Brown allocates more money for emergency sheltering
An additional $800,000 will supplement Spokane city funding for emergency sheltering this winter, Mayor Lisa Brown’s office said Wednesday.
Brown said the one-time money is coming from the city’s 1590 HEART Fund. 1590 refers to a 2020 state law that allows local governments to levy sales and use taxes to generate money for housing and related services. The $800,000 was left over after the city dedicated money to affordable housing service projects earlier this year.
According to a city news release, the money will be pay for additional beds at five sites beginning November 1: The Way Out Shelter, Hope House, House of Charity, Revive and the Salvation Army’s Family Emergency Shelter. Among them, Brown’s office said, the city will now be able to pay for 133 surge beds for 143 nights.
Officials search for missing Whitman County ballots
Whitman County Auditor Sandy Jamison announced Tuesday that hundreds of Whitman County ballots were lost in the mail.
An estimated 250 ballots, primarily belonging to voters with PO Boxes in the town of Garfield, Wash., went missing after being processed by the postal service two weeks ago.
Whitman County Auditor Sandy Jamison said her office started investigating after getting calls around the middle of last week from residents who had not received their ballots.
"I'm optimistic that these ballots will be found, but time is of the essence now," she told Northwest Public Broadcasting. "So, we’re asking people to be proactive and call us right now if they don't have a ballot."
Jamison says ballots were delivered to the postal facility in Spokane on Oct. 16th.
Residents requesting a replacement ballot can do so by calling the county elections office, or by going to voteWA.gov.
Natural gas ballot initiative may be unconstitutional
Initiative 2066 on the November ballot in Washington aims to block regulation of natural gas, but the complex measure might run afoul of the state constitution.
It’s a requirement that goes all the way back to ancient Rome: Laws can only cover one subject at a time, to make sure people are clear what they’re voting on. That single-subject requirement is enshrined in the Washington state constitution.
"You don't want somebody to sneak a topic into legislation where there's not enough fair warning to the legislators or to the voters [in the ballot title]," University of Washington Law Professor Hugh Spitzer told KUOW public radio.
Backers say Initiative 2066 is about one thing: protecting consumer access to natural gas. But the measure would undo various state and local laws, ranging from building codes to utility planning.
Spitzer said the measure likely runs afoul of the single-subject rule.
"Initiatives tend to be one sided, and so they don't benefit from the give and take of the legislative process," Spitzer said.
Opponents say they plan on going to court to stop it, if voters approve it.
WA homeless service funding shrinks along with real estate sales
In Washington, the slow housing market is having a consequence you probably haven’t heard about: Less money to help people who are homeless.
Nearly all of the state’s funding for homeless services comes from document recording fees that people pay when they buy or refinance homes. As real estate transactions have dropped, so have the fees being collected. This fiscal year, there’s a projected shortfall of about $250 million.
Michele Thomas is from the nonprofit Washington Low Income Housing Alliance.
“When people hear this, they should be really, really alarmed,” she told Northwest Public Broadcasting. “Nobody wants cuts to homeless services. Nobody wants homeless shelters to close. Nobody wants to see an increase in unsheltered homelessness on our streets.”
"This work is already really stressful," said Sam Jackle, who works in homelessness services in Walla Walla County. "So when there's uncertainty around whether or not there's enough funds or where the funds will come from, that just kind of amplifies that.
For the past two years, the Legislature has backfilled the budget hole. But analysts are predicting a deficit in the coming session. And Thomas said she’s worried there won’t be enough to cover the gap.
Got an election-related complaint? Spokane's U.S. attorney's office is all ears.
Spokane Assistant U.S. Attorney Frieda Zimmerman has the election beat this fall. She’s the person assigned by her office to review complaints related to voting.
“We don’t have issues with polling places, but generally the type of things that we could see, but always hope not to see, is voter intimidation, any types of threats to election workers, and any concerns about ballots not going where they’re supposed to go or any type of interference in that process,” she told SPR News.
Zimmerman has been the Department of Justice’s elections officer for eastern Washington since 2022. But this is her first presidential election and she’s very aware of the potential for shenanigans. She wants people to understand they have a place to report things that seem unusual.
“In all elections it’s important for the Department of Justice to make sure that there’s public confidence in the electoral process and one way that we can do that is by providing a local point of contact within the department so that the public can report any type of potential violations that they see happening,” she said.
Zimmerman says her job is to review the reports that come in and route them to the appropriate agencies to be investigated. She also refers complaints to the Department of Justice office in Washington, D.C. so that the agency can track cases in the Inland Northwest.
Online map points to ‘spooky houses’ in Spokane area
If you’re looking to scare up Inland Northwest homes decked out for Halloween, you can consult on online guide.
The Google map is called “Spokane Spooky Houses,” and Kevin King and his family have been updating it since they created it four years ago.
King told SPR News he recognized that people drive by to see Christmas lights during the holidays, and he thought it was likely people drive by houses decorated for Halloween as well.
“It was just us driving around and finding other places and adding them to the map,” he said. “But then this year, especially, we've had a lot of people just message us and saying, ‘Hey, please add us.’”
This year, King’s map shows more than 120 Spooky Houses, including a few in Idaho.
King said he starts putting the map together mid-September and is still adding houses on the map up until Halloween itself.
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Reporting was contributed by Brandon Hollingsworth, John Ryan, Susan Shain, Doug Nadvornick and Monica Carrillo-Casas.