KUOW Blog
News, factoids, and insights from KUOW's newsroom. And maybe some peeks behind the scenes. Check back daily for updates.
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Stories
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New state dashboard shows rising drug-related deaths
A new state dashboard gives further insight into the number of drug-related deaths and hospitalizations occurring in Washington.
The dashboard shows there were 7,598 fatal overdoses from 2017 through 2021, the majority related to opioids.
Deaths have been climbing sharply for the past few years.
Increased availability and use of the synthetic opioid fentanyl, which is far more potent than heroin, has played a role in the rising death toll.
Fentanyl contamination in other drugs may also be a factor.
State officials say they hope the dashboard will help people understand the magnitude and trends of the current crisis.
“I would love to see this information used at the local level,” said Anna Frerichs, drug overdose epidemiologist with the state Department of Health.
Frerichs said having the right data can go a long way to helping improve prevention, treatment, and harm-reduction programs in communities. She said it can also help target services to those who are hardest hit.
The state data not only shows the increase in deaths and hospitalizations that have occurred in recent years, it also shows that the crisis is taking a heavier toll on some groups.
“Overdose rates are higher in men, as opposed to women, and they're highest in the American Indian and Alaskan Native community,” Frerichs said.
Drug-related age-adjusted death rates for American Indian and Native Alaskan people in 2021 were more than double those in any other population.
The next hardest hit population were members of the Black community.
The history of systemic racism and oppression contributes to health disparities for both of these groups, as it does for other communities of color.
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Washington lawmakers debate who benefits from juvenile sentencing reforms
One of the bills advancing in the Washington Legislature involves juvenile sentencing reforms, but lawmakers have to decide whether these changes will be retroactive, or only affect people sentenced in years to come.
Right now in Washington, a prison sentence is calculated based on the person’s prior offenses, both adult and juvenile.
In the wake of more recent landmark court decisions, and laws that treat offenses committed by youth under 18 as fundamentally different from adult crimes, lawmakers are considering HB 1324. The bill would drop all but the most serious juvenile offenses from a person’s sentencing score.
Eugene Youngblood is formerly incarcerated, and teaches at King County’s juvenile detention center. He spoke in support of House Bill 1324 last month on behalf of the organization Dream.org, saying it is in line with the state’s goal of not penalizing people for youthful mistakes.
“What my ask is to you is to pass 1324 to show that Washington does not just provide lip service — that it means what it says and it says what it means," Youngblood said.
Attorney Gabriel Galanda told legislators that Indigenous people are disproportionately incarcerated over mistakes as adolescents.
“We need to reverse the destructive intergenerational pattern of Indigenous youth incarceration,” he said. “We need to bring certain of our youth home so they, their families and their communities can heal.”
Making the law retroactive would mean that roughly 1,000 people could petition for resentencing, to have their sentences recalculated without the points from juvenile adjudications.
Russell Brown heads the Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorneys. He told legislators that revisiting existing sentences would not be fair to the victims of those crimes.
“It is the resentencing of those, it is the breaking of the promise, that draws our significant opposition here," Brown argued. "If you want to have a conversation about moving forward, we’re happy to have that.”
The Washington State Association of Counties estimated that those resentencing hearings would cost more than $10 million.
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Is it logical to cut school arts programs?: Today So Far
- School districts are facing budget shortfalls and are looking at programs like art, music, newspaper, etc. to cut and save money — which is just so cliché.
- Washington's lawmakers want to create incentives for buying e-bikes, similar to the perks for buying electric cars.
This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for April 7, 2023.
The best math teacher I had in my entire K-12 experience started every class the same way. He went up to the whiteboard, wrote down the assignment from our textbook that was due the next day, then he sat down at his desk at the front of the room and said, "I'll be up here if you need me." He then got out a deck of cards and started playing solitaire.
That was the best math teacher I ever had. It was my senior year in high school. Before this, I spent years with teachers making me stare (I was really asleep with my eyes open) at a board while they lectured. I barely passed those classes. But senior year, I suddenly scored straight A's in math. How?! Because I wasn't sleeping in a class before being sent home to do homework without the assistance of a teacher. Instead, I was doing math. That classroom was not quiet. Students traded tips and asked how to do this or that problem. "How do you do number 28?" "Oh, I found the instructions on page 137." Sometimes we would just asked the teacher, and he would work it out on the board. It was a process of doing, not sitting/sleeping.
I can't help but think of that experience when I hear that the school districts in Seattle and Shoreline are considering cutting arts, music, newspaper, and other programs as they face budget shortfalls going into next year. Let's run through the logic on this. Schools are there to teach kids, yet in a pinch, they will cut the relevant programs that put learning into action. School districts are basically saying, "We want you learn it; We don't care if you use it." These programs are where learning is active.
Seattle needs to find a way to fill a $131 million budget gap before the next school year. Shoreline is aiming to cut $14 million from its budget for next year. In Seattle, the district has already nixed 74 central office positions, and some teachers are getting displacement notices. A displacement notice is when the district cuts a class or program you're teaching, and you could be moved to another school. This has already happened to one of two music teachers at Washington Middle School. That school will now have one teacher carrying the same load as two. In Shoreline, a similar threat to arts and music programs looms as the school board seeks solutions. The situation has prompted pushback from students and parents in both districts.
In short, the districts are facing budget shortfalls and are looking at programs like art, music, newspaper, etc. to cut and save money — which is just so cliché. The tactic of cutting such programs (never sports for some reason) is an oft told tale. Does this seem logical? Cutting the programs where learning is active; that actually have long-term benefits and educational applications? Music is associated with improved mental processing, memory, teamwork, and math skills. Speaking as a newspaper reporter at heart, this program is excellent for critical thinking and communication skills.
This is like teaching a person to bake a cake. You tell them about flour, eggs, sugar, mixing and molds, and oven temperatures. Then you cover frosting and sprinkles. And then there are the options: red velvet, funfetti, angel food, and pound cakes. All that information is conveyed, but when it comes time to bake a cake, the district says, "Well, we told you about the ingredients, that should be enough."
Read more here.
Following Washington's first carbon credit auction in February, we're now seeing where that money is going. One place you'll see funds diverted is e-bikes.
Drivers who buy electric cars have a few perks, from federal tax credits to Washington state voiding the sales tax. Washington's lawmakers now want to create similar incentives for e-bikes with the House and Senate open to spending millions on e-bike level perks. The Senate has slated $5 million in rebates for buying an e-bike, which breaks down to $300 per bike, or $1,200 for low-income buyers.
A few years ago, as bikeshares started rolling into Seattle, I reported on one company's operation by riding its bike three miles to work for a few days. After the first day, I couldn't walk. Seattle had beat me, and that single-speed cruiser. Another company eventually entered the mix with an e-bike option and everything changed. Seattle became "flat." I liked it so much I looked into buying an e-bike of my very own — I would become a cyclist, a bike commuter, one of those people who screams "on your left!" at pedestrians, or gets snobby at drivers. Then I saw the price tags for e-bikes and that was the end of that.
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Port of Seattle paid fraudsters more than $570,000 due to lax security, audit finds
The port fell for phishing schemes on two occasions in 2021, the Washington State Auditor's Office found, due to weak controls including staff not following protocol.
In October, 2021 the Port of Seattle Diversity, Equity & Inclusion department fell victim to what auditor's office spokesperson called a "classic phishing scheme": cyber-fraudsters posing as a legitimate contact seeking to have upcoming payments sent to a different bank account.
The department forwarded the phony email to the accounts payable department, which also took the bait, and paid the fraudsters $184,676 in three payments.
Two months later, the DEI department received a second phishing email, which it also forwarded on for processing, and the port made five more payments totaling $388,007 to a second fraudulent bank account.
After the port realized the fraud, it was able to recover most of the money, minus a $50,000 insurance deductible.
The auditor’s office found that port employees failed to follow standard protocols to prevent fraud, which State Auditor Pat McCarthy said is a cautionary tale for other state and local governments.
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Idaho's 'abortion trafficking' law prompts pushback from Washington leaders
Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed HB 242 into law on April 5. It outlaws helping a minor get an abortion without parental permission. The law includes restrictions on any Idaho resident from helping others travel to other states for abortion services. The bill calls this "abortion trafficking."
RELATED: Washington stocks up on abortion drug as federal ruling on access looms
Idaho law only allows abortions to be performed in cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is in jeopardy. Violating the new law could result in two to five years in prison. Even if parents consent to an out-of-state abortion, people assisting with the travel could still be charged and have to prove in court that permission was given.
In a statement, Gov. Little said that the bill "does not criminalize, preclude, or otherwise impair interstate travel, nor does it limit an adult woman from obtaining an abortion in another state. Rather, the 'abortion trafficking' provision in the bill seeks only to prevent unemancipated minor girls from being taken across state lines for an abortion without the knowledge and consent of her parent or guardian."
The law is slated to go into effect in 30 days.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee wrote a letter to Gov. Little before the bill was signed into law this week, urging him to veto the bill. Inslee said he feared "that our residents, in particular the women and girls of Washington, will be in grave danger if they travel to your state and find themselves in need of urgent reproductive health care services."
Noting that Idaho's health care providers are welcome in Washington, Inslee added, "make no mistake, Governor Little, the laws of another state that seek to punish anyone in Washington for lawful actions taken in Washington will not stand.”
Upon the bill's signing, Planned Parenthood pushed back against the law, calling it "despicable" and objecting to the use of the term "trafficking."
“For too long now Idaho lawmakers have slipped under the radar with some of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the country," Mistie DelliCarpini-Tolman, Idaho state director of Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates, said in a statement. "Now, they are using an incredibly serious term like 'trafficking' to talk about young people traveling with trusted adults to access a legal procedure in another state. It’s despicable."
In Washington state, ever since the Dobbs decision in 2022, lawmakers have put up safeguards around the issue of abortion. Gov. Inslee has ordered the state patrol not to assist in any out-of-state investigations into people seeking abortion care. Washington voters legalized abortion in 1970, but lawmakers have recently been pushing for a state constitutional amendment to provide further protections.
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NW scientists study the promises – and challenges – of offshore wind
With the climate rapidly changing, researchers are trying to find ways to make clean energy developments less expensive and easier to build. For the Northwest, offshore wind power could play a critical role, but it also presents major challenges.
One of the lead research groups in this area is Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. This year, they received federal funding to build upon an earlier study that reviewed obstacles to fully developing offshore wind along the West Coast.
According to the national lab, floating turbines off the coast of Oregon and California could power millions of homes. But even if all that energy were harnessed, there’s no easy way of plugging it into the existing grid, said Travis Douville, wind energy grid integration lead for the lab.
“I love the analogy of getting a blood transfusion through your fingertips,” Douville said. “You would never pick that, right? That would never be the opportune way to interconnect and transmit a significant amount of offshore wind, through these fragile and relatively small coastal transmission links.”
PNNL is studying how to improve that process.
“We have world class resources off the coast of southern Oregon and northern California in particular, which is precisely a region where we don't have much transmission on shore,” Douville said.
Building the turbines would also be difficult. On the West Coast, the continental slope drops off sharply – meaning the water gets really deep, really fast. Because of that geography, offshore wind turbines would have to “float.” They’d be anchored to the ocean floor with cables, which would keep them from moving much at all.
“When you get beyond depths of approximately 60 meters, generally, it's not economical to use a fixed bottom foundation for a wind turbine, which is similar to when people think of land-based wind turbines and putting them in the sea floor,” Douville said.
As part of the study, an advisory committee will evaluate potential impacts to coastal communities and marine life from offshore wind.
The research is expected to come out late next year. [Copyright 2023 Northwest News Network]
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Should Seattle have a 'no idle zone' for cruise ships?: Today So Far
- The Port of Seattle is working toward a bold new policy for the many cruise ships that frequent our shores — they have to plug in.
- About $28 million in Washington state is now slated to address food insecurity.
- It appears that most Seattle City Council members support Mayor Bruce Harrell's goal of a $1 billion housing levy.
This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for April 6, 2023.
The Port of Seattle is working toward a bold new policy for the many cruise ships that frequent our shores — they have to plug in.
Right now, when a cruise ship ties up in Seattle and drops off its many passengers, it's likely idling its engines to keep its own electricity running. This is like when you pull into your driveway, but can't turn off your car because you need your radio on to finish listening to a story on 94.9 KUOW. Unlike your tiny car engine, however, cruise ships have massive engines that can spew tons of carbon pollution into the air. An option to get around this is to simply have them plug into power on the shore and turn their engines off.
"We are working towards having all of our cruise ships plug in. It will be a requirement by 2030, if not sooner," Stephanie Jones Stebbins with the Port of Seattle told Soundside.
This is already an option for ships, but participation has been low — 37% of ships in 2021, and 21% in 2022. Stebbins notes that not all cruise ships have the ability to plug in, currently, but as that changes, participation is expected to go up. The trips these ships take to Alaska, however, could potentially pump 2,800 metric tons of carbon into the air (That's sciency talk for "a lot"), and there are other ports along the way. Big picture: The Port of Seattle has started an effort toward a "Green Corridor," which aims to decarbonize the Northwest shipping channel. Cruise ships are the first targets for this effort. Soundside has the full story here.
About $28 million in Washington state is now slated to address food insecurity. Lawmakers just passed a bill to make it happen. The money will be funneled to hunger relief organizations. In the Seattle area, one such organization tells KUOW that donations are not keeping up with demand.
“Part of the challenge is that grocery donations have also been down as people are challenged to deal with higher costs of food for their own household tables as well,” said Christina Wong with Northwest Harvest.
The money is coming as a couple factors (among others) are influencing food insecurity in our region. Inflation has been the big one we've all noticed over the past couple years, driving the price of food up and making us all visit multiple grocery stores to find the best price for eggs. The second factor is that over the past few pandemic years, government assistance for things like SNAP (food buying assistance) was increased. That helped as finances were tight. Now, those increased benefits have phased out, meaning less financial assistance for food at the same time prices are up. KUOW's Ruby de Luna has the story here.
It appears that most Seattle City Council members support Mayor Bruce Harrell's goal of a $1 billion housing levy. The mayor's plan is to use the levy to pay for affordable housing and related services.
Seattle's current housing levy (which began in 2016) expires this year, meaning a big chunk of revenue is about to go away. The city has used these funds to pay for an estimated 2,741 rentals. It has also helped low-income buyers purchase a home in Seattle. The new levy is not only being crafted to replace the expiring one, it's doubling down on it. To be more accurate, the current levy proposal is three times larger than the old one.
While the mayor's proposal will likely be favored by the City Council, KUOW's Joshua McNichols points out that each member has their own priorities for the money. Expect a financial tug of war at City Hall as different interests try to pull some funding their way. Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda is bringing up labor. Councilmember Sara Nelson wants consideration for helping small landlords offering affordable housing. And Councilmember Lisa Herbold wants more of the funding to flow into her district in West Seattle. Read the full story here.
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Rolling toward Washington state: support for e-bikes
If you want to drive an electric car, all sorts of tax breaks and government programs can help with the expense: a $7,500 federal income tax credit and an exemption from Washington state’s 6.5% sales tax, to name just two.
But if you want to ride one of the most climate-friendly electric vehicles of all, you’re basically on your own.
Legislators in Olympia aim to change that.
As part of their proposed $13 billion transportation budgets, the Washington state Senate and House of Representatives have both approved spending several million dollars to expand access to electric bicycles.
Both chambers support creating $2 million worth of e-bike libraries to lend out the climate-friendly, space-saving vehicles.
The Senate has also approved $5 million in rebates for people who buy an e-bike: a $300 rebate for any Washington resident who buys an e-bike or a $1,200 rebate for a low-income buyer.
What actually gets funded over the next two years awaits budget negotiations between the two chambers and the governor’s signature.
As Washington state tries to shift from fossil fuels to clean electricity, the main push has been for electric cars.
Cars are the dominant transportation vehicle in the state and can do things—like transport a family of four—that no bike or e-bike can.
On the other hand, an e-bike costs a tiny fraction of what a new car costs to buy or operate.
E-bikes have small electric motors as well as pedals and can be propelled by a mix of human and battery power.
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Is a capital gains tax coming to Seattle?: Today So Far
- Some Seattle leaders are considering a capital gains tax for the city.
- We need to find something to do with all these green crabs showing up in the Northwest.
- Washington state is stockpiling doses of the abortion drug mifepristone.
This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for April 5, 2023.
Seattle is looking at starting up its own capital gains tax.
Last month, Washington's Supreme Court concluded that the state's new capital gains tax was A-OK (long story short, the court said that it's an excise tax, not an income tax, which is not allowed under state law). It didn't take long, like a week and a half, for Seattle leaders to start planning for their own capital gains tax. KUOW's David Hyde consulted some experts, who say that capital gains taxes at the local level are now entirely possible, so something like this was inevitable following the court's ruling.
“I think that the court ruling reaffirms what many of us already knew, which is that capital gains should be considered a viable option at the state or local levels,” Seattle Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda told KUOW.
It's unclear exactly how this tax is going to influence Washingtonians. Only time will tell. The state's capital gains tax is targeted. It only hits profits on the sales of stocks and bonds exceeding $250,000. It doesn't kick in for real estate sales or retirement accounts. So the pool of people this affects is small. The tax is expected to produce $500 million annually. Still, one financial company has already opted to move its headquarters out of Washington as a result of the tax. Startup leaders told GeekWire that this will have ramifications on Washington's startup scene, specifically whether companies will choose to come to, or expand, in the area. Stocks can be a form of compensation for such companies. Others in the scene say it won't scare off too many folks. GeekWire also reports that existing data indicates wealthy people don't seem to move based on taxes.
What is certain: Seattle is slated to come up about $200 million short each year, starting in 2025. A new, local capital gains tax is likely to be part of a package to address that shortfall. Read more here.
We need to find something to do with all these green crabs showing up in the Northwest. Shellfish growers are calling for a "blitz" to knock down their population. Over on the Long Beach Peninsula, around Willapa Bay, folks have been farming oysters and clams for years. About 70% of the state's oyster harvest comes from this one area. The invasive green crabs knock down these local populations, which is bad for the growers, and bad for seafood menus. Green crabs basically take everything, because they're very shellfish.
"They'll eat all the shellfish if they get established, then move on to everything else that they can eat. All the habitat – the eelgrass which is so important, they even take that out eventually," Willapa Bay Shellfish owner Warren Cowell told Northwest News Network. "So, what's at stake here is Willapa Bay as a whole, the whole ecosystem and everything that it contributes."
People like Cowell are now setting crab traps, aggressively, to "hold the line." They're taking in as many green crabs as they can catch. We could eat the green crabs, but they're not as easy to dish up as other varieties. There has also been talk of using them as fertilizer. A Bellingham company can turn the shells into textiles and other products, but it only uses the shells, not the rest of the crab. Some people have even tried turning them into whiskey. Maybe this is an "all of the above" type situation. Perhaps a new green crab industry is on the horizon, producing fertilizer, compost, booze, textiles, and more. If any of our region's entrepreneurial minds want to make a buck, I'd point you in this direction. Read more here.
Washington state is stockpiling doses of the abortion drug mifepristone. The move comes as a federal judge in Texas is expected to make a ruling that could limit supply of the drug nationally, potentially making it as difficult to obtain as it is to say the word "mifepristone."
Washington has a plan to counter the decision, but the way the state is going about it is a bit odd. Washington's Department of Corrections has a pharmacy license, which allows it to purchase and store drugs. The DOC is getting 30,000 doses of mifepristone, and lawmakers in Olympia are pushing through a bill that would allow the department to distribute the drug to health care facilities around the state. On top of that, the University of Washington is getting 10,000 doses of its own. Gov. Jay Inslee says this will give the state a four-year supply. Read more here.
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King County Sheriff urged to provide more interpreters for non-English speakers
An oversight committee is urging the King County Sheriff's Office to do better around how it communicates with people who don’t speak English.
The recommendations stem from a 2022 internal investigation. It looked at a traffic stop involving two King County Sheriff’s deputies. The man they pulled over alleges he was discriminated against because of his Hispanic heritage, and alleges the deputies used excessive force. At one point, the man ended up on the ground as deputies arrested him.
According to the investigative report, "The complainant alleged that one of the deputies at one point placed their knee on his face while he was on the ground, resulting in a minor mark. The complainant stated that he was not hurt by this but was sure that it occurred."
During the interaction deputies had struggled to find a way to communicate with the man. He had a blood alcohol level higher than the legal limit for someone to drive in the state of Washington.
The man was arrested before a Spanish-speaking detective was able to help translate for the deputies. The report says the man arrested did not speak English well, but “that he can understand everything.”
Katy Kirschner is with the county’s office of law enforcement oversight, which takes a look at such cases.
“We noticed that the policy that addresses use of interpreters actually only had requirements for American Sign Language, and not a lot of policy that spoke to non-English speaking individuals," Kirschner said.
She says they have plenty of resources, but not many are requirements, or even outlined in officers' handbooks.
The oversight committee outlined several ways for the sheriff’s office to address this gap in a letter, including ways to identify language barriers and provide interpreters.
In a statement provided to KUOW, the sheriff’s office says it’s currently working to update its policies to reflect best practices, and has a language access liaison who is "actively addressing and improving the department’s policies, tools, and processes to assist community members needing assistance with languages other than English or sign language."
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Twitter labels NPR's account as 'state-affiliated media', which is untrue
Twitter added a "state-affiliated media" tag to NPR's main account on Tuesday, applying the same label to the nonprofit media company that Twitter uses to designate official state mouthpieces and propaganda outlets in countries such as Russia and China.
NPR operates independently of the U.S. government. And while federal money is important to the overall public media system, NPR gets less than 1% of its annual budget, on average, from federal sources.
Noting the millions of listeners who support and rely upon NPR for "independent, fact-based journalism," NPR CEO John Lansing stated, "NPR stands for freedom of speech and holding the powerful accountable. It is unacceptable for Twitter to label us this way. A vigorous, vibrant free press is essential to the health of our democracy."
NPR officials have asked Twitter to remove the label. They initially assumed it was applied by mistake, NPR spokesperson Isabel Lara said. "We were not warned. It happened quite suddenly last night," Lara said.
In response to an NPR email for this story seeking comment and requesting details about what in particular might have led to the new designation, the company's press account auto-replied with a poop emoji — a message it has been sending to journalists for weeks.
'Seems accurate,' Musk says of state-affiliated label
Twitter's owner and CEO, Elon Musk, has acknowledged the new tag was applied to NPR. Responding to a tweet about the shift, Musk posted an image of a screenshot showing Twitter's policy defining state-affiliated media, with a short message: "Seems accurate."
Twitter's policy describes state-affiliated media as "outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution."
As recently as Tuesday, Twitter's policy page stated explicitly that NPR would not be included in this label — before the wording was altered to remove NPR.
"State-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the UK or NPR in the US for example, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the purposes of this policy," the document said.
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Relief is on the way for Washington food banks struggling to keep up with demand
House Bill 1784, a hunger relief bill, is making its way to Gov. Jay Inslee’s office for his signature. The bill will earmark $28 million to hunger relief organizations to address food insecurity.
Northwest Harvest’s community market in Seattle’s SoDo neighborhood opens its doors three days a week. Here, people fill their bags with grocery staples and fresh produce.
Christina Wong, the organization’s director for public policy, said donations have not kept up with demand for food.
“Part of the challenge is that grocery donations have also been down as people are challenged to deal with higher costs of food for their own household tables as well,” Wong said.
Wong notes part of what’s driving demand is people on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a federal food assistance program also known as SNAP, lost their emergency aid in February.
“That end of emergency SNAP allotments doesn’t mean that there’s a reduction in need,” she said. “If anything, it just means people have less money to shop for food.”
Wong said the state funds will help keep food banks stocked for the next few months.
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