Washington overhauls competency system for criminal defendants

A new journalism fellowship to increase local news coverage in Washington will be established with money from the state budget. 

The Washington Legislature allocated $2.4 million over two years for the new fellowship program. Under the program, which could start as early as 2024, eight recent college graduates will be sent to news outlets statewide each year for two-year reporting stints. 

Local news coverage nationwide has been dwindling in recent years. Nearly 2,000 newspapers closed nationwide between 2004 and 2018, according to data from the University of North Carolina,

Several news outlets in Washington have closed or scaled back operations over the past two decades. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer became an online outlet after closing its print operation in 2009. Recently, leadership at the Seattle Chinese Post announced it would cease publication after more than four decades. 

“I know what it means for the press corps to hold elected officials’ feet to the fire, and it’s an important part of our democratic process that we can’t let slip away in towns around our state,” said Sen. Karen Keiser, D-Des Moines, in a news release from Washington Senate Democrats. 

Keiser, a graduate of the University of California Berkeley who worked as a broadcast journalist in Denver, Portland and Seattle, led the effort to fund the program with Sen. Marko Liias, D-Everett. 

The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University will operate the program, modeled after the California Local News Fellowship operated by the University of California Berkeley. Half of the participants selected will be WSU graduates, and all who complete the fellowship will receive a certificate in digital media innovation from the university. 

The Crosscut Ideas Festival is back, with sessions running today through Saturday. The annual festival is a gathering for newsmakers, changemakers and innovators to come together and discuss current events and the issues of our time. Along with virtual sessions running all week, the Crosscut Ideas Festival will culminate in an all-day Saturday in-person event including art installations, workshops and keynote speakers.

Each day, we’ll offer a synopsis of what’s to come. Here are today’s virtual sessions: 

• What Washington Thinks of the Supreme Court: Crosscut reporter Mai Hoang and pollster H. Stuart Elway discuss the surprising results of the recent Crosscut | Elway poll regarding the U.S. Supreme Court. Registered voters throughout the state gave their thoughts on this year’s docket, including affirmative action, trans rights and their overall opinions on the Court. The session starts at 9 a.m. 
   
• Will the Metaverse Kill Reality?: Tech companies such as Meta have placed big bets on the metaverse, but the technology comes with its own obstacles. Consumers have been slow to adopt, high prices remain a barrier and the quality of the content is in question. Video-game enthusiast and author Steven L. Kent moderates a panel with Jesse Schell, CEO of Schell Games, and Michael Pachter, equity research analyst. The session starts at 11 a.m. 
   
• A Republican Reset: Will Hurd, former U.S. Representative from Texas and Republican party member, discusses the future of the party with unDivided podcast host Brandi Kruse. Hurd’s book, American Reboot, argues for moving beyond the partisan gridlock that characterizes American politics. But can the Republican party move past its own gridlock? The session starts at 2 p.m. 

Interested in attending? Tickets are still on sale for virtual events and Saturday’s in-person sessions at the Amazon Meeting Center, 2031 Seventh Ave. Find a full list of speakers, sessions and ticket prices at crosscut.com/festival. 

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court made a decision that altered the landscape of reproductive rights when it overturned Roe v. Wade. Now the Court is posed to reshape other aspects of American life with what seems like a record number of far-reaching cases, many of which will have implications for Washington state.

Crosscut readers have been learning about these cases and the implications for our communities in our stories about affirmative action, the adoption of Native American children and our recent Crosscut/Elway poll. In the coming weeks, other Court-related coverage will focus on topics including immigration and religious accommodations for workers.

Members of our community can join a live conversation about the 2023 season of the Supreme Court at the Crosscut Ideas Festival during two virtual sessions. On Tuesday at 9 a.m., pollster Stuart Elway and Crosscut reporter Mai Hoang will talk about our April poll on the Supreme Court. On Friday at 9 a.m. Crosscut reporter Megan Burbank will interview Judith Arcana, former member of an abortion underground, about reproductive health before Roe. And on Saturday at 11:30 a.m. in person, Dahlia Lithwick will do a live taping of the Amicus podcast focused on the Supreme Court.

Tickets to virtual and in-person sessions at the Crosscut Ideas Fest are available on Crosscut.com.

Eastern Washington cities are historically hotter and drier than their Western peers, but this year, some Eastern cities have been getting hotter sooner. 

On Sunday, Spokane tied its hottest April 30 on record: 82 degrees Fahrenheit at Spokane International Airport, tied with that date in 1981. (Records have been kept in the Spokane area since 1881.)

The Spokane forecast surprised local forecasters like Jeremy Wolf of the National Weather Service in Spokane. It’s uncommon to see such high temperatures in Spokane after such a cool spring, Wolf says. 

Spokane had seen its first day at or above 70 degrees only a few days earlier, April 26, when temperatures reached 71. The Inland Northwest experienced a colder-than-normal April, with temperatures 2 to 6 degrees cooler than average. The weather this past weekend was 15-20 degrees hotter than average.

“The temperatures themselves weren’t abnormally hot by summer standards, where we often are in the 90s every day, or for several days. But yes, this was still pretty warm for early in the season,” Wolf says. 

The National Weather Service temperature outlook for May, June and July suggests hotter-than-average temperatures across the state, including Western Washington. The Service is also expecting temperatures in the 70s in the Seattle area on Tuesday and Wednesday. The average spring temperature for early May in Seattle is 63 to 64 degrees. 

The National Weather Service issued some safety warnings for recreationists who spend time near water or melting snow. Water rushing into rivers causes them to run faster and higher; hiking or skiing in melting snow comes with a greater avalanche risk; and lakes and streams are still cool enough to cause hypothermia. Wolf says rivers have been steadily rising since the warm temperatures began, and forecasters are watching for floods this week in nearby Idaho.

A bell rang 94 times, once for each worker in Washington state who died on the job last year, as their name was read aloud Thursday at the 2023 Worker Memorial Day ceremony in Tumwater.

Officials reported the most dangerous industry continues to be construction, which in 2022 accounted for about a third of the state’s workplace fatalities. Three of those workers died when the trench they were in collapsed. The second highest number of deaths, 26, resulted from exposure to toxic chemicals.

Thursday's event also honored 35 workers who died before 2022, but had not received recognition in previous ceremonies.

“As we hear each name read, it’s important to remember these are not just names. These are not just statistics. They’re our neighbors. They’re our friends. They’re our co-workers. They’re families. They’re our community,” said Joel Sacks, director of the state’s Department of Labor & Industries

On-the-job homicides also increased last year, rising from four deaths in 2021 to 11 in 2022 – all but two by gunfire. These deaths included Justin Krumbah, an Instacart shopper shot at a Fred Meyer in Richland.

In both 2020 and 2021, COVID-19 proved the leading cause of work-related fatalities, claiming 24 and 26 lives respectively. In 2022 that number dropped to 13.

Gov. Jay Inslee told attendees that a recently passed bill is intended to increase the safety of state highway workers by authorizing the use of speed safety cameras in work zones. 

“We got the legislature to do something to increase safety for that one group of employees, and we’re always looking for things like that, to try to allow people to come home safely,” he said.

The state’s fatality rate ranks third-lowest in the country with 2.1 deaths per 100,000 workers, according to the AFL-CIO’s 2023 Death on the Job report released this week – below the national average of 3.6 deaths per 100,000 workers.

The Washington Supreme Court says a group of Richland School Board members were appropriately subject to a recall by voters after they violated state law in two different ways.

The Court says three of the five members of the board disobeyed Gov. Jay Inslee’s statewide mask mandate when they voted to make face coverings optional in Richland schools. And they violated Washington’s Open Public Meetings Act because there was evidence that a quorum of the board had debated the issue via text messages before the panel met in an actual public meeting.

After the school board’s actions, a group of Richland voters filed a petition to recall the three members who, at a Feb. 15, 2022 meeting, had voted to remove the mask mandate, more than a month before the governor lifted the mandate for public schools. A superior court ruled that the recall petition was factual and legally sufficient to appear on the ballot. The three board members appealed the Court’s order in May 2022. The Washington Supreme Court dismissed most of their appeal in a unanimous decision issued on Thursday.

The decision, written by Justice Sheryl Gordon McCloud, also points out that the school board members proceeded with their efforts to remove the school mask mandate after being advised by several attorneys that they did not have the authority to do so.

As spring weather rolls into town, weekend conditions will be perfect for outdoor activities, including one of the biggest citizen science scavenger hunts of the year. 

From April 28 through May 1, Washingtonians and people in at least 445 cities around the world are being asked to help assess how local wildlife are doing by participating in the eighth annual City Nature Challenge. 

People are invited to use their cell phones and the free species identification app iNaturalist to document and identify as many individual plants and animals as they can this weekend. The event is sponsored locally by the Woodland Park Zoo, the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium, and the Northwest Trek Wildlife Park.

The data isn’t only fun to collect, but also possibly valuable to scientists and their conservation work.

“By engaging the public in making nature observations in this global event, we help to generate more local biodiversity data than you would normally get on a regular weekend; people also learn about iNaturalist and then can use it more regularly to contribute biodiversity observations into the platform and different projects,” says Katie Remine, Woodland Park Zoo’s living northwest conservation manager.

The Challenge started in 2016 as a friendly competition between two California science museums’ community science teams hoping to improve patrons’ awareness of local biodiversity. Seattle organizations joined in 2017, and the zoo’s Brianna Widner says metro-area participation has increased annually since then, with 7,705 observations of 1,280 different species from 654 participants last year. 
Historically, Washington has been one of the more diverse U.S. states; a 2002 NatureServe study found it was home to 3,375 species at the time, making it the 20th most diverse state with the 13th greatest number of endemic species.

Crosscut has long been known for its in-depth, long-form reporting and multipart investigations into broader issues facing the Pacific Northwest – from levees in Aberdeen to affordable-housing issues in Spokane. Each published story takes a lot of behind-the-scenes beat reporting that often gets left on the cutting-room floor. 

The Crosscut newsroom has decided to start picking up those pieces by launching briefs. They’re just as the name implies. Briefs will be shorter reads that provide continuing coverage of the issues our readers are interested in – from affordable housing to Indigenous affairs to climate – as well as emergent news of the day, including breaking news from Olympia, arts events happening around town and agriculture reports.  

Our long-form content isn’t going anywhere – we will still publish daily stories that provide the same nuanced reporting that is the backbone of Crosscut. And each Wednesday we will continue to produce our long-form features alongside our weekly Crosscut Reports podcast. We just will also offer a few more brief stories each weekday afternoon, as well. 

So we’ll keep it brief. You can find the latest briefs on our homepage, or go to crosscut.com/briefs to find more.

The Washington Coalition for Open Government is suing the state of Washington over lawmakers’ claims that they have a right to a so-called “legislative privilege” that allows them to withhold public records.

The lawsuit argues the state and various lawmakers have violated the 1972 voter-approved Public Records Act by redacting and withholding records under a legislative privilege that does not exist in state law or the Washington Constitution.

The Washington Coalition for Open Government, a nonprofit advocate for government transparency, advocates for public records, open meetings and informed citizens. The organization is made up of journalists, attorneys and other advocates of government transparency, including some elected officials.

The lawsuit mentions lawmakers by name, including House Speaker Laurie Jenkins, D-Tacoma. It offers examples of instances when lawmakers mentioned legislative privilege when they redacted or withheld records, and notes that the Public Records Act does not contain a legislative privilege exemption. The lawsuit notes that language isn’t contained in other Washington statutes, nor has it been included in any affirmative court rulings.

In 2019, the Washington Supreme Court ruled that legislative emails, texts, memos and other communications are disclosable as part of the Public Records Act. This year’s legislative session began in January with revelations that lawmakers have been quietly blacking out documents and continuing to claim legislative privilege.

Michael Fong will start as the newly appointed director of the state Department of Commerce on May 8. Gov. Jay Inslee appointed Fong to the position earlier this month.

Kendrick Stewart, Commerce’s deputy director, has led the agency since the departure of former director Lisa Brown earlier this year and will continue in that role until Fong starts. 

Commerce oversees more than 100 programs related to community and economic development efforts, including housing, business and international trade. 

Fong comes to Commerce from the U.S. Small Business Administration, where he served as regional administrator for the agency’s operation in the Pacific Northwest, overseeing programs that provided small business owners emergency pandemic relief funding, capital access, business development counseling and government contracting opportunities. 

Fong has served in various city, county and national public-sector roles for more than two decades. The Spokane native started his career as a policy analyst and legislative aide for the Seattle City Council and later was the city’s senior deputy mayor from 2017 to 2021.

In early March, Brown stepped down as Commerce director after leading the agency for four years. Later that month, Brown declared her candidacy for Spokane mayor, running against incumbent Nadine Woodward. 

Brown has lived in Spokane for more than four decades and represented the area for two decades in the Washington Legislature, eventually becoming the first Democratic woman to serve as Senate Majority Leader, and was Chancellor of Washington State University Spokane’s health sciences campus.