nice “wish list” projects that pale in importance next to the over one billion dollars in backlogged road and bridge repairs. The part of this ten year tax allocated to repairs and maintenance is less than one-seventeenth of what would be needed even to address today’s backlog. The maintenance backlog is a serious public safety issue that affects cars, buses, bicycles, and every other type of vehicle that uses our streets and bridges.

We need to focus on what matters, capital infrastructure maintenance should be the priority. On par with this for the general fund would be maintenance of the safety net for those most vulnerable. Regressive taxation is not the answer for addressing revenue shortfalls in the future. Seattle should take the leadership in working with legislative representatives from the 36th, 46th, 43rd, 37th, 34th and the 11th in working with legislative allies to urge a WA State income tax to replace all regressive taxes and to lower current sales tax rates.

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

The biggest problem for the Parks & Recreation Department in recent years has been lack of accountability to local park users and neighbors, particularly in park controversies like the Gas Works Park concerts, the proposed Woodland Park Zoo parking garage, a redesign of Occidental Park, and many others. There were two common themes to those controversies: pressure from the city to use its parks to generate new income streams, and lack of responsiveness by both Parks Department leadership and city council to neighborhood concerns.

Those controversies have subsided after the departure of longtime Parks and Recreation head Ken Bounds and his patron, former mayor Greg Nickels. But the pressures to generate park income for the city, and the need for oversight by and accountability to the city council, remain. Parks Department leadership and members of the council’s Parks and Seattle Center need to balance the sometimes conflicting needs of the many constituencies of the parks – picnickers, sports fields users, special events patrons, dog lovers, etc. – with those of park neighbors and the general interests of the city.

The goal of keeping Seattle Parks free, safe, and accessible for all Seattle residents should be paramount. Safety is not limited to people and should be extended to keep fighting breeds of dogs out of Off-leash areas, and parks for the safety of other pets and people. User fees should be kept affordable and other income streams – whether park concessions, special events, or more creative attempts to raise desperately needed revenues for the city – should only be undertaken if the impact on that primary goal is minimal. Revenue shortfalls will continue as the recession continues. Parks are places where naming rights and advertisement for a fee could be better utilized to assist with park maintenance and expenses.

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?

The City has made a huge investment in Seattle Public Schools by taxing citizens to invest in a variety of support services for students. Overall the city should and must do a better job of managing the Education Levy dollars so that the wrap around services being funded can assist the school district in raising academic achievement and graduation rates. Dropout rates are unacceptably high. African-American and Native American graduation rates have declined in the last decade. Our schools often haven’t been successful in educating some groups of students ESL students, lower income students and students from African –American, Native American and Latino cultural groups. We’re not being smart to ensure that we are leveraging city influence on the schools to establish some targeted goals and benchmarks to be measured against. The city can also do a much better job working in partnership with the school district to support administrative areas like Human Resource training, shared staff between the cities Park and Recreational staff who oversees the fields and the school district’s garden and janitorial staff who have some similar and shared responsibilities for the same properties. We need to facilitate ways to keep school district gyms and recreational areas open to the public in the early evenings and on weekends. North and South end schools can be paired to support one another much like the Sister City International relationships. In the end, the Families and Education Levy need to be supported but at the same time, we need to build into it some real specific benchmarks for accountability.

The primary role of city government in public transit is to oversee urban planning, zoning, and development in such a way that it both encourages transit use and makes transit itself more efficient. The city government needs to encourage and support a healthy mix of transportation modes; there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. As Seattle moves to greater density, it should both concentrate much of that increased density in areas with good transit service and work to ensure that transit can adapt adequately in areas where demand will increase due to new development.

There have been various proposals over the years to combine transit agencies in the region, particularly Metro and Sound Transit. Depending on the details, I would seriously consider such a proposal. The coordination and elimination of redundancy amongst different agencies is better, but there’s more to be done, and having one bureaucracy to fund rather than several would also result in cost savings and improved efficiency – savings that, hopefully, could be redirected into expanded service.

Once again, the Tacoma News Tribune has achieved a level of stupidity that is both remarkable and depressing. And with Ken Burns’ fantastic series on alcohol prohibition airing this week on PBS, I should probably add inexcusable to that list as well.

The fun began over the weekend when TNT reporter Rob Carson filed a report about how he was able to get a medical marijuana authorization from a doctor he only saw over Skype. Anyone who’s familiar with the medical marijuana situation in the state knows that this kind of nonsense happens. At Seattle Hempfest, there were women with bikinis at the entrance encouraging people to “get legal” or to “get their green card”. Hell, we don’t even have “green cards” in this state.

Most people are smart enough to know that this will happen as long as there’s a way for people to make money from it. It’s no different from before medical marijuana was around, when there were thousands of people in this state willing to illegally sell pot to you for money. Now, along with those people, there are now people willing to provide you with a medical marijuana authorization for money. Not much of a difference other than the level of professional risk. These are merely the evolving ways that the futility of prohibiting a widely used recreation drug manifests itself.

As soon as I saw Carson’s report, I knew there was another Editorial Board disaster in the making. And they did not disappoint:

Restoring credibility to medical marijuana in Washington will require separating drug-seekers from the seriously ill people who may genuinely need it.

Anyone who cares about the latter should be anxious to prevent recreational users and abusers from discrediting the whole system – as is happening in Tacoma on a large scale.

The TNT seems awfully concerned about the credibility of medical marijuana, but they might need to be a little more worried about their own credibility. Hardly anyone disputes the fact that there are folks who derive genuine value from the medical use of marijuana. Even Dave Reichert has come to realize this after the reality of its effectiveness hit close to home. The fact that large numbers of recreational users come up with medical excuses doesn’t discredit that reality at all. But it does discredit the morons who can’t figure that out.

For the last two years, pot-lovers across the state have found it increasingly easy to get the so-called green cards that protect them from the law.

Wow, two big problems. There are no such thing as “green cards”. Anyone who’s told by a doctor that they are getting a “green card” is being scammed. This state does not have a registry system. What a doctor (or other licensed health professional) can give you is an authorization on special tamper-proof paper. And if a police officer finds your medical marijuana and he/she doesn’t think your authorization is valid? Well, he/she can still arrest your ass and see if the prosecutor will press charges. So not only are people not getting “green cards”, they don’t even have protection from the law. Of course, this fact makes the editorial even more completely pointless so it’s not surprising they’re not explaining it well.

Tacoma officials have accommodated them by tolerating a proliferation of illegal marijuana stores that now – according to licensing records – greatly outnumber the city’s pharmacies.

And according to a study by the RAND Corporation, it’s very possible that they lead to a reduction in crime in their immediate vicinity. So what’s the problem? Let’s get more of them!

That’s the visible end of the sham, but it’s not the headwater. Upstream, the industry is sustained by ever-growing numbers of common marijuana smokers who’ve discovered how easy it is get authorization papers on flimsy pretexts.

Who cares? Either those recreational smokers buy marijuana from someone who’s likely being supplied by organized crime, or they can buy it from a locally run dispensary who pays taxes and keeps the profits in the community. I know which option I prefer.

The News Tribune’s Rob Carson, for example, reported Sunday that, after walking into a Tacoma marijuana outlet, he was able to get medical authorization via the Internet from a nurse practitioner in another part of the state.

When the TNT finally goes tits up, I will pay top dollar for their fainting couch.

State law permits providers to authorize marijuana to treat debilitating or intractable pain that can’t be relieved by other treatments. Carson’s long-distance nurse quickly recommended marijuana for shoulder discomfort he normally handled with ibuprofen.

Sure, and if Carson got caught with marijuana and charged with possession, that authorization very likely wouldn’t hold up in court. Although if he were almost anywhere in King County, the prosecutor likely would have more important things to do than to charge him anyway. And if he were in Seattle, he wouldn’t even need the authorization.

The medical ethics of too many pot docs are a joke. Supposed professionals recommend marijuana to the vast majority of “patients” they see, and they offer their customers their money back if they don’t walk away with a license to use. It’s all about the cash.

Wow, how’d you unravel that mystery?! Boy, your investigative skills are top-notch.

Judge John Hickman of the Pierce County Superior Court has lost patience with the charade. He has refused to return confiscated “medical marijuana” to two Tacomans unless they demonstrate that their authorizations actually comply with state law.

Um, I believe they were providers, so even if their own authorizations don’t hold up, they only have to prove that they were providing for a valid patient.

These two aren’t the issue; they may well be in compliance. What’s important is that somebody – at last – is insisting that authorizations pass muster with someone other than a marijuana merchant.

That’s been the law, numbnuts. Look up State v. Fry.

Somebody – preferably, responsible medical professionals – should be scrutinizing the authorizers on a routine basis.

They already do, and few people get upset about it. In fact, a doctor who writes medical marijuana authorizations was one of the main people providing input for how the new law passed this year should prevent scammers.

Marijuana advocates talk about moving the drug from Schedule I to Schedule II, which would allow doctors to legally prescribe it.

That may not be a bad idea. But the prescribing of Schedule II drugs, such as Percocet and amphetamines, is monitored by professional oversight bodies and ultimately by pharmacists. Doctors get sanctioned if they get too prescription-happy.

Actually most marijuana advocates think it should be lower that Schedule II (which is where cocaine and methamphetamine are listed), but the general sentiment is true. If a doctor thinks that you could benefit from medical marijuana, you should be able to obtain it from a safe place where the safety of the drug is most assured. And every medical marijuana supporter I’ve ever known wants more research done to find out exactly what the plant does and how it’s most effective. Up until now, it’s mostly anecdotal and that’s far from ideal.

Sorry this is long, but for an editorial this clueless, it requires a full line-by-line takedown. Here’s the utterly obnoxious end:

Medical marijuana advocates who are out to help the genuinely sick – not furtively legalize the drug for all comers – wouldn’t object to tighter regulations of their own. Would they?

Sorry, but I’m here to both help the genuinely sick AND legalize the drug for all (adult) comers. I mentioned this week’s PBS documentary on alcohol prohibition for a reason, and it’s because the parallels are all too obvious.

During alcohol prohibition, there was a medical exemption for alcohol. If you could get a doctor to write you a prescription for whiskey, you were able to buy “medicinal” booze through legal channels. There was also a religious exemption. This led to a lot of priests and rabbis getting rich supplying people’s “spiritual activities”. All of this was cynical and all of it was driven by greed. But the answer to that problem wasn’t to crack down on the cynical ways people were able to exploit the law to get rich. The answer was to recognize that trying to stamp out a widely popular recreational drug is impossible, and that it was much smarter to make it legal and regulate its sale to all adults. The answer for marijuana is the same, and this should be obvious to anyone with both a brain and a minimal knowledge of history. But it appears that the folks at the Tacoma News-Tribune editorial board still have neither.

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?

In many categories rates of crime are down in Seattle. However, that didn’t make my neighbors around Graham Hill School feel any better last spring when there were more than a dozen home break-ins in the area. It also didn’t matter to the families when the young pregnant woman was shot and killed in south Rainier Beach in the spring. It hasn’t mattered to any of the Pioneer Square or Belltown people I’ve spoken with who are angry and frustrated by on-going street dealing and violence.

We make progress by staying focused on the places we know experience trouble, policing them consistently, engaging the surrounding community to build stronger families and institutions, and connecting people with options that change lives, like Community Court, Drug Court and Mental Health Court.

We’ve all seen too many cell phone-captured incidents on television of incidents we don’t associate with the vast, vast majority of officers who do a great job. Fundamentally, there’s no place for abuse by any public servant. We avoid incidents like the few we’ve seen by investing in great recruitment (for problem solvers from all parts of our community), training and supervision, and, when necessary, in clear discipline. In the wake of the John T. Williams tragedy I joined with the other members of the Council’s Public Safety Committee to put forward a set of 11 recommendations to the Chief of Police and the Mayor. The recommendations touch on investigation procedures, department transparency, supervisory expectations, hiring and training. While a handful of the recommendations will require contract negotiations, many can be executed immediately by the Chief of Police and Mayor. Some require further vetting with communities of color and officers. Diversity and sensitivity training are a constant process. I don’t believe that work is ever done.

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

Whether rain or shine, Seattle’s Central Waterfront will be a place we want to visit to see the water, perhaps touch the water, take visitors, go jogging, walk the dog, sit on the grass, catch a concert, watch a street performer. As we walk, wheel or ride from north to south we’ll move through zones with different character or activities depending upon how the seawall is rebuilt in that section and on how much right-of- way is recaptured when the Viaduct comes down. The reclaimed area will be well- maintained and programmed through a successful partnership between public and private (both for-profit and foundation) funders. Surface transportation will effectively move people and goods, but also be minimal in its physical spread. The Waterfront will be an awesome place to experience the every-day beauty of our city’s surroundings, all watched over by the Olympics and Seattle’s own skyline.

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?

The challenge during this very, very, very slow economic recovery is to protect the core services required of local government (police, fire, clean water and mobility infrastructure to name a few) without hampering our future success in areas not considered core services but which enable us to be a great place to make a life (affordable housing, human services, community-building and urban planning to name a few).

My top General Fund budget priorities are public safety (patrol officers and firefighters), survival services for low-income and at-risk people in our city, and protecting areas where our spending leverages other dollars and shows measurable outcomes. The Neighborhood Matching Fund is an example of the latter. NMF is the catalyst and boost that produces not just hardscape projects all over our city, but yields a stronger, more resilient community as a result of neighborhood partnerships.

As the economy recovers to the point where we see additional revenue, I am committed to returning to the SPD hiring plan abandoned with the economic downturn. I believe we need to be hiring to both replace retiring officers and to increase the overall number of officers on patrol. I would also like to invest new dollars into more effective shelter programs, ones that provide 24-hour shelter, better meet the needs of people currently sleeping outdoors, and ones that show positive results moving people into housing.

We need to cut or restructure efforts that don’t yield measurable results. This is easier said than done. We have a great deal of recently compiled information on both general crime prevention efforts and youth violence prevention efforts. The efforts under way, involving millions of dollars, serve community needs. They involve great community volunteers and city staff, and they serve constituencies. However, not all the efforts underway can demonstrate through outcomes that they move the needle in a positive direction when it comes to crime.

Note: In this answer I’m addressing the city’s core budget. I favor other infrastructure investments (street care connections and extensions, better street infrastructure, a great waterfront) but these are topics being discussed in relation to supplemental revenue sources.

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

The City of Seattle enjoys a Department of Parks & Recreation that runs the spread from natural open spaces (East Duwamish Greenbelt, for instance) to heavily-scheduled recreation fields (Woodland Park, Delridge and Dahl, for instance), tiny skate dots up to recreation and teen life complexes (Garfield, for instance). We serve thousands of people, some of whom have deep pockets some of whom don’t know where they’ll find their next meal. Parks and parks facilities and beloved and the classic government service – a community “good” not expected to make a profit. The problem is we can’t continue running the system at the subsidy levels we have now. DPR has been hit hard in the past couple of budget cycles. We’ve cut budgets, raised fees and demanded more revenue be generated out of community centers and boating facilities. While DPR receives a charter-mandated level of minimum funding that level is nowhere near the cost of running the system we have now. Additionally, you can find plenty of people who believe we short-change ourselves via less-than-regular maintenance of our active park spaces. We can raise fees only so far before we lose the ability to attract the kids and adults our ballfields, courts and community centers should serve.

City parks should be beautiful and well maintained. Community center activities should be diverse in content, co-determined with the community, and accessible to anyone regardless of income. Facilities should be spread through the city with regard to great transit, proximity to density and with regard to social equity. The city should continue to partner with the Associated Recreation Council to run programming and should be more aggressive about finding other programming partners; groups that can fill our community centers, pools, fields and courts during the days and evenings to generate some additional earned income. We should also work closely with ARC, the Parks Foundation and others on additional ways to under-write the costs incurred when low-income kids sign up for swimming, the computer lab, tennis, rowing, etc. Perhaps an endowment to under-write partial costs for kids who fall under a defined family income threshold.

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

High quality public schools and safe, efficient, comfortable transit are key if we are to be successful in our urban development goals. While City government directly controls neither of these areas we can and do play a significant role in shaping the success of both systems in Seattle. With both education and transportation Seattle’s opportunities can be found in setting clear expectations, demanding accountability, and furthering our goals through partnership.

In terms of expectations, I have been a part of ongoing work with the Seattle Scholl Board about our mutual interest in high performing neighborhood schools. We have a long way to go in the south half of the city, but I have lead conversations in Rainier Beach and other neighborhoods about what we want from our neighborhood schools. With regard to Metro, we have a transit plan (currently be revised) that sets a course for “frequent” transit headways of 10 minutes. The Transit Master Plan serves as a clear statement of expectations for a transit plan in the city (involving both Metro and Sound Transit) that supports our city and regional growth goals.

With regard to demanding accountability, I am using the commitment to neighborhood schools, the school “report cards,” and school visits as a way to track progress on improvement. We’re also using the outcome requirements attached to funding from the Families & Education Levy as a way to produce accountability. In the transit realm, the city has flexed accountability muscles after snowstorm shutdowns and, in less crisis fueled times, in determining where Rapid Ride routes should run. I’ll put in a plug for a colleague – Councilmember Tom Rasmussen. Tom has done a terrific job building relationships and trust with electeds from other cities and King County on the Regional Transit Committee and the Transit Task Force. Through this work we have built a new agreement regarding Metro service allocations with better outcomes (at least theoretically) for Seattle.

Partnership plays out on an every-day level and through special efforts like the Families & Education Levy renewal proposal before voters this fall, Transit Now (passed by voters in 2006) and the maintenance and mobility car tabs proposal slated for this fall. These are supplemental dollars earmarked for specific objectives via the schools or Metro. The funding helps Seattle Public Schools and Metro with system objectives and ensures Seattle gets specific services and outcomes important to our goals. On a regular basis I work in partnership with Seattle Public Schools on facilities and neighborhood development issues that come up related to the Council’s Committee on the Built Environment, the committee I chair. I look for opportunities to make facilities changes logical and predictable for the school system and the community, and I look for opportunities to weave school system planning into our work planning for new development in urban villages.

So what we have here is Rob McKenna participating in the multi-state lawsuit, now fully aware that the goal of the lawsuit is to strike down the entire law.

If McKenna is successful, Washington state gets credit for the downfall of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Ouch! Like that sooooooo represents our state. But that’s nuttin’.

Just for shits and giggles, I decided to look up the immediate effects should the lawsuit succeed in killing the law—the things that would affect hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Washingtonians.

Here’s what I found:

• Strips small businesses of the 35% tax credit (50% beginning in 2014) provided to make employee coverage more affordable.
• Eliminate for early retirees the temporary re-insurance program (pending the full development of insurance exchanges).
• Eliminate consumer protections and the external review process for appealing insurance company coverage determinations or claims.
• End the prohibition on recissions—that is, insurance companies will, once again, be allowed to drop sick people from coverage.
• End the prohibition on insurance companies denying coverage to children (and, in 2014, everyone) with pre-existing conditions
• Eliminate caps—once again allow insurance companies to place lifetime caps on coverage.
• End prohibition of certain annual coverage limits—some are in effect right now but all such restrictions will be eliminated by 2014.
• Re-open the Medicare part D “donut hole” by eliminating the 50% discount on brand name drugs for those in the donut hole, and put a halt to the gradual elimination of the donut hole by 2020.
• Reinstate co-payments for preventive care and, under medicare, once again allow preventive care to be included in deductibles.
• Eliminate funding for state consumer assistance programs that help folks navigating the health care insurance process.
• Eliminate funding for resources and new screening procedures that reduce fraud and waste in Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP.
• Eliminate the option for young adults to remain on their parents’ insurance plan until they turn 26.

That is a selection of the tangible benefits that have already fully or partially kicked in under the law.

It will be painful…particularly to our state’s youngest and oldest citizens.

There are many more benefits to come. Some are extremely important, like getting insurance for the estimated 50 million uninsured Americans.

And then there is the fiscal effects, to the tune of quashing the $210 billion in deficit reduction over the next 10 years, and an estimated $1 trillion over the next 20 years.

Shit…with gubernatorial wannabes like McKenna…who needs al Qaeda?

From earlier this year:

A botched gun-trafficking investigation that allowed suspected criminals to purchase roughly 2,000 firearms — many which later crossed the border into Mexico — came under renewed criticism on Tuesday as federal officials responsible for implementing and overseeing the operation testified before Congress.

The hearing came just hours after the release of a joint House and Senate report providing new details on the investigation, code-named “Operation Fast and Furious.” According to the report, at least 122 guns tied to the operation have been found by Mexican authorities at crime scenes or were recovered during police action against drug cartels.

The operation was “a perfect storm of idiocy,” Carlos Canino, a senior ATF agent in Mexico, said in the report. Other current and former ATF agents testified at the hearing that the operation violated basic agency protocols.

The “Fast and Furious” operation first ignited controversy in March after whistleblowers within the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms revealed to the media and members of Congress that a gun tied to the program had been found last December among a cache of weapons at the murder scene of a Border Patrol agent.

From yesterday:

Firearms dealers in states that allow medical marijuana can’t sell guns or ammunition to registered users of the drug, a policy that marijuana and gun-rights groups say denies Second Amendment rights to individuals who are following state law.

Federal law already makes it illegal for someone to possess a gun if he or she is “an unlawful user of, or addicted to” marijuana or other controlled substances. A Sept. 21 letter from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, issued in response to numerous inquiries from gun dealers, clarifies that medical marijuana patients are included in that definition.

So let me get this straight. Gun sales to people who are widely expected to use those guns to kill people are ok (as long as the ATF thinks that there’s a chance that it could help them bring down Mexico’s drug trafficking organizations), but gun sales to people who have permission from their doctor to use a medicinal plant that makes you more passive are not.

Every time I think members of our government have managed to do the dumbest thing possible, they always top it.

Rob “Cupcake” McKenna has lost control of the multi-state lawsuit against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

McKenna made the unilateral decision to join the lawsuit, against the will of the voters, the Governor, and the state legislature. He then repeatedly reassured us all that the aim of the lawsuit is only to overturn the “individual mandate” while keeping the rest of the law intact:

When Attorney General Rob McKenna signed on to the partisan Republican lawsuit challenging the federal Health Care Reform law, he claimed that he was not trying to overturn or repeal the entire law, only part of it.

In an interview with BJ Shea on KISW, McKenna stated, “We don’t think we can stop this entire bill, we don’t think we can or that we should.”

In a video on his official website, McKenna stated, “There are two provisions that are focused on in this lawsuit. None of the thousands of other provisions in the law are affected because we are just addressing these two provisions. . . . . the individual health insurance mandate. . . .and Medicaid.”

In an interview with KING 5 News, McKenna stated, “We are not challenging the policy, that is not our role.”

McKenna’s official website reads, “This suit will not ‘overturn’ or ‘repeal’ the new health care reform legislation. In fact, this lawsuit will not affect most provisions in this 2,400-page bill.”

Has McKenna been lying to us all along? Or…maybe he just didn’t know what the fuck he was doing by joining the lawsuit. Because the principles of the lawsuit see a larger purpose:

“This health-care law is an affront on Americans’ individual liberty,” said Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who asked the high court to strike down the entire law, not just its mandate that all Americans have health insurance. […]

Bondi’s request to strike down the entire law was at odds with McKenna’s statements when he made Washington state a plaintiff in the case last year.

McKenna, a Republican candidate for governor in 2012, said his goal in joining the lawsuit was not to strike down the entire law, just the provisions he argues are unconstitutional — chiefly the mandate. But the plaintiffs’ legal briefs since then repeatedly have sought to scrap the entire law.

McKenna’s office said he has been overruled on that point by his co-plaintiffs.

So, whether he initially lied or was just too fucking stupid or incurious enough to know what he was signing up for, the one thing we know: McKenna hasn’t been influential enough to convince his fellow AGs to limit the scope to what he promised us.

McKenna should now do the right thing and pull out of the lawsuit.

More and more Seattle folks are biking to work. From Seattle Bike Blog:

Seattle rose to the number two spot among major US cities in terms of the number of people commuting to work by bike in 2010. The percentage of people using a bicycle as their primary mode of getting to work in Seattle increased 22 percent between 2009 and 2010, according to the annual American Communities Survey conducted by the US Census.

This data confirms the city’s 2010 downtown bike commute count, which measured an increase of 21.4 percent in the same time period.

Between 2005 and 2010, the percentage of people commuting by bike in Seattle increased 57 percent. Between 2000 and 2010, it increased 93 percent.

On top of what it says about the infrastructure improvements in the last decade or so, I think there is a cultural aspect that gets lost in the war on cars nonsense. And that’s that most Seattle drivers are perfectly willing to share the road with bikes.

Yes, there are asshole drivers. Yes, the recent spate of bicyclist deaths has been tragic. Yes, several media outlets have invested themselves in a story of a clash between driving and riding a bike. Yes, I’ve read the comment threads whenever there’s a bike story in the paper. But for the most part, drivers are willing to give you a bit of room and to slow down if they can’t. Speaking personally, I’ve had pleasant chats with people in cars with the windows down who just started talking to me when we were both stuck at red lights. Probably more than people yelling at me or honking their horns.

And while I don’t have any hard data, lots of Seattle drivers also ride bikes. There’s certanily some self interest for me when I’m driving and I see a bike. On top of wanting to make sure not to hit the person, I also feel that I’d better give room and slow down, etc. to put kindness to bicyclists out into the world.

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.

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!