♪♪
-Hello. I’m your host, Brian Callanan.
State lawmakers have wrapped up their 2024 session
but could face some major challenges
in a matter of months.
With more than a thousand bills
circulating through the state capital this year,
six citizen initiatives stood out.
-The initiatives were a game changer
in the short session this year.
-The legislature passed
three of the Republican-backed measures.
A bill of rights for parents of school kids,
a ban on a state income tax,
and a roll-back on restrictions for police pursuits.
-And this is one step, an important step,
but only one step to get us back in the right direction.
-Voters will decide on the three
remaining initiatives this fall.
Whether to eliminate the capital gains tax.
Whether to make the state’s long-term care plan optional.
And whether to appeal the Climate Commitment Act.
-If you remove that initiative,
you increase pollution in the state of Washington.
-Democrats pushed through a plan to speed up
Puget Sound energy transmission
away from natural gas. And there was bipartisan support
for more co-living units statewide.
-It’s definitely an affordable way
to be able to continue to live in a healthy, small home.
-But proposals to cap annual rent hikes and expand
housing near transit did not make the final cut.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-The legislature is adjourned.
-With the short session over and a big election season ahead,
the work for lawmakers and voters is just beginning.
-This budget was not wild and crazy.
-Where’s the money coming from,
both to fight these initiatives and to pass them?
-We had some House lawmakers who just couldn’t understand
why adding liquor to a strip club
would make a strip club safer.
-We get the scoop from our panel of reporters from Olympia.
Next on "City Inside Out."
♪♪
-Well, welcome once again to "City Inside Out."
I’m Brian Callanan, and I have with me
a crew of Olympia correspondents
to help break down some of these topics,
including Jeanie Lindsay.
She is a state government reporter
for the Northwest News Network. You’ll probably hear her on KUOW
and a number of other NPR stations;
Jeanie, good to have you. -Yeah. Happy to be here.
-We also have with us Paul Queary,
the editor and publisher of the Washington Observer.
Paul, good to see you too. -I’m glad to be with you.
-Great. -And then Grace Dung is here.
She is a reporter for the Washington State Standard.
Grace, good to have you as well. -Thanks for having me.
-All right. Let’s do this thing.
-Paul, let me start with you, if I could.
I wanted to ask about the initiatives
that really seemed to dominate this short, 60-day session.
There were six of them backed by Republicans.
Three ended up getting passed by the legislature.
Three will go to public vote.
I just -- I don’t think I’ve ever seen this tactic
before where a lawmaker,
like Representative Jim Walsh, State GOP Chair,
uses one of his major donors, Brian Haywood,
cranks out a big slate of initiatives
and then has this much of an impact on a short session.
What did you make of how all this came together?
-It was -- that was really unprecedented.
And together, those initiatives really represent
a rollback of most of the agenda of the Democratic majority
in the legislature and Governor Jay Inslee.
If they were all to pass, the three that passed
were really kind of the least consequential of the three,
although the police pursuit law was certainly as --
a very, very serious matter. -Yeah.
-But I think it’s really, in some ways,
kind of innovative use of the initiative process.
-Yeah.
-To kind of try and reassert some sort of control.
Republicans have been on the outside
looking in for kind of a while now in Olympia,
and this is a way for them to use a different tactic --
-Tactic, yeah. - -- to achieve their aim.
So, you know, we’ll see if it pans out.
-Yeah.
-It’s panned out pretty well for them so far;
we’ll see how it goes in November.
-So far. Thank you very much for that.
And just working off of that,
lawmakers passed three of these measures.
This was a bill of rights for parents,
for school kids, a ban on the state income tax,
and this roll-back of the restrictions on police
pursuits that the legislature passed a few years ago.
Jeanie, I wanted to get into this with you.
Why would democrats, the majority in Olympia,
say yes, we’re going to approve
these three conservative-backed measures.
Why did they do that?
-Yeah. It was kind of surprising.
I was definitely surprised when they started to move forward
with the three that they did. But as I talked with more folks,
it was clear that they were sort of
trying to be strategic about it, right?
Because democrats are the most threatened by the three
that are going to the ballot in November,
because they will have huge -- -Yeah.
- -- financial cost to the state on --
-We will get into those in a minute, yeah.
-Yeah. -Yeah.
-And so, by passing these three
there’s a couple of things that they’re going to do with that.
They’re going to reduce the number of measures
that are on ballots this fall, and Washington voter’s ballots
are already going to be stacked with so much --
-It’ll be crowded, yeah. Yeah.
-But they also get to maintain more control over the law
because by enacting these initiatives into law,
if there are any issues that lawmakers and democrats
are super unhappy with,
particularly around the parents bill of rights,
or if they want to make more adjustments to police pursuits,
they can come back in 2025 and make changes.
But if voters had enacted these initiatives,
there basically would be a super majority block
around the underlying law for the first two years.
So, it’s just giving them more flexibility
to address any issues that might arise from these proposals
that democrats aren’t really super excited about,
but enough didn’t have a problem with
and they’re looking ahead at the long-term strategy.
-Grace, what have you got? -Oh.
I was just going to add that we spoke to --
the standard spoke to Republican leadership
as part of their kind of routine.
They speak with every news outlet,
and one of the things that my -- one of my colleagues asked about
was if they’re worried about police pursuits coming up again
and democrats changing the police pursuit law yet again,
and rolling back some of the rollbacks that they did.
-Yeah. Right. Right.
-So, what Jeanie was saying about how it’s about giving
the democrats more control, that’s absolutely something
that the republicans are worried about.
-Okay. And maybe I can stick with you, Grace,
and talk a little bit about the measures
that we will be voting on this November.
Whether or not to repeal the capital gains tax.
Maybe I can start there.
Whether or not to repeal the Climate Commitment Act.
Whether to make Washington’s Long-Term Care Act optional.
Actually, let me start with that Climate Commitment Act,
and Grace, let me ask you about this.
This, a signature issue for Governor Inslee;
he’s leaving office this fall after three terms.
How do you see this battle shaping up over I-2117?
The future of our climate, the cost of a gallon of gas;
a lot to talk about here.
Where do you see this debate heading?
-I’m going to be honest; I don’t cover that.
-Yes.
-I think you would probably want to ask Jeanie or Paul.
-Okay.
-I will say though that Governor Inslee
is extremely passionate about the Climate Commitment Act.
You ask him anything to do with the Climate Commitment Act
or environment in general
and he will talk to you for however long he’s allowed to
before his staff pulls you away. -Yeah.
-So, it’s definitely something that gets him passionate.
-Anyone else want to jump in on this CCA?
-I think the really interesting thing there
is going to be who turns out to fight over that initiative.
Because when a previous carbon pricing scheme
was on the ballot back in 2018, the oil company spent
an absolute boatload of money defeating it.
-Yeah. -And --
but now that the Climate Commitment Act is in place,
there’s a lot of money to be made in the green energy field.
-Right. Yeah.
-And there’s a sense that a lot of these players,
including some of the oil companies themselves,
see a better future for themselves
with the Climate Commitment Act. So, what I’m tracking,
and we follow the money pretty closely at The Observer,
what I’m tracking is sort of where’s the money coming from,
both to fight these initiatives and to pass them.
-Right.
-And I’m already seeing some, you know,
sort of environmentalist billionaire money
flowing into the no campaign on that.
And I haven’t seen a lot of money on the other side yet.
Brian Haywood put up a lot of money
to get those things on the ballot.
-Right.
-But the fall campaign will cost, you know,
well north of $10 million. -Wow.
-And we haven’t seen that money yet.
-Interesting. And when you talk about this cap
and invest auction bringing in $1.8 billion last year
to the state, that’s a lot of money we’re talking about.
-Oh yeah. People are making money off of that.
-Yeah. Yeah. For sure.
Jeanie, If I could, I’d like to move on
to the capital gains tax question here, I-2109.
This brought in nearly $900 million in its first year,
which was over-projections I should point out.
$500 million of that goes towards education childcare,
but there were more than 400,000 people in our state
who signed the petition that said we want to reappeal this.
What’s this debate going to look like?
-Yeah. I think that Washington’s conversation
just about taxation generally, I mean a lot of the ire
that was aimed towards the capital gains tax
is really about,
you know, the wording that was used around it.
I mean for folks who might not remember,
this was a capital gains tax that was decided
by the state’s supreme court -- -That’s right.
- -- deciding whether it was a tax on income and property,
which there are a ton of rules around in Washington state
versus an excise tax. -Yeah.
-So, I think that just the concerns
about taxation generally is going to be baked into this,
but also the idea of driving away people
who are creating jobs.
I mean, Jeff Bezos just left Washington state --
-Mm-hm. Sure.
- -- and there are folks who are pointing
to the capital gains taxes; something to blame for that.
Now, whether that’s true or not is,
you know, to be determined
or never to be determined -- -Yeah. Right.
-I don’t know, but I think just the conversation
about the impact of, you know, some of these economy drivers,
and then just the conversation
about the volatility of this tax at all.
-Yeah. -A lot of folks point to how,
you know, this money is tagged for schools
and early learning, but -- -That’s right. Yeah.
- -- it could change so much depending on what people’s --
you know, what people are doing with their capital gains, so --
-Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
- -- I think just the conversation
around taxation broadly, but also about how this could
or not, you know, change Washington’s economy --
-Yeah. - -- and just the questions
around what its effect really is.
-Yeah. We always talk a lot about the most regressive
economy in the United States in terms of states, and --
-Right.
- -- I would love to see where that goes.
Anyone else want to jump in on capital gains here?
-I think that there’s a couple of really
interesting things there.
One is the sort of camel’s nose argument.
Right now, that tax is focused on the very wealthiest
Washingtonians. -Right.
-And the people who are fighting it,
you know, think that that’s going to be a,
you know, in their favor.
That the money’s going for education and childcare
and it’s coming from a handful --
-Yeah.
- -- relative handful of millionaires and billionaires.
-A small amount of people. Yeah.
-But the camel’s nose argument would,
you know, suggest that maybe it gets expanded.
-I see.
-You know, and you start to go down
the economic ladder a little bit to,
you know, garden-variety rich people.
-Sure. Right. -Or merely affluent people.
-Right.
-And then, you know, then all of a sudden you start
to bring in a lot more people, and that’s, you know,
and I think that’s what that fight’s going to be.
-We’ll see. They can’t make the argument
that there’s going to be an income tax coming from it,
because I guess we already put a ban on that,
so we’ll see where we go with that one.
-Right.
-Paul, I wanted to stick with you --
-Picking it up as aggressive. -Yeah. Yeah. Right.
We’ll see where we go here.
Paul, let me talk about this idea
of allowing people to opt out of Washington Care,
is our state’s long-term care plan, so I-2124.
Supporters of Washington Cares
would say this plan will wither away
if you let people opt out of it.
Republicans say it’s too expensive.
Some people may pay into it and never even need it.
Where do you see this debate going?
-So, I think this is a --
perhaps the most interesting of the taxing
because this tax pretty much hits pretty much everybody
who gets a paycheck. -Yep.
-And it’s a line on your pay stub,
not that most people get, you know, paper pay stubs anymore.
-Right. Right. Right.
-So, you know, people might be fired up about that, but the --
you know, the supporters of it, which is mostly the local
of the Service Employees International Union
that represents long-term care workers,
you know, they make a pretty conjunct argument
that this money’s really necessary
to provide long-term care
for people who just can’t afford it
at the end of their lives, which --
-Okay. - -- you know,
is a really large percentage of the population.
-Yeah. -But at the same time,
people at the other end of the economic spectrum,
and you know, most people who own homes
or have significant savings --
-Sure. - -- can sort of self-ensure
against this at the end of their lives.
-Yeah. Right.
-And for them, this is just a tax that pays for something
that they’re really not going to use.
-Yeah. Yeah. It’s going to be an interesting one.
I know it was tough to get this thing through
the legislature even to start with.
-Grace, let me jump to do -- to you.
I want to talk about some of the things that have passed
and didn’t pass in this session here.
And one priority for progressive lawmakers
was this push to get unemployment benefits
for striking workers.
This bill didn’t end up having the votes.
What’s this bill about? What happened here?
-Yeah. So, this bill would have
given unemployment insurance to workers on strike following,
I think it’s the first Sunday of the second --
-Yeah. It was more than a week. Yeah.
-It -- there’s a -- about a week to two weeks --
-Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
- -- and the idea was, you know,
let’s make sure that workers on strike are taken care of.
That they have rent and food when they’re on strike.
The argument from the opposing side,
from the business industry was that it would tip the scales
in the balance of the striking workers and not the industry
and that there’s a fragile balance there
and that it would put a strain
on the unemployment insurance system,
which you know, the Washington State Labor Council
said that it would actually, you know,
only be less than 1 percent of UI
claims during one of these major strikes, so --
-I see.
- -- a strike of over, like, a thousand people or more.
-Yeah.
-Which does not happen very often.
-True.
-Moreso in recent years, but really not often.
-Yeah.
-And when I spoke to Senator Kaiser,
who was the lead sponsor in the Senate, where it failed,
she said that she was so close that she could taste it.
But it was just a short session. They always use the --
-Yeah. Right.
- -- excuse that it’s a short session.
-Yeah. -And people aren’t familiar
with the legislation, because this is the first time.
But it was really interesting because I really, you know,
I thought it had a better chance than it did in California,
where this has also been, you know, suggested --
-Yeah. - -- because in California
the UI system is kind of in shambles
and our system is pretty robust.
-Yeah. -So, it’s not like our system
can’t -- or at least in my opinion,
it’s not like our system can’t afford it.
-I see.
-I think it’s more about the politics
and it will be interesting to see
if it gets brought back next session.
-Yeah. With Kaiser leaving, that’s --
-Yeah. With Kaiser leaving.
-That’s going to be a very interesting twist.
Did you have something to say, Paul?
-I think actually that the climate is actually
to get better for that bill rather than worse.
-Yeah. Okay. -At least two of the no votes
among the Democratic Caucus, or the potential no votes;
it didn’t ever come up for a vote in the Senate --
-Oh.
- -- are not going to be back in the Senate next year,
and at least one of those is likely to be replaced
by somebody who would vote yes on the bill.
So, if it was only a vote or two short,
you know, things might get better for it.
And in general, labor star’s kind of
on the rise in Olympia, so -- -Yeah.
- -- you know, we’ll see what happens next time.
-We shall see.
Jeanie, I wanted to ask you about a bigger question here,
the overall state budget, before we get into
some of these individual issues here.
So, democrats tied hundreds of millions of dollars
from the Climate Commitment Act
to measures like utility credits for lower income people;
some of the state ferry projects too,
so definitely some political work behind the scenes there.
You think about the CCA getting repealed;
that’s going to get very interesting,
but talk about that if you’d like.
I just wanted to get some of the highlight areas
of where the state wants to spend
taxpayer dollars this year.
-Yeah. The CCA money is sort of sprinkled
across all of the budgets that they passed,
because they passed the big, operating budget,
which is programs and services --
-Yep.
- -- transportation. Transportation construction.
So, CCA money is sort of throughout that.
The state already has some of those dollars,
and so the way that they wrote some of these line items
in the budget is that they won’t go into effect until 2025 --
January 1st.
So that if the cap and trade system does get reappealed
and that money goes away,
they sort of are earmarking which things which won’t happen.
-Oh. Okay.
-So, they’re sort of building it in that way.
But, as far as big picture,
the other money that they’re not using --
-Yeah. - -- not CCA,
a lot of it is going towards behavioral health.
-Yeah.
-They, you know, included money in this budget
for pay raises for the school employees.
There’s been a lot of talk about paraeducators specifically.
-Yeah.
-Special education. There’s also been some more money
towards the housing trust fund.
So, you know, this budget was not wild and crazy.
-Yeah.
-But it was, you know, still focusing
for and moving forward on some of those core issues
around behavioral health, education, housing,
things like that this session -- -Okay.
- -- that they’ll probably keep building on next year.
-I would imagine so. Paul, I’ll go to you here.
I wanted to talk about one of the last bills
to come out of the legislature this session.
This move to help Puget Sound Energy transition
its customers from gas to electricity.
This one, I know, has a lot of controversy behind it
and democrats were not all in agreement about it;
barely got enough votes to get through the house.
What’s the story with this bill?
-Well, that bill is mostly aimed at allowing
Puget Sound Energy to change its rates,
so it recoups the cost of the existing gas
network more quickly.
And they want to do that because they see some of the other laws
that have been passed in recent years,
the Clean Energy Transformation Act
which passed in 2019 and the Climate Commitment Act,
as driving up their cost for gas
and also putting significant emissions
restrictions on their power mix in general.
And they see this as the, you know,
a trend away from gas towards electricity,
as their path to complying with those laws.
And that’s one of the reasons they wanted this.
It was initially very controversial
when it was introduced last year because it contemplated
that they would stop building new gas infrastructure.
-Yeah.
-It would have been this year --
or actually, it would have been last year.
That was taken out this year as well as it was a provision
in the bill early on this year that would have allowed
Puget Sound Energy to satisfy their obligation
to serve by providing electricity instead of gas,
and that was taken out as well. But opponents still like it.
It contemplates that gas will be
much more expensive in the future
and that that would have the effect of forcing
a lot of people to kind of retool their houses
and businesses to use electricity --
-Right. - -- instead of gas, which is,
you know, an expensive proposition.
-It is. That’s a battle ahead. -They’ve got to face that.
-Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Grace, I want to jump back
to you for another worker issue, if I could.
Some new workplace standards for strippers --
-Yes.
- -- in the state of Washington.
I never thought I’d see a stripper poll out in front
of the state capital building, but --
-Certainly, the most fun protest I’ve ever been to.
-It was. Yeah. Yes.
"Strip our clothes; not our pay."
Apparently, this worked.
What is this bill going to do; let’s talk about it.
-Yeah. So, it -- to be clear,
strippers have been asking for legal liquor in strip clubs.
Washington state is the only state in the entire country
where there’s not legal liquor in some form in strip clubs,
and they say that this creates a situation
where the strippers are the only source of revenue for a club.
So, it creates a situation
where you have club owners exploiting them;
charging them exorbitant fees to get up on stage.
-Right.
-And then they end up leaving in debt to those club owners.
So, the idea is if you have liquor,
there’s another sort of income. They’re likely to be exploited.
The bill also covers a wide-ranging list
of workplace protections.
Training, having security officers, things like that.
But the strippers I’ve talked to have said
that without legal liquor,
if they put these workplace protections in place,
the club owners might think, you know,
throw up their hands and say, well now I can’t afford it.
-How am I going to pay -- how am I going to pay for that?
-How can I pay to have a strip club?
-Yeah.
-And so, this legal liquor situation was something --
it was kind of a ride or die situation
for them where they were like,
we need to pass it with legal liquor.
And that was a huge controversy, especially in the House
because you have some House lawmakers
who just couldn’t understand why adding liquor to a strip club
would make a strip club safer --
-Yeah. - -- for these workers.
And so, at the start they were saying,
you know, let’s pass this House bill without the liquor stuff
and will go to the Liquor and Cannabis Board.
But then the Liquor and Cannabis Board --
-It came right back, yeah.
- -- they came right back, and they were like,
"We think that only legislature can do this.
And then a really interesting thing happened
where the lewd conduct rules --
-Yes. Yeah. Yeah. - -- became a situation.
And so, just to explain the background there.
-Yeah. Yeah.
-Seattle had several queer bars,
gay bars, get raided, well, advocates say it was raided;
you know, police say, "We were just checking it out."
-Yeah. "We were working with the LCB." Right. Yeah.
-Yeah. We’re with the LCB.
-Yeah. -And this created --
you know, this was an uproar and in the LGBTQ community
because it felt like they were --
they felt like they were being targeted.
-Targeted, yeah.
-And so,
it became politically necessary for the legislature to say,
"We need to reappeal these lewd conduct rules."
-Mm-hm.
-With those lewd conduct rules come rules
that basically prevent strip clubs
from having liquor in them. -Right. Right.
So, there’s nudity -- and if you have nudity,
if you have people next to each other,
you have a customer and a performer like,
from this mound of distance, you can’t --
like, you can’t have liquor I your establishment.
And so, the House ended up passing the ---
basically overturning the is lewd conduct rules,
and as a result of that we now have a pathway
to potentially having liquor in the strip clubs.
-Yeah.
-And so, this is a very roundabout way of getting there,
but at the end of the day,
you know, I talked to -- to Madison Zack-Wu,
who leads "Strippers are Workers; the Reads Green."
That’s been -- -Yes. Right.
- -- you know, that’s been pushing for this.
And she said, "We’re -- we are so happy,
it’s everything that we wanted.
-Yeah. I’m interested --
and thank you for teaching me so many things about strippers.
I appreciate that. Yeah. Paul.
-And I think that there’s --
that’s going to be a really interesting --
to watch how that plays out,
because they directed the liquor and cannabis board
to repeal the lewd conduce rule entirely.
That rules isn’t a ban on liquor in strip clubs,
it’s a ban on stripping in bars.
-Right. Right.
-And so, what the actual consequences
of that down the road are -- -Yeah.
- -- I think are going to be really fun to watch.
I think the liquor and cannabis board
were meeting on topic today.
-Yes. Yeah. Yeah. -It was --
-They seemed rather, you know, frustrated with the --
the legislature, and if you look at what you’ve told reporters,
they were saying, "Well, we would have preferred
that they pass the Senate version
because the Senate version makes a clear pathway
to liquor and strip clubs." -Mm-hm.
-Whereas this is just a complete reappeal
and now they have to start from scratch.
-Yeah. Yeah.
I need to pick up the pace a little bit,
but Jeanie, I wanted to talk about the rise and fall
of the Rent Stabilization Bill. I know you covered this.
It would have capped rent hikes at 7 percent annually
but wouldn’t apply to new buildings
or when new renters come in. What happened here?
Is this bill coming back? What have we got?
-The bill will be back for sure.
So, this year it was the, you know, latest version of it.
It -- the rent stabilization conversation in Olympia
is not totally new. -It’s been around.
-This bill -- this concept has been proposed before.
So, this year was the furthest that it’s ever gone,
but yeah, it just did not have a path forward in the Senate.
I mean, the Senate version stalled out
in the housing committee
when Senator Annette Cleveland ultimately withheld her vote
from passing that bill -- -Yeah.
- -- on a committee the day it needed to go.
And then, when the House bill came over to the Senate,
Democrats decided we’re not going to send this back
to housing to die;
we’re going to send it to the Ways and Means Committee.
Hopefully giving it a chance to get some more faces behind it;
get more people looking at it.
But there were two senators in that committee
who also didn’t support it,
and they will not be coming back.
-Yeah.
-So, rent stabilization conversation
is likely to be a lot different next session.
-Yeah.
-But this year, it just had a few key people
that were not on board with it.
-Got it. Paul, another brief conversation, if I could,
the legislature to pass a measure,
allowing for more co-living situations in a house;
these single-room occupancy units.
But then again, they couldn’t pass a measure
encouraging more development near transit.
You’ve written about housing policy
so much at the state level,
what was your takeaway from this session?
-Yeah, that -- and I should give a plug
to my guy Tim Gruver,
who is our main housing reporter.
But yeah, that -- you know, those bills
are both really interesting.
I mean, the cohousing thing was mostly a thing in Seattle,
-Right. - -- and long-time Seattleites
will remember that City Council effectively banned
it kind of a long time ago -- -Didn’t like them. Yeah.
- -- over various complaints about those.
So, it’s interesting we see legislature
essentially come back and pave them over.
-Yeah.
-The Transit-oriented Development Bill,
I think there were sort of two issues surrounding that bill.
One is, there’s a lot of smaller cities
on the mass transit network that are --
-Yeah. Right. - -- uneasy about this.
-Right.
-And there was both passive and active resistance.
-Yes.
-I feel from those communities.
And the others said there was a fight --
kind of an internal fight among supporters about how much --
what kind of requirements for affordable housing
needed to be baked into these projects.
-Hm. Yeah. Yeah. -The low income housing folks
wanted a really substantial percentage advocated to,
you know, to folks of lesser means.
-Yeah.
-And the -- sort of the property-development,
friendly, lawmakers, you know, were arguing that those projects
just don’t pencil out very well --
-Okay.
- -- when you put those kinds of requirements on them.
-Okay. -So, you know, that’s --
that fight’s probably going to continue.
I mean, those -- those sides
are pretty entrenched on those issues, I think.
-Yeah. We will see what happens next session,
but we do need to wrap up. Thank you for this discussion.
Grace, a story maybe from the Capital we haven’t talked about;
a headline you’re paying close attention to,
the 22nd version, if you can.
-I would say what is happening at the Tacoma Ice Facility.
The Federal, privately-run facility --
-Yeah. - -- where state --
the state is trying to inspect the facility
under House Bill 1470, which passed in 2023,
Representative Lillian Ortiz-Self,
and it would bring more oversight to this facility
that has a long list and history
of reported human rights violations,
and that is currently playing out in court.
-Yeah.
-Whether -- the -- sorry, the Court --
Federal Court has given them a preliminary injunction,
siding with the private company.
And so, currently state inspectors
aren’t able to access the facility.
-Wow. Big immigration story there.
Thank you for that. Jeanie, something we haven’t covered.
20 second version if you can?
-Yeah. There’s a couple of prison
resentencing bills that didn’t make it this session,
and I’ve been covering those in the lead up
to the legislation session,
and now I’ll be following up with folks who,
you know, have a stake in that conversation
about why it didn’t happen and where that leaves us now.
-All right. Looking forward to hearing that.
Paul, some final thoughts here?
-You know, I think one of the interesting bills
that failed this year was, The Medical Mergers Bills,
which contemplated -- -Hospitals. Yeah.
- -- a whole new layer of regulatory authority
for the attorney general over the healthcare sector.
That passed the senate and then kind of ground down
in that house in the final days. We’d have to --
I have to imagine that we’re going to see that issue again,
because you know, it sort of has issues of abortion right access
and Gender-affirming Care Access.
And then also, there’s a lot of folks
who want that kind of thing because they’re concerned about
just consolidation in the healthcare space in general,
and so, you know, I think that’s one to watch.
-We will see what happens next.
Thank you all. And we will be right back.
-What are people saying online
about the 2024 legislative session?
One person writes, "The legislature’s budget investments
reflect the state’s dedication to addressing critical issues
such as education and substance use disorder.
Another person comments,
"Dems have safe majorities in the Washington legislature.
Yet the Washington GOP accept the agenda in Olympia this year,
and Dems got barely anything done."
We’d like to know what you think.
Send us an email at contact@seattlechannel.org
or find us on social media.
-Great to have that input and a big thanks
to our panel for your input too.
We will see you next time on "City Inside Out."
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