Three lessons about tackling the biodiversity crisis

A new Washington state legislative district map will be in effect during elections this year after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a motion by conservative Latino voters to block the map’s adoption. 

This is not the end of the debate over Washington’s political map, but the Supreme Court has stopped it for now. The 2024 election will be governed by the map adopted last month by a U.S. District Court judge. 

The new map aims to create a Latino voter-majority district that aligns with voting rights laws. Under the new map, Legislative District 14 unites Latino communities in Central Washington from the east part of Yakima to Pasco in neighboring Franklin County, including Latino communities along the Lower Yakima Valley. The map also switched the Latino-majority district from the 15th to the 14th to ensure that state Senate elections fall on a presidential election year when the turnout of Latino voters is higher. 

The court led the process of creating the map after U.S. District Court Judge Robert Lasnik sided with Latino voters who sued the state in January 2022. He said the district, as drawn by the bipartisan Washington State Redistricting Commission in 2021, diluted Latino voter power. The court led the process after Democrats in the Legislature declined to reconvene the redistricting commission. 

A group of conservative Latino voters, which included State Rep. Alex Ybarra (R-Quincy), intervened in the case, known as Palmer v. Hobbs, and opposed the map, stating that it was an attempt by Democrats to gain power in conservative Central Washington districts. That argument did not get much traction in the original court case or the remedial map process.

Intervenors, however, will have another opportunity to present their arguments for the appeals process, which was allowed to continue after the court declined to block the map for the 2024 election. According to a court document, conservative voters must file opening briefs by June 7, with responses due in early July.

The Seattle Public Schools Board of Directors is scheduled to appoint new members on Wednesday to replace two who resigned earlier this year after moving out of the districts that they represented.

The school district held a forum with the finalists from director districts 2 and 4 last week. The forum was posted to the district’s YouTube channel for board meetings. District 2 includes the area from Magnolia Interbay to Loyal Heights to Green Lake. District 4 includes the area from Downtown up through Queen Anne to Fremont.

Both seats will be up for election in November 2025. 

Former school directors Vivian Song and Lisa Rivera vacated their positions in January after The Seattle Times raised questions about Song’s residency in her school board district. Song and Rivera said they were in compliance with state law, but both resigned to avoid “unnecessary distraction,” according to their joint statement.

The Seattle Public Schools Board is scheduled to evaluate the finalists in an executive session scheduled before the regular public board meeting on Wednesday. The regular board meeting starts at 4 p.m. Wednesday at the John Stanford Center for Educational Excellence, 2445 Third Avenue South in Seattle. The newly appointed directors are expected to take the oath of office at 5 p.m, Thursday. 

Correction: This article originally had an incorrect date for the oath of office. The article was corrected on April 4, 2024.

Crown Prince Haakon of Norway will be in Seattle on April 17 and 18 to discuss environmental efforts like the green transition and advancing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. 

With Seattle’s maritime industries in mind, the Crown Prince will discuss new technology and sustainability with representatives from the state. There will be a conference at the National Nordic Museum in Ballard. 

In 2019, Norway and Washington signed a memorandum of understanding to boost trade relations and create sustainable technology to enhance their maritime economies. 

Other Norwegian officials will attend: the minister for digitization, Norwegian State Secretary Kristina Sigurdsdottir Hansen and representatives of Norwegian businesses and the ministry of energy. Members of the delegation also have plans to visit Amazon and Microsoft.

Seattle has a strong Nordic heritage; Many immigrants came to the city and worked as fishermen, loggers, farmers, miners and boat builders. Prince Haakon’s father, King Harald V, visited Ballard in 2015, since the neighborhood is where many Scandinavian immigrants settled. He said the landscape of Seattle was similar to parts of Norway.  

It’s not the first time that royalty has visited Seattle. In 1976, King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden came to Seattle. Prior to his visit, the City Council created the Ballard Avenue Landmark District and the king issued a special proclamation at the ceremony.

Shortly after, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip paid the city a visit in March 1983. It was the last stop on their West Coast tour. 

As part of his plan for Downtown Seattle’s post-pandemic recovery, Mayor Bruce Harrell announced this week that he is sending legislation to the City Council to allow more business types to set up shop in vacant storefronts in the greater Downtown area.

The proposed legislation would apply to areas in Belltown, South Lake Union, Lower Queen Anne/Uptown and Downtown that currently allow retail, restaurants and bars and entertainment as well as libraries, museums, child care and religious facilities in street-level commercial spaces.

The bill would expand those allowed uses to include medical offices, research and development labs, food processing, horticultural operations, crafts manufacturing and art installations. The proposal also leaves the door open for other business types not covered by that list to apply for a permit from the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections.

While the legislation would change the allowed permitting for three years, businesses established during that period would be allowed to stay indefinitely.

In addition to expanded uses, the proposed legislation would modify zoning regulations to allow smaller business spaces, making it easier for smaller-scaled businesses to set up shop. The bill would allow businesses to be a minimum of 8 feet deep instead of the current 15-foot minimum Downtown and 30-foot minimum in Belltown.

Finally, the bill would modify zoning rules to encourage businesses to occupy the second floor of office towers rather than filling only ground floor spaces.  

As is the case in many U.S. cities, Downtown Seattle has struggled in the wake of the pandemic, driven in large part by hybrid office work reducing daily foot traffic. Other than a dip around the winter holidays, Downtown worker foot traffic has mostly hovered around 55% of pre-pandemic levels since August 2023, according to the Downtown Seattle Association. Office vacancies in the central business district have continued to rise, hitting 24% at the end of last year and predicted to increase to 30% by the end of 2024.

Harrell has made Downtown recovery a centerpiece of his first Mayoral term. His Downtown Activation Plan is a laundry list of ideas meant to bolster economic recovery through tourism, increased numbers of Downtown residents and more.

In mid-March, Harrell transmitted legislation to the City Council to incentivize the conversion of office buildings into apartments and other uses. Last fall the Council passed legislation to rezone Third Avenue between Union and Stewart Streets to increase commercial and residential density, legislation to allow more hotel construction in Belltown and waived permit fees for food trucks and carts and small-to-medium street and sidewalk events. 

Washington is set to create a state-run automatic retirement savings system for workers who don’t already have access to an employer-based retirement system.

Washington Saves will require businesses without retirement plans for employees to allow their workers an opportunity to contribute to an individual retirement account (IRA) via an automatic payroll deduction through the Washington Small Business Retirement Marketplace. Employers will be required to enroll employees who have had continuous employment of one year or more in the program at default contribution rates. Employees may opt out. Washington Saves will launch for enrollees in 2027, according to a press release from the office of State Treasurer Mike Pellicciotti, who requested the legislation.

According to an analysis by AARP in 2022, about 43% of Washington workers in the private sector work for a company that doesn’t offer retirement plans — about 1.2 million people. Lack of access also varies by demographics — 66% of Hispanic workers, 47% of Black workers and 43% of Asian American workers do not have access to an employer-provided plan in Washington. Overall, 42% of all men and 44% of all women do not have such a plan. The legislation that created the system, Senate Bill 6069, was signed into law on Thursday by Gov. Jay Inslee. It passed the Legislature this year, with final votes of 55 to 41 in the House and 35 to 12 in the Senate.

Oregon established the first state-run automated individual retirement savings system in 2017, and several other states, including California, Maryland and Virginia, have followed suit, according to Pew Charitable Trusts.

A redrawn Washington legislative district map selected by a U.S. District Court judge earlier this month will be used in elections this year. The U.S. Court of Appeals has announced it will not step in to block the decision. 

However, the three-judge appeals panel, in its order Friday evening, allowed a group of conservative Latinos to continue its appeal efforts. 

The new maps create a Latino-voter-majority district in the Yakima Valley that aligns with federal voting rights laws. U.S. District Court Judge Robert Lasnik sided with Latino voters who sued the state in January 2022, saying the district, as drawn by the bipartisan Washington State Redistricting Commission in 2021, diluted Latino voter power. 

Under the new map, Legislative District 14 unites Latino communities in Central Washington from the east part of Yakima to Pasco in neighboring Franklin County, including Latino communities along the Lower Yakima Valley. The map also switched the Latino-majority district from the 15th to the 14th to ensure that state Senate elections fall on a presidential election year when the turnout of Latino voters is higher. 

A group of conservative Latino voters, which included State Rep. Alex Ybarra, intervened in the case and opposed the map, stating that it was an attempt by Democrats to gain power in conservative Central Washington districts. That argument did not get much traction in the original court case or the remedial map process. Intervenors, however, will now have an opportunity to lay out their argument for the appeals process. According to a court document, conservative voters must file opening briefs by June 7, with responses due in early July.

The state Department of Health announced updated guidance for people who get COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses, relying on a person’s symptoms rather than the previously recommended five-day quarantine. 

One of the most significant changes is to recommend that people are free to return to their normal activities once their symptoms have improved overall, and they are without fever for 24 hours. This means not having a fever or a need to use fever-reducing medication for at least a full day before having contact with others, since people can still be contagious after their symptoms have improved. 

Previous recommendations asked people to stay isolated for at least five full days after symptoms appeared. The state’s guidance follows recent updates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Department of Health still advises wearing a mask, handwashing, physical distancing and testing after contracting a respiratory virus and returning to daily life, to avoid the risk of spreading infection. Those with COVID-19 can be contagious for five to 10 days after their illness. People with the flu can remain contagious for five to seven days, and those that contracted respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) are contagious three to eight days. 

These precautions can be helpful to older adults and people with weakened immune systems, who have higher chances of getting very sick from one of those respiratory diseases, state health officials say.

California and Quebec on Wednesday took the next step toward partnering with Washington to form a bigger carbon market.

The state and Canadian province formally announced their interest in the joint venture. The earliest that the proposed alliance could happen is 2025. Lurking in the background is a November referendum on whether to repeal Washington’s cap-and-invest program.

“Though Washington has formally expressed interest in joining the California-Québec carbon market, today’s joint statement is the first time that all three governments have expressed their mutual interest in forming a shared market,” wrote Washington Department of Ecology spokeswoman Caroline Halter in an email. Details will be hashed out among the three governments.

The Washington Legislature recently passed a bill that brings this state’s fledgling carbon market regulations in sync with the joint California/Quebec market. A bigger market is expected to bring down carbon emission auction prices, which would lead to lower gasoline prices.  

Washington’s carbon polluters, including oil companies, bid every three months on the amount of carbon emissions they can release. The volume of allowances is limited, which has driven up auction bids. 

Until recently, Washington’s auction prices — ranging from $48.50 to $63.03 per allowance of about one metric ton of carbon emissions — have been significantly higher than those of the California/Quebec joint market, taking a lot of blame for this state’s high gasoline prices. But while Washington’s carbon auction prices have been higher than those in California, Washington has frequently had lower gas prices. 

New York, Massachusetts and Maryland are watching Washington and this potential alliance with thoughts of creating their own cap-and-trade programs to eventually join the bigger market.

Earlier this month, at Washington’s first auction of the year, carbon allowance prices of $25.76 came in dramatically lower than those in the California/Quebec market, whose bid prices increased from $19 in 2021 to $41.76 last month, according to the California Air Resources Board. 

Since January 2023, Washington has raised $1.96 billion in cap-and-invest revenue for many dozen climate change mitigation programs.

Washington sweet-cherry growers are now eligible for up to $500,000 in federal emergency loans from the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Farm Service Agency after U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack issued a formal disaster declaration for the 2023 cherry harvest.  

Washington’s Congressional delegation wrote to Vilsack in February urging him to issue the declaration after weather caused major losses for growers, who needed help continuing operations in 2024. 

Last year, a cold spring that transitioned abruptly to unseasonably high temperatures led to a shortened cherry season, when numerous cherries ripened at once. 

Meanwhile, California’s cherry season was delayed due to cold and rainy conditions. As a result, cherries from both states were harvested simultaneously, leading to an oversupply — about 70% of the Western U.S. crop matured between June 20 and July 20. Normally, the season lasts for 120 days, starting in California and ending in upper-elevation areas of Washington state and the Pacific Northwest. 

When prices consequently dropped, Washington growers opted not to pick millions of boxes of cherries, roughly 35% of the state’s crop.

Growers have until Nov. 14 to apply for emergency loans, which can be used for various recovery needs, including replacing equipment or other essential items, reorganizing a farming operation or refinancing debt. 

Washington cherry growers have dealt with adverse weather conditions in consecutive seasons. In 2021, sustained triple-digit temperatures in late June damaged ripening fruit. In 2022, a cold and wet spring stunted their development, leading to what ended up being the smallest crop of Northwest sweet cherries in nearly a decade. 

Cascade PBS is honored to share that our state government reporter Joseph O’Sullivan has been honored by the Washington Coalition for Open Government for his work covering state lawmakers’ efforts to hide information about their work from the public using what they say is their “legislative privilege.”

O’Sullivan and his partner in the reporting project that spanned 2023, Shauna Sowersby of McClatchy, were given the Coalition’s prestigious Bunting Award at a ceremony on Friday at T-Mobile Park, although O’Sullivan was unable to attend.

“The Kenneth F. Bunting Award recognizes journalists and media outlets for work that uses or advances Washington state’s open government laws, or educates citizens about them,” according to their website. The Coalition said this was the first time they had honored journalists from two different organizations who collaborated on a project. O’Sullivan and Sowersby worked together on their reporting for more than a dozen stories published in their respective publications. Crosscut also won this award last year for investigative coverage. 

Sowersby and O’Sullivan used public records and dozens of interviews to tell the story of how lawmakers were silently exempting everything from deliberative documents to embarrassing content, why they decided to use “legislative privilege”; and how the exemption was crafted and used. They also uncovered how powerful lobbying agencies can influence transparency laws and how at least one executive branch agency secretly had a “legislative privilege” policy on their books. That agency has since rescinded the policy.