Tonight, Wash­ing­ton’s Leg­is­la­ture took a stand for fair­ness, oppor­tu­ni­ty, and inclu­sion by adopt­ing Ini­tia­tive 1000, which would empow­er agen­cies and insti­tu­tions of high­er learn­ing to adopt poli­cies that rem­e­dy dis­crim­i­na­tion faced by the state’s under­rep­re­sent­ed and dis­ad­van­taged communities.

Spon­sored by Nathaniel Jack­son, I‑1000 does three things, as sum­ma­rized by the staff of the Wash­ing­ton State House of Representatives:

• Amends the pro­vi­sion of law [Tim Eyman and John Carl­son’s I‑200] that pro­hibits the state from dis­crim­i­nat­ing against or grant­i­ng pref­er­en­tial treat­ment to an indi­vid­ual or group based on cer­tain char­ac­ter­is­tics in pub­lic employ­ment, pub­lic edu­ca­tion, and pub­lic contracting.
• Cre­ates the Gov­er­nor’s Com­mis­sion on Diver­si­ty, Equi­ty, and Inclu­sion respon­si­ble for direct­ing, mon­i­tor­ing, and enforc­ing state agency com­pli­ance with the ini­tia­tive and report­ing on state agency progress in achiev­ing diver­si­ty, equi­ty, and inclusion.
• Requires a mem­o­ran­dum and draft leg­is­la­tion regard­ing nec­es­sary statu­to­ry changes to bring nomen­cla­ture and process­es in line with the initiative.

I‑1000 does not repeal I‑200; but instead mod­i­fies it. Quo­tas remain pro­hib­it­ed under I‑1000, but oth­er approach­es to rem­e­dy­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion would become avail­able to Wash­ing­ton’s col­leges, uni­ver­si­ties, and state agencies.

With just hours to go before the end of the reg­u­lar ses­sion, the House and Sen­ate brought I‑1000 to the floor for a vote and adopt­ed it after a live­ly debate. Democ­rats pro­vid­ed all of the votes to adopt it in both hous­es; not a sin­gle Repub­li­can vot­ed aye. The roll call in the House was as follows:

Roll Call
HI 1000
Affir­ma­tive action
Final Passage
4/28/2019

Yeas: 56; Nays: 42

Vot­ing Yea: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Apple­ton, Bergquist, Callan, Chap­man, Cody, Davis, Doglio, Dolan, Enten­man, Fey, Fitzgib­bon, Frame, Good­man, Gregerson, Hansen, Hud­gins, Jink­ins, Kil­duff, Kir­by, Klo­ba, Leav­itt, Lekanoff, Lovick, Macri, Mead, Mor­gan, Mor­ris, Orms­by, Ortiz-Self, Orwall, Paul, Pel­lic­ciot­ti, Peter­son, Pet­ti­grew, Pol­let, Ramos, Reeves, Ric­cel­li, Robin­son, Ryu, San­tos, Sells, Senn, Shew­make, Slat­ter, Springer, Stan­ford, Stonier, Sul­li­van, Tar­leton, Thai, Tharinger, Valdez, Walen, Wylie, Chopp

Vot­ing Nay: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Barkis, Blake, Boehnke, Caldier, Cham­bers, Chan­dler, Cor­ry, DeBolt, Dent, Dufault, Dye, Eslick, Gildon, Goehn­er, Gra­ham, Grif­fey, Har­ris, Hoff, Irwin, Jenkin, Klip­pert, Kraft, Kretz, MacEwen, May­cum­ber, McCaslin, Mos­bruck­er, Orcutt, Rude, Schmick, Shea, Smith, Steele, Stokes­bary, Suther­land, Van Wer­ven, Vick, Volz, Walsh, Wilcox, Ybar­ra, Young

And this was the roll call in the Senate:

Roll Call
SI 1000
Affir­ma­tive action
3rd Read­ing & Final Passage
4/28/2019

Yeas: 26; Nays: 22; Excused: 1

Vot­ing Yea: Sen­a­tors Bil­lig, Car­lyle, Cleve­land, Con­way, Darneille, Das, Dhin­gra, Frockt, Hasegawa, Hobbs, Hunt, Keis­er, Kud­er­er, Liias, Lovelett, McCoy, Nguyen, Ped­er­sen, Ran­dall, Rolfes, Sal­daña, Salomon, Takko, Van De Wege, Well­man, Wil­son (Claire)

Vot­ing Nay: Sen­a­tors Bai­ley, Beck­er, Braun, Brown, Erick­sen, For­tu­na­to, Hawkins, Holy, Hon­ey­ford, King, Mul­let, O‘Ban, Pad­den, Rivers, Schoesler, Shel­don, Short, Wag­oner, Walsh, War­nick, Wil­son (Lyn­da), Zeiger

Excused: Sen­a­tor Palumbo

In the House, Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Bri­an Blake vot­ed no.

In the Sen­ate, Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Mark Mul­let vote no.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Guy Palum­bo skipped the vote.

NPI thanks and con­grat­u­lates the Leg­is­la­ture’s eighty-two oth­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­is­la­tors for their his­toric votes to pass I‑1000. For a while, it did­n’t look like I‑1000 was going any­where. To see it pass is a huge relief.

Because I‑1000 is an ini­tia­tive to the Leg­is­la­ture, not a bill, it does not go to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee for sig­na­ture. The ini­tia­tive will become law unless it is sub­ject­ed to a suc­cess­ful ref­er­en­dum. Expect John Carl­son, Tim Eyman, and oth­ers to announce such an effort imme­di­ate­ly.

Our team at NPI stands ready to help assem­ble a broad and diverse coali­tion to ensure that I‑1000 remains the law of the land in Wash­ing­ton State.

The enti­ty that qual­i­fied I‑1000 as an ini­tia­tive to the Leg­is­la­ture (orga­nized by for­mer law­mak­er Jesse Wineber­ry) is unfor­tu­nate­ly in no shape to defend the mea­sure. It was unpro­fes­sion­al­ly run and owes hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars to Tim Eyman’s asso­ciates, who are co-defen­dants in Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son’s prin­ci­pal cam­paign finance enforce­ment law­suit against Eyman.

NPI did not par­tic­i­pate in the effort to qual­i­fy I‑1000 to the Leg­is­la­ture due to con­cerns over fund­ing and trans­paren­cy. A pro­gres­sive cam­paign should nev­er do busi­ness with a cor­rupt right wing com­pa­ny like “Cit­i­zen Solutions”.

Nev­er­the­less, the ini­tia­tive qualified.

While we could not in good con­science sup­port the I‑1000 cam­paign, we have emphat­i­cal­ly sup­port­ed I‑1000 as pol­i­cy, and we have been urg­ing the Leg­is­la­ture to adopt the mea­sure since Jan­u­ary when the House and Sen­ate convened.

There is now an oppor­tu­ni­ty to form a new cam­paign to defend the new­ly enact­ed Wash­ing­ton State Diver­si­ty, Equi­ty, and Inclu­sion Act (which is I‑1000’s offi­cial title) — and we look for­ward to enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in that effort.