Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.

On the evening of April 4th, 1968, our country was robbed of one of the greatest civil rights leaders in our history, an event that sparked race riots and tremendous emotional outpouring across our nation.  Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated 44 years ago today while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee.

Upon hearing the news of Dr. King’s assassination, then-Sen. Robert F. Kennedy said:

“Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in…[W]e can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and love.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Photo credit: Kelson

While Sen. Kennedy was referring to racial discrimination when he gave this speech, his words can be applied to the struggle for marriage equality in our time.

The state of Washington furthered Dr. King’s dream of love and justice between fellow human beings during the 2012 session with the passage of marriage equality. We showed the rest of our nation and the whole world what kind of state we are – the kind of state where no one is a second-class citizen.

Well done, Washington.

To read this post in Spanish, click here.

HDC aims to break budget impasse

Majority Leader Pat Sullivan, House Ways and Means Chair Ross Hunter, and House Capital Budget Chair Hans Dunshee will meet with reporters and members of the public at 10:00 this morning in House Hearing Room A.  They will discuss their operating and capital budget proposals and other bills the House plans to move forward with this week.

Sullivan has stressed that the operating budget proposal does not represent an agreement between the House and Senate, but does include many changes requested by the Senate Republicans. 

"If we are to have any chance at all of getting a budget finished on time, we have to get something moving," he said. "We will continue to meet, continue to talk, and continue to negotiate, but we also have to get a budget in motion."

Details of the proposal will be available on LEAP at 11:00 am.

To read this post in Spanish, please click here.

“A really incredible culture of health”

The 2012 County Health Rankings report shows that folks who live in the San Juan Islands are relatively healthier than those living in Yakima. But even those living in Yakima are healthier than 90 percent of the nation in certain areas. And in the areas where Yakima ranks considerably below the best counties in the nation, its rankings are nonetheless higher than those in many other states.

In fact, Angela Russell, an associate researcher at the University of Wisconsin said that "Overall, it seems like Washington ... has created a really incredible culture of health."

Could this have something to do with the state’s highly successful Basic Health Plan, which has served as a model for similar programs in other states? Or perhaps with Apple Health for Kids, another state program, to cover all Washington children? Hmmm… food for thought.

But back to the report, the five healthiest counties in Washington are San Juan, Kittitas, Island, Whitman and Whatcom. The five counties in poorest health are Ferry, Wahkiakum, Okanogan, Grays Harbor and Mason.

Even though we’re doing quite well, Mary Selecky, Washington Health Secretary, believes we shouldn’t rest on our laurels. She said we still have to work on quitting smoking, losing weight and maintaining healthy cholesterol levels.

There’s always room for improvement, we know that, but our ear to ear smile from having heard that we have created an incredible culture of health won’t be vanishing anytime soon.

To learn more, read the Associated Press story here.

To read this post in Spanish, click here.

House plans to move budget-related bills forward this week

The House is moving forward Wednesday with a short list of bills that will be necessary to implement (NTIB) the supplemental operating budget.  Although an agreement on the final budget has not yet been reached, the House Democratic negotiating team wants to get the ball rolling.

Additional details can be found on our website here.

To read this post in Spanish, click here.

Upthegrove bill good for business, the environment, and the state’s bottom line

If you drink filtered water at home or at work, you know the drill.  The filter keeps impurities out of your drinking water, which is a good thing.

In a similar fashion, boatyards in Washington state are required to install pollution control filter systems that help keep toxic runoff out of Puget Sound.

But the filters for boatyards are significantly more expensive than your average home drinking water filter.  They can cost upwards of $100,000, which is no small chunk of change.  Since most boatyards in the state are small businesses, this is a pretty significant investment for them.


Luckily, a bill that was signed into law last week will streamline the permitting process boatyards have to go through in order to install these filter systems.  It’s currently a rather lengthy process, and as they say – time is money.  An expedited process helps these small businesses as they work to comply with state law, and protects the jobs these businesses create and sustain.  Rep. Dave Upthegrove sponsored the bill, which won’t cost the state any money but helps keep Puget Sound free from toxic runoff and other pollutants.

You can read more about the bill here.

And here’s a video of Rep. Upthegrove talking about the bill when he introduced it earlier this year.

To read this post in Spanish, click here.

Digital textbooks coming to K-12 classrooms

iPads are replacing bulky flight manuals in the cockpit. A music library of records, cassettes, and CDs that once filled entire closets can now be stored in your phone. And after many centuries of using paper textbooks in the classroom, Washington state took the first big step towards moving classrooms into the digital age.

House Bill 2337 was signed into law last week by Governor Gregoire. The bill directs the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction to develop a program designed to get open source digital textbooks in our public schools. Open source materials are vetted, peer-reviewed, and available for free or at very low cost via the internet. All open source materials approved by OSPI will align with the state’s Common Core standards.

The idea was introduced by Rep. Reuven Carlyle, a Seattle democrat, who successfully championed a similar effort at the community and technical college level.

Photo credit: Tnvols2

In addition to the $65 million the state spends each year, traditional textbooks are 7-11 years out-of-date. In today’s digital world where we can summon information at a moment’s notice, should our children be learning from textbooks written before the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Digital textbooks provide a solution to expensive and out-of-date traditional textbooks.

“Open source educational materials are the future,” said Carlyle. “They are gaining popularity with school districts all across the nation. They are simple, efficient, easy to use, and dramatically cheaper than proprietary textbooks.”

To read this post in Spanish, click here.

Washington leads the way once again in the fight against human trafficking

“If this can happen to my daughter, it can happen to your daughter,” said, in this King 5 story, the mother of a young girl who was forced into the commercial sex industry right here in our state.

Human trafficking, which includes commercial sex and forced labor, is the fastest growing international crime and the second most profitable organized crime, behind drug trafficking. The U.S. Department of State reports that 14,500-17,000 persons are trafficked into the United States each year.

But not all the victims of human trafficking had to cross our borders or reach our shores, many of them are born and raised in our state. Since October 2008, King County courts have charged and prosecuted 67 offenders for sex trafficking-related crimes. Seventy-two percent of their victims were children. Currently, it is estimated that 300-500 youth are being forced into prostitution just in King County. But there are human traffickers in other counties as well such as Snohomish, Pierce, Yakima and Spokane.

In 2002 Washington became the first state in the nation to criminalize human trafficking. And now we are the first in the nation to require verification of age for online ads that promote sex-related services. That was one of a big package of anti-human trafficking bipartisan bills signed into law by Governor Chris Gregoire last week.

Gov. Chris Gregoire signs anti-trafficking bills into law.

The two bills we recently wrote about here, aimed at reducing the commercial sale of sex in our state by establishing heftier fines for both johns and pimps, were also among the bills to get the governor’s signature.

For more information on these and all the bills in the anti-trafficking package, go here.

To read this post in Spanish, click here.