deescalation

I have a short update for you all today, starting with a state bill that could use your support. HB1310, the bill on de-escalation and police accountability, has its public hearing in the Senate tomorrow, March 16 at 10:30am.

• You can sign in to register your support. (This takes less than a minute.)
• You can submit written comments in support of the bill.
• You can sign up to testify live at the hearing tomorrow.

If you’re interested in what happened at this morning’s Seattle Council Briefing, you can read my live tweets.

Nothing much was discussed in the Public Safety space. Here are some news tidbits:

• The big news is that the federal American Recovery Act plan will offer $239m to Seattle in aid.
• CM Morales will not be discussing the legislation to lift the proviso on the participatory budgeting funds ($30m) at her committee meeting this week after all.
• The Public Safety and Human Resources committee meeting next Tuesday, March 23 at 9:30am is when the legislation to cut the $5.4m from the SPD’s budget to allocate instead to the PBP might come to a vote. We might well see some amendments on that legislation, or the CMs might decide to leave that money within the SPD, so again, this week is a good time to email or call your CMs to discuss this. You might also consider making public comment at the meeting next week.
• The Bring Business Home legislation passed in Full Council this afternoon, which will ease zoning restrictions for small home-based businesses for the next year. The sole vote against was CM Pedersen.
• State Senator Joe Nguyen is considering running against Dow Constantine for King County Executive. Senator Nguyen is generally favorable towards police reform so this could be an interesting development on the County level.

We’ll see if this slow start presages a slow week (my novel revisions certainly hope so!). In the meantime, I hope you all had a wonderful Pi Day yesterday; I know I’ll be eating pie for the foreseeable future, a happy state of affairs indeed.