welcome to Washington InFocus your source for the week's top stories in the state of Washington I'm Cole lauderbach managing editor for the Center Square newswire service this week we'll discuss the first debate between Washington's candidates for Governor the state pledging to address chronic absenteeism in schools Seattle shifting its proposed prostitution enforcement to Target The Pimps of the city and new allegations that a State University could have broken a law in trying to access 911 information that's ahead on Washington in Focus I'm Cole [Music] lauderbach some people would call him a loser he ran for State office he was beaten he started a business he failed he ran for congress he lost he was nominated for vice president he lost again but he knew only those who never tried are the real losers and Abraham Lincoln was no loser persistence pass it on from the foundation for a better life at values.com [Music] welcome back to Washington in Focus I'm Cole udb now let's jump into the headlines with Governor Jay Insley not seeking office Underdog Republicans in Washington are as close to getting one of their own into the governor's office than they have been in decades Centrist Republican Dave rard is facing Democratic attorney general Bob Ferguson the duo faced off in their first debate this week Capital correspondent carlen Johnson covered the event that seemed to get a little Rowdy didn't it carlen yeah right from the jump uh to borrow a phrase from my teenager was within the first seven minutes of the debate um reer the Republican candidate announced he's not supporting the GOP nor Democratic presidential nominees and so Ferguson jumped in and and right away says wait a minute you know you're supporting the convicted felon and convicted sexual abuser and that's when you he's like no no no sorry to disappoint you Bob but I'm not supporting Trump and I'm also not supporting Harris and um that seemed to come as a surprise to a lot of folks on uh social media right away I was kind of monitoring I was watching the debate and taking some notes and then monitoring real time social media and a lot of supporters of rker didn't seem very pleased that he you know came out publicly and said that Trump wouldn't be getting his vote well but I mean and there's the devils in the details there because he has said he would vote for Trump in the past but he's not endorsing him he's not he's not you know stumping for him he's not going to stand on a stage in Spokane with the president um if the president ever got the bad idea to try and campaign there um but you know at the same time Ferguson politically it behooves him to tie rker to Trump because what that does is well they believe it moves the needle for Centrist Republicans of which many you know you look at Trump's previous um vote tallies where there are Republicans who will vote Republican all the way down the ballot but leave the top ticket option empty um I I know that in some states it was you were looking at tens of thousands of people that did that and that's where rker kind of finds himself but Ferguson I mean it's it was his objective it seem like number one objective from the get-go to try and make sure that Trump was hanging around Riker's neck yeah and I didn't do the the count on you know how many times he said Trump in the debate but it was more than a dozen I would it seemed like a lot yes yeah and he kept even after rker said you know I'm not going to vote for Trump and I'm not going to vote for Harris um then Ferguson pushed back and he's like you know I remember you spoke to this group of Republican activists you said you're supporting Donald Trump and he was making reference to something that that some of our readers Might Recall was Major headlines back in spring when reer was at a republican activist event and he was asked outright are you gonna vote for Trump and he did not answer audibly but he nodded his head apparently and there was a democratic operative Ferguson plant made in the event who reported on that so that got a lot of play and Ferguson kept bringing that back up right well and they did I mean it wasn't just a cult of personality debate I mean to both of their credit Ferguson and reer both leaned heavily into I I would say you know policy issues and Riker has a track record and he was a member of Congress correct um and but Ferguson spent years as the state's top attorney the attorney general and um a lot of other state attorney generals have taken measures to say you know we're cracking down on the opioid crisis we are you know working on it like say in in California with um organized retail theft there's been a lot of um changes and prosecutions for that you know County attorneys have done the same thing one of the one of the things that I noticed was rker really leaned hard into Ferguson's previous support for the decriminalization of um drugs in general yeah and the when the moderators uh you know asked about homelessness and the drug epidemic which you know most of us know are are intertwined um rker fired back and he said you know basically the homeless problem is not just a problem a housing issue yes affordable housing is all part of it mental illness is part of it but it really truly stems record said from a drug and substance abuse crisis and back in 2021 um may recall that was shortly after the Supreme Court's Blake decision that basically decriminalized drug possession yeah set Washington you know down the drug spiral we've been on at the time Ferguson came out in support of decriminalization he said you know this should not be an issue for people that have drug problems they shouldn't be in the criminal justice system it's a public health issue um so you know he's he's got that burden to bear because we're all at this spot now where we know what basically the legalization of hard drugs in Washington is has done to us um on some level and you I mean and you eluded to it but you know homelessness I it can't be understated enough where a lot of other states you know homelessness is not polling as the top issue in Iowa right right um because you know even even homeless people don't want to live there but in terms of you know in places like Washington Western Washington especially homelessness crisis you know Oregon California Arizona in the west is often the very top concern because it it it leads to all of these other problems that are connected to it and I it was encouraging to hear that both recognize that they didn't try to deflect right no they didn't and and to as you mentioned to Ferguson's credit he you know he launched it he said you know it's it's a complex problem he said you know Mental Health you know dependency issues affordability yeah that's all part of it um but he didn't seem as willing as rker to basically say if we do not address the drug crisis that we're facing there is no chance we're going to make a dent in this homeless crisis you know and I live at a part of Washington state feder Way South of of Seattle where it's evident you know every single day and open drug use nobody doing anything to stop it if we're going to allow that to happen and continue to do that those people are going to remain on the streets because they'd rather be able to be an active drug user than even accept you know a housing or you know even a low barrier shelter uh California California refers to those individuals as um uh assistant assistance resistant service resistant where they say no they don't want to be placed they don't want a home um one thing that stuck out last thought on this is uh Riker's bold statement that if I am Governor I am vetoing any new tax we are taxed enough in Washington I wonder how well that's going to resonate because your total tax burden in Washington is one of the highest in the country and it didn't did you did you really even notice that Ferguson didn't necessarily have an answer for that he didn't respond to it absolutely and the moderators unfortunately didn't push back on that and expect an answer and it'll be interesting to see if once rker assuming he is elected gets into office he's a able to hold true to that promise you know it's one thing to make that campaign promise and a vastly different thing when you're up against lawmakers even some with his own party and certainly moderates wait we need this big chunk of change to do this policy thing that you promis to do I.E hire a bunch more cops how you going to do exactly force him to veto a bill that raises taxes to hire more police yeah so uh thank you carlen great it was a fascinating debate and I'm definitely looking forward to the next next one in your coverage moving on to Seattle prostitution and human trafficking has resulted in increased violence in Seattle City officials have been working on a response but the community has pushed back on some of the proposals Seattle reporter Spencer Paulie has chronicled the city council's hearings on the matter Spencer how bad has this issue become I think it's safe to say it's bad the issue has gotten worse as years go on especially in uh along Aurora Avenue in Seattle um in fact I actually met someone pretty recently who lives on aora Avenue and frequents the streets and he can attests that the streets are dangerous with prostitution just being very prominent um now this legislation was sponsored by Kathy Moore uh firsttime C city council member and she said that prostitution correlates with gun violence and and thus created this bill to address it because she's shown videos in uh previous public hearings that shown prostitution within the same hour you see gunfire and you see people fleeing the streets overnight and this it's not just a couple shots right I mean these are I I I seen that video that they played it was a gunfight I mean okay Corral in the streets of Seattle I was shocked and this isn't happening at you know 2: in the morning 3 in the morning this is 10 p.m. to midnight I mean daylight it was well not that one was at night but it was yeah it was there were people in the streets still yeah exactly what was the original solution here um that was proposed so the original uh solution includes a pro uh a Prohibition on loitering for the purpose of buying selling or pimping prostitution with a separate provision that allows a judge to issue a state outof area prostitution order that targets the northern Aurora Avenue area um and this bill would also restore the misdemeanor crime of prostitution loitering which was removed in 2020 by the previous seal city council regime this one was more Progressive and saw uh punishing prostit prostitutes as racist and yeah so that was going to be considered to be brought back to the table here so now I mean they're they're bringing back you know an old policy like they have a couple times now um but what they got the community response was really interesting to me with with um to say that you know a lot of this becomes more punitive to the people who the community considers victims yeah you know feedback was very mixed during the one public hearing that was held last month um residents Civ along Roar Avenue were the ones to say hey we need this legislation passed because we are tired of being victims of crime so dangerous I don't where our friends and family are coming to visit us and and you know they're just feeling overall unsafe but this is common in Seattle City council meetings where there are still people who do not like um tough uh legislation that's tough on crime U some found that the bill targets prostitutes who are a victim of human trafficking and said we need to instead prioritize uh Rehabilitation instead of just punishing these people um and they say that this targets um minorities which is another issue that they found and even in one case two cases I remember during the public hearing last month there was some prostitutes who attended and said hey we choose to do this and we don't want to be targeted by police so the new approach now is to kind of go up the chain akin to with drug drug use the target is the drug dealer and not the actual open air drug user um and this seems like a similar vein uh there yeah so Kathy Moore did listen to public hearing and did Pro uh propose amendments that were passed uh that basically limit the stay out of area prositution order to just buyers and pimps and now seatt Police Department officers are going to have to learn from sex trafficking Survivor groups and prioritize diversion over arrest this was what Kathy Moore proposed as a result of these comments however um you know this legislation was passed uh on Tuesday uh but it took a little bit the committee meeting was a little uh Rowdy I would say people were still in opposition to this uh based on the same things that were heard during public hearing and um so it's still not a bill that we're seeing total you know approval of from the community but yeah I think just hearing but it's a compromise I think it sounded like you know the the city council woman was looking you know she listened and I mean I guess in terms of responsive Public Service I suppose that's you know the best that you can get right that's exactly thank you Spencer appreciate it chronic absenteeism is classified as a student missing more than 10% of school days in a year while some absences a serious illness for instance can't be avoided American children are missing more school than ever in the years after the covid-19 pandemic Capital correspondent carlen Johnson covered what Washington and more than a dozen other states are starting to take seriously what's The Pledge carlen yeah the pledge from these 14 States Washington being one of them that have signed on says that they will cut chronic student absenteeism by 50% by 2029 so in five years um The Pledge is these states and they're trying to get others to also sign the pledge will cut that chronic absentee rate um and just for some um context chronic absenteeism as a defined by the US education department is missing 10% or more of school for any reason that's whether your you know your mom says we've got an appointment this morning or not so excused or unexcused um so that's basically it doubled from one out of six to almost one out of three students during the pandemic and post pandemic there's been a very very slight Improvement but not much yeah they're not below pre-pandemic levels yet not any now the big thing and you spoke with hedie Chang um her organization um attendance attendance works out of California great organization and they've they've been pushing for this for years many many years before the pandemic too one thing that they note is that chronic absenteeism affects overall student progress uh in in terms of when the student is not there in the class learning even if they're making up the homework testing and progress reports have shown that there's a marked drop in their the students learning if they miss if they cross that threshold into chronic absenteeism right th those academic progress reports we've all seen them go you know they started diving during covid right and then we didn't here in Washington state at least we didn't do any measurement of of student progress status test uh State assessment tests and the like we all you know set aside for a couple of years but yeah and you think about it too I mean it's it's obvious so it's not just the student who's got the perfect attendance um but you know the the teacher is going to be distracted and having to try to explain you know missed instruction for a student who maybe wasn't there Monday Tuesday shows up on Wednesday and maybe there's a pop maybe there's a pop quiz and the teacher wants everybody to succeed so she's going to spend an extra 10 minutes just with that kid or the few that weren't there and then you get you know I still have one at home that's in high school and a lot of the a lot of the class assignments are uh group projects or presentations right so then you got students are grouped together like a group of three or four if you've got two of the four that weren't there half of the class time to prepare ultimately the whole presentation's going to be tanked and that's going to affect everybody in the group even that kid with perfect attendance so just a logical progression towards um you know academic decline based on you know this High absentee rate well and you hit on a great Point too is that the the the squeaky wheel gets the attention um where teachers often say you know 80% of my attention goes to 20% of the students in the class because they're either C causing trouble they're struggling where the other students you know they may need help but they're not going to normally get that much you know as much attention from the teacher as the ones that are in dire need of assistance and with chronic absenteeism you're piling on where it becomes not just the students that are trouble students or the ones that regularly struggle these students then who are missing the time are placed in that category and that number grows to the detriment of the other students in the class it is and it and you think about how it affects sort of um mental health or divisions in the classroom that kind of a thing right I mean I remember being in school and the the bad kid or the kid who need the extra help getting all the attention you might have a question for the teacher um and you don't get that class time because the teacher is you know redirected to help the kids that are are playing catchup um one you brought up attendance Works who's done all this great work for a decade or more on this um what are the stats that they reported on when they announced this 14 state pledge was shocking to me uh 29.7% of the nation students so just under 30% of students in American public schools which is about 14.7 million kids were chronically absent in the 2122 school year I mean right well but at that same time you have to think in 2122 a lot of states were still remote much of California students were still attending over a computer where it was very easy to just not log in for one reason or another right um so I I think that you know that's why a lot of those stats kind of just went out the window but in terms of this pledge uh carlen what is what are they doing about it now yeah initially it's just some sort of policy recommendations they they've got all these states to sign on um Washington office of superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Rik doll has signed on they had already been working on uh chronic absenteeism for the last few years have spoken to him about that a lot of times but right now what they're doing is they're saying okay you states that have signed on we're going to develop a you know a box of resources for you some of it I'm sure is going to be legislative policy recommendations and the like right go to go to your meet leaders and policy makers raise awareness make sure everybody knows how bad this is you know the dire nature it and then try to get resources to improve this and the group will be meeting every two or three months the leaders from these 14 states to kind of go okay how's your progress you know let's help each other what's working for you what was a fail and uh you know try to really get on top of this because I'm telling you it is it is bad since I still have one at home and in high school and she tells me that you know in a lot of her classes about half the kids are gone on any given day it's not getting better my uh third graders the same way um it's a it's a really big problem and I'm glad that I'm glad that states are really finally seeing that the issue that this is going to cause because it's going to affect them for the rest of their lives as well thank you carlen uh in the long running Saga over a database meant to track when police have to use force on civilians a new bit of drama has unfolded investigative reporter TJ martinell wrote this week what the university tasked with making the database for public consumption might have at least attempted to step outside the letter of the law first TJ could we have some background on the matter because it's a little complex yeah so back in 2021 the state legislature passed a law that calls for the creation of a police use en Force database that would be overseen by the uh State Attorney General's office and there was a bidding process in which Washington State University won the contract it was the only bidder and what is followed has been this very drawn out process of setting up this database and the purpose of it is so that the public can access statistics and data on these incidents and be able to download it Okay now what's the information that the university is seeking that's now become this you know lightning rod of legality what they're looking for trying to obtain is what's called computer AED dispatch data and this is what you would get from 911 call dispatch centers and they're trying to get data user agreements with these dispatch centers in order to use that information for this database and the and people have raised red flags saying hey wait a minute yeah there's so there's state law on criminal record privacy and then there's also the FBI has a policy that regulates this kind of data so and if you violate those regulations with the FBI you can lose access to their criminal justice databases so that which cripples a law enforcement organization because they use that you know they that every day hundreds of times a day I imagine and now your your your longtime Source um Bob scales was one of the first ones to say you know raise that red flag and say Hey you understand what you're asking for is il legal right yeah he reached out to the uh Washington State Emergency Management Division and said that this is could get them in huge legal trouble they were actually going to discuss it the uh data user agreement draft there was a draft that was sent out they were going to discuss it their August 15th meeting but it was cancelled the meeting wasn't cancelled but the plans to discuss it were canceled after they looked at this and just said you know this is a the this contract the data use agreement is at an individual Dispatch Center level so let them deal with it but also defer to your legal counsel on the matter and it's not it wasn't just scales saying hey you guys can't just get this whole hog yeah the Washington Association of sheriffs and police Chiefs have also so they're neutral on the database itself they have a very you know neutrality perspective but they've expressed concerns about whether or not this is going to run a foul of the FBI's criminal justice information Service rules and again they also are telling their members to seek legal counsel and have them review it before doing anything and but they continue to say that they're worried about this this database and how this what's going to be done with the information is as far as whether or not it's going to violate the state or federal law right now what is WSU said wazu um wazu sent out a to the Washington Association of sheriff and police Chiefs sent out a statement from the Attorney General's office saying that they're not seeking full access to the to an agency's uh CAD system and which is not what anybody's arguing they're not argu nobody's arguing that trying to access the system they're trying to access the data in the system and the question is whether or not accessing that data because Washington State University is not a criminal justice agency it's a public university and subject to foyer subject to public records requests and in fact I believe there's some people who've already tried to file public records requests to see if they can get this data to see if it runs a if they do um they're not supposed to get that data but because it's a public university they can't they're not subject to the same uh public records exemptions as a law enforcement agency right now what do the FBI said you reached out to the FBI and said hey you know what's your take on this you're the only one that hasn't said anything and you're going to be the hammer that drops right they referred me to the cjis systems agency with the Washington State Patrol which has already issued a statement to Washington Association of sheriffs and police Chiefs and they effectively said that any data shared with wazu that contains CGI it would be a compliance issue and it's only authorized to be shared with another law enforcement agency or something like that so that's where that the now to be fair that statement doesn't say that these data user agreements would be illegal they're saying if it does this then it's it has compliance issues got it all right well we'll see how they do moving forward thank you TJ and a big thank you to our journalists for sharing their stories stay up to date with these and more at the centers square.com I'm Cole lauderbach and until next time this has been Washington in focus [Music]