Chief Diaz steps down
The announcement on Monday, April 8, that Seattle Police Chief John Diaz will step down in May is welcome news.
Seattle Police Department (SPD) chief since 2010, Diaz is a decent man who has been the quintessential “company man” — he’s been with SPD for 33 years and worked his way up through the ranks.
But Diaz’s leadership has been problematic, reflected in the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) December 2011 findings that Seattle police demonstrated patterns of excessive force and biased enforcement in an unconstitutional manner “nearly 20 percent of the time.”
Yes, crime is down — 11 percent compared to four years ago — but DOJ’s findings compromised trust in Diaz’s leadership.
Assistant Police Chief Jim Pugel will step up as interim chief, a role Diaz performed before being named police chief. Surely, the city has learned a lesson and will go outside the department for Diaz’s successor.
Inslee’s budget
While some have welcomed Gov. Jay Inslee’s March 28 unveiling of his budget as a solid start, it seems to have galvanized the Republican opposition, which controls the Senate for the first time in eight years.
Senate Republicans released their version of a budget last week; House Democrats will follow, and then the negotiations begin.
The Senate Republican $33 billion budget comes in $1.1 billion under Inslee’s proposal — without the tax extensions and closing of loopholes contained in the governor’s budget. Those extensions and loopholes, Inslee says, do not represent a break with his campaign pledge of no new taxes.
Either way, Inslee’s budget faces a steep climb.
The expansion of Medicaid is proper. The additional $1.2 billion targeted for K-12 education, funding mandated by the state Supreme Court, may be too little or too much — that remains to be seen. The Senate Republications have earmarked $1 billion for that purpose.
Still to be addressed: higher education, which is on a starvation diet, even as tuitions rise. Reductions in overall spending are few, and that is a red flag for Republicans. Now, the real, devil-is-in-the-details messiness begins.
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