By Jake Goldstein-Street | Reporter
A slew of significant and controversial changes for local governments to be decided Nov. 3 are receiving far less attention than contests for state Supreme Court seats and statewide initiatives. Examples include disallowing politicians from double-dipping with multiple elective offices, ousting a controversial sheriff and raising the bar for tax hikes.
Also in today’s edition…
• The feds continue to deny claims from sickened Hanford employees.
• Assessing school safety funding after the Bend, Oregon, shooting.
• And, why it matters that some states don’t have birth centers.
News tips, feedback, questions? Email us: [email protected]
By Jerry Cornfield
Keith Swank’s future as Pierce County sheriff is in the hands of the electorate that put him in office two years ago.
Charter Amendment 53 would make the sheriff an appointed position rather than an elected one. That person would be chosen by the county executive and confirmed by the County Council. If the measure passes, Swank, who was narrowly elected in 2024 to a four-year term, would be out of office on Jan. 1, 2027. King County is the only county with an appointed sheriff.
Swank has incited anger among some in the community with his incendiary social media posts, desire to work more closely with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on deportation efforts than a state law allows, and his views on an array of social issues, including support for a statewide initiative to bar transgender girls from playing girls sports.
Lonnie Rouse’s wife, Melinda, takes his vital signs. (Photo by Margaret Albaugh for ProPublica)
By Lizz Giordano, Cascade PBS, and Brandon Block, ProPublica
For years, employees at the Hanford site filing workers’ compensation claims had to prove the chemicals they were exposed to on the job made them sick. A law signed by Gov. Jay Inslee flipped that burden of proof. Under the law, agencies were instructed to presume that working at Hanford had caused certain cancers, neurological diseases and respiratory illnesses. Now the Department of Energy would have to prove to the state that something other than the job had made the workers sick if it wanted to deny their claims.
Lonnie Rouse thought the presumption law would speed up his claim for benefits. State lawmakers and the former governor thought it would force the DOE to take responsibility for the harm Hanford workers were experiencing.
But despite the law, the DOE continues to fight new and existing claims, Cascade PBS and ProPublica found. The publications asked the state for claims records going back to the presumption law’s passage in 2018, but the state only provided records going back three and a half years, to 2023. In that period, workers filed 102 new claims for benefits, state data shows. The DOE did not recommend approving a single one.
Bend residents set up a memorial for three children and one teacher killed by a shooter at Silver Rail Elementary School. (Photo by Sean Scully/States Newsroom)
By Alex Baumhardt
Voters in the Bend-La Pine School District are among those who approved school safety spending in bond votes taken in 2017 and 2022, and Silver Rail elementary, where three children and a teacher were killed last week, was a beneficiary of those dollars. More than 100 of Oregon’s 197 school districts have asked voters in the past eight years to agree to local property tax increases to raise money for school safety upgrades. Voters said yes about half the time.
By Kelcie Moseley-Morris
Birth centers can be an attractive option for pregnant patients seeking fewer medical interventions and a more “home-like” childbirth experience that is still attended by professionals. Centers are often chosen by Black, Indigenous and Hispanic patients, who experience negative maternal and infant health outcomes at disproportionately higher rates than white patients, research shows.
Using data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Association of Birth Centers and other state-level data, a recent report found 10 states — Arkansas, Hawaii, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Rhode Island and Vermont — have zero birth centers.
ICYMI
Hundreds of thousands of WA voters have cast ballots | by Jerry Cornfield
COMMENTARY: What people and computers say about the Northwest power supply | by Randy Stapilus
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