There's a lot of local news that happens every week, not to mention national and statewide coverage. It's all too easy to get lost in the sauce or remain blissfully ignorant. Like Luke, who's been far too busy lately to keep up on what's going on with Spokane City government. This week, I got him caught up with a new format. We're calling, I doom scroll so you don't have to enjoy. This is Free Range, a co-production of KYRS and Range Media. I'm your co-host, Luke Baumgarten. If you don't recognize my voice, it's because I haven't been here in a while. And. I've been busy with non journalist related things at our little work around cooperative. And as a result of that, it's gonna be my reality for a while. And when Erin and I were discussing this week, how am I going to be a contributing number to this show, we thought, let's just roll with it. And so Aaron, today you're gonna help me and hopefully some of the listeners learn what I've been missing. What have we been missing? Those of us who haven't been doom scrolling the news as much as you do. And, and actually, and weirdly, I'm longing for a, a return to those days of, you know, those, those blissful days of doom scrolling for myself, honestly, I'm being so incredibly plugged into what's happening, gives you some sense of how much fun I've not been having with the other stuff I've been working on. So yeah, let's, let's just maybe jump right in. Yeah. So gimme, gimme the upshot, Aaron. What's going on? Yeah. You know, if it makes you feel any better, you're not the only one that's been feeling a little out of touch lately. I was doing yard work this weekend with a friend and as I am want to do, I terrorize people and I was like, what's your most problematic political opinion? Go. And she was like, well, I think my fatal political flaw. I said, I just don't have the energy to be as informed as I want to be. Oh, wow. And like, starting to read the news can kind of suck me into an endless doom scroll and that just results in me not reading the news. Yeah. 'cause I just, I can't do it. And you know, I was thinking about that the other night at 4:00 AM when I woke up with an impending sense of dread and spent an hour reading the news before I was able to go back to sleep because, you know, even if what's going on is bad, like really, really escalation into fascism style bad, being informed about it makes me feel a little bit better. And so as I've been reading and writing like a madman, I thought, you know, maybe we could get you caught up. And I know you kind of know about the first thing I'm gonna pitch you on, because I also dragged you into my madness this morning by calling you at 8:30 AM and being like, Hey, do you wanna edit something that I am fire drilling? Yeah. But I figured, you know, if your brain wasn't awake enough to process any of the texts you were editing, we'd run through it anyways. 'cause it is the biggest piece of news that I've heard this week, which is that the Washington State Supreme Court overturned Proposition one, which was the voter approved ballot initiative. Passed by 75% of the voters in 2023, and it banned camping within a thousand feet of schools, parks, and daycare centers. The Supreme Court found this morning that the ballot language overstepped the bounds of what an initiative is allowed to do. And so that means that essentially as of like 7:00 AM this morning, prop one is now overturned because the ballot language that appeared before voters was found to be unconstitutional according to the state Supreme Court. Right. And as I was reading it and trying to remember all the stuff that had happened before the election last year that led up to this, I even got a little confused remembering the, this lawsuit, which was, which was originally put up before the election to get it off, pulled off the ballot by Jules Helping Hands and slick the Spokane Low Income Housing Consortium, consortium Executive Director Ben Stucker. And the fact that that was still what was on offer here was a little surprising to me. 'cause I'd heard there was also a constitutional challenge on the grounds that it violated the state constitution. But that's a completely separate lawsuit. Yeah, completely separate lawsuit, which is picked up by the ACL U. Is pushing a lawsuit on behalf of Jules Helping Hands, right? And a couple of unhoused individuals. I think the lawsuit name is Curry at all. And the grounds of that second lawsuit, which we still don't have a result for, is that arresting people for homelessness, for camping outside, sleeping outside, when there is no shelter space, right available is unconstitutional. So it required people like the police officers who might be arresting folks or other, you know, code enforcement that might be asking people to move along. It required people to check right shelter capacity before enforcing laws on the grounds that, you know, arresting somebody for sleeping outside if there's nowhere else for them to sleep is cruel and unusual punishment, right? One originally. So there, there's two levels of constitutionality we're talking about here too, right? If I, as again, as I, if I remember, if there's any room left in my brain for news, there is the re the. When the law passed locally, it still wasn't immediately enforced because there was, it hadn't reached the Supreme Court yet, but there was a, a federal case Martin v Boise. Martin v Boise, and there was also a Grants Pass, Oregon ruling. Mm-hmm. That sort of, it basically reinforced Boise that basically said, you can't, you can't arrest somebody for not having a home if you don't have someplace to take them to. Basically, that's not jail. Or you can't run somebody off of a camping property that got overturned by the Supreme Court. But this, the second lawsuit that we're not even talking about today would be that it's a, it's unconstitutional at the state level because the state constitution is not, you know, not the s not the same. Yeah. And then there's a. I think you were kind of getting at this, but they're also saying that because in the second lawsuit, not the one that we're actually talking about today, but in the second lawsuit, they're also saying that because anti camping laws are typically only enforced against somebody who is unhoused or looks unhoused, right. It's like discriminatory. Yeah. Because technically, you know, you could have a kid that's camping, pitching a tent in their parents' backyard, and if that backyard was within a thousand feet of a school or whatever that would technically be illegal. Of course, that's never going to be enforced. Nobody is ever going to enforce that, but they are going to enforce those anti camping rules, right. Against unhoused people. Right. And so there's that second layer of like, maybe this is unconstitutional because we have a set of laws that are only being enforced. Some people in that, others against one category of person. Well, honestly, that's been a conversation for. F 12, 13 years, starting with when the sit lie ordinance was passed in the early 2010s. And actually was one of the people that passed that was Ben Stucker, who who was the other petitioner on this lawsuit, was the petitioner on the lawsuit to get this law struck down. And they're not the same. And I'm, I'm not trying to equate them that way, but the conversation back then was the sit lie ordinance basically gives, and it's, and it's confined to downtown specifically gives police or authorities the power to shoo you on if you're sitting on the sidewalk. And the funny thing about that was the, the law passed and without it, within a year or so, we got our Apple store, which, you know, in 2012, you know, if we remember back that long or you, you can like ask your parents about it, Aaron, because you were a zygote. I was 12. Okay, fine. Like, we had people camping outside all the time to get a, you know, a thousand dollars iPad. And that was, and because these are, it, it was an ordinance that was spurred by the business community, some of whom are friends of mine. I've spent a lot of my life downtown. So these, this is not like, you know, it was inclusive of all the, a lot of the same people you see siding with like Larry Stone over homeless stuff now. But it was also, you know, included the former owner of Boo Radley's and, and Atticus who were saying like, it's really, we don't have any power when some, if somebody wants to cause a disturbance, we don't have any power. And there was a feeling that there needed to be a law passed, but we've been talking about this like. Sit in live for me, but not for the mm-hmm. You know, si we've been having this similar conversation for over a decade, I guess is the point. Yeah. And you know, I was 12 when that was all happening, but I've been thinking a lot about pedestrian interference, which seems to be my generations sit in live. Yeah, you're right. Sit in lie is so negligible enforced now because it's just easier for police to use PE to do the Pedestrian interference. Pedestrian interference, which is essentially a citation for being in the way of pedestrians. And I was thinking about a story that former city hall reporter Nate Sanford wrote last summer about a gentleman who I guess looked homeless or was hanging out in an area where homeless people hang out, but he was just downtown eating a breakfast burrito. Like he was just. Stand in there eating his breakfast burrito and he gets picked up and cited for pedestrian interference, which ended up being a detail in Nate's story about like, how messed up is this that you can be downtown eating your breakfast burrito and if people catch a certain vibe from you, if SPD decides that you, you know, look or seem a certain way or you're standing in the wrong place, you can get cited for pedestrian interference. I'd forgotten about that. I remember that story. I'd forgotten about that anecdote. And the reason that's a little, ironically funny is that I started editing the story that you were fire drilling at the, the rocket market downtown, which is, you know, five minutes away from our office. And I'd stopped in there for, to grab a bite. And after, so I edit, I did my first edit on that story, walked out, and I was finishing up the breakfast burrito I had walking down the sidewalk. And I definitely did not get accosted by police while doing so. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, there's a lot of backstory with this. I think I, I spent one morning calling up the city Brian Hansen, who was the gentleman behind the, he was sort of the face of the campaign too. He was the face of the campaign. Yeah. The wallet of the campaign was Larry Stone, who is one of those famous names in Spokane politics, always popping one of the biggest conservative donors. He's always popping up. Yep. Hansen told me this morning that he was disappointed by the Supreme Court's decision. He said spicier words than that though. Yes. I am looking for my story to read you the exact spicy words because the quote is so good. I don't just want to paraphrase it. I wanna read you, read you the quote. Okay, he gave me a couple. The first was, this is not the outcome I was hoping the measure would receive from the state's highest court, the true judicial branches of this state. That being all the courts below the state Supreme Court, they did their job. Hansen said the state Supreme Court unfortunately is a political beast, and I'm saddened to say that because I am a product of the state's law schools and I took pride in that fact. I asked him, you know, I wonder if he would say the same thing about our National Supreme Court. If it's a political beast, is this, this a, is this a pol? Is this a parallel construction he's building? Yeah. I wonder. Well, I did ask him if he intended to try to advance this case up further to the Supreme, further to the Supreme Court or and he said that, or like this was an, it's called an on bonk decision. And I am not like a court reporter Uhhuh, so I can't capture like the full nuances of that term. But I think there is a way that he could ask the Supreme, the state Supreme Court to make another verdict on this before it goes all the way up to the National Supreme Court. And he said that that would be an exercise in futility, quote a kabuki dance, if you will, to take that route. I think the more effective route is to implore our city council to listen to the will of 75% of its constituents and pass a city ordinance that codifies the purpose and intent of this legislation or this proposition. And a kabuki dance, you say a Kabuki dance. I, I don't really know exactly what he was getting at here. I know that there's like kabuki theater I dunno if this was like a misspeak. He did just, I asked him one question and he like, talked at me for seven minutes and I mean, while he was talking at me, he answered pretty much everything that I could think of to ask. So that was great. But it did mean that there wasn't a lot of room in there for me to, to insert follow up questions. Yeah. So j just real quickly on, on bonk, I'm not a lawyer, but I do listen to some Supreme Court podcasts and I was an on bonk decision is, so at a, the, the, say the Circuit Court of Appeals, the, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, you've got a bunch of judges and it's generally one judge or a small panel of judges is listening to a case. An on banc decision, which means I think from the bench or in the bench French is actually when everybody listens to the decision, like agrees on the or. And it's usually for really complex or technical cases. So the fact that it was an on banc decision actually probably means it's. Sort of more. 'cause sometimes at the appellate level you can, if you get a single judge or, or the, the one of the smaller panels rules against you, you can appeal for an on banc decision to get everybody on board. And so the fact that they went straight to an on banc means that there's probably no more recourse. They would have to go go to the feral. That is very interesting. I feel like this morning Hansen was saying something to me, and again, I was like, frantically Googling on bonk myself as he was talking. Yeah. But he was saying something about like how the, the justices who did not weigh in have the same political bents, so it would be pointless. But I, I do think so. It wasn't, wasn't on Bon. No. All the justices weighed in. There was six who concurred with the decision and I think. Two, three. Two dissenters. Who dissented? Is it a nine? Judge? Two dissenters. Okay. So maybe there was one single judge who just didn't, didn't either. Neither confirmed nor denied or whatever. Yeah. Again, I'm not usually a courts reporter. Yeah. But every once in a while when city business escalates up to the court, speaking of the city five minutes after my story went up, we got a press release from the mayor's office on how the city, or at least the city mayoral administration plans to approach this. They wrote that the city's unlawful camping ordinance, which predated Proposition one, remains in effect and is being enforced. So that's stuff like no camping under the Viaducts. There was a couple other things, and this was before my time. Right. And wrote that our legal team is currently reviewing the court's opinion in detail. We'll be working together to thoughtfully chart a path forward that reflects the court's guidance as well as the best interests of our community. Okay. About an hour before we hopped on here council members Michael Kakar and Jonathan Bingle, the two conservatives on this five two Progressive Majority Council announced their intent to introduce an ordinance legislation to the city council to vote on that would reenact prop one because essentially the Supreme Court's decision in this case was that. This went beyond the purview of a voter base initiative, right? It's something that's within city council's purview. So they're saying this is within our purview and the voters clearly wanted it. So let's enact prop one via ordinance. So we're already seeing, and, and this, this would be something coming from the conservatives in, and so very unlikely, unless a couple of the, they would need to progressives jump ship to even bring it to a vote. But it's also why that that other lawsuit about the constitutionality of the, the camping ban is, might still be relevant because if something were to happen where the two conservatives convinced a couple progressives to, to pass it through the normal legislative process, which is feasible, doesn't seem likely to me, but is feasible. There would still be this opportunity then for. That, that other lawsuit that we started off talking about but was not decided today to have some bearing on to then be like, yeah, okay. It doesn't matter that your city council wanted to do it. It's still unconstitutional. Yeah. Stop. Yeah. And that is I wasn't able to get ahold of him this morning. I just didn't have time to call all seven city council members, so I figured somebody else will cover that angle. But Emery Denman over the spokesman talked to Paul Dillon who. It was like, there's no way I'm voting for a prop one at the city council level, especially when we've got this other lawsuit out. Like, let's wait until that settles, the dust settles on that one until we decide if we want to pass this, this. Right. So that, that might even be the, the excuse that the progressives use to not even bother with it until something happens at the state level. Right. Until they kind of have that clarity. Yeah. Well, before we move on to the next story, or if you have more to talk about on this one. No, I'm almost ready to move on. I did wanna share quotes, like maybe one quote from the folks who introduced the legislation. Yeah. Julie Garcia. She was so, or introduced the lawsuit. Yes. The folks, the petitioners, so Ben Stucker and Julie Garcia, and they were both so excited when I called them this morning. This quote didn't make it in, but Ben Stucker picked up the phone and was like, hello? And I was like, hi, this is Aaron, a reporter from Range. And before I could really even finish my sentence telling him like, here's what I'm working on, can I turn on my recorder? He was like, we won, we won our case. And the Camping Ban Initiative is illegal and has been overturned. And I'm like, yes, Ben, that is what I'm calling you about. Can I turn my recorder on? And he was like, yes. And Julie just seemed so just. Overwhelmed and moved. She choked up a couple of times and you know, this is like, the story I wrote was a story that very much focused on the ins and outs of the legality of this, but I wanted to make sure to bring it back around for jewels and the folks that she serves through her outreach, her street outreach team, right, they're just getting ready to reintroduce their mobile showers as the weather gets warmer. Yeah. Through their their medical respite beds and their scatter site shelters. She said, it's not necessarily that I disagree that people should not sleep next to schools or daycares. I agree that nobody, not just people experiencing homelessness, that nobody should exist in those spaces, which I'm a little confused about that bit. But wait, say that again. She said not just people experiencing homelessness, but nobody should exist in those spaces. But I think what she means is like we shouldn't ha really have anybody loitering around schools or like camping. Yeah. Or like the one time I didn't quite make it home and ended up like woke up in, in the grass in front of Roosevelt Elementary or so drunk college kids just sleeping on benches. I mean, not in decades. Definitely didn't happen at the house I currently live at ever. But, but you finished by saying. But if we tell people where they can't go, we have to have somewhere for them to go. Yeah. Otherwise, all we do is take away their right to exist. And I think that's what's at the core of this. And what I don't want to get lost, even though the piece I had time to write this morning. Was about the legality, right? Is that this is about people who are just being like, there are so many ways in which their existence is criminalized. It makes it harder for them to get off their feet. One little teaser piece of news that I would love to end on before we move on to something else is that, well, I do have one thing to say after. Okay. And with gimme your teaser piece. Then I wanna do the last thing. The Spokane City Council is prepping to vote on an ordinance on Monday the 21st, called Ban the Address. Oh yeah. That's which would make it illegal for employers to discriminate against potential employees during the hiring process if they don't have a permanent address or if they list a PO box or a shelter as their address on application. So it would kind of ban asking that question. Yeah. Unless for some reason having a permanent physical address is relevant to that specific job, there might be a few edge cases in which that's true. So they wrote in that exception, but it's remote work maybe, or something like that. Yeah. But that's up for a vote. And City Council member, Paul Dillon sent me an email yesterday from one of the foremost leading researchers on this topic who said that Spokane would be the first city in the entire United States Wow. To pass a ban. The address policy that's pretty cool. At the city level. I remember we passed the Ban the Box earlier, which was the check mark that you, and most employment applications, and I think this only applied to city level jobs at the time, but the idea is that the, the box was to say if you've ever been convicted of a felony, which is mm-hmm. Like basically the box that most or a lot of employers use to just like, throw your application in the trash. And the idea, and I think this, the address idea is similar, is not to like f you know, former felons should be allowed to be anything they want to be or whatever. But the idea is like, it's so prejudicial. Mm-hmm. Just you, you don't know anything other than the check mark. It's. Somebody's criminal history or their, their housing status may be, and again, I'm not advocating for one thing or the other here, but it's like we can fight over whether it should be part of the deliberation process when you're looking for a job, it seems sort of at face value, and especially in the housing case for advocates who are like, people need to pick themselves up by the bootstraps, which are some of the people most, you know, sort of actively fighting for these more punitive measures. It's, it feels a, like they should also be very in favor of something like this. If they're actually arguing that, you know, you need to pick yourself up by your bootstraps in good faith. 'cause like to me, if somebody's unhoused and they still have the wherewithal, like if I was sleeping on the streets, I don't think I could get my poop in a group to go to job interview. But if that's what people are doing, we should be, and we've interviewed people who were living in trench shelter before, while working full time jobs. And that, and that's the thing that I think gets lost in the conversations we've been having around Sheldon Jackson and Gavin Cooley. I ended up having a conversation in the real world with Gavin. The details of which I will not go into in great detail. But one of the eshots was like. Having a job and being homeless or not mutually exclusive. Like, I feel like as often as you hear the sort of the classic stereotypical tale, especially with the deep reporting that we're doing, starting with Carl Segerstrom and myself a little bit and, and really continuing with, with you and Hedge, it's like, it's a flip of the coin. People have home, you know, people who are unhoused often have jobs, some don't, but it's like, so. Having a job isn't even a sufficient condition to get housing in a lot of cases. But not having a job is definitely not gonna get you housing. Right. Yeah. I mean, the rent control story, a rent stabilization story I just wrote, I found like a piece of data that said, you know, in Washington in general, working a minimum wage job, you need to be working like 82 hours a week in order to afford Yeah. Who the average, who's doing that housing and not be rent burdened, which means spending more than 30% of your income on rent. Yeah. And we have a lot of people in Spokane who are spending between 30 and 50% of their monthly income on rent, which makes survival just like the edge of a knife. Yeah. All right. What was the thing you wanted to finish on? Well, I know you compliments make you uncomfortable, so I'll start by complimenting range and then I'll, you know, edge into complimenting you, but. We don't try to break news. We're actually not really built to break news at range. There are four of us. There's four of us. You know, we don't really work weekends and it's just not what we're doing. We're writing long investigative pieces or in depth, you know, pieces. So it's a real testament. And this is a court case. This is a public court filing. So it's, these are some of the things where it's a, where daily stuff you're, you're racing to, to beat your competitors. 'cause everybody has the information at the same time. I think it's a testament to the work that range has done on these issues over the years. And and then your, your reporting specifically sellers, apologies for complimenting you here or making you feel good 'cause I know you don't like that. But like we got a head start and it wasn't from Stucker or Julie Garcia, it was from somebody else. And so we got a basically a 15 minute head start on the story and we beat everybody else to it. I just think it's a real testament to like the, the trust that range and you have built in the community. So great work. Thanks. See how awkward that was? Yeah. I hate it. Okay, so let's just talk about some some queer protection ordinance. Yeah, let's jump into that. You know, I was looking at my list and as, as much as I talked about doom scrolling and like the misery of what's going on, the three big things bras to talk about are all pieces of arguably good news. Yeah. I know some people, 75% of voters voted for prop one. So honestly there might be 75% of you out there who feel like this is bad news. Yeah. That's totally, you're right. I think though we're weighing on, in, on the legality of processes and if it wasn't a legal process then it is good news that that got corrected. Right. But Spokane is also going to be talking about an ordinance next Monday, and then voting on the 28th. That is an LGBT qia, A two s plus protection ordinance, which is a bit of a mouthful. But that two s at the end is extremely important because that answer for Two-Spirit, it's an indigenous queer identity. And because the human rights code in Spokane hadn't been updated since like mid 2010s, I wanna say. Mm-hmm. Right. Two-Spirit people were left out of Spokane's Human Rights Code, which guarantees certain levels of protection and just reaffirms that folks will not be discriminated against in Spokane. Right? So one thing this ordinance does is adds two-spirit people into the, the definitions and the code for the human rights code, and guarantees that queer indigenous people will be protected and have will not be discriminated against in Spokane. It. Also creates a shield law for Spokane, which might be a term that you've heard before, specifically in talking about immigration. There's like sanctuary laws, shield laws. Right. But it is also a thing that is starting to happen more frequently for people who seek reproductive healthcare. Sure. Gender affirming healthcare or treatment for aids. HIV positive folks who need treatment because there are a variety of level of laws that criminalize certain things in different states. Just across the border in Idaho, I think it is illegal for people to get gender affirming care for minors. And so there's been some worries that like, you know, let's say you get, you come across the border to Washington and you get gender affirming care in Washington. And now like Idaho is subpoenaing Washington doctors asking you to turn over private medical records for a case against a parent who helped a child get gender affirming healthcare. Or for a person who came across the border into Washington to get reproductive healthcare for an unwanted pregnancy. And Washington State has its own shield law, which basically says, no Washington State resources will be used to do this. Washington residents, employees do not have to turn over this kind of information to other states. But Spokane is now going to be doubling up on that code and saying that like, Spokane City resources and information will not be used, which is important because if for some reason the state law fell, we would have the city law to fall back on and it's like in the example of when, when. Abortion rights when Dobbs happened. States that had their own laws, enshrining, reproductive rights were in decent shape. And then other states have, and, and, and actually initiative processes in, in red states in a couple cases were done to make sure that if, even if the federal protections were lost there would be some form of state or, or local protection. It's, it's basically like one level below that sort of idea as well. Exactly. And you know, some of the queer community leaders that I talked to for this story told me that there are some very real fears about Governor Bob Ferguson and the way that he's. Been moving. Some of his language around wealth tax and around rent con stabilization has been less than the progressive ideal. And though there has been reassurances from aspects of his office. So like the governor's office, you know, oversees like the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction and it oversees like the lgbtq plus commission on a state level. And to an extent the Attorney General as well. And like there have been definitive supports for queer and trans people coming out of those offices. Bob Ferguson himself has been pretty quiet on the issue. I could find one example like a couple months ago where he expedited gender and name changes on birth certificates, right, in order to help people like maybe get passports changed or shore up their documentation. But there's been just like a. Flow of executive orders and decisions coming out of Trump's administration that criminalize or make it difficult for trans people to exist in society, to get medical care, to be in the military, to play sports, to have a public civic life. Like trans people cannot get passports with their correct name and gender right now. Right, yeah. Which can impact, like leaving the country. If that doesn't make you a bit nervous, it probably should. Yeah. And Ferguson hasn't necessarily been extremely proactive in his communications about that. So I think there is some weariness. About Ferguson's administration and seeing a local jurisdiction step up and be like, right, just in case. Yeah. Here's another blanket of protections I think has been reassuring for community leaders. Not to dive totally into too much of a tangent, but I've been thinking about this a lot with, with, I think Ferguson, especially through this legislative session, is showing himself that, I think he made his, he built his brand on basically suing Donald Trump, right? Like since 2016. Yes. He's, and, and this is what state's attorneys generals obvi often do when their political party is not in power at the federal level, they'll sue. And this happened, you know, it was conservatives doing it when Obama was president. I don't, wasn't, you know, paying attention too much to state court fights when Biden was around. But then obviously. There was so much action that happened during the Trump administration, and Ferguson was one of those people, like at the forefront. It was like either him or whoever it was it who was the Attorney General of California at the time. Oh yeah. It was like, it was either like, it was either US, California, or New York. Right. And really built his brand that way. What I think this legislative session is showing is that Ferguson's really comfortable with the part of like democratic or progressive politics that's built around more identity themed issues like queerness or, you know, race issues. I think. Not so good from a progressive perspective on class stuff, like mm-hmm. Pretty a and I think people I've been talking to at the legislative level or a advocates and stuff are like actually pretty disappointed with what's been going on this legislative session. I mean, just today the House and the Senate came out with new budget drafts that have even more sales tax in them to make up for cutting the wealth tax. Right. Which Ferguson threatened to veto and sales tax is the most regressive because it impacts poor people disproportionately. And we, I wrote, this is a story I wrote about last year that we have only just since because of the other wealth the, the capital gains tax or the excise tax. Oh, you're gonna be so excited. There may be doing more capital making studies, more of that. Well, I mean, we went from the 50th, the absolute most regressive state in America to the 49th worst, most regressive state. Yay. And we, so something like this, and, and again, it's like. I had this conversation with a hedge fund person for that story. It's, and he had obviously had a different perspective. 'cause that's what, you know, hedge funds and, you know, gains from long held stocks or ownership in companies is where that is, where that money comes in. But it's like everybody pays sales tax, literally everyone. And when you are a million, you know, a millionaire actually doesn't mean that much anymore. Say you have tens of millions of dollars and you shop at Whole Foods and you say you work minimum wage. And actually, well, grocery doesn't count. So say you, like if you're a bit, you know, tens of millionaire and you buy something, you're needing to get a new car to get to work or a new, like, the tax, the tax on that thing is a much higher, a much lower percentage of your income or worth or wealth than somebody who's working minimum wage. So that's what makes it regressive. The wealth tax, the, the one that's, that is in effect the, the capital gains excise tax. Like 90% of the money didn't just come from the west side. It didn't just come from like the tech hubs in the Puget Sound area. It came from a single legislative district, which is the legislative district where Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, who's the former or current Microsoft, CEO, the founder of Microsoft, and where Jeff Bezos used to live and currently has a house. So all of that money, and it was like the first year it came in, it was close to a billion dollars of tax, came from one legislative district. And so, but getting back, so it's just, if we need to raise revenue, we're in a budget crisis. It's, it's been really shocking to people. I think that Ferguson is, has been like, I'm gonna veto any new revenue, wealth, wealth, tax related revenue. It strikes me though, and getting back to the actual topic of this story that I'm really curious to get your thoughts on, Aaron. Because he has been historically good on identity stuff and because he did build his brand on just trying to punch Trump in the nose, any chance he got. This feels like it could be an a, a political win for him. That would be easy and that would maybe distract from all the, you know, the, the bad feelings people have about the wealth tax stuff. So why isn't he doing it? So the one place that I'm really worried, this is, I think an answer to your question. Yeah, go for it. A story that I wrote earlier this year was on Medicaid coverage for trans people which we've already seen attacks on even this week. Totally. And the thing with that is that Washington State law guarantees that people will have the access to gender affirming care through Medicaid. So even if, so, even if there's a federal prohibition, they take the money away, then the state has to pay for it. The state is legally required to make sure that that care is covered through state insurance. Right now, the feds pay for 50 to 90% of Medicaid coverage in Washington. So if the feds are like, Hey, we're not. Do en gender affirming or reproductive healthcare anymore. The worry is then yes, that all of that cost burden gets punted to the state and then the state is going to be forced to make a choice of like, Hey, we're in a budget deficit. How do we pay for this? Where people think Ferguson is all pretty iffy on new revenue, right? Wealth tax, I mean, more than pretty ffy me trying, like he's on the record. I'm trying, saying I'm trying to be no new revenue. Yeah. Or they'll be forced to repeal the state law requiring Medicaid to cover that. And so it's kind of a rock in a hard place and, but it's, Ferguson hasn't come out with any definitive statement on what would happen there, even though the lgbtq plus commission I talked to, I think the, the, the chair of that, I don't know if they do chair or president, but I talked to representative Nicole Ery and. Senator Ni, I don't, it's been like months since I wrote this story, but she was like a state legislator. Sure. Of some port. Yes. Some ery was like, you know, we are not backing down from the state law. Like we will figure it out. But again, we don't know where Ferguson Sands on revenue for that. And I think that that's making queer people like rightfully nervous. This is a time when people should be proactive in stating their support for marginalized groups that are under attack. And if you're not proactive in stating your support, you're silent on the issue and people have rightful doubts about where you stand and what you'll do to protect them. Well and honestly, and, and this is not me sort of trying to put forth an opinion, but just to point out that like. Oftentimes identity issues get set in opposition to class issues. This has been happening my whole life. It's happening less and less now. 'cause I think people are realizing, this is a very concrete example of where there is a class. This is like this identity issue of being able to access, you know, healthcare. Healthcare means access to Medicaid. Medicaid is a hundred percent class focused. Mm-hmm. People are only on Medicaid if they're, you know, so disabled, they can't work or their kids or they're elderly or they're below a certain income threshold. And so the idea trans and gender non-conforming people are like disproportionately more likely to be under a certain income threshold like an among. Yeah. Among all groups, like some of the most deeply impoverished people tend to be specifically trans folks. It's, it's sort of like and a spectrum. And then when you look at those intersections of being trans and disabled, or being trans and bipoc, the financial situation or your, your likelihood of being above that poverty line gets lower and lower. Yeah. Not to be depressing. So there's two more other good provisions in this city law. The first would prohibit the city from collecting or disseminating information about anyone's sex assigned at birth, with the exception of if it's related to a criminal investigation. So basically the city is saying, we don't need to know anything about your sex when you were born. If they ask for any information on paperwork, it is just going to be your gender that you identify as Now, which is great, I think it also guarantees health insurance for the city employees and their families covers both reproductive and gender affirming healthcare as well as care for people who are HIV positive. And that one is a pretty big win because currently the mayor has say over what the city's healthcare plan is. Oh, right. We've got a mayor right now who I think is largely pretty supportive of LGBTQ plus people. But axone the first. Openly queer elected on city council. Told me over the phone yesterday. Openly queer while in office. Well, no, openly queer elected because Kate Burke, who was formerly on city council, came out after she was elected. That's what I meant. Yeah. While in office. Yeah. So there's like a, a sort of little, you know, asterisk that in asterisk there. But Zopone told me that like this one is particularly important because if power on the mayoral level changes, it would require a full ordinance with the support of city council to roll back those insurance coverage protections for employees. Yeah. And it would also create a, there was sort of an informal police liaison position where somebody in SPD would liaise with LGBTQ plus people in advance of like, pride or other issues. This person's sort of informal capacity was to build trust with the queer community so that like if something happened, people had somebody that they felt comfortable going to. Mm-hmm. That would formalize that position. I think they've already filled it. I know the name, but not off the top of my head. And so this would kind of create a formal rule for somebody. This is going to be up for a first reading on April 21st and up for a vote on April 28th. So next Monday. For the reading and the Monday after, after, for the, for the vote. We've got some more information on this legislation and you know how you can talk to council about it if it's something that you're interested in, that I will throw in our KYRS page. Awesome. And with that note, we are gonna play you a message from our underwriters. One, one quick thing, just because I'm curious about this, the whole, you don't need to collect or disseminate people's information unless it's related to a criminal investigation. Did you talk to anybody about what, even, even if there is a criminal investigation, why they would need to know? And is it like a sexual assault, rape kit situation or like why, why? I mean, I guess that might be one example. Okay. Of, and also like. It might be related to a criminal investigation on the side of victimhood, because then you would know if you knew somebody was trans, that it might be a hate crime. I see. And you might be able to bring up hate crime charges. Right. So there are like a couple of cases that I think I can imagine that being maybe like relevant information. It almost seems like maybe more like they're carving out the possibility. Mm-hmm. So if it is like a crime situation, they wouldn't be prohibited from asking or like clarifying, Hey, are you, it seems like you may be transgender. Is that true or not? That would, yeah. Whether or not there's an active plan to be asking for that sort of identifying information in criminal proceedings, it might just be Yeah. Yeah. Carve out. Okay. All right. Aaron, yeah, there's, would you mind telling me about this Safe Streets press conference that our urbanism columnist Lauren Pangborn and you attended yesterday? Yeah. So. I get a slack from Lauren and she's like, where is this press conference that Erin Hut is tweeting about? Posting about on Blue Sky? And I like Erin Huts, the communication director for the mayor. Yes. And I'm like, oh, well it's it main and post. It's like, that's such an interesting location for a press conference. I wonder if they're going turn it into a pedestrian street. Oh man. We were disappointed. We set our expectations really high. The street in front of the mall, which is the intersection of Oh yeah. Main and Post is not becoming a full pedestrian street. However, there was a lot of other more exciting developments. It's the, it's the front door to the mall. It's also where you can get a Red Robin Burger on one corner and a pf Chang's bowl of noodles on the other, if you're, if you're trying to figure that, if you're, if you navigate by food like I do, and they shut it down periodically for events like terrains. Bizarre. Like bizarre. Yeah. There's some like other street festivaly things that happen over there, but honestly it's very, very difficult to shut down. We were the, I'm associated with Terrain and it took more than one, it took like two years to finally, it was actually in our third year of doing Bazaar that we were finally given permission after talking to basically every business owner on that street. To shut it down, so it's not an easy thing to do. Yeah. Well actually that was one thing that was announced at this press conference for Safer Streets is that there's an ordinance that will be coming before City Council very soon. They're hoping to get it passed before June. That would make it much easier for you to shut down any street that is non arterial. That'd be awesome. They didn't give a ton of details. I'm sure once the draft of the ordinance launches, we'll be able to get more of a sense for what exactly that process is, but. They are calling it, like, making it easier to establish a Play Streets program which will allow neighbors to temporarily close non arterial streets to provide car safe spaces, like block party stuff, like block parties, neighborhood play, community activities. It's starting in June and running through Halloween. So you have to imagine they want people to be able to do like summer markets. Yeah. And, you know, a trunk or treat and make that really easy to just have a, a block or a chunk of street that is completely shut down to cars so that folks can walk around, bike around, scoot around in freedom, hang with their neighbors, meet people without having to worry about becoming one of the ever increasing number of pedestrian fatalities in our city. It's so dark that that's like where we're at with this. And, and it's also just a testament like to see, I'm, I'm just going to, to fully send my opinion here, like, we're just way too deferential to cars in our culture. And I don't even feel bad saying it. You can slide into my dms if you're a, if you're a car guy or a truck guy. But this is my, my whole thing has always been like, even if you are a car and truck eye, don't you want fewer cars and trucks on the streets? So it's fun. It's more fun to drive. You're not getting stuck in traffic like we should be making a society that's better for all types of transportation so that the people that want to do the various types of transportation they want to do, have the space to do it. And that includes cars. And what we've seen is like, wow, you're like a full on urbanist. Oh, well, and look, it, it strikes me that the thing like with Ban the address, we might be the first city in America to do it. The stuff we're talking about here that has taken decades to get through is not even remotely controversial. It's not revolutionary. It's, it is, it is literally a, a worldwide movement. One of them, one of the movements is called Selo. It is the idea, and it starts like this, it starts with like making it easier to shut down streets. We do the, the, we do the, I can't remember what's the bike shutdown thing that we do do a couple times a year? Oh yeah, Lauren talked about that. Par it's parks to summer parkways. Yeah, summer parkways. Like in, when I was traveled to Mexico City a couple years before the pandemic, they like literally their biggest street, which imagine division in Spokane, but lined with beautiful trees rather than lined with strip malls that entire street shuts down. On like, I think every Sunday and people ride and they bike and they go get brunch and they, people put their patio ch like the restaurants put their patio furniture in the street and it basically transforms like one of the major arterials in one of the largest cities in the world into a big pedestrian mall. And that then has led to so much more interest in this. And it's actually dropped commuting times in Mexico City. Again, one of the most dense and hectic and crazy like 25 million people live in basically a, a river valley. Not on, or a valley, not on like Spokane. It's made it a less polluted city. It's made it an easier city for cars to get around into because people saw what was possible and they, you know, were like, yeah, let's do this, you know, complete streets thing. Yeah. And kind of on your point about, you know, every car off the road actually makes it better to be a driver, right? Like if somebody's choosing to bike instead of drive. One of the other things that they announced at this press conference was that they're going to be revamping our old Safe Streets ordinance, which l filled me in on a very funny bit of history, which was that three of our current big names in Spokane politics. We've got John Snyder, who is our director of Transportation and Sustainability at the city. And Paul Dylan and Kitty Kki, who are currently Spokane City Council members. Yeah. Back in the day, they were working on the original Complete Streets Original. Complete, yeah. As Snyder was a council member, then Dylan was his legislative assistant and Ksky was an organizer who was just like pushing for this to happen. But now they're all three going to be working on revamping the Complete Streets ordinance to be more in line with best practices of today's times. And so what that does is that basically whenever the city tears up a street, so like let's say they're doing a big like refinishing. Yeah. When they put that street back together, it has to be put back together in a way that includes options for biking and walking. That's really smart. Yeah. So basically adding in new corridors, rethinking what the street looks like. Yeah. So that we are considering pedestrians or alternative modes of transportation in our streets. I'm old enough, I'm pretty sure I met, well, I guess kitty's old enough as well. I'm pretty sure I met now Councilwoman Kitty Klasky when she was flyering for Complete Streets like close to 20 years ago. So this has been long time in the works and. Yeah. And it's really cool. And honestly, that whole idea of like, when we tear up a street, we replace it, you know, we sort of, we take the opportunity to not just relay pavement mm-hmm. But to rethink what's going on there. That was actually an innovation that David Conn did, you know, famous, pragmatic, conservative, David Conn. And he was doing it with like, all the infrastructure under the street. So his whole thing was like, okay, cool. Like when it's torn up, we've gotta do everything at once. We can, we can lay fiber optic cable for high-speed internet or what, like, whatever needs to happen, let's just do it in a coordinated manner. So it saves money and it like, gives us this opportunity to, like, we don't, nobody likes having roads torn up. It sucks. It's like, inconvenience for everyone. So if we're gonna do it, we might as well do it in a way that's like thinking 10, 20, 30 years into the future. Yeah. And we're gonna see that coming up soon. River, Spokane River, the Falls, Spokane Falls Boulevard is slated for redo soon. And so some of the discussions, oh man, have been around planning for what that redo is going to look like under Complete Streets. I know we're running close to time, so I'll run you through the other main points that got brought up at this presser The traffic unit is coming back. This was a big controversy in 2023. Okay. Yeah. When I got pulled, when Mayor Woodward pulled money out of the traffic calming fund in a budget that was again, unanimously improved by the council at the time. Right? So not entirely Woodward's fault, they all green stamped that to stand up the previously disbanded Spokane Police Department unit focused on traffic enforcement. However. It's two years later and that unit has still not been stood up. They announced at the press conference that it's finally happening. There will be four officers whose full-time work is entirely dedicated to traffic enforcement and another three officers whose focus is on DUI enforcement. Okay, so we've got seven officers now who are dedicated to, to traffic work. Also under that kind of umbrella is a traffic fatality review team. Oh, wow. That will consist of police, fire streets, engineering, et cetera, and they'll meet four times a year to discuss fatal crashes, what the underlying issues might be and how those underlying issues might be able to be addressed. We're getting more red light and speed cameras, which is a bit of a controversial move. I've, I've seen some public complaints about, you know, a surveillance state and having all this data about people's movements being tracked. The flock cameras specifically? Yeah, the flock cameras specifically, these red light cameras are going on one, or at least the first couple red light cameras are going at the intersection of Mission Avenue and Green Street, which is one of the top 10 deadliest intersections Lauren and I wrote about last year. So I used to live near that intersection when I was a senior in college. It is, it's dicey. It is. And finally they're banning right turn on red at some key intersections downtown. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Which is, you know, people are thinking a lot about the oncoming traffic from the left when they're turning Right. And not necessarily about the pedestrians that might be crossing perpendicular right. In, in front of, well, I'm sorry. You're thinking more about who's coming from the left when you're turning right on a one way street as well. Mm-hmm. So that's another argument for one of the, the pushes that a lot of Complete Streets advocates want, which is getting rid of one ways and making them two ways. 'cause it makes, even, it's better for retail, it's better for everything, but it also makes drivers more aware of their surroundings from both directions, which will hopefully, and, and in most cases when it's implemented, saves lives. Yep. So we've got a piece on that coming out shortly from Lauren. I think that's been through one or two edits. But that's your. Quick and dirty breakdown. I got a, I got a halfway pitch from a, a mutual friend of ours. I don't wanna say too much on camera or on mic, but there might be a, a flock camera data story we could do. And we might have a, we might have a, a, a developer who's interested in crunching some numbers for us. Well, more to come. More to come. That's our time This week free Range is a weekly news and public affairs program presented by Range Media and produced by Range Media and KYRS Community Radio. I'm Aaron. That's Luke. We'll catch you next week. Thanks for letting me hang out. Aaron.