More than 120 organizations will split $25 million in grants from King County for programs that address disparities in health care, mental health and other issues as part of the county’s efforts to tackle racism as a public health crisis. 

The 123 awardees are community organizations, nonprofits and small businesses, including Black Coffee Northwest, Chief Seattle Club, Wa Na Wari, the Tenants Union of Washington State, Young Women Empowered and dozens more.

According to a press release last week from King County Executive Dow Constantine’s office, the grantees will work to address disparities in health care, mental health supports, maternal health, and healthy aging, as well as food access, youth mentoring, housing, art, nature and outdoors groups, and capacity-building for small organizations that provide services and more. The 123 awardees were chosen from 800 organizations that applied.

In 2020 the King County Board of Health declared racism a public health crisis in the wake of the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on communities of color and the national racial-justice protests that followed the killing of George Floyd by police officers. In the early months of the pandemic, health care workers in King County gathered by the thousands to demand that public officials declare racism and police violence as crises that public health policies should address.

The awards were determined by the Gathering Collaborative, a King County group that formed in 2022 to work toward reversing the continued impact of systemic racist practices and policies that harm Black and Indigenous people. The group was formed as part of the efforts stemming from the county’s 2020 public health declaration that pledged to support “King County and Public Health - Seattle & King County immediately in the work to advance a public health approach in addressing institutional and systemic racism.”

Washington’s continued job growth has resulted in a June unemployment rate at pre-pandemic levels. 

The rate of 3.8% in June was a drop from 4.1% a month earlier, according to preliminary figures released Wednesday by the Washington Employment Security Department. The previous time Washington’s unemployment rate was that low was February 2020, Employment Security economist Paul Turek said in a news release. 

In the Seattle metropolitan area, which includes Bellevue and Everett, the June unemployment rate was 3%, the same as in May. 

In June the state added 11,900 nonagricultural jobs, including 8,800 jobs in the private sector, according to seasonally adjusted figures released by Employment Security. 

Leisure and hospitality, a sector negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, reported 8,900 more jobs in June, including 5,200 for food service and drinking establishments.

Other sectors reporting job gains included education and health services, with 4,600 jobs. Professional and business services reported an increase of 500 jobs. 

While the state saw solid job growth overall, some industry sectors have seen declining job numbers. Manufacturing jobs fell by 2,500 over the month. Retail trade also reported a drop of 2,800, including 900 jobs in food and beverage stores. 

The information sector, which includes tech jobs, saw a sizable contraction, losing 5,500 jobs between June 2022 and June 2023. Seattle-area tech companies have laid off thousands of workers in recent months. 

However, there was robust year-over-year growth in other sectors. Education and health services and leisure and hospitality also reported in June the most job gains year-over-year, with 32,700 more jobs and 25,200 more, respectively. Government was also among the top three sectors for job growth, with 25,600 jobs. 

Employment security provides seasonally adjusted figures, which account for occurrences such as holiday hiring, to make month-to-month comparisons. The year-over-year figures are not seasonally adjusted. 

Washington state saw a record-high 394 murders in 2022, according to a new statewide collection of law enforcement data, up from 336 murders in the year before. Released Monday, the 2022 Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs’ annual crime statistics report also showed an increase in the number of assaults, thefts and other crimes.

The Association has released a crime report every year since 1980. The data is often debated in the Washington Legislature, where elected officials write and rewrite laws on everything from what should be a crime to directing how law enforcement officers conduct their work.

Given Washington’s population growth, the overall murder rate is still effectively lower than it was in 1994, according to Steve Strachan, executive director of the nonprofit Association. Still, recent numbers are a marked increase from before the COVID-19 pandemic began. In 2019, the state saw 205 murders, according to the new report.

There were also 47,448 vehicle thefts statewide last year, according to the new report, up from about 35,400 in 2021.

The new annual report also shows what could be record-breaking use of firearms during violent offenses. In 2022 there were 7,216 instances of violent crimes involving a firearm, more than triple the organization’s 2019 tally of 2,318 instances. The figure has grown in recent years, with 4,358 instances in 2020 and 5,665 in 2021, according to a review of previous reports.

Meanwhile, the number of assaults against law enforcement officers increased after a dip in last year’s statistics. The latest report notes 2,375 assaults against officers last year, up from 1,968 recorded in 2021 and 1,676 in 2018.

The new report notes a decline in commissioned law enforcement officers in Washington by 70 individuals, to 10,666 officers total, said Strachan during a news conference on the report. Washington had a net loss of nearly 500 commissioned officers in 2021, he said.

For 13 years, Washington has had the lowest number of law enforcement officers per 1,000 people among all 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to Strachan. The figure in the new report is also the lowest on record for the state.

Staff shortages don’t affect only the number of officers on patrol, because they include other roles such as detectives who investigate crimes, Strachan said.

“We are way outside the norm; we are literally at the far end of the curve,” he added.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling against race-based admissions at college campuses likely will not have any immediate impact on Washington policy or higher education admissions.

Affirmative action has been outlawed in the state since 1998, when voters passed Initiative 200, which prevents government entities from using race as a factor in hiring or admissions.

But in 2022, Gov. Jay Inslee issued a guidance to state agencies that they should be using whatever tools they have to identify and eradicate discrimination and disparities in their institutions. Inslee’s January 2022 order called the state’s previous guidance on how to comply with Initiative 200 overly restrictive.

In that guidance, the governor asked the Washington Student Achievement Council, which works to encourage Washington students to go to college, to track student success across subpopulations and to gather information about the success of programs designed to address discrimination in higher education.

In a statement after the Supreme Court decision on Thursday, Inslee said, “Our state will continue advancing the cause of equity in higher education and government. As with past rulings from this court that have made our society less equitable for women, people of color, and other marginalized communities, Washington state will respond however necessary to continue advancing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of the arc of the moral universe that bends toward justice.”

Eight other states have also banned affirmative action: Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire and Oklahoma. Texas joined that group because of a court decision, and other courts have chimed in on affirmative action, contributing to the nation’s patchwork of rules on this issue.

Washington state will receive $1.2 billion — about $300 million more than previously projected — as part of a federal government program that aims to bring broadband internet to every household in the country.

The funding, announced by President Biden earlier today, represents the most ambitious federal effort yet to bridge the digital divide in rural communities. The money comes from the 2021 infrastructure spending bill.

Mark Vasconi, head of the Washington state Broadband Office, said challenges to the Federal Communications Commission’s long-criticized maps of national internet service helped identify some 71,000 additional unserved households across Washington, a more than 40% increase over previous estimates.

Vasconi said the crowdsourced map revision process likely contributed to the state’s netting significantly more money than previously projected, since the program favored states with spottier access. Officials had expected to receive about $900 million for the state prior to today’s announcement of $1.2 billion.

“It’s a dramatic improvement,” Vasconi said of the mapping process outcome.

States now have six months to submit initial proposals to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to unlock the first 20% of the funds.

Vasconi said the subsequent planning process will be more “prescriptive” than previous efforts, with tighter rules about how administrators evaluate which projects to fund and more explicit rules regarding tribal consultation and workforce development. 

“We’ve been wanting to see this kind of funding support for as long as broadband service has been available,” Vasconi said. “It’s finally here, and a lot of work is going to proceed in order to effectively use the funding so that broadband service is a reality for all households in the country.”

Six immigrants from India are on a hunger strike at the ICE Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, according to advocacy organization La Resistencia.

The immigrants are refusing food to draw attention to a number of issues, including lengthy and indefinite detention. They note that one man in the group has been held for eight months. Another striker says he has medical issues that have not been adequately addressed.

The Indian detainees, all vegetarians, also say their food has not been adequate and they cannot supplement their diet with food from the commissary because the prices are so high. The strikers also say their health has been affected by a lack of exercise outside, and that their immigration proceedings have not been handled properly.

A request for comment from the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, was not immediately returned on Thursday. La Resistencia says they are planning a protest at the Tacoma facility for Sunday, June 18.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act, which requires child welfare departments to prioritize adoption and foster care placement of Indigenous children with family or extended kin.

Haaland v. Brackeen questioned the constitutionality of this 1978 law, which also requires child welfare departments to give Native nations notice as soon as an investigation begins into a Native family to determine if the child needs services or removal.

The case involved three children with Native heritage and white families that either wanted to adopt them or were fostering them. They challenged the Indian Child Welfare Act as unconstitutional using several different arguments, including alleging that Congress lacks authority in those decisions.

The 7-2 decision, written by Amy Coney Barrett, lifts an especially sharp pen against the state of Texas for claiming with “creative arguments” that the ICWA harms Texas by requiring it to break its promise to its citizens that it will be “colorblind” in child-custody proceedings. Barrett writes that if this argument were legitimate, then states would be able to bring constitutional challenges every time they have to enforce a federal law.

She goes on, “Texas tries to finesse this problem by characterizing ICWA as a ‘fiscal trap,’ forcing it to discriminate against its citizens or lose federal funds.” Barrett dismisses this argument as vague and disconnected from reality.

After nearly 18 months, the state’s largest homeless encampment closed Friday after securing housing for its last resident.

Camp Hope, located on state Department of Transportation property in Spokane’s East Central neighborhood, sheltered up to 600 unhoused people last summer. As a coalition of service providers worked to relocate residents to other housing options, the population dwindled to fewer than 70 by early March.

Workers are now cleaning the site, including removing fencing and a portable office, according to WSDOT. No new individuals will be allowed to live there.

The encampment sparked political debate and several lawsuits. Local officials wanted the state to clear the encampment more quickly because of concerns over crime and drug use, but state officials and local homeless advocates said that while it also wanted to clear the encampment, it was necessary to address its residents’ underlying issues.

In March, a Spokane County Superior Court judge agreed that the city of Spokane had met the requirements to declare the encampment a nuisance property but allowed the encampment to continue operation while all parties worked on a closing plan.

Camp Hope started in December 2021 as a protest at Spokane City Hall over the lack of available shelter beds. Protesters then relocated to the WSDOT property off the Interstate 90 interchange.

While WSDOT did not grant permission to use the site, state officials said they wanted a gradual and “more humane” resolution to close the site. The state contracted with the nonprofit Empire Health Foundation to coordinate camp operations while simultaneously finding housing, mental health and other assistance for its residents.

Because the camp was on WSDOT property, the state agency was able to use $25 million from its Right of Way Safety initiative plus additional funds from the Department of Commerce to provide assistance and housing. That included a $15 million grant to Catholic Charities’ Catalyst Project to rehabilitate a hotel into temporary housing for nearly 100 people.

Researchers at the University of Washington went on strike Wednesday to put more pressure on the university in contract negotiations.

“We love our research but UW left us no choice. We will be striking until we get a fair contract. Our priority has always been ensuring that science at UW is sustainable and inclusive, and that means fair pay so we can all afford rent, take care of our families, and stay in the careers we love,” said Rebecca Bluett, postdoctoral scholar at UW, in a news release from the union, UW Researchers United or UAW 4121.

The union represents about 1,500 UW staff researchers and 900 postdoctoral researchers. The postdocs are negotiating a new agreement, and the staff researchers are in their first contract negotiations after forming a union a year ago.

Issues in the strike include pay, child care and a harassment-prevention program, according to the union.

UW spokesman Victor Balta said university officials are disappointed at the union’s decision to strike after significant progress had been made in negotiations in both contracts recently. He noted that the offers on the table include significant wage increases.

The University says its proposal includes increases for research scientists of about 10% over three years plus changes in the pay structure and a catch-up increase of 3.25% for those who did not get a merit raise last year. For postdocs, UW is offering an average 15% total wage increase this year, including 13% in January when new minimums were introduced, plus higher minimum salaries. 

“Our postdocs and research scientists are valued members of our university community and important contributors to our research mission,” Balta said in a statement Wednesday. “We all agree that fair and competitive compensation creates a more inclusive and sustainable scientific workforce and is needed to continue to attract talented postdocs and research scientists.”

Washington state has hired a leader from the Colorado tax department’s Marijuana Enforcement Division to be the new director of the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board.

Will Lukela, who will start his new job July 10, has 30 years of regulatory and leadership experience in the other state at the lead in legal cannabis, according to a news release from Gov. Jay Inslee’s office. Lukela will replace Rick Garza, retiring after 38 years of state service including serving as director of the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board.

Lukela is currently the deputy chief of licensing for the Colorado Department of Revenue’s Marijuana Enforcement Division, a job he has had since 2018. The department’s work included licensing as well as criminal and compliance investigations. According to a news release from the Liquor and Cannabis Board, Lukela helped transform the Colorado operation from a focus on enforcement to philosophy focused on collaboration, education and compliance.

“As the two pioneering states in the legalization of adult-use cannabis, Washington and Colorado face similar challenges. I will continue to build on the impressive work of the agency across all regulated industries and pledge to work collaboratively with staff and stakeholders to build their trust and support through transparency,” Lukela said in a statement.