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Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's unconventional perspective on world, national, and local politics.

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Friday, March 27th, 2020

Another loss for Tim Eyman: Judge rules injunction against I‑976 shall remain in place

Polit­i­cal scam­mer Tim Eyman and his cohorts lost anoth­er court bat­tle today when King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court Judge Mar­shall Fer­gu­son ruled that his pre­vi­ous­ly-issued injunc­tion bar­ring imple­men­ta­tion of Eyman’s incred­i­bly destruc­tive Ini­tia­tive 976 would remain in effect for the time being.

“It is here­by ORDERED, ADJUDGED, AND DECREED that Plain­tiffs’ Emer­gency Motion is GRANTED,” Judge Fer­gu­son wrote in a brief order dat­ed today, March 27th. “The date to lift the pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion entered in this mat­ter on Novem­ber 27, 2019 is con­tin­ued from March 27, 2020 until such date when the Wash­ing­ton Supreme Court rules on Plain­tiffs’ Emer­gency Motion for Stay Pend­ing Review.”

The judge’s order effec­tive­ly pre­serves the sta­tus quo, allow­ing local gov­ern­ments like the City of Seat­tle to con­tin­u­ing receiv­ing vehi­cle fee rev­enue until the Supreme Court decides what should hap­pen to the injunc­tion.

It’s the lat­est twist in a legal bat­tle that dates back to last autumn, after a sub­ma­jor­i­ty of Wash­ing­ton vot­ers passed Ini­tia­tive 976, Eyman’s most recent con. I‑976 false­ly promised vot­ers that they could get “thir­ty dol­lar car tabs” with­out men­tion­ing that this would like­ly neces­si­tate the elim­i­na­tion of bil­lions in fund­ing for Amtrak Cas­cades, the Wash­ing­ton State Patrol, vot­er-approved Sound Tran­sit Link light rail expan­sion, bus ser­vice, and road main­te­nance in over six­ty cities.

After Elec­tion Day, Seat­tle, King Coun­ty, and a coali­tion of plain­tiffs rep­re­sent­ed by Paci­fi­ca Law Group (which we at NPI are proud to acknowl­edge as the firm that rep­re­sent­ed us when we applied for tax-exempt sta­tus) filed a law­suit con­tend­ing that I‑976 was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in more than a dozen dif­fer­ent ways.

The case land­ed on King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court Judge Mar­shall Fer­gu­son’s dock­et.

Judge Fer­gu­son con­sid­ered and then grant­ed the plain­tiffs’ request for a pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion bar­ring I‑976 from going into effect in ear­ly Decem­ber 2019.

Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son, who is required by law to defend the ini­tia­tive, tried to get the Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court to nix the pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion, but a major­i­ty of the Court denied his motion.

I‑976 remained on ice through the hol­i­day sea­son and into the new year.

In Feb­ru­ary, Judge Fer­gu­son heard a whole day of oral argu­ment on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of I‑976 from attor­neys rep­re­sent­ing most of the par­ties. The fol­low­ing week, he reject­ed most of plain­tiffs’ argu­ments against the mea­sure, but reserved judg­ment as to the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of two sec­tions of the mea­sure.

Ear­li­er this month, Judge Fer­gu­son found those two remain­ing pro­vi­sions uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. He ordered them sev­ered from the rest of the ini­tia­tive, but kept the injunc­tion in place at least through today, March 27th, to allow the par­ties an oppor­tu­ni­ty to present argu­ments for and against it. His order not­ed that the par­ties could ini­ti­ate the process of seek­ing appel­late review if they so wished.

That prompt­ed the plain­tiffs to ask the Supreme Court to sus­tain the injunc­tion.

For the past few days, there have thus been two the­aters in the I‑976 legal bat­tle: the orig­i­nal the­ater in King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court, and a sec­ond one in the Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court, where briefs have been pil­ing up.

After the plain­tiffs made their move at the appel­late lev­el, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son com­plained that his office need­ed more time to pre­pare.

“Plain­tiffs filed a thir­ty-four-page motion to stay at 4:30 PM yes­ter­day, March 24th,” Fer­gu­son wrote in a let­ter to the Court dat­ed this past Wednes­day.

“They raise five dif­fer­ent con­sti­tu­tion­al claims, and attach thou­sands of pages of exhibits. A team of attor­neys in my Office has been prepar­ing a response since the moment we received Plain­tiffs’ fil­ing, but the Court’s response dead­line gives them less than forty hours to com­plete their work. My com­plaint is not that this is hard on them; my team is will­ing to work as hard as it takes.”

“But no mat­ter how hard they work, this short peri­od of time is insuf­fi­cient to ade­quate­ly brief these issues on behalf of the pub­lic.”

The Court, evi­dent­ly sym­pa­thet­ic, grant­ed Fer­gu­son’s request for more time.

State attor­neys made full use of the extend­ed win­dow to fin­ish their reply brief. They filed it with the Supreme Court this morn­ing, only a few hours before the hear­ing sched­uled by Judge Fer­gu­son at the tri­al court lev­el.

Judge Fer­gu­son ulti­mate­ly opt­ed not to hold a hear­ing at all, and relied on the writ­ten briefs to reach his deci­sion, with no oral argu­ment.

The State and Pierce Coun­ty stren­u­ous­ly argued that Fer­gu­son should not extend the injunc­tion because the case had moved to the appel­late lev­el.

“An exten­sion of the pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion is unnec­es­sary because this issue is prop­er­ly before the state Supreme Court,” state attor­neys con­tend­ed.

“An exten­sion of the pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion is also unwise, as it risks need­less con­fu­sion. In light of Plain­tiffs’ request to file a reply brief, the Supreme Court will not be able to rule on their emer­gency motion until at least 1:00 PM. This cre­ates a risk of incon­sis­tent action by this Court and the Supreme Court.”

“For exam­ple, the Supreme Court may deter­mine that a stay is not appro­pri­ate. An order by this Court extend­ing the pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion would appear to be incon­sis­tent, cre­at­ing con­fu­sion as to whether I‑976 has tak­en effect and poten­tial­ly neces­si­tat­ing fur­ther action to obtain clar­i­ty.”

This tor­tured argu­ment was swift­ly denounced by the plain­tiffs’ attor­neys.

“Defen­dants the State and Pierce Coun­ty con­tin­ue to urge this Court not to grant a rea­son­able, lim­it­ed con­tin­u­ance until the Wash­ing­ton Supreme Court can decide Plain­tiffs’ Appel­late Stay Motion because the Supreme Court is aware of the time sen­si­tive nature of the request before that Court. This is non­sen­si­cal.”

“The Supreme Court is equal­ly aware that the par­ties have ful­ly briefed Plain­tiffs’ request for a tem­po­rary stay at this court. The Supreme Court clear­ly is expe­dit­ing review of Plain­tiffs’ Appel­late Stay Motion, but has not guar­an­teed a deci­sion by today. Nor would Plain­tiffs’ request­ed con­tin­u­ance cause ‘con­fu­sion,’ as Defen­dants’ con­tend. To the con­trary, Plain­tiffs seek a con­tin­u­ance express­ly so that the Supreme Court can act on this issue, and only until the Supreme Court does so.”

The plain­tiffs’ attor­neys con­clud­ed: “An injunc­tion that pro­tects rights of this mag­ni­tude, which this court has acknowl­edged will result in irrepara­ble harm should it be lift­ed, should not be allowed to lapse sim­ply because Plain­tiffs have sought relief in all the courts to which they were enti­tled. A far bet­ter course of action, legal­ly and prac­ti­cal­ly, is for a tem­po­rary exten­sion of the injunc­tion until the Supreme Court weighs in on the sub­stan­tive issues pre­sent­ed here.”

Judg­ing by Judge Fer­gu­son’s order, he found this argu­ment per­sua­sive.

With no Supreme Court deci­sion hav­ing been reached with respect to the fate of the injunc­tion as of this after­noon, Judge Fer­gu­son wise­ly con­clud­ed that it would be pru­dent to keep the injunc­tion in place until the Supreme Court does weigh in.

That left Tim Eyman howl­ing mad.

The dis­graced ini­tia­tive spon­sor and noto­ri­ous office chair thief had expect­ed the injunc­tion to lapse and appears stunned that it did­n’t. Ear­li­er this week, he told his fol­low­ers that I‑976 would be going into effect today, hav­ing already told them ear­li­er this month that I‑976 had gone into effect.

“None of us will be get­ting thir­ty dol­lar tabs,” Eyman seethed after learn­ing of Judge Fer­gu­son’s rul­ing. (He’s right about that, at least: I‑976 would not result in any­one’s vehi­cle fees being low­ered to thir­ty dol­lars; the low­est any­one would pay is $43.25, as Eyman him­self has admit­ted. “Thir­ty dol­lar car tabs” is a big fat lie.)

“It was sup­posed to hap­pen today. It did­n’t,” Eyman con­tin­ued.

He went on:

“I am beyond furi­ous.”

And, for good mea­sure, a cou­ple para­graphs lat­er, he declared:

“I am thor­ough­ly dis­gust­ed.”

Eyman blamed Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son for the con­tin­u­ance of the injunc­tion, hilar­i­ous­ly claim­ing that if Fer­gu­son had only filed his brief with the Supreme Court soon­er, then the injunc­tion would have lapsed.

If Eyman real­ly believes what he’s telling his fol­low­ers, then it just rein­forces our view that he does not under­stand how the judi­cial branch of our gov­ern­ment works, despite hav­ing been through this process many times before. (More than half a dozen of his pri­or ini­tia­tives have been chal­lenged as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.)

The odds were always good that the injunc­tion was going to be kept in place, because it’s the log­i­cal course of action. If the injunc­tion were to lapse, the peo­ple’s pub­lic ser­vices would suf­fer an irrepara­ble injury from I‑976.

If the ini­tia­tive is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, it should not be allowed to go into effect.

On the oth­er hand, if the Supreme Court decides that the mea­sure is con­sti­tu­tion­al — which would be a mis­car­riage of jus­tice, because it’s loaded with con­sti­tu­tion­al defects — refunds could always be issued to affect­ed tax­pay­ers.

Judges and jus­tices under­stand that bells can’t be unrung, so they gen­er­al­ly favor preser­va­tion of the sta­tus quo while a case is being lit­i­gat­ed.

The injunc­tion pre­serves the sta­tus quo. If I‑976 is struck down, the injunc­tion will become per­ma­nent. If I‑976 is upheld, the injunc­tion will go away.

Until then, it should just be left in place.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 6:30 PM

Categories: Core Encyclopedia Topics, Elections, Litigation, Public Planning

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Friday, March 27th, 2020

Governor Jay Inslee rebuffs SOS Kim Wyman, won’t cancel April 2020 special election

Wash­ing­ton Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee has reject­ed a request by Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman to can­cel the upcom­ing April 2020 spe­cial elec­tion, which means the elec­tion will be held as planned, at least in those juris­dic­tions that wish to move for­ward with the con­sid­er­a­tion of a local levy or bond mea­sure.

“Rather than post­pon­ing the spe­cial April elec­tions, we are work­ing with Sec­re­tary Wyman on what could be done to help audi­tors man­age elec­tions dur­ing the out­break, for April and lat­er in the year,” Inslee’s chief of staff David Post­man (a for­mer polit­i­cal reporter) told The Seat­tle Times’ Joseph O’Sul­li­van.

Wyman had actu­al­ly called for the elec­tion to be can­celed alto­geth­er, not post­poned, but even a post­pone­ment has been ruled out.

Wyman called the deci­sion “frus­trat­ing” and told O’Sul­li­van she was “dis­ap­point­ed”.

But offi­cials with sev­er­al fire and school dis­tricts are relieved. They have bud­gets they need to put togeth­er by June 30th, and hav­ing their levy and bond propo­si­tions called off by exec­u­tive decree would have been frus­trat­ing and dis­ap­point­ing.

It would also have set a bad prece­dent. As NPI’s Gael Tar­leton (who is chal­leng­ing Wyman) has argued, democ­ra­cies don’t can­cel elec­tions.

Even dur­ing a pan­dem­ic, we need to be able to hold elec­tions.

For a democ­ra­cy, free and fair elec­tions are a bedrock, essen­tial pub­lic ser­vice.

We are for­tu­nate that we use a vote at home sys­tem here in Wash­ing­ton, with no polling places, only acces­si­ble vot­ing cen­ters and same-day vot­er reg­is­tra­tion sites. Peo­ple do not need to queue up in long lines to vote. The bal­lot comes to them and they have sev­er­al weeks to fill it out and return it.

Some­one has to count the returned bal­lots, of course, and the peo­ple who do have to be in some degree of prox­im­i­ty to each oth­er to car­ry out their work.

That’s what Kim Wyman pro­fess­es to be con­cerned about.

We all want elec­tion work­ers to be safe, but we don’t achieve that by pulling the plug on the means by which we make deci­sions about how to gov­ern our­selves.

Rather than can­cel­ing the April spe­cial elec­tion, coun­ty audi­tors should use it as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to estab­lish and test pro­to­cols for the safe han­dling of bal­lots.

We’re going to be hav­ing more elec­tions lat­er this year, and can­cel­ing those would deny Wash­ing­to­ni­ans the pow­er to decide who rep­re­sents them.

As a vet­er­an elec­tions admin­is­tra­tor, Kim Wyman ought to appre­ci­ate bet­ter than any­one that can­cel­ing the August and Novem­ber elec­tions would be just as dis­rup­tive to our state and coun­try as this pan­dem­ic has been.

Since can­cel­ing those elec­tions would be unthink­able, why bring the ham­mer down on the school and fire dis­tricts that made a law­ful deci­sion to go to the bal­lot next month? Wyman’s pro­pos­al was a bad idea and we’re glad Inslee said no to it.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 6:27 PM

Categories: Elections

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Friday, March 27th, 2020

Governor Jay Inslee signs comprehensive sexual health education legislation into law

Anoth­er one of NPI’s prin­ci­pal 2020 leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ties has become a law.

Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee today signed ESSB 5395, prime spon­sored by Sen­a­tor Claire Wil­son and cham­pi­oned by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mon­i­ca Stonier in the House.

The bill sen­si­bly requires that all Wash­ing­ton pub­lic schools teach age-appro­pri­ate com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion (CSHE), although it allows par­ents to opt their chil­dren out of receiv­ing CSHE instruc­tion and it keeps school dis­tricts in charge of mak­ing deci­sions about the cur­ricu­lum that is to be taught.

The bill passed the Leg­is­la­ture on a set of par­ty line votes, with Democ­rats in strong sup­port and Repub­li­cans fer­vent­ly opposed.

It was arguably the most divi­sive bill con­sid­ered dur­ing the ses­sion.

House Repub­li­cans tried to destroy the leg­is­la­tion by fil­ing hun­dreds of amend­ments against it; their gam­bit failed when House Speak­er Lau­rie Jink­ins sched­uled a marathon floor ses­sion that ran until 2 AM to ensure the bill would get a vote.

Repub­li­cans have relied heav­i­ly on mis­in­for­ma­tion and dis­hon­est talk­ing points to make a case against the bill. They have false­ly argued, for exam­ple, that the bill requires kinder­gart­ners to be taught about sex­u­al inter­course (it does­n’t). They have argued that the bill pro­motes pornog­ra­phy (it does­n’t). They have even hyper­bol­i­cal­ly claimed that CSHE will rob chil­dren of their inno­cence (it won’t).

Fol­low­ing pas­sage of the bill, Repub­li­cans (the state par­ty, the House Repub­li­cans, and the Sen­ate Repub­li­cans) all called for a guber­na­to­r­i­al veto, using the social media hash­tag #Lis­ten­ToTheP­eo­ple.

But lis­ten­ing to the peo­ple is exact­ly what Inslee did by sign­ing the bill.

Late last year, NPI asked a large sam­pling of Wash­ing­ton vot­ers (nine hun­dred!) about their views on the leg­is­la­tion. We found 67% in sup­port of the bill — more than two thirds — with about half, 49%, in strong sup­port of com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion. The oppo­si­tion clocked in at just 22%.

That’s com­pelling evi­dence that Wash­ing­to­ni­ans sup­port ESSB 5395.

The only evi­dence Repub­li­cans have pro­duced to date that the peo­ple are on their side is anec­do­tal or unsci­en­tif­ic. For exam­ple, Repub­li­cans have cit­ed par­ent respons­es to OSPI sur­veys about com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion.

But what they haven’t admit­ted is that right wing groups opposed to CSHE mobi­lized right wing par­ents to fill out those sur­veys. The sur­vey tak­ers were self-select­ed and not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the state’s vot­ing pop­u­la­tion.

Repub­li­cans have also cir­cu­lat­ed pho­tos of crowds massed on the steps of the Leg­isla­tive Build­ing in oppo­si­tion to the bill as proof as “the peo­ple” oppose it.

Well, we have pho­tos of crowds on those same steps who sup­port the bill.

For exam­ple:

Gov­er­nor Inslee speaks to young peo­ple at the Wash­ing­ton State Capi­tol on Jan­u­ary 20th, 2020 (Pho­to: Office of the Gov­er­nor)

And, oh, look: The peo­ple in this pho­to are pret­ty much all young peo­ple… the peo­ple who this bill pri­mar­i­ly affects!

When peo­ple hold pas­sion­ate views about an issue, it’s not hard to pack a hear­ing room or fill the Capi­tol steps with peo­ple. But as I said ear­li­er, such assem­blies don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect the views of the vot­ing pub­lic as a whole.

Repub­li­cans seem utter­ly con­vinced that with this bill, they have found a wedge issue that they can use against Democ­rats this sum­mer and autumn in the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. And they plan on going beyond mere­ly using it as fod­der for attack mail­ers in leg­isla­tive races. The Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty, head­ed by Trump apol­o­gist Caleb Heim­lich, has com­mit­ted itself to orga­niz­ing a ref­er­en­dum dri­ve, which, if suc­cess­ful, would force a statewide vote on the bill.

Iron­i­cal­ly, for pub­lic health rea­sons, Repub­li­cans can­not col­lect sig­na­tures against this pub­lic health leg­is­la­tion using the time-test­ed prac­tices of putting peti­tions out­side of church ser­vices or sta­tion­ing paid sig­na­ture gath­er­ers out­side of Wal­mart entrances. Pub­lic gath­er­ings are for­bid­den due to the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, and will like­ly remain pro­hib­it­ed through the dura­tion of the time­frame of the sig­na­ture dri­ve, which must be com­plet­ed by June 12th, 2020.

It is the Con­sti­tu­tion that spells out the time­frame for a ref­er­en­dum dri­ve (nine­ty days) and that time­frame can­not be altered, not even dur­ing times of emer­gency.

State law does not allow elec­tron­ic sig­na­ture gath­er­ing (which is good, because that would make the prob­lem of sig­na­ture fraud much, much worse) and Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman has said she can­not accept elec­tron­ic copies of peti­tions, either, not even if the elec­tron­ic copies are scans of sig­na­tures on print­ed peti­tions.

Wyman has pub­licly sug­gest­ed that ref­er­en­dum back­ers dis­trib­ute peti­tions elec­tron­i­cal­ly to sup­port­ers so they can osten­si­bly be print­ed at home, signed there, and pro­vid­ed to spon­sors through the Unit­ed States Postal Ser­vice.

But state law explic­it­ly requires peti­tions to be print­ed on EDP-sized paper or big­ger, and very few peo­ple have print­ers at home that can han­dle this size.

RCW 29A.72.100:

The per­son propos­ing the mea­sure shall print blank peti­tions upon sin­gle sheets of paper of good writ­ing qual­i­ty (includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to newsprint) not less than eleven inch­es in width and not less than four­teen inch­es in length. Each peti­tion at the time of cir­cu­lat­ing, sign­ing, and fil­ing with the sec­re­tary of state must con­sist of not more than one sheet with num­bered lines for not more than twen­ty sig­na­tures, with the pre­scribed warn­ing and title, be in the form required by RCW 29A.72.110, 29A.72.120, or 29A.72.130, and have a read­able, full, true, and cor­rect copy of the pro­posed mea­sure print­ed on the reverse side of the peti­tion.

Inter­est­ing­ly, RCW 29A.72.170 (which is a sub­se­quent pro­vi­sion lat­er on the same chap­ter) does not men­tion incor­rect paper size as one of the grounds for refusal of a peti­tion by the Sec­re­tary of State. The Supreme Court in 2018 turned back a legal chal­lenge to Ini­tia­tive 1639 that con­tend­ed the peti­tions need­ed to be reject­ed because they were improp­er­ly for­mat­ted.

Nev­er­the­less, Repub­li­cans would be tak­ing a risk if they took up the print at home idea. The right wing has pre­vi­ous­ly tried to chal­lenge the sub­mis­sion of bal­lot mea­sure sig­na­tures on form grounds, and they’d be set­ting them­selves up for a poten­tial legal chal­lenge if they open­ly dis­re­gard­ed RCW 29A.72.100.

The Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s office, as required by law, has already for­mu­lat­ed the bal­lot title for their ref­er­en­dum. It is as fol­lows:

The leg­is­la­ture passed Engrossed Sub­sti­tute Sen­ate Bill 5395 con­cern­ing com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion [and vot­ers have filed a suf­fi­cient ref­er­en­dum peti­tion on this act].

This bill would require school dis­tricts to pro­vide com­pre­hen­sive age-appro­pri­ate sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion, as defined, for all stu­dents, con­sis­tent with state stan­dards, and excuse stu­dents if their par­ents request.

Should this mea­sure be:

[  ] Approved
[  ] Reject­ed

Because Ref­er­en­dum 90 is a ref­er­en­dum, the orga­niz­ers were not able to go “bal­lot title shop­ping” like many ini­tia­tive spon­sors (we’re look­ing at you, Tim Eyman) do. “Bal­lot title shop­ping” entails sub­mit­ting mul­ti­ple drafts with slight­ly dif­fer­ent pro­vi­sions in an attempt to obtain favor­able bal­lot title word­ing that polls well.

Since a ref­er­en­dum is a pro­posed vote on a bill that has already passed the Leg­is­la­ture, it isn’t pos­si­ble to go shop­ping like it would be with an ini­tia­tive. Titles can be chal­lenged through Thurston Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court, how­ev­er.

NPI stands ready to defend ESSB 5395 should the right wing force a statewide vote on it. We believe this leg­is­la­tion is nec­es­sary and thought­ful­ly-writ­ten. It is telling that most of the right wing’s objec­tions to it are based on straw men argu­ments. Our research strong­ly sug­gests that most Wash­ing­to­ni­ans feel very dif­fer­ent­ly about this bill than the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s base does.

When 2020 ends, we are opti­mistic that ESSB 5395 will still be on the books.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 2:00 PM

Categories: Core Encyclopedia Topics, Education, Elections

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Wednesday, March 25th, 2020

U.S. Senate unanimously adopts gargantuan $2.2 trillion coronavirus rescue package

Remem­ber Paul Ryan and the deficit scolds? Yeah, those folks are long gone. The surest sign of that came just a few min­utes ago when the Unit­ed States Sen­ate vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly (!) to adopt an enor­mous $2.2 tril­lion coro­n­avirus res­cue pack­age and send it to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion.

Nine­ty-six sen­a­tors vot­ed for the bill.

The four sen­a­tors who did not vote were Repub­li­cans Rand Paul of Ken­tucky, Mike Lee and Mitt Rom­ney of Utah, and John Thune of South Dako­ta. (Thune has just come down with an ill­ness; the oth­ers are in self-quar­an­tine.)

If you’re won­der­ing how this res­cue pack­age com­pares to the so-called “stim­u­lus” from 2009 (which was actu­al­ly called the Amer­i­can Recov­ery and Rein­vest­ment Act, or ARRA), the answer is that it’s more than twice as big.

“When ARRA was being con­sid­ered, the Con­gres­sion­al Bud­get Office (CBO) and the staff of the Joint Com­mit­tee on Tax­a­tion esti­mat­ed that it would increase bud­get deficits by $787 bil­lion between fis­cal years 2009 and 2019,” CBO staff wrote in a report for Con­gress released in Feb­ru­ary of 2012.

“CBO now esti­mates that the total impact over the 2009–2019 peri­od will amount to about $831 bil­lion. By CBO’s esti­mate, close to half of that impact occurred in fis­cal year 2010, and more than nine­ty per­cent of ARRA’s bud­getary impact was real­ized by the end of Decem­ber 2011.”

ARRA was passed by a Con­gress that was con­trolled entire­ly by Democ­rats and sent to a new­ly inau­gu­rat­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic Pres­i­dent dur­ing the height of the Great Reces­sion. No House Repub­li­cans vot­ed for it, and only a cou­ple of Repub­li­cans in the Sen­ate agreed to back it (Arlen Specter and Susan Collins).

This leg­is­la­tion appro­pri­ates more than twice as much mon­ey and will head to the desk of a Repub­li­can pres­i­dent with Mitch McConnel­l’s bless­ing.

“Let’s stay con­nect­ed and con­tin­ue to col­lab­o­rate on the best ways to keep help­ing our states and our coun­try through this pan­dem­ic,” McConnell said. “Let’s con­tin­ue to pray for one anoth­er, for all of our fam­i­lies, and for our coun­try.”

Think about that for a moment.

And then remem­ber Simp­son-Bowles. And the Tea Par­ty man­i­festo. And Oba­ma’s grand bar­gain to get the debt ceil­ing raised. And… seques­tra­tion.

Why did this coun­try have to endure all that non­sense?

Answer: Because Barack Oba­ma was Pres­i­dent. No oth­er rea­son!

With the exec­u­tive branch no longer under Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol, deficits don’t mat­ter and deficit hawks have no pow­er or rel­e­vance in the Unit­ed States Con­gress.

Con­sid­er Con­gress’ recent track record. Con­gress has:

  • passed mas­sive tax cuts for cor­po­ra­tions (the Repub­li­can tax scam);
  • sig­nif­i­cant­ly increased defense spend­ing;
  • refused to adopt Trump’s pro­posed cuts to pub­lic ser­vices.

And now the Sen­ate — in a rather unprece­dent­ed show of bipar­ti­san­ship — has unan­i­mous­ly approved a coro­n­avirus res­cue pack­age that dwarfs ARRA in size and scope. Is it per­fect? Def­i­nite­ly not. Is it need­ed? Yes. This is a cri­sis.

Pro­gres­sive Democ­rats like Eliz­a­beth War­ren fought hard — real­ly hard — to pre­vent the leg­is­la­tion from end­ing up as one big blank check that Trump’s min­ions could use to cre­ate a cor­po­rate slush fund. For that, we are very, very grate­ful.

One key pro­vi­sion says that the res­cue pack­age can’t be used to bail out busi­ness­es con­trolled by the peo­ple’s elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives:

The leg­is­la­tion ensures that tax­pay­er-backed loans can­not go to firms con­trolled by Trump, oth­er White House offi­cials or mem­bers of Con­gress. This would sug­gest that Trump-owned prop­er­ties, includ­ing hotels that have been hurt by the down­turn, can­not seek tax­pay­er assis­tance.

Anoth­er pro­vi­sion that Democ­rats insist­ed upon aims to pro­tect tax­pay­ers by set­ting up much-need­ed account­abil­i­ty mech­a­nisms:

For exam­ple, the White House and Repub­li­cans agreed to allow an over­sight board and cre­ate a Trea­sury Depart­ment spe­cial inspec­tor gen­er­al for pan­dem­ic recov­ery to scru­ti­nize the lend­ing deci­sions and detect abu­sive or fraud­u­lent behav­ior.

“Every loan doc­u­ment will be pub­lic and made avail­able to Con­gress very quick­ly so we can see where the mon­ey is going, what the terms are and if it’s fair to the Amer­i­can peo­ple,” Schumer said on the Sen­ate floor Wednes­day.

And impor­tant­ly, dis­clo­sures about lend­ing to cor­po­ra­tions will need to be made in a time­ly fash­ion by demand of Chuck Schumer.

One last holdup, accord­ing to two con­gres­sion­al aides, sur­round­ed a final con­di­tion for the more than half-tril­lion in cor­po­rate res­cue fund­ing: Schumer insist­ed on lan­guage requir­ing the terms of those loans to be dis­closed to the pub­lic with­in sev­en days. The change was made, and the final bill cir­cu­lat­ed to Sen­ate offices short­ly after 10 PM.

Don­ald Trump expressed sat­is­fac­tion with the result, say­ing:

“The Democ­rats have treat­ed us fair­ly. I real­ly believe that we’ve had a very good back and forth. And I say that with respect to Chuck Schumer.”

That’s… high praise.

The Pacif­ic North­west­’s Unit­ed States Sen­a­tors have been in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with NPI to share their thoughts about the res­cue pack­age.

Here’s what Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray had to say about it:

“From the begin­ning of this cri­sis I’ve insist­ed that our response be focused on get­ting peo­ple on the front lines the sup­port they need, like surge capac­i­ty in hos­pi­tals, more med­ical sup­plies and per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment for respon­ders, and relief for work­ers and small busi­ness­es who’ve had the rug pulled out from under them.”

“I’m glad Democ­rats pushed for and got much-need­ed changes that will do more to help Wash­ing­ton state hos­pi­tals, work­ers, small busi­ness­es, and hard-hit fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties.”

“I also want to be clear that this was not the bill I would have writ­ten on my own, and there’s no ques­tion there is much more to do to fight this virus — espe­cial­ly when it comes to ensur­ing all work­ers have paid leave, cost isn’t a bar­ri­er to treat­ment, and hard-hit states like ours get the resources we are demand­ing.”

“I know how dif­fi­cult this time is for peo­ple across our state and I want every work­er, stu­dent, and fam­i­ly in Wash­ing­ton to know I am hold­ing each of you in my heart, and that I will con­tin­ue hold­ing the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion account­able for imple­ment­ing this law, and oth­ers relat­ed to the coro­n­avirus response, with the urgency, con­sis­ten­cy, and equi­ty our state deserves.”

“I am doing absolute­ly every­thing I can to make sure Wash­ing­ton state gets what we need from the oth­er Wash­ing­ton, and I won’t stop until we’ve recov­ered. There is a long road ahead, but we will get through this togeth­er.”

Mur­ray’s office cit­ed the fol­low­ing as high­lights of the bill:

Health Care

  • Hos­pi­tals: $100 bil­lion nation­wide in surge fund­ing for hos­pi­tals and health infra­struc­ture.
  • Pub­lic Health Agen­cies: $4.3 bil­lion nation­al­ly to sup­port fed­er­al, state, and local pub­lic health agen­cies to pre­vent, pre­pare for, and respond to COVID-19.
  • Per­son­al Pro­tec­tive Equip­ment: $16 bil­lion for the Nation­al Strate­gic Stock­pile to pur­chase sup­plies, includ­ing per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment.
  • Med­ical Sup­plies: $1 bil­lion for the Defense Pro­duc­tion Act to bol­ster domes­tic sup­ply chains, enabling indus­try to quick­ly ramp up pro­duc­tion of per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment, ven­ti­la­tors, and oth­er urgent­ly need­ed med­ical sup­plies, and bil­lions dol­lars more for fed­er­al, state, and local health agen­cies to pur­chase such equip­ment.
  • Com­mu­ni­ty Health Cen­ters: $1.32 bil­lion in sup­ple­men­tal awards for com­mu­ni­ty health cen­ters.

Work­ers

  • Child Care: $3.5 bil­lion nation­al­ly for the Child Care Devel­op­ment Block Grant, which sup­ports child care and ear­ly edu­ca­tion pro­grams.
  • Unem­ploy­ment Insur­ance: $600 increase to the week­ly unem­ploy­ment insur­ance ben­e­fit and expan­sion of eli­gi­bil­i­ty for ben­e­fits to those impact­ed by COVID-19.
  • Direct Pay­ments: $1,200 per indi­vid­ual, plus $500 for chil­dren.
  • Retire­ment Income: Increas­es in people’s flex­i­bil­i­ty to access and man­age their retire­ment sav­ings.

Eco­nom­ic Sup­port

  • Small Busi­ness­es: More than $375 bil­lion in small busi­ness grants, loans, and assis­tance.
  • Trans­porta­tion: $35 bil­lion nation­al­ly in aid to our nation’s tran­sit sys­tems and air­ports.
  • Cor­po­rate Account­abil­i­ty: Pro­tec­tions against big cor­po­ra­tions abus­ing fed­er­al sup­port by pre­vent­ing com­pen­sa­tion increas­es and bonus­es for exec­u­tives and stock buy backs.

Wash­ing­ton State Pri­or­i­ties

  • Emer­gency Fund­ing: $45 bil­lion nation­al­ly for FEMA’s Dis­as­ter Relief Fund to pro­vide for the imme­di­ate needs of state, local, trib­al, and ter­ri­to­r­i­al gov­ern­ments to pro­tect cit­i­zens and help them recov­er from the over­whelm­ing effects of COVID-19.
  • Edu­ca­tion Fund­ing: $30.75 bil­lion nation­al­ly to help ensure K‑12 schools and insti­tu­tions of high­er edu­ca­tion can con­tin­ue to serve stu­dents as they respond to the coro­n­avirus cri­sis.
  • Hous­ing Fund­ing: $7 bil­lion nation­al­ly for afford­able hous­ing and home­less­ness assis­tance pro­grams.
  • Com­mu­ni­ty Devel­op­ment Block Grants (CDBG): $5 bil­lion nation­al­ly for coun­ties and cities to rapid­ly respond to COVID-19 and the eco­nom­ic and hous­ing impacts caused by it.
  • Tribes: More than $10 bil­lion for trib­al COVID-19 response expens­es.
  • Tri-Cities: Direc­tions to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to ensure tens of thou­sands of work­ers at the Han­ford Nuclear Site and PNNL who can­not tele­work con­tin­ue to receive pay.
  • Vet­er­ans: $19.6 bil­lion nation­al­ly for our nation’s vet­er­ans, includ­ing to help treat COVID-19, pur­chase test kits, and pro­cure per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment for clin­i­cians.
  • Fish­eries: $300 mil­lion nation­al­ly for trib­al, sub­sis­tence, com­mer­cial, and char­ter fish­ery par­tic­i­pants.

Seat­mate Maria Cantwell, who has served along­side Mur­ray for near­ly two decades, empha­sized that the res­cue pack­age has a lot to offer small busi­ness own­ers.

“Our small busi­ness­es have been hit hard. We want to try to lessen the eco­nom­ic impacts of shel­ter-in-place or social dis­tanc­ing,” Cantwell said.

“Our busi­ness­es who shut down don’t have the same resources to come to Wash­ing­ton, D.C., to lob­by for aid and sup­port but are count­ing on us to cre­ate a pro­gram that small busi­ness­es can get both grants and loans.”

Accord­ing to Cantwell’s staff, the Sen­a­tor…

… sup­port­ed more than $377 bil­lion in assis­tance for small busi­ness­es through­out the coun­try. $350 bil­lion of the fund­ing will help pro­vide Small Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion (SBA) low-inter­est, fed­er­al­ly-guar­an­teed loan pro­grams for small busi­ness own­ers. She also helped secure $27 bil­lion to pro­vide relief and assis­tance to small busi­ness­es and non-prof­its. That includes $10 bil­lion to fund a new emer­gency grant pro­gram for small busi­ness­es of up to $10,000, and $17 bil­lion to enable the Small Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion (SBA) to cov­er all loan pay­ments – includ­ing prin­ci­pal, inter­est, and fees – for new and exist­ing SBA loans for the next six months.

Ore­gon’s senior Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor Ron Wyden also praised the pack­age.

“From the start, Democ­rats made it clear that strug­gling fam­i­lies and small busi­ness­es must be the pri­or­i­ty in any eco­nom­ic pack­age passed by Con­gress,” said Wyden, Sen­ate Finance Com­mit­tee Rank­ing Mem­ber and a chief nego­tia­tor of the pack­age. “I fought hard for a bill that would help those Ore­go­ni­ans who have no way to pay their bills for poten­tial­ly months down the road, and the small busi­ness­es strug­gling to stay afloat dur­ing this cri­sis.”

“There is lots of work ahead, but tonight the Sen­ate took the right step toward help­ing alle­vi­ate the eco­nom­ic pain so many Ore­go­ni­ans are feel­ing.”

Wyden’s office cit­ed the fol­low­ing as high­lights of the bill:

  • $55 bil­lion increase in the Mar­shall Plan for our Health Care Sys­tem.
  • $150 bil­lion for a state and local Coro­n­avirus Relief fund, includ­ing $8 bil­lion for a sep­a­rate trib­al relief fund.
  • $10 bil­lion for SBA emer­gency grants of up to $10,000 to pro­vide imme­di­ate relief for small busi­ness oper­at­ing costs.
  • $350 bil­lion for new small busi­ness loans up to $10 mil­lion, specif­i­cal­ly aimed at pri­or­i­tiz­ing small busi­ness­es in under­served and rur­al mar­kets and those owned by eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­ad­van­taged indi­vid­u­als and women.
  • $30 bil­lion in emer­gency edu­ca­tion fund­ing and $25 bil­lion in emer­gency tran­sit fund­ing.
  • $30 bil­lion for the Dis­as­ter Relief Fund to pro­vide finan­cial assis­tance to state, local, trib­al, and ter­ri­to­r­i­al gov­ern­ments, as well as pri­vate non­prof­its pro­vid­ing crit­i­cal and essen­tial ser­vices.
  • More than $10 bil­lion for the Indi­an Health Ser­vices, and oth­er trib­al pro­grams.
  • Pro­hi­bi­tion on busi­ness­es con­trolled by the Pres­i­dent, Vice Pres­i­dent, Mem­bers of Con­gress, and heads of Exec­u­tive Depart­ments from receiv­ing loans or invest­ments from Trea­sury pro­grams.
  • Make rent, mort­gage and util­i­ty costs eli­gi­ble for SBA loan for­give­ness.
  • Ban on stock buy­backs for the term of the gov­ern­ment assis­tance plus 1 year on any com­pa­ny receiv­ing a gov­ern­ment loan from the bill.
  • Estab­lish­ment of robust work­er pro­tec­tions attached to all fed­er­al loans for busi­ness­es.
  • Pro­vide income tax exclu­sion for indi­vid­u­als who are receiv­ing stu­dent loan repay­ment assis­tance from their employ­er.

“We face a pub­lic health cri­sis that threat­ens to bring anoth­er Great Depres­sion. Fam­i­lies, hos­pi­tals, & small busi­ness­es need imme­di­ate aid,” said Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth War­ren. “This is not the bill I want­ed, but its imme­di­ate invest­ments are vital. They are also insuf­fi­cient. We will need to do more – and soon.”

“But the price of action dur­ing a health cri­sis shouldn’t be a $450 bil­lion Trump Admin­is­tra­tion fund that could be used to boost favored cor­po­ra­tions,” War­ren declared. “I fought for more over­sight & restric­tions on this fund.”

“We got some lim­its, but they are short of what’s need­ed.”

“I won’t block vital aid but tomor­row we get back up and con­tin­ue the fight. And I make you this promise: I will spend every wak­ing moment watch­ing the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion and do every­thing I can to hold it account­able for how it spends this $450 bil­lion tax­pay­er fund,” War­ren pledged.

“In this cri­sis, what the Amer­i­can peo­ple want is for us to use our tax­pay­er dol­lars in every way that we can to pro­tect the work­ing fam­i­lies of this coun­try and the fifty per­cent of Amer­i­cans who are liv­ing pay­check to pay­check, not just the bil­lion­aires and large cor­po­ra­tions,” said Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders.

In a pack­age this large, there is some­thing for every­one to like, and some­thing for every­one to dis­like. Giv­en that Repub­li­cans con­trol the Sen­ate and White House, it’s a mir­a­cle that there is so much mon­ey in this bill for work­ers, for tran­sit agen­cies, for small busi­ness­es, and for state and local gov­ern­ments.

And yet, as big as this bill is, it’s not enough. This bill is being called a “stim­u­lus”, like ARRA was, but it’s not a stim­u­lus. This is a res­cue bill.

This is a bill that tries to hold back a dam from break­ing. And it may seem huge, but’s not enough; there needs to be a sequel and anoth­er sequel after that.

A real stim­u­lus would go beyond a res­cue and address both our widen­ing infra­struc­ture deficit and the cli­mate cri­sis. We are still in need of a real stim­u­lus.

Reporters and opin­ion writ­ers, take note: No Sen­ate Repub­li­cans appear con­cerned with find­ing an answer to the ques­tion “How you gonna pay for this?” Because that’s not impor­tant. What’s impor­tant is help­ing peo­ple.

For any­one con­cerned about the nation­al debt and deficit spend­ing, there’s a sim­ple solu­tion to the ques­tion “How you gonna pay for that?”: Raise tax­es on the wealthy. It’s not going to hap­pen right now, but as soon as there is a more respon­si­ble Pres­i­dent and Sen­ate major­i­ty in place, it should.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 10:30 PM

Categories: Core Encyclopedia Topics, Legislative Advocacy, National Defense

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Wednesday, March 25th, 2020

COVID-19 Update: Idaho Governor Brad Little issues “stay at home” order for Gem Staters

It’s time for anoth­er install­ment of of our spe­cial series COVID-19 Update, bring­ing you the lat­est devel­op­ments on the nov­el coro­n­avirus out­break that pub­lic health author­i­ties here and through­out the coun­try are work­ing dili­gent­ly to mit­i­gate.

Unlike some of the non­sense that is unfor­tu­nate­ly cir­cu­lat­ing on social media, all the infor­ma­tion you’ll find here is accu­rate and based on sound sci­ence.

Idaho joins the “stay at home” party

Ida­ho Gov­er­nor Brad Lit­tle, a Repub­li­can, has come under fierce and with­er­ing fire in recent days for an inad­e­quate response to the nov­el coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic.

Now he is scram­bling to respond. The state’s news­pa­per of record, The Ida­ho States­man, which is based in Boise, pub­lished a blis­ter­ing edi­to­r­i­al yes­ter­day denounc­ing Lit­tle for not ris­ing to the moment. The news­pa­per opined:

With few con­firmed cas­es and a seem­ing­ly low spread of COVID-19, Ida­ho had a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty to lead the nation and take proac­tive pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures to “flat­ten the curve” and stem the rise in cas­es in this cri­sis. We could have been a mod­el for how to han­dle the out­break and have the fewest cas­es of coro­n­avirus in the coun­try.

Instead, after Little’s Mon­day press con­fer­ence, we appear, yet again, to head to the bot­tom of the list.

We were hope­ful that Lit­tle would announce more strin­gent mea­sures, such as those being tak­en by oth­er states’ gov­er­nors, includ­ing Ore­gon and Wash­ing­ton right next door, and by Boise May­or Lau­ren McLean.

The edi­to­r­i­al went on:

We were look­ing for a strong response from the gov­er­nor, but what did we get instead? The dead­line to file tax­es got pushed back.

We were sore­ly dis­ap­point­ed and, frankly, are con­cerned that such an unem­phat­ic response will lead to a full-blown out­break in Ida­ho, result­ing in an over­whelmed health care sys­tem and, ulti­mate­ly, what could have been pre­ventable deaths.

To date, Little’s posi­tion has been a typ­i­cal Ida­ho approach to deal­ing with a prob­lem. God for­bid that we should use the heavy hand of gov­ern­ment to stop this thing.

And make no mis­take, that’s what it’s going to take. It’s time for force­ful and aggres­sive lead­er­ship from the gov­er­nor. Leav­ing it up to indi­vid­ual cities, coun­ties and dis­tricts is woe­ful­ly inad­e­quate.

Colum­nist Michael Deeds con­curred:

I don’t know about you, Ida­ho, but I real­ly hate look­ing like a los­er.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the past twen­ty-four hours have made it dif­fi­cult to feel like we’re “win­ning” in the Gem State.

Wal­letHub, a per­son­al finance web­site that cre­ates met­rics-based state rank­ings of every­thing, just pumped out a coro­n­avirus study that will make Ida­hoans want to hide under their beds — or, at least, nev­er leave the house.

That came rough­ly twelve hours after Rachel Mad­dow blast­ed Ida­ho Gov. Brad Little’s lais­sez-faire COVID-19 poli­cies on her MSNBC show.

The evi­dence clear­ly shows that Lit­tle’s lit­tle response has not been work­ing for Ida­ho. Bow­ing to the crit­i­cism and the calls for more strin­gent action, Lit­tle has belat­ed­ly joined his col­leagues Jay Inslee and Kate Brown in putting his state under a “stay at home” order. He announced his deci­sion today at Gowen Field.

“From the get-go, our focus has been to slow the spread of coro­n­avirus to pro­tect our most vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens and pre­serve capac­i­ty in our health­care sys­tem,” Gov­er­nor Lit­tle said in a news release sent to NPI. “And from the begin­ning, I stat­ed my com­mit­ment to mak­ing deci­sions about our response to coro­n­avirus based on sci­ence. With con­firmed com­mu­ni­ty trans­mis­sion of coro­n­avirus now occur­ring in Idaho’s most pop­u­lat­ed areas, we need to take strong mea­sures to ensure our health­care facil­i­ties are not over­bur­dened. I am fol­low­ing the guid­ance of our pub­lic health experts and issu­ing a statewide stay-home order effec­tive imme­di­ate­ly.”

“Our health­care and pub­lic safe­ty work­ers are putting them­selves in harm’s way to respond to the coro­n­avirus emer­gency, and we owe it to them to do our part by fol­low­ing this statewide stay-home order,” Gov­er­nor Lit­tle added.

The order is effec­tive for twen­ty-one days. Its actu­al text was not avail­able at press time (it’s not fin­ished yet), but we will update this post when it is.

Idaho "Stay Home" COVID-19 order

A poster cre­at­ed by the State of Ida­ho instruct­ing Gem States to stay home

Idaho’s COVID-19 case count has gone up

Just like every oth­er state in the coun­try, Ida­ho is see­ing more COVID-19 cas­es. The total num­ber of cas­es has now reached sev­en­ty-three. There have not been any deaths yet. 1,089 peo­ple have been test­ed through the state lab­o­ra­to­ry sys­tem and sev­en hun­dred and nine­ty eight have been test­ed through com­mer­cial labs. Here’s a break­down of where the cas­es are:

Pub­lic Health Dis­trictCoun­tyCas­esDeaths
Pan­han­dle Health Dis­trictKoote­nai30
South­west Dis­trict HealthCanyon50
Cen­tral Dis­trict HealthAda220
Val­ley10
South Cen­tral Pub­lic Health Dis­trictBlaine330
Cas­sia1
Twin Falls10
South­east­ern Ida­ho Pub­lic HealthBan­nock20
Bing­ham10
East­ern Ida­ho Pub­lic HealthMadi­son20
Teton20
TOTAL730

Most of the region now under stay-at-home orders

With today’s action by Lit­tle, the three states that NPI pri­mar­i­ly serves are now all under stay-at-home orders. Adja­cent juris­dic­tions are mov­ing clos­er towards hav­ing sim­i­lar poli­cies in place. Alas­ka is requir­ing peo­ple who trav­el to The Last Fron­tier to self-quar­an­tine. Mon­tana has shut schools and man­dat­ed phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing. Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau has also urged his con­stituents (includ­ing British Columbians and Alber­tans) to go home and stay there.

Alaska sees first death

Alas­ka isn’t yet under a “stay at home” order (Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor Mike Dun­leavy has inde­fen­si­bly neglect­ed to issue one), but that could be chang­ing soon.

Com­mu­ni­ty trans­mis­sion of the nov­el coro­n­avirus has already hap­pened with­in the state, the nation’s largest by area. And one Alaskan has now died from COVID-19… although in Wash­ing­ton State, not Alas­ka.

The first Alaskan killed by COVID-19 was in Wash­ing­ton state when they con­tract­ed the ill­ness and died, state offi­cials announced Tues­day evening as they stepped up their call for Alaskans to avoid close con­tact with oth­ers.

Dr. Anne Zink, the state’s chief med­ical offi­cer, said in a media brief­ing Tues­day that the indi­vid­ual had been in Wash­ing­ton for some time and that offi­cials believe that’s where they con­tract­ed COVID-19, the ill­ness caused by the new coro­n­avirus. The death is con­sid­ered an Alas­ka case under fed­er­al rules, she said.

Mean­while, Alaska’s pub­lic employ­ees, who are grave­ly con­cerned about their own health, are suing Dun­leavy for keep­ing state offices open. And many Alaskans have report­ed not being able to get test­ed for COVID-19.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 3:23 PM

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Monday, March 23rd, 2020

COVID-19 Update: Governors Jay Inslee and Kate Brown issue stay-at-home orders

It’s time for anoth­er install­ment of of our spe­cial series COVID-19 Update, bring­ing you the lat­est devel­op­ments on the nov­el coro­n­avirus out­break that pub­lic health author­i­ties here and through­out the coun­try are work­ing dili­gent­ly to mit­i­gate.

Unlike some of the non­sense that is unfor­tu­nate­ly cir­cu­lat­ing on social media, all the infor­ma­tion you’ll find here is accu­rate and based on sound sci­ence.

Governors: Stay at home — that’s an order

Most Pacif­ic North­west­ern­ers are now under orders to stay at home and be safe from COVID-19 unless they need to obtain food for their house­holds or get exer­cise. Wash­ing­ton Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee and Ore­gon Gov­er­nor Kate Brown today issued so-called “stay at home” orders that build on their ear­li­er orders pro­hibit­ing large pub­lic gath­er­ings, clos­ing schools, and clos­ing restau­rants and bars.

The gov­er­nors had been under increas­ing pres­sure to act after many Pacif­ic North­west­ern­ers failed to take seri­ous­ly the guid­ance of pub­lic health author­i­ties to prac­tice phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing. Crowds have recent­ly been observed by reporters and police at beach­es such as Alki, trails like the one that goes to Rat­tlesnake Ridge, and bas­ket­ball courts in pub­lic parks. Though the gov­er­nors plead­ed with peo­ple to stop irre­spon­si­bly con­gre­gat­ing, too many peo­ple still failed to lis­ten.

And so new orders have been issued.

“We’ve been very clear on the need for every­one to stay home,” Gov­er­nor Inslee said in an evening address from his office. “And, while most Wash­ing­to­ni­ans are doing their part, some still don’t grasp the seri­ous­ness of this pan­dem­ic.”

“We encour­age all Wash­ing­to­ni­ans to fol­low the new guid­ance of Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee and Sec­re­tary of Health John Wies­man. The guid­ance in Stay Home, Stay Healthy is crit­i­cal to lim­it­ing the spread of COVID-19 and help­ing flat­ten the curve of infec­tions. Our behav­ior could mean life or death for Wash­ing­to­ni­ans,” said leg­isla­tive lead­ers in an unusu­al joint state­ment.

The state­ment was attrib­uted to Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Andy Bil­lig (D‑Spokane), Speak­er of the House Lau­rie Jink­ins (D‑Tacoma), Sen­ate Minor­i­ty Leader Mark Schoesler (R‑Ritzville) and House Minor­i­ty Leader JT Wilcox (R‑Yelm) .

“We have already lost Wash­ing­to­ni­ans to this virus. We grieve with their fam­i­lies and stand along­side the peo­ple who are cur­rent­ly bat­tling this ill­ness.”

“We rec­og­nize the impact these deci­sions have on busi­ness­es, fam­i­lies, and indi­vid­u­als across the state. There is no way to over­state the chal­lenge fac­ing our state and our nation. The weeks and months to come will test our will, our val­ues and our courage but our state is resilient. We will get through this.”

“We must work togeth­er, sup­port each oth­er and stay pos­i­tive,” the leg­isla­tive lead­ers added. “Ulti­mate­ly we will emerge from this chal­lenge more unit­ed than ever, pre­pared to build an even stronger Wash­ing­ton.”

Since many busi­ness­es have already closed down — from gyms to bar­ber­shops to restau­rant din­ing rooms — you might be won­der­ing what’s left to close. The new orders con­tin­ue to have carve-outs for what are con­sid­ered essen­tial busi­ness­es.

But there are few­er excep­tions.

The new orders pro­hib­it gath­er­ings large and small of all kinds: pub­lic and pri­vate. That means wed­dings, funer­als, fam­i­ly reunions, birth­day cel­e­bra­tions, din­ner par­ties, sleep­overs, the works. All are pro­hib­it­ed through at least April 6th, 2020.

And any busi­ness that does not meet the tighter def­i­n­i­tion of an “essen­tial busi­ness” must sus­pend oper­a­tions by the end of the day on Wednes­day unless it can con­duct its busi­ness vir­tu­al­ly with employ­ees work­ing from home.

Boe­ing announced that its Puget Sound fac­to­ry oper­a­tions would come to a halt after an IAM Dis­trict Lodge 751 shop stew­ard died of COVID-19.

Read Inslee’s procla­ma­tion:

Jay Insle’s Stay Home, Stay Healthy order

The restric­tions announced in Ore­gon are sim­i­lar.

Read Gov­er­nor Kate Brown’s procla­ma­tion:

Gov­er­nor Kate Brown’s order strength­en­ing phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing direc­tives

Why is all this necessary?

Don­ald Trump and oth­er fools who don’t under­stand pub­lic health have ques­tioned the increas­ing­ly restric­tive orders being issued by gov­er­nors like Jay Inslee, Kate Brown, Gavin New­som, Andrew Cuo­mo, Phil Mur­phy, JB Pritzk­er, and Ned Lam­ont, which are result­ing in a shut­down of civic life and eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty.

For exam­ple, Trump tweet­ed:

We can­not let the cure be worse than the prob­lem itself. At the end of the fif­teen day peri­od, we will make a deci­sion as to which way we want to go! (Post­ed to Trump’s Twit­ter account, March 22nd, 2020)

Phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing is not a cure for the nov­el coro­n­avirus, but rather a means of mit­i­gat­ing a dead­ly pan­dem­ic. The rea­son SARS-CoV­‑2 is called a “nov­el” coro­n­avirus is because it’s new. Human bod­ies haven’t encoun­tered this virus before and don’t have an immu­ni­ty to it. That’s why it is such a threat.

The gov­er­nors who issued the stay at home orders want to pro­tect their con­stituents from being infect­ed and killed by the virus. They issued the stay-at-home orders because keep­ing peo­ple apart is the key to pre­vent­ing mas­sive loss of life.

To under­stand how a virus like COVID-19 can wipe out fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties with increas­ing speed, you have to under­stand the con­cept of expo­nen­tial growth.

Expo­nen­tial growth, as defined by Dictionary.com, means the “growth of a sys­tem in which the amount being added to the sys­tem is pro­por­tion­al to the amount already present: the big­ger the sys­tem is, the greater the increase.”

Expo­nen­tial growth explains why it’s tak­ing less and less time for the num­ber of con­firmed COVID-19 cas­es to dou­ble.

With­out phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing, the num­ber of peo­ple who will con­tract the virus, get sick, and pos­si­bly die will sky­rock­et in a very short amount of time.

This graph­ic from Gary War­shaw and Sign­er Lab explains what phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing can do for us (the orig­i­nal title of the graph used the term social dis­tanc­ing, which NPI no longer uses, because it is a mis­nomer).

The power of physical distancing

The pow­er of phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing: An info­graph­ic by Gary War­shaw and Sign­er Lab, mod­i­fied by NPI

You can click the image to see a larg­er ver­sion.

Pre­fer a video expla­na­tion? Watch this:

You may have also heard ref­er­ences to “flat­ten­ing the curve”. That refers specif­i­cal­ly to the ben­e­fit phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing can have on our health­care sys­tem. If peo­ple do not prac­tice phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing, the results will be dis­as­trous. Hos­pi­tals, doc­tors, nurs­es, and first respon­ders will not be able to help every­one who falls ill.

This graph illus­trates the con­cept of “flat­ten­ing the curve”:

Flatten the curve!

Experts explain: “Far and away, the most impor­tant thing to do is flat­ten the curve of the epi­dem­ic so that our health sys­tems can cope and to give time for the sci­en­tists to research vac­cines and treat­ments.”

Peo­ple who scoff at stay­ing home and com­ply­ing with the stay-at-home orders either do not appre­ci­ate the destruc­tion that a pan­dem­ic can cause, rip­ping apart fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties, or mis­tak­en­ly think that keep­ing our bro­ken eco­nom­ic sys­tem going is more impor­tant than sav­ing lives.

The truth is that bro­ken economies can be repaired — an econ­o­my is just the sum of human endeav­ors — but lives lost are irre­place­able. Once some­one has died, they can’t be brought back, at least not in this dimen­sion.

As our friend Anat Shenker-Oso­rio tweet­ed ear­li­er today:

“Humans invent­ed this con­ven­tion called ‘the econ­o­my’ mere­ly to mea­sure what we do. And we are expect­ed to pledge loy­al­ty and obe­di­ence to it. The emper­or isn’t just he naked he’s mere­ly a set of ones and zeroes. The only there there is us.”

Anat is cor­rect.

Life, lib­er­ty, and the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness. Those ideals mat­ter more than any com­pa­ny’s short term prof­its, or any­body’s 401(k).

Again, economies can be rebuilt. God is capa­ble of rais­ing the dead accord­ing to many faith tra­di­tions, but human beings are not.

We can’t get our par­ents and grand­par­ents and broth­ers and sis­ters and aunts and uncles and cousins and friends back once they’re gone.

Yes, there are mil­lions of peo­ple out there who will be hurt­ing eco­nom­i­cal­ly because of COVID-19. Let’s help them. But help­ing them does­n’t mean giv­ing big cor­po­ra­tions a blank check. We’ve done that before, and look where it got us.

More deaths, more cases in Washington State

There are now 2,221 con­firmed cas­es of COVID-19 in Wash­ing­ton State. One hun­dred and ten peo­ple have died from the dis­ease.

31,712 indi­vid­u­als have test­ed neg­a­tive.

King Coun­ty has the most cas­es.

Here’s the lat­est from Seat­tle-King Coun­ty Pub­lic Health:

Pub­lic Health—Seattle & King Coun­ty is report­ing the fol­low­ing con­firmed cas­es and deaths due to COVID-19 through 11:59 p.m. on 3/22/20.

  • 1170 con­firmed cas­es (up 130 from yes­ter­day)
  • 87 con­firmed deaths (up 12 from yes­ter­day)

These addi­tion­al deaths include:

  • A woman in his sev­en­ties, who died on March 21st
  • A man in his sev­en­ties, who died on March 21st at Ever­green­Health
  • A man in his eight­ies who died on March 22nd at Ever­green­Health
  • A man in his eight­ies, who died on March 22nd at Swedish Issaquah
  • A woman in her sev­en­ties, who died on March 22nd
  • A woman in her nineties. who died on March 22nd
  • A man in his sev­en­ties, who died on March 22nd
  • A woman in her nineties, who died on March 22nd
  • A woman in her six­ties, who died on March 22nd at Swedish Cher­ry Hill
  • A man in his six­ties, who died on March 21st at Swedish Cher­ry Hill
  • A man in his six­ties who died on March 22nd at Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton Med­ical Cen­ter
  • A man in his six­ties who died on March 22nd at Vir­ginia Mason

Of the 87 deaths report­ed, 37 are con­firmed to be asso­ci­at­ed with Life Care Cen­ter of Kirk­land.

In What­com Coun­ty, there are a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of deaths and cas­es asso­ci­at­ed with Shuk­san Health­care Cen­ter.

More cases in Oregon

The Beaver State also report­ed more cas­es today.

Ore­gon Health Author­i­ty report­ed 30 new cas­es of COVID-19, bring­ing the state total to 191, as of 8:00 AM today. The COVID-19 cas­es report­ed today are in the fol­low­ing coun­ties: Clacka­mas (2), Hood Riv­er (1), Linn (1), Mar­i­on (8), Mult­nom­ah (2), Polk (2), Wash­ing­ton (14).

More cases in British Columbia

North of the bor­der, the num­ber of nov­el coro­n­avirus cas­es is also increas­ing.

VICTORIA — The COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion in British Colum­bia is con­tin­u­al­ly evolv­ing and the infor­ma­tion below is cur­rent as of 10 a.m. on Mon­day, March 23, 2020.

Cas­es:

  • Total con­firmed cas­es in B.C.: 472
  • New cas­es since March 21, 2020: 48
  • Hos­pi­tal­ized cas­es: 33
  • Inten­sive care: 14
  • Deaths: 13
  • Recov­ered: 100

Con­firmed cas­es by region:

  • Van­cou­ver Coastal Health: 248
  • Fras­er Health: 150
  • Island Health: 39
  • Inte­ri­or Health: 30
  • North­ern Health: 5

Test­ing:

  • NEW: Test­ing capac­i­ty has increased to approx­i­mate­ly 3,000 tests per day.
  • 17,912 indi­vid­u­als test­ed as of March 20, 2020.
  • Test­ing is avail­able for all who need it, but not every­one requires a test.
  • If you have no symp­toms, mild symp­toms or you are a return­ing trav­el­er self-iso­lat­ing at home, you do not require a test.
  • For each of these sit­u­a­tions, the pub­lic health advice remains the same, regard­less of test results: self-iso­late for 14 days to mon­i­tor for the devel­op­ment of symp­toms or until your symp­toms are com­plete­ly gone.
  • Those who have severe ill­ness, require hos­pi­tal­iza­tion, are res­i­dents of long-term care facil­i­ties or are health-care work­ers will con­tin­ue to be test­ed.
  • Any­one part of an active inves­ti­ga­tion or out­break clus­ter will be test­ed so they can be appro­pri­ate­ly mon­i­tored.
  • If symp­toms appear, call your health-care provider, call 811 for guid­ance or check your symp­toms online.

COVID-19 fallout: News roundup

COVID-19 Update will return with a new install­ment tomor­row.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 9:30 PM

Categories: Core Encyclopedia Topics, Healthcare, World Commmunity

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Sunday, March 22nd, 2020

Final numbers are in for Washington’s 2020 presidential primary: Turnout sets new record

Wash­ing­ton State’s just-con­clud­ed 2020 pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry turned out not only to be a ground­break­ing event, but a record-set­ting one, too.

For the first time in state his­to­ry, both major polit­i­cal par­ties pledged to allo­cate one hun­dred per­cent of their nation­al con­ven­tion del­e­gates using the results. And vot­ers respond­ed enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly. As of Fri­day, the final day of count­ing, 49.56% of vot­ers had returned a bal­lot, with 2,256,488 bal­lots count­ed.

Nev­er before has a pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry attract­ed that kind of turnout.

In 2016, turnout was just 34.78%. In 2008, the year that Barack Oba­ma and Hillary Clin­ton vied for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion, turnout in the mean­ing­less pri­ma­ry was 41.88% despite being held in Feb­ru­ary when the race was still very flu­id.

In 2000, turnout was 42.60%.

No pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry was held in 2004 or 2012 because the Leg­is­la­ture opt­ed to can­cel it, so we can­not com­pare this year to those years.

As men­tioned above, this was the first pri­ma­ry in which both par­ties pledged to uti­lize the results to allo­cate their nation­al con­ven­tion del­e­gates.

That seems to have made all the dif­fer­ence with respect to turnout.

Peo­ple under­stood that the pri­ma­ry mat­tered, that the results would count, that return­ing a bal­lot would help influ­ence who got nom­i­nat­ed (well, at least on the Demo­c­ra­t­ic side… the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty made sure Don­ald Trump’s name was the only name on the Repub­li­can bal­lot).

And con­sid­er this: Even though vot­ers were required to declare a par­ty affil­i­a­tion (Demo­c­ra­t­ic or Repub­li­can) in order to have a returned bal­lot count, more Wash­ing­to­ni­ans checked the box and par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pri­ma­ry than vot­ed in last year’s Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion, when there was an ini­tia­tive, ref­er­en­dum, and con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment on the bal­lot along with thou­sands of local posi­tions.

While it’s not pos­si­ble to make an apples-to-apples com­par­i­son between a nom­i­nat­ing event and an actu­al elec­tion because they are dif­fer­ent things, I still think it’s telling that 221,087 more bal­lots were cast in a nom­i­nat­ing event for Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States than were cast at an elec­tion a few months ear­li­er where may­ors, city and coun­ty coun­cilmem­bers, school board mem­bers, port com­mis­sion­ers and more were being elect­ed, main­ly for four year terms.

We know turnout is at its high­est in a pres­i­den­tial year gen­er­al elec­tion. No oth­er type of elec­tion comes close. So imag­ine how many more vot­ers would par­tic­i­pate in decid­ing who their local lead­ers were if that is when we had our local elec­tions.

NPI’s good friend Chris Roberts has writ­ten about this very sub­ject here on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, and I’d encour­age you to read his post.

NPI strong­ly sup­ports phas­ing out odd-num­bered year elec­tions so that we can reduce vot­er fatigue, save mon­ey, improve turnout in local elec­tions, and ensure more vot­ers are involved in decid­ing the fate of state-lev­el bal­lot mea­sures.

Half of the ten low­est turnout gen­er­al elec­tions in Wash­ing­ton State his­to­ry have all been in the past two decades, which is trou­bling.

At least we’re going in the oth­er direc­tion with our pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry.

Wash­ing­ton’s top elec­tions offi­cial, Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman — who, as doc­u­ment­ed here, has a his­to­ry of mak­ing over­ly opti­mistic turnout pre­dic­tions — orig­i­nal­ly pre­dict­ed turnout of fifty per­cent in Wash­ing­ton’s pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry, which was well beyond what many coun­ty audi­tors were fore­cast­ing.

As The Her­ald of Everett not­ed in an edi­to­r­i­al pub­lished a month ago:

Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman told a gath­er­ing of news­pa­per edi­tors and pub­lish­ers last week that she is expect­ing about fifty per­cent turnout for the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry.

If Wyman had stuck to her fifty per­cent pre­dic­tion, she would have been on the mon­ey for once. But, amus­ing­ly, she did­n’t do that.

Instead, she revised her pre­dic­tion upwards:

Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman told us today she expects turnout to reach fifty-five to six­ty per­cent by the time the elec­tion is cer­ti­fied.

– Anchor David Rose, Q13 Fox, March 9th evening news broad­cast

Watch clip:

The next day, right wing radio host Jason Rantz (a big Wyman fan) char­ac­ter­ized her pre­dic­tion as “up to six­ty” as opposed to “fifty-five to six­ty”:

Kim Wyman, Sec­re­tary of State, believes it’s going to get up to six­ty because of how many of the votes that are going to come in today.

– KTTH host Jason Rantz, 5:11 PM on Tues­day, March 10th

Our research has found Wyman’s past pre­dic­tions have been over­ly opti­mistic by at least five per­cent­age points and some­times as much as ten or more, so her revised pre­dic­tion fits that pat­tern. Should’ve stuck with the orig­i­nal pre­dic­tion!

King Coun­ty Elec­tions, on the oth­er hand, was way off. The state’s largest juris­dic­tion con­ser­v­a­tive­ly esti­mat­ed forty per­cent turnout.

Instead, turnout in King Coun­ty was 53.57%. Even though their pre­dic­tion was not in the ball­park, Elec­tions Direc­tor Julie Wise is no doubt thrilled to see more than half of the bal­lots her team mailed out come back for count­ing.

Coun­ties with the best turnoutCoun­ties with the worst turnout
Best: Jef­fer­son (65.64%)Worst: Yaki­ma (39.45%)
Sec­ond best: San Juan (64.95%)Sec­ond-worst: Adams (40.71%)
Third-best: Clal­lam (56.97%)Third-worst: Franklin (40.79%)
Fourth-best: Wahki­akum (56.54%)Fourth-worst: Ben­ton (43.15%)
Fifth-best: Colum­bia (56.27%)Fifth-worst: Pierce (44.70%)

Wyman seems sat­is­fied with the turnout Wash­ing­ton did see, remark­ing:

“Aside from run­ning an acces­si­ble, secure, and fair elec­tion, my mis­sion was to give vot­ers a greater voice in the nom­i­na­tion process for our nation’s next pres­i­dent. This year’s pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry turnout shows we accom­plished just that.”

I’m not sure what she means by “we”, because Wyman made her­self an imped­i­ment to efforts to get the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty to switch to a pri­ma­ry.

Infu­ri­at­ing­ly, Wyman plans to con­tin­ue advo­cat­ing that a “straw poll” option be added to the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry bal­lot, which would make the pri­ma­ry com­plete­ly unus­able by the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty.

Here’s an idea: Let’s not do that. Let’s not go back­wards. Let’s focus on improv­ing Wash­ing­ton State’s pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry for 2024, not ruin­ing it.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 6:51 PM

Categories: Elections

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Sunday, March 22nd, 2020

Last Week In Congress: How Cascadia’s U.S. lawmakers voted (March 16th-20th)

Good morn­ing! Here’s how Cascadia’s Unit­ed States Sen­a­tors vot­ed on major issues dur­ing the leg­isla­tive week end­ing Fri­day, March 20th.

The House was in recess.

In the United States Senate

Chamber of the United States Senate

The Sen­ate cham­ber (U.S. Con­gress pho­to)

APPROVING $100 BILLION TO ADDRESS CORONAVIRUS: Vot­ing 90 for and eight against, the Sen­ate on March 18th sent Don­ald Trump a $100 bil­lion eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty and stim­u­lus pack­age to help fam­i­lies, indi­vid­u­als and small and medi­um-size busi­ness­es cope with the first wave of the coro­n­avirus out­break in the Unit­ed States. In part, the bill (H.R. 6201) would fund free virus test­ing for all who request it; emer­gency food aid for the poor, seniors and K‑12 stu­dents; enhanced unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits; and stepped up Med­ic­aid and pub­lic-health out­lays.

In addi­tion, the bill would autho­rize ten days’ paid sick leave through Decem­ber to indi­vid­u­als and house­holds affect­ed by the pan­dem­ic, using tax cred­its to reim­burse employ­ers the full cost of pro­vid­ing the leave.

The pay­ments would have to be at least two-thirds of nor­mal pay and capped at $1,000 per week. Gov­ern­ment employ­ees would receive equiv­a­lent sick-leave ben­e­fits. But com­pa­nies with five hun­dred or more employ­ees, which account for slight­ly more than half of the U.S. work­force, would be exempt­ed from hav­ing to pay sick leave, and those with few­er than fifty work­ers, which sup­ply about a quar­ter of the pri­vate work force, could request hard­ship exemp­tions.

The bill is pro­ject­ed to deliv­er paid sick leave to only twen­ty to twen­ty-five per­cent of the country’s pri­vate work­force, a share Con­gress is expect­ed to increase in its next coro­n­avirus eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty leg­is­la­tion. The bill also would pro­vide work­ers at com­pa­nies affect­ed by the coro­n­avirus with up to fif­teen days’ paid med­ical and fam­i­ly leave, which would kick in after expi­ra­tion of the sick leave.

As with sick leave, firms employ­ing more than five hun­dred work­ers would be exempt­ed and those with few­er than fifty work­ers could seek exemp­tions.

John Thune, R‑South Dako­ta, said: “This is a time for all of us to come togeth­er to ensure that med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, Amer­i­can busi­ness­es and Amer­i­can fam­i­lies have what they need to com­bat the coro­n­avirus and to deal with its effects.”

James Lank­ford, R‑Oklahoma, said:

“The first prin­ci­ple we should have as Con­gress is, do no harm… We need to take action, but we need to take action that helps peo­ple keep their jobs… My fear is that we didn’t do that just now. We might have just made it worse.”

A yes vote was to send the bill to the White House.

The State of Idaho

Vot­ing Aye (2):
Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Jim Risch and Mike Crapo

The State of Oregon

Vot­ing Aye (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley

The State of Washington

Vot­ing Aye (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Maria Cantwell and Pat­ty Mur­ray

Cas­ca­dia total: 6 aye votes

DECLINING TO EXPAND SICK LEAVE AND FAMILY LEAVE: Vot­ing 47 for and 51 against, the Sen­ate on March 18th defeat­ed a Demo­c­ra­t­ic-spon­sored bid to amend H.R. 6201 (above) to include more inclu­sive paid sick leave dur­ing the  pan­dem­ic and first-time, per­ma­nent avail­abil­i­ty of paid leave to the pri­vate sec­tor dur­ing all types of emer­gen­cies under the 1993 Fam­i­ly and Med­ical Leave Act.

First, the amend­ment sought to pro­vide all pri­vate-sec­tor employ­ees and inde­pen­dent con­trac­tors affect­ed by any pub­lic-health emer­gency includ­ing the coro­n­avirus out­break with 14 days’ paid sick leave through 2021, with employ­ers receiv­ing imme­di­ate Trea­sury reim­burse­ment for their pay­ments when they show doc­u­men­ta­tion to the Depart­ment of Labor.

This pro­vi­sion was more advan­ta­geous to both work­ers and employ­ers than the sick-leave ben­e­fit in the under­ly­ing bill.

Sec­ond, the amend­ment sought to per­ma­nent­ly expand the fam­i­ly and med­ical leave law to include twelve weeks’ paid leave for pri­vate-sec­tor work­ers dur­ing emer­gen­cies; the act now autho­rizes paid emer­gency leave (also twelve weeks) only to fed­er­al civ­il ser­vants. The amend­ment also attempt­ed to per­ma­nent­ly pro­vide work­ers with sev­en days’ accrued paid sick leave under the 1993 law. There was no com­pa­ra­ble pro­vi­sion in the under­ly­ing bill.

Co-spon­sor Pat­ty Mur­ray, D‑Washington (the Pacif­ic North­west­’s most senior sen­a­tor), said her amend­ment was “good for work­ers who need to stay home if they are sick or to take care of their fam­i­ly with­out los­ing a job or their pay­check, and it is good for small busi­ness­es that want to keep their work­ers and com­mu­ni­ties safe and that are strug­gling to stay afloat dur­ing this cri­sis.”

Ron John­son, R‑Wisconsin, called the Demo­c­ra­t­ic approach “a new man­date on busi­ness [that] is going to do a great deal of eco­nom­ic harm. It may sound good, but it is not the right way to go.…We need to learn the les­son from 2009, where over­reg­u­la­tion ham­pered our recov­ery.”

A yes vote was to adopt the amend­ment.

The State of Idaho

Vot­ing Nay (2):
Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Jim Risch and Mike Crapo

The State of Oregon

Vot­ing Aye (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley

The State of Washington

Vot­ing Aye (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Maria Cantwell and Pat­ty Mur­ray

Cas­ca­dia total: 4 aye votes, 2 nay votes

KEEPING PAID SICK LEAVE UNDER FEDERAL CONTROL: Vot­ing fifty for and forty-eight against, the Sen­ate failed to reach a six­ty-vote thresh­old for adopt­ing a Repub­li­can-spon­sored bid to trans­fer the admin­is­tra­tion of paid sick leave in H.R. 6201 (above) from employ­ers and fed­er­al agen­cies to state-run unem­ploy­ment insur­ance pro­grams. In the under­ly­ing bill, employ­ers would pay the sick leave and then receive full Trea­sury reim­burse­ment by means of tax cred­its. Under the amend­ment, state job­less pro­grams would make pay­ments and reim­burse employ­ers, and then shut down the pro­gram at the end of the year.

Co-spon­sor Ron John­son, R‑Wisconsin, said his amend­ment “does not sad­dle small busi­ness­es, Amer­i­can busi­ness­es, with a new man­date that they don’t have a great deal of con­fi­dence in. And it would def­i­nite­ly be tem­po­rary” with an expi­ra­tion date of Decem­ber 31st, 2020.

Pat­ty Mur­ray, D‑Washington., called the approach unwork­able because dis­placed employ­ees “would be on their own until they were com­pen­sat­ed by the state, and the unem­ploy­ment sys­tem in each state would be dras­ti­cal­ly over­bur­dened at a time when work­ers are going to need it in the event they are laid off.”

A yes vote was to adopt the Repub­li­can amend­ment.

The State of Idaho

Vot­ing Aye (2):
Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Jim Risch and Mike Crapo

The State of Oregon

Vot­ing Nay (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley

The State of Washington

Vot­ing Nay (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Maria Cantwell and Pat­ty Mur­ray

Cas­ca­dia total: 2 aye votes, 4 nay votes

DECLINING TO OFFSET COST OF CORONAVIRUS BILL: On a tal­ly of three for and 95 against, the Sen­ate on March 18th defeat­ed an amend­ment that sought to off­set the pro­ject­ed $100 bil­lion cost of H.R. 6201 (above) by cuts else­where in the fed­er­al bud­get. The amend­ment also sought to lim­it the pay­ment of the bil­l’s child tax-cred­its to fam­i­lies with a Social Secu­ri­ty num­ber, a pro­vi­sion seen by crit­ics as anti-immi­grant. As lat­er signed into law by Don­ald Trump, the bill would con­sist almost entire­ly of deficit spend­ing.

Spon­sor Rand Paul, R‑Kentucky, said his amend­ment “has noth­ing to do with not lik­ing immi­grants; it has to do with say­ing tax­pay­er mon­ey should­n’t go to non-peo­ple. You should have to be a per­son to get tax­pay­er mon­ey. It just says you have to have a Social Secu­ri­ty num­ber.”

Our own Ron Wyden, D‑Oregon, said:

“I would just ask my col­leagues to save the immi­gra­tion debates for anoth­er time when we are not in the mid­dle of a pan­dem­ic.”

A yes vote was to adopt the amend­ment.

The State of Idaho

Vot­ing Nay (2):
Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Jim Risch and Mike Crapo

The State of Oregon

Vot­ing Nay (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley

The State of Washington

Vot­ing Nay (2):
Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Maria Cantwell and Pat­ty Mur­ray

Cas­ca­dia total: 6 nay votes

Key votes ahead

Con­gress will take up its third coro­n­avirus relief pack­age in the week of March 23rd, a mea­sure that could prompt­ly send at least $500 bil­lion in direct pay­ments to indi­vid­u­als and house­holds and pro­vide bailouts to numer­ous indus­tries.

Edi­tor’s Note: The infor­ma­tion in NPI’s week­ly How Cas­ca­di­a’s U.S. law­mak­ers vot­ed fea­ture is pro­vid­ed by Votera­ma in Con­gress, a ser­vice of Thomas Vot­ing Reports. All rights are reserved. Repro­duc­tion of this post is not per­mit­ted, not even with attri­bu­tion. Use the per­ma­nent link to this post to share it… thanks!

© 2020 Thomas Vot­ing Reports.

Written by Voterama in Congress :: 7:30 AM

Categories: Legislative Advocacy, Series & Special Reports

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Saturday, March 21st, 2020

COVID-19 fallout: Metro abandons August levy proposal; transit agencies reduce service

Man­ag­ing the rapid­ly wors­en­ing coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic is the most urgent pur­pose at present for all lev­els of gov­ern­ment every­where. The pan­dem­ic has had pro­found impacts on pub­lic ser­vices in the Pacif­ic North­west, includ­ing trans­porta­tion.

In the face of a rapid­ly-evolv­ing sit­u­a­tion, local tran­sit agen­cies are mod­i­fy­ing ser­vice and long-term plans to ensure the via­bil­i­ty of their oper­a­tions.

King Coun­ty Metro won’t sub­mit a request for fund­ing to vot­ers

With Seat­tle’s Trans­porta­tion Ben­e­fit Dis­trict expir­ing at the end of 2020, coun­ty offi­cials were hop­ing to ask coun­ty vot­ers in August to fund region­al mobil­i­ty improve­ments.

With the cur­rent pub­lic health emer­gency and antic­i­pat­ed neg­a­tive eco­nom­ic impacts, Met­ro­pol­i­tan King Coun­ty Coun­cilmem­ber Clau­dia Bal­duc­ci of Belle­vue announced that the coun­ty would no longer move for­ward with a levy pack­age.

Sched­uled to expire at the end of the year is a $60 car-tab fee and 0.1% sales tax levied in the City of Seat­tle. This has aug­ment­ed Metro’s exist­ing fund­ing to enable increased ser­vice fre­quen­cies, new pro­grams like Via to Tran­sit and Trail­head Direct, and ORCA oppor­tu­ni­ty pro­grams.

Coun­ty offi­cials were hop­ing to large­ly replace that fund­ing with a coun­ty­wide sales tax increase, but that is off the table.

Also includ­ed in the pro­pos­al were increased ser­vice hours to meet Metro’s sys­tem goals, sup­port for low-income pro­grams, and the elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of bus bases.

Coun­cilmem­ber Bal­duc­ci’s state­ment also indi­cates a wish for the Leg­is­la­ture to open up new fund­ing path­ways for tran­sit local­ly, espe­cial­ly with the uncer­tain­ty sur­round­ing I‑976.

Seat­tle May­or Jen­ny Durkan intend­ed to main­tain the bus ser­vice improve­ments that her city has ben­e­fit­ed from since 2014, but it remains to be seen how that will be pur­sued in light of recent devel­op­ments. The City has until May 8th to send a mea­sure to the bal­lot.

In the long run, this is a speed bump for imple­men­ta­tion of Metro Con­nects, the 25-year plan approved by the coun­ty coun­cil in 2017. Fea­tures of this plan include increas­ing ser­vice hours from 3.5 mil­lion to 6 mil­lion annu­al­ly, upping the amount of RapidRide lines to 26, and sup­port­ing 73% of King Coun­ty res­i­dents with easy tran­sit access with­in walk­ing dis­tance.

Sched­uled route adjust­ments will con­tin­ue

King Coun­ty Metro has been plan­ning a large restruc­ture of bus ser­vice on the North East­side, to come into effect March 21st, 2020. These changes will go ahead — but be sub­ject to the same tem­po­rary ser­vice reduc­tions the entire agency is plan­ning in the face of our pub­lic health emer­gency.

In the past, bus­es in the Kirkland/Kenmore/Woodinville/Redmond areas were com­pli­cat­ed and not use­ful.

Put sim­ply, the old routes were not direct enough. They tried to serve too many loca­tions at once, which decreased the appeal of the bus for rid­ers look­ing to move quick­ly between major cen­ters.

A comparison of the old Rt 238 and new Rt 231, more streamlined bus service on the North Eastside. (Photos: King County Metro)

A com­par­i­son of the old Rt 238 and new Rt 231 from Kirk­land to Wood­inville, show­cas­ing more stream­lined bus ser­vice on the North East­side. (Pho­tos: King Coun­ty Metro)

The new restruc­ture aims to straight­en out bus­es across the North East­side, with more direct, city-to-city con­nec­tions being pre­ferred to cir­cuitous neigh­bor­hood-cen­tric routes. Totem Lake, Brick­yard, South Kirk­land, and UW Both­ell will all receive bet­ter con­nec­tions to major hubs.

A few major route changes to note: Route 255, the main con­nec­tion from Kirk­land to Seat­tle for com­muters, will also receive an over­haul.

Instead of fight­ing traf­fic into Down­town Seat­tle, the 255 will exit State Route 520 at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton and rid­ers will need to trans­fer to Link light rail.

Also com­ing into ser­vice is the new Sound Tran­sit Route 544, which will link the 520 cor­ri­dor direct­ly to South Lake Union for the first time. This will allow East­side com­muters head­ed to South Lake Union to bypass down­town.

Over at the Seat­tle Tran­sit Blog, you’ll find a detailed analy­sis of the route changes for North­east King Coun­ty. And King Coun­ty Metro has pro­vid­ed a handy map tool and infor­ma­tion­al page to keep rid­ers updat­ed.

Tem­po­rary ser­vice reduc­tions, elim­i­na­tion of fares wide­spread

If you are mak­ing an essen­tial trip via tran­sit, remem­ber to prac­tice phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing and main­tain per­son­al hygiene. Allo­cate extra time for your trip, as online trip plan­ners will not account for the ser­vice reduc­tions.

Local­ly, King Coun­ty Metro and Sound Tran­sit both announced across-the-board reduc­tions in ser­vice lev­els for the time being. Sound Tran­sit was report­ing a 69% drop in rid­er­ship at the begin­ning of last week. Ser­vice reduc­tions are tak­ing place across the board: Sounder and Express bus ser­vice are all affect­ed.

Link Light Rail’s Con­nect 2020 project has also been extend­ed, after the last round of safe­ty test­ing revealed elec­tri­cal issues that must be resolved. The Con­nect 2020-relat­ed ser­vice reduc­tions will con­tin­ue to remain in effect until fur­ther notice.

Fare enforce­ment has also been paused on Link. Down­town sta­tions will be closed again this week­end, and dur­ing this clo­sure only all Link rides will be free, sys­tem-wide.

Local agen­cies are hav­ing to bal­ance the con­tin­ued tran­sit needs for essen­tial pub­lic work­ers and com­mu­ni­ties with­out trans­porta­tion alter­na­tives, while absorb­ing the cuts to rev­enue result­ing from the elim­i­na­tion of fare box income and decreased sales tax rev­enue.

Metro will be reduc­ing the amount of trips on near­ly all bus routes. Ser­vice will be entire­ly cut on eleven Metro-oper­at­ed low-rid­er­ship routes.

Metro is also sus­pend­ing the Com­mu­ni­ty Ride pro­gram. While rid­er­ship is low and irreg­u­lar, these routes pro­vide crit­i­cal access to ser­vices for folks in Black Diamond/Enumclaw, Shoreline/Lake For­est Park, Nor­mandy Park, and Sam­mamish. The imple­men­ta­tion of the new Juani­ta and Bothell/Woodinville Com­mu­ni­ty Rides will be delayed. (The Des Moines Com­mu­ni­ty Shut­tle will run reduced ser­vice while the Mer­cer Island shut­tle is sus­pend­ed.)

Com­mu­ni­ty van shut­tle trips will con­tin­ue to oper­ate as long as there are vol­un­teer dri­vers. This seems to be Metro’s plan to con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing access for vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties. Areas served include Bothell/Woodinville, Duvall, Sam­mamish, Kenmore/Kirkland, Lake For­est Park/Shoreline, and Vashon.

The Via to Tran­sit pro­gram, which aimed to increase low-income Link rid­er­ship in South­east Seat­tle and Tuk­wila, will also not oper­ate.

Last­ly — and cru­cial­ly — King Coun­ty Metro will also be sus­pend­ing fares on para­tran­sit, water taxi, and Metro bus ser­vices. Rear-door board­ing will be required, with the front reserved for the dri­ver and cus­tomers who require the use of the board­ing ramp.

Across our region, sim­i­lar COVID-19-relat­ed mod­i­fi­ca­tions are tak­ing place.

Bus­es in Skag­it, What­com, and Jef­fer­son coun­ties have gone fare-free dur­ing the emer­gency to lim­it inter­per­son­al con­tact (Inter­ci­ty Tran­sit is already fare-free). TransLink, the oper­a­tor in the Van­cou­ver, BC area, has also gone fare-free on its bus­es.

Island Tran­sit is mod­i­fy­ing its Sat­ur­day sched­ule for week­day ser­vice. Com­mu­ni­ty Tran­sit is study­ing ser­vice reduc­tions but has not imple­ment­ed any­thing yet — though cer­tain peak-hour trips to King Coun­ty have been can­celled due to staff short­ages. Pierce Tran­sit is report­ing no mod­i­fi­ca­tions to ser­vice as of now.

Amtrak Cas­cades is sus­pend­ing all ser­vices between Seat­tle and Van­cou­ver, BC, run­ning replace­ment bus­es until Belling­ham. Ser­vice along the rest of the line from Seat­tle to Eugene has been reduced; see the Cas­cades web­site for details.

The King Coun­ty Water Taxi has delayed the roll-out of sum­mer ser­vice. Kit­sap Tran­sit water taxis are oper­at­ing with reduced capac­i­ty to main­tain dis­tanc­ing.

Last­ly, Wash­ing­ton State Fer­ries has sus­pend­ed all gal­ley ser­vices and sus­pend­ed no-show/­can­cel­la­tion fees, but has­n’t reduced sail­ings sys­tem-wide. The sea­son­al ser­vice from Ana­cortes and the San Juans to Van­cou­ver Island has, how­ev­er, had its launch delayed by a month. Its first sail­ing is ten­ta­tive­ly sched­uled for April 26th.

Written by Bobby Aiyer :: 8:30 AM

Categories: Core Encyclopedia Topics, Public Planning

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Friday, March 20th, 2020

COVID-19 Update: Governor Jay Inslee holds off on “shelter in place” order… for now

It’s time for anoth­er install­ment of of our spe­cial series COVID-19 Update, bring­ing you the lat­est devel­op­ments on the nov­el coro­n­avirus out­break that pub­lic health author­i­ties here and through­out the coun­try are work­ing dili­gent­ly to mit­i­gate.

Unlike some of the non­sense that is unfor­tu­nate­ly cir­cu­lat­ing on social media, all the infor­ma­tion you’ll find here is accu­rate and based on sound sci­ence.

Governor Jay Inslee asks Washingtonians to stay home

Wash­ing­ton State’s chief exec­u­tive appealed to its sev­en plus mil­lion inhab­i­tants not to leave home unless absolute­ly nec­es­sary in a press con­fer­ence today, explain­ing that not enough peo­ple are doing a suf­fi­cient job of phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing.

“I’m ask­ing you, and you may say I am plead­ing with you, to stay home; stay home unless it is nec­es­sary that you go out,” Inslee said from his con­fer­ence room in the State Capi­tol, where a Cis­co WebEx sys­tem was set up and a pool cam­era rolling. “I am exer­cis­ing every ounce of the bul­ly pul­pit author­i­ty that I have.”

Gov­er­nors in sev­er­al oth­er states have now issued so-called “shel­ter in place” orders. Inslee has not, but he has closed schools and restau­rant din­ing rooms, and pro­hib­it­ed large gath­er­ings of peo­ple. Many Wash­ing­to­ni­ans are anx­ious for him to go fur­ther, and Inslee hint­ed that he is prepar­ing to do so.

Work­ers in their six­ties and peo­ple with health con­di­tions that leave them par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to COVID-19 ought to be able to elect to stay home even if their employ­er wants them to come in, Inslee said. He explained that his staff are explor­ing whether he may issue an exec­u­tive order to that effect.

“If you are in one of these vul­ner­a­ble groups, I want to see to it you have the right to stay home … and I urge you to do so,” he said.

Watch Inslee’s press con­fer­ence.

Local authorities: Keep off playgrounds and sports courts

Mean­while, King Coun­ty and the City of Seat­tle announced that all play­grounds, basketball/racket courts and sports fields would be clos­ing.

“With schools closed and peo­ple adapt­ing to new work habits, our parks and open spaces can pro­vide an impor­tant break in these stress­ful times. It is clear, how­ev­er, that we must con­tin­ue to be vig­i­lant in these places as well, and make sure all our res­i­dents put into prac­tice Pub­lic Health direc­tives,” said King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine. “Go for a hike. Take the fam­i­ly for a stroll. Kick a soc­cer ball around with your kids. But use good sense and avoid gath­er­ings, team sports, pick-up games, and play­ground equip­ment.”

“Parks are beloved by all, but we must be smart about our behav­iors dur­ing this unprece­dent­ed pub­lic health emer­gency. We are in a new nor­mal. While indi­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies can bike, walk, or run, we can­not allow gath­er­ings at Seattle’s best loca­tions includ­ing Alki, Gold­en Gar­dens, Seward, Vol­un­teer Park or Mag­nu­son. Every sin­gle res­i­dent should take social dis­tanc­ing guide­lines to heart – it could save someone’s life,” said May­or Jen­ny Durkan.

Reporters from sev­er­al dif­fer­ent media out­lets have observed large crowds con­gre­gat­ing at Alki Beach, and the staff of The Seat­tle Times have observed peo­ple fail­ing to prac­tice phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing on bas­ket­ball courts.

More deaths, more cases in Washington State

The death toll from the nov­el coro­n­avirus con­tin­ues to increase in the Ever­green State, as does the num­ber of new­ly con­firmed cas­es. The Depart­ment of Health reports there are 1,524 con­firmed cas­es and eighty-three deaths. 21,719 indi­vid­u­als have test­ed neg­a­tive for COVID-19.

In King Coun­ty:

Pub­lic Health—Seattle & King Coun­ty is report­ing the fol­low­ing con­firmed cas­es and deaths due to COVID-19 through 11:59 PM on 3/19/20.

  • 793 con­firmed cas­es (up 100 from yes­ter­day)
  • 67 con­firmed deaths  (up 7 from yes­ter­day)

These addi­tion­al deaths include:

  • A man in his six­ties, who died on March 19th
  • A woman in her nineties, who died on March 17th
  • A man in his sev­en­ties, who died on March 18th
  • A woman in her eight­ies. who died on March 18th
  • A woman in her sev­en­ties, whose date of death has not been con­firmed
  • A man in his sev­en­ties, who died on March 19th at Val­ley Med­ical Cen­ter
  • A woman in her six­ties, who died on March 19th at Har­borview Med­ical Cen­ter

Of the 67 deaths report­ed, 35 are con­firmed to be asso­ci­at­ed with Life Care Cen­ter of Kirk­land.

More cases in Oregon

Ore­gon’s con­firmed cas­es now num­ber in the triple dig­its.

Ore­gon Health Author­i­ty report­ed 26 new cas­es of COVID-19, bring­ing the state total to 114, as of 8:30 AM today, March 20th. The COVID-19 cas­es report­ed today are in the fol­low­ing coun­ties: Clacka­mas (4), Deschutes (2), Grant (1), Linn (1), Mar­i­on (4), Mult­nom­ah (5), Union (1), Wash­ing­ton (6), Yamhill (2).

Ore­gon Gov­er­nor Kate Brown is com­ing under pres­sure to issue a “shel­ter in place” order, just like Wash­ing­ton Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee is, the Willamette Week reports.

More cases in Idaho

The Gem State is now begin­ning to grap­ple with the pan­dem­ic just like its west­ern neigh­bors. The state now has thir­ty-one total con­firmed cas­es.

Pub­lic Health Dis­trictCoun­tyCas­esDeaths
Pan­han­dle Health Dis­trictKoote­nai30
South­west Dis­trict HealthCanyon10
Cen­tral Dis­trict HealthAda40
South Cen­tral Pub­lic Health Dis­trictBlaine190
Twin Falls10
East­ern Ida­ho Pub­lic HealthMadi­son10
Teton20
TOTAL310

Employ­ees of Boise State Uni­ver­si­ty, Micron Tech­nol­o­gy Inc. and the Boise VA Med­ical Cen­ter have all test­ed pos­i­tive for coro­n­avirus, the Ida­ho States­man reports.

Gov­er­nor Brad Lit­tle issued a state­ment fol­low­ing the dis­clo­sure of the new cas­es.

“My office and mem­bers of my Coro­n­avirus Work­ing Group are ful­ly engaged with the South Cen­tral Pub­lic Health Dis­trict, Blaine Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­ers, and may­ors in that area to ensure a strong response is in place. Our num­ber one pri­or­i­ty is to slow the spread of the virus in that com­mu­ni­ty and out­side of it. To ensure that hap­pens, the direc­tor of the Ida­ho Depart­ment of Health and Wel­fare will issue an iso­la­tion order for res­i­dents in the area. We are still work­ing on the details, and res­i­dents will still have essen­tial ser­vices avail­able to them, such as access to gro­cery stores and, of course, health­care.”

“I am firm in my com­mit­ment to mak­ing deci­sions in our coro­n­avirus plan­ning and response based on sci­ence, not fear. Every step of the way, we have made deci­sions based on the best infor­ma­tion and guid­ance from the Cen­ters For Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion and our nation’s lead­ers, and we will con­tin­ue to do so.”

“I urge every­one to be even more vig­i­lant of the pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures to slow the spread of coro­n­avirus. And most of all, I con­tin­ue to urge Ida­hoans to take care of each oth­er. Be mind­ful of our actions. Find some­one you can help. We will get through this togeth­er.”

More deaths, more cases in British Columbia

The news isn’t bet­ter north of the bor­der.

VANCOUVER — Adri­an Dix, Min­is­ter of Health, and Dr. Bon­nie Hen­ry, B.C.‘s provin­cial health offi­cer, have issued the fol­low­ing joint state­ment regard­ing updates on the nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) response in British Colum­bia:

“We are announc­ing 77 new cas­es of COVID-19, for a total of 348 cas­es in British Colum­bia.”

“Of the new cas­es, one patient is a health-care work­er at the Duf­ferin Care Cen­tre, a long-term care home in Coquit­lam. Fras­er Health author­i­ty pub­lic health and infec­tion con­trol teams are on site.”

“Every health region in British Colum­bia has patients with COVID-19: 200 are in the Van­cou­ver Coastal Health region, 95 are in the Fras­er Health region, 30 are in the Van­cou­ver Island Health region, 19 are in the Inte­ri­or Health region and four are in the North­ern Heath region.”

“Addi­tion­al­ly, of the total COVID-19 cas­es, six peo­ple have com­plete­ly recov­ered, 22 are receiv­ing acute care, 10 are in inten­sive care and the remain­ing patients are at home in iso­la­tion.”

“As the num­ber of cas­es increas­es and the pres­sure on our health-care sys­tem inten­si­fies, we would like to acknowl­edge and thank our health­care work­ers as they sup­port all those in B.C. who require test­ing and care for COVID-19.”

“In step with World Health Orga­ni­za­tion rec­om­men­da­tions, the Pub­lic Health Agency of Canada’s Nation­al Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee on Infec­tion Pre­ven­tion and Con­trol pro­vides clear guid­ance for all health-care work­ers to fol­low. They can be con­fi­dent that by fol­low­ing these guide­lines on appro­pri­ate use, we will have suf­fi­cient sup­ply of per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment.”

“We need every­body to be aware of the risk in every com­mu­ni­ty and every health region across B.C. And, equal­ly impor­tant, because of the incu­ba­tion peri­od and rapid trans­mis­sion, the self-iso­la­tion and [phys­i­cal] dis­tanc­ing that we do today will ben­e­fit all of us two weeks and two months from now.”

“Giv­en the chal­lenges social dis­tanc­ing presents for restau­rants, effec­tive imme­di­ate­ly, all dine-in food ser­vices are pro­hib­it­ed. Restau­rants must move to deliv­ery or take-out options only, or close.”

“We also want to be clear that while spend­ing time out­doors is impor­tant, peo­ple still need to stay away from groups in any envi­ron­ment — to pre­vent bring­ing the virus into their homes.”

“New resources are being made avail­able every day to sup­port every­one in our province as we con­tin­ue to work to stop the trans­mis­sion of COVID-19.”

Adjusting to life during a pandemic: Practical advice

This is unques­tion­ably a dif­fi­cult, stress­ful time. It’s hard for every­body. Here’s some prac­ti­cal advice for cop­ing with pan­dem­ic life.

Stay safe, keep your dis­tance, and be well.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 10:59 PM

Categories: Core Encyclopedia Topics, Healthcare, World Commmunity

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Friday, March 20th, 2020

Kim Wyman wants to cancel the April special election; NPI’s Gael Tarleton says postpone it

Coun­ty elec­tions offi­cials in Wash­ing­ton are about to fin­ish tab­u­lat­ing bal­lots in the state’s ground­break­ing March 10th pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry, in which more than two mil­lion vot­ers par­tic­i­pat­ed. Once they do that, though, they’ll have to turn around and mail out bal­lots to those vot­ers in a juris­dic­tion with some­thing on the bal­lot dur­ing the April 2020 spe­cial elec­tion win­dow allowed by state law.

Repub­li­can Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman, the state’s top elec­tions offi­cial, has con­clud­ed that it would be bet­ter if the April spe­cial elec­tion were not held due to the rapid­ly wors­en­ing coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. This week, she sent a let­ter to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee urg­ing him to can­cel the April spe­cial elec­tion.

Her let­ter was cosigned by most of the state’s coun­ty elec­tions offi­cials.

“While pub­lic con­tact in an elec­tion is great­ly reduced because Wash­ing­ton is a vote-by-mail state, the staffing require­ments to con­duct an elec­tion remain,” Wyman wrote. “The uncer­tain­ty of the impact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic could dra­mat­i­cal­ly impair a coun­ty’s abil­i­ty to per­form its statu­to­ry duties in an elec­tion.”

Wyman’s chief con­cern is that a coun­ty elec­tions office might have to shut down if some­body tests pos­i­tive for the nov­el coro­n­avirus.

“[A] pos­i­tive COVID-19 diag­no­sis for an elec­tions staff per­son could result in elec­tion offices being shut down for clean­ing while the elec­tion is in progress and facil­i­ties are full of live bal­lots that require secu­ri­ty,” Wyman the­o­rized. “Addi­tion­al­ly, elec­tion offi­cials can­not safe­ly assist vot­ers in per­son while pro­tect­ing their staff by main­tain­ing social dis­tanc­ing required to slow the spread of COVID-19.”

That’s true, but can­cel­ing the April 28th spe­cial elec­tion would be prob­lem­at­ic because a num­ber of local gov­ern­ments have already used their statu­to­ry author­i­ty to sub­mit mea­sures to the vot­ers for their con­sid­er­a­tion.

If the elec­tion is nev­er held, what hap­pens to those mea­sures?

Wyman and elec­tions offi­cials argue that “these elec­tions [mean­ing, the levy and bond mea­sures that were sub­mit­ted] can be resched­uled by the boards of each juris­dic­tion for August 4th or Novem­ber 3rd, at their dis­cre­tion.”

Okay, but pre­sum­ably the boards of those juris­dic­tions sub­mit­ted mea­sures for the April 28th date because they did­n’t want them to appear on the August or Novem­ber bal­lots when oth­er mat­ters are being con­sid­ered. If those juris­dic­tions want­ed August or Novem­ber, they could have picked August or Novem­ber.

At NPI, we believe that the Feb­ru­ary and April spe­cial elec­tion win­dows should be per­ma­nent­ly elim­i­nat­ed and replaced with a sched­ule that pro­vides for elec­tions in May and Novem­ber (the August Top Two elec­tion would move to May).

Cur­rent­ly, how­ev­er, state law allows a local gov­ern­ment to sub­mit mea­sures to the bal­lot in Feb­ru­ary or April. Those are the rules. And until the rules are changed by the Leg­is­la­ture, elec­tions offi­cials should try to hon­or them.

Even in an emer­gency.

NPI’s Gael Tar­leton, who is chal­leng­ing Wyman for Sec­re­tary of State, argues that a bet­ter solu­tion would be to post­pone the April spe­cial elec­tion, not can­cel it.

“Dic­ta­tor­ships can­cel elec­tions. Democ­ra­cies don’t. Our vote-by-mail sys­tem should enable us to pro­tect both elec­tion work­ers and our democ­ra­cy,” Tar­leton said in a news release. “Peo­ple need to know that their voice still counts. Our Leg­is­la­ture must help fire dis­tricts, schools and util­i­ties get the fund­ing they need to keep our com­mu­ni­ties oper­a­tional and safe. It’s the job of a leader to ensure democ­ra­cy doesn’t die in a cri­sis and while we keep our work­ers safe.”

Per­haps what would make more sense is attempt­ing to resched­ule the April spe­cial elec­tion to June. That would give elec­tions offi­cials more time to pre­pare and devel­op plans to pro­tect elec­tion work­ers, and the elec­tion could still be held sep­a­rate­ly from the oth­er elec­tions sched­uled to be held lat­er this year.

School dis­tricts face unique bud­get­ing con­straints because the school year is dif­fer­ent from the cal­en­dar year. Because the Leg­is­la­ture still does­n’t pro­vide suf­fi­cient fund­ing to school dis­tricts, they remain depen­dent on vot­er approved levies and bond mea­sures to remain fis­cal­ly healthy. Any dis­trict that was count­ing on pas­sage of a levy mea­sure next month could be grave­ly harmed by Wyman’s pro­pos­al.

Speak­ing of elec­tion secu­ri­ty and good hygiene… let’s start work­ing now on plans for pro­cure­ment of bet­ter bal­lot return envelopes. Reforms are need­ed to improve the secu­ri­ty and safe­ty of our vote-at-home sys­tem. NPI advo­cates the fol­low­ing:

  • Return bal­lot envelopes should have self-adhe­sive seals so that vot­ers don’t have to lick or moist­en them. Self-seal­ing envelopes are com­mer­cial­ly avail­able. There are two main types: peel ‘n stick (exam­ple) and flip ‘n stick (exam­ple). They cost more, but the cost is well worth it.
  • The sig­na­ture line should be moved to the bal­lot secu­ri­ty enve­lope and the secu­ri­ty enve­lope made manda­to­ry. This way, peo­ple’s sig­na­tures, tele­phone num­bers, email address­es, and par­ty dec­la­ra­tions (in pres­i­den­tial pri­maries) do not appear on the out­side of the pack­et.

Gov­er­nor Inslee has just signed a bill to require that bal­lot return envelopes state the date of the elec­tion, which is some­thing else that was on our wish list. Thanks, Gov­er­nor Inslee! And thanks to the prime spon­sor, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Melanie Mor­gan, for bring­ing the bill. You can watch my tes­ti­mo­ny in sup­port from TVW.

If you would like to read Wyman’s let­ter in full, it’s below.

Let­ter request­ing can­cel­la­tion of April spe­cial elec­tion

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 1:22 PM

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Thursday, March 19th, 2020

Lieutenant Governor Cyrus Habib to serve out term, leave politics, and join the Jesuits

Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Cyrus Habib announced today that he will be leav­ing pol­i­tics at the end of the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cycle to join the Soci­ety of Jesus, bet­ter known to some as the Jesuits or the Jesuit Order. Habib revealed in a post pub­lished on Amer­i­ca (a promi­nent Jesuit pub­li­ca­tion) that he has cho­sen not to seek reelec­tion this year. Instead, he will serve out the remain­der of his cur­rent term as Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor and then depart pub­lic life for reli­gious life.

Said Habib:

“I have felt a call­ing to ded­i­cate my life in a more direct and per­son­al way to serv­ing the mar­gin­al­ized, empow­er­ing the vul­ner­a­ble, heal­ing those who suf­fer from spir­i­tu­al wounds and accom­pa­ny­ing those dis­cern­ing their own futures.”

“For me, this is root­ed in my faith in Christ’s Gospel. But my desire to encounter some­thing greater than myself by walk­ing with the poor and aban­doned of this world will be famil­iar to those of many dif­fer­ent spir­i­tu­al tra­di­tions. I have come to believe that the best way to deep­en my com­mit­ment to social jus­tice is to reduce the com­plex­i­ty in my own life and ded­i­cate it to serv­ing oth­ers.”

“I have also come to believe that, while we cer­tain­ly con­tin­ue to need peo­ple of good will to serve in elect­ed office, meet­ing the chal­lenges our coun­try faces will require more than just pol­i­cy-mak­ing,” Habib elab­o­rat­ed.

“Peo­ple are in dire need of spir­i­tu­al sup­port and com­pan­ion­ship. From our throw­away cul­ture that treats work­ers and our envi­ron­ment as dis­pos­able to a new gen­er­a­tion of young peo­ple eager to change the world but strug­gling with unprece­dent­ed anx­i­ety, alien­ation and oth­er men­tal health chal­lenges to the fear and iso­la­tion we are all expe­ri­enc­ing as a result of the coron­avirus, this is a time when we need to ground our­selves in the wis­dom of those who came before and cul­ti­vate new forms of wis­dom forged in the fires of our present moment.”

In an inter­view with Amer­i­ca’s Zac Davis, Habib cit­ed Father Michael Ryan, the pas­tor of St. James Cathe­dral, as a role mod­el and key influ­ence, not­ing that Father Ryan gave him a copy of James Mar­t­in’s The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Every­thing when he was grap­pling with his father’s ill­ness and death four years ago.

Read­ing that pas­sage brought a smile to my face, because Father Ryan is one of the wis­est, kind­est men I know. He is an extra­or­di­nary priest who has com­fort­ed and coun­seled so many dur­ing his decades of ser­vice to Christ. His hom­i­lies pro­vide great intel­lec­tu­al nour­ish­ment. They’re men­tal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly ther­a­peu­tic.

As a Catholic myself and as fel­low wor­ship­per at St. James, I under­stand and respect Cyrus’ deci­sion, and I am very hap­py for him. It’s total­ly in keep­ing with the man that I know and admire. We do not often see peo­ple for­go their polit­i­cal ambi­tions in order to enter reli­gious life. But if the Roman Catholic Church is to sur­vive and thrive, then it needs lead­ers like Cyrus Habib.

I look for­ward to Cyrus’ ordi­na­tion. Jesuit faith for­ma­tion can take over a decade — seri­ous­ly, it’s a long process! — but I am con­fi­dent Cyrus will get there, and when he does, I’ll be hon­ored and delight­ed to cel­e­brate his accom­plish­ment with him.

Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee offered his best wish­es in a state­ment released this morn­ing.

“Cyrus’ life and career are an inspi­ra­tion to many,” the Gov­er­nor said.

“He has had a mete­oric career in elect­ed pub­lic ser­vice, so I was sur­prised when he called me this morn­ing to say he was­n’t run­ning again.”

“While the news was unex­pect­ed, any­one who knows Cyrus is not sur­prised by his com­mit­ment to faith. I have no doubt his future in the Jesuit priest­hood will bring much good to a world that needs it right now.

“Tru­di and I wish Cyrus all the best as his life of pub­lic ser­vice now turns to a new stage that will be impact­ful to many.”

I have faith that my path and Cyrus’ paths will cross again in the future because we share a faith tra­di­tion. So I will not say fare thee well to Cyrus when I see him. Instead, I will say Au revoir — because I know we will be meet­ing again.

Thank you, Cyrus, for every­thing, and best wish­es as you under­take this new jour­ney. The NPI team and I are pulling for you!

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 1:09 PM

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Wednesday, March 18th, 2020

Elizabeth Warren proposes conditions for bailouts of big firms due to COVID-19 impacts

No more blank checks for you, Wall Street!

That’s the mes­sage Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth War­ren says that Con­gress must deliv­er to the nation’s “cap­tains of indus­try”, many of whom are now send­ing their lob­by­ists to Capi­tol Hill to plead for fis­cal aid. The avi­a­tion indus­try, the hos­pi­tal­i­ty indus­try, and oth­ers are all reel­ing from the effects of the rapid­ly wors­en­ing coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, and want tax­pay­er assis­tance to avert cat­a­stro­phe.

War­ren says it would be irre­spon­si­ble to offer fed­er­al aid with no con­di­tions, as Con­gress unwise­ly did twelve years ago. The bank bailout suc­ceed­ed in sta­bi­liz­ing the banks, and they repaid the Unit­ed States Trea­sury, but the oppor­tu­ni­ty to com­pel them to change their behav­ior was squan­dered. Today, the banks are even big­ger and they con­tin­ue to engage in preda­to­ry lend­ing prac­tices.

Les­son learned. Con­gress must insist upon con­di­tions for any bailout pack­age. And since the pres­i­den­cy and the Unit­ed States Sen­ate are cur­rent­ly con­trolled by Repub­li­cans friend­ly to Wall Street, it will assured­ly be up to Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi and her cau­cus to put togeth­er leg­is­la­tion that does­n’t write a blank check.

Here are War­ren’s pro­posed con­di­tions for a bailout pack­age:

We’re not writ­ing blank checks to giant cor­po­ra­tions. Any tax­pay­er dol­lars that go to help big busi­ness­es dur­ing the coro­n­avirus cri­sis should come with the fol­low­ing min­i­mum require­ments:

  1. Com­pa­nies must main­tain their pay­rolls and use funds to keep peo­ple work­ing or on pay­roll.
  2. Com­pa­nies must pro­vide a $15 min­i­mum wage with­in one year of the nation­al emer­gency dec­la­ra­tion end­ing.
  3. Com­pa­nies are per­ma­nent­ly pro­hib­it­ed from engag­ing in share repur­chas­es.
  4. Com­pa­nies are pro­hib­it­ed from pay­ing out div­i­dends or exec­u­tive bonus­es while they are receiv­ing any relief and for three years there­after.
  5. Com­pa­nies must set aside at least one seat – but poten­tial­ly two or more, as the amount of relief increas­es – on the board of direc­tors for rep­re­sen­ta­tives elect­ed by work­ers.
  6. Col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments should remain in place and should not be reopened or rene­go­ti­at­ed pur­suant to this relief pro­gram.
  7. Cor­po­ra­tions must obtain share­hold­er and board approval for all polit­i­cal expen­di­tures.
  8. CEOs must be required to per­son­al­ly cer­ti­fy a com­pa­ny is in com­pli­ance and face crim­i­nal penal­ties for false cer­ti­fi­ca­tions.

Con­gress must set up an over­sight body, mod­eled on the Con­gres­sion­al Over­sight Pan­el and the SIGTARP pro­gram for the bank bailout, but with real fund­ing & sub­poe­na pow­er. We need real account­abil­i­ty to make sure these con­di­tions are met.

These are great ideas and we’re thrilled to see Sen­a­tor War­ren step­ping up to pro­vide bold pro­gres­sive lead­er­ship in a time of cri­sis.

In the 1930s, when Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt came into office, he did­n’t just work to sta­bi­lize Amer­i­ca’s soci­ety and and econ­o­my. He worked to imple­ment reforms to pro­tect the coun­try from a future depres­sion or reces­sion.

That’s how we end­ed up with Social Secu­ri­ty, with the Glass-Stea­gall Act, with fed­er­al deposit insur­ance through the FDIC, and with new infra­struc­ture built by the Works Progress Admin­is­tra­tion and the Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps.

A cri­sis like this is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to build a more inclu­sive, equi­table, and broad­ly pros­per­ous soci­ety, and it must not be squan­dered.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 11:44 AM

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Wednesday, March 18th, 2020

Progressive Marie Newman ousts right wing Democrat Dan Lipinski in IL-03 rematch

Bernie Sanders may be falling short in his quest for the 2020 Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion, but pro­gres­sive activists in Illi­nois have suc­ceed­ed in oust­ing an entrenched incum­bent Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­ber of the U.S. House who oppos­es repro­duc­tive rights. Con­gress­man Dan Lip­in­s­ki, fifty-three, has failed to secure renom­i­na­tion in Illi­nois’ 3rd Dis­trict. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty will instead be rep­re­sent­ed this Novem­ber by pro­gres­sive chal­lenger Marie New­man:

New­man held more than 47% of the vote over Lipinski’s near­ly 45%, putting the LaGrange chal­lenger clos­er to top­pling a south sub­ur­ban polit­i­cal dynasty that dates back near­ly four decades. It was enough for New­man to declare vic­to­ry over the eight-term incum­bent.

“This cam­paign has always been about work­ers and work­ing peo­ple and advo­cat­ing for bet­ter health­care and an econ­o­my that works for every­body,” New­man said in a state­ment.

“I look for­ward to work­ing with this amaz­ing coali­tion over the next sev­en months to con­tin­ue spread­ing that mes­sage.”

But Lip­in­s­ki wasn’t ready to throw in the tow­el.

“As we close this evening, there are still votes to be count­ed in this race,” Lip­in­s­ki said in a state­ment.

“It is very close. We may have to wait overnight or into the morn­ing for the final vote count. I want to thank every­one for their sup­port. Please stay safe and take care of your­selves and your fam­i­lies.”

Two years ago, New­man lost to Lip­in­s­ki by the slimmest of mar­gins. This time around, it appears that she will pre­vail. There are votes still left to count, but not many, and Lip­in­s­ki would need a mir­a­cle to over­come his deficit.

Lip­in­ski’s father Bill rep­re­sent­ed the dis­trict from 1983 to 2005 and Dan has held it ever since. It is a solid­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic dis­trict. Now, for the first time in decades, it will not be rep­re­sent­ed by some­one from the Lip­in­s­ki fam­i­ly.

It is impor­tant to note that Lip­in­s­ki isn’t just opposed to wom­en’s repro­duc­tive rights. He calls him­self a Demo­c­rat, but he does not act or vote like one.

As Wikipedia notes:

He did not endorse Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma for reelec­tion in 2012, oppos­es legal­ized abor­tion and stem cell research, was the only House Demo­c­rat from Illi­nois to vote against the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act, sup­port­ed reau­tho­riz­ing the Patri­ot Act in 2006, and sup­port­ed the Defense of Mar­riage and First Amend­ment Defense Acts.

If Lip­in­s­ki rep­re­sent­ed a deep red dis­trict, his lack of sup­port for Demo­c­ra­t­ic and pro­gres­sive caus­es would not be so egre­gious. But he rep­re­sents a blue dis­trict and has no excuse for depriv­ing his con­stituents of pro­gres­sive rep­re­sen­ta­tion, orga­ni­za­tions like Indi­vis­i­ble and Democ­ra­cy For Amer­i­ca say.

“Con­grat­u­la­tions to Marie New­man! This is a big night for the pro­gres­sive move­ment, scor­ing a win in one of the most impor­tant pri­maries of 2020. This race has big impli­ca­tions for what it means to be a Demo­c­rat in the Trump era,” tweet­ed Indi­vis­i­ble’s nation­al account, adding her cam­paign hash­tag #NewDayinIL03.

“I am burst­ing with pride and grat­i­tude for the amaz­ing coali­tion that helped bring about much need­ed change in our dis­trict,” New­man tweet­ed after results became avail­able. “We are going to work togeth­er to low­er health care costs, to fight cli­mate change, and to build an econ­o­my that works for every­one.”

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 8:30 AM

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