WA Supreme Court hears arguments on public defense caseload standards
For nearly three hours Wednesday, the Washington Supreme Court heard from people who support and oppose a state bar association proposal to lower maximum caseloads for public defenders.
The bar association’s goal is to update what it considers outdated standards and give public defenders more time per case.
But many city and county governments don’t think the proposal is a good idea. They argue it would require hiring more attorneys and support staff to adequately handle cases, and that would take money they don’t have. A lawsuit that sought more state money for public defense was dismissed in September.
Some of the people who spoke Tuesday argued that a statewide approach is the wrong way to go. Okanogan County Prosecuting Attorney Albert Lin said more populated counties should handle public defense workloads differently than sparsely-populated ones.
“The one-size-fits-all mandate that is being considered will not help,” Lin said.
Jason Schwarz, past chair of the Council on Public Defense, disagreed. He told the justices separate approaches for different jurisdictions would be pointless in addressing public defense workloads.
“Standards are not standards if they don’t apply equally across the board,” Schwarz said.
Sophia Byrd McSherry, of the state Office of Public Defense, said the agency supports the bar association’s proposal. But she said the office is also open to a modified version that would give some jurisdictions more time to work with state officials and adjust to the new caseload limits.
At the end of the hearing, Washington Chief Justice Steven Gonzalez thanked the people who shared their opinions. He noted that the court next convenes December 4, but the justices haven’t decided whether they’ll take up the caseload proposal at that session.
Spokane City Council holds makeup meeting today
The Spokane City Council’s regular Monday meeting was called off this week because of a threat posted online. The council will convene today to pick up the business it was to have considered at the Monday session.
Beginning at 11:00 a.m., the council will hold a briefing session, go into a closed session, then hold what would have been Monday’s regular meeting.
The agenda calls for council members to vote on the Spokane Airport Board budget, a contract amendment for the Empire Health Foundation to administrate a housing navigation center, increase an opioid response fund, and distribute federal ARPA funds, among other matters.
The meeting will be streamed online at https://my.spokanecity.org/citycable5/live and https://www.facebook.com/spokanecitycouncil.
Columbia River treaty conference continues at Gonzaga
The people negotiating a new Columbia River Treaty are providing details of an “agreement in principle” between Canada and the United States.
Tribal people and other groups say the successor to the 1964 Columbia River Treaty must have a broader vision. Jay Johnson represents the Sylix Okanagan Nation in the Canadian negotiating group.
“We obviously had a treaty that was focused exclusively on flood control and power generation and reflected the era of the day in the Sixties,” he said Wednesday. “You know, we build it. We conquer nature. We’ll make a better world for everyone. And we left out the ecosystem. Left out the communities along the river, left out indigenous voices, left out salmon.”
Negotiators said the new version will include a variety of provisions to address environmental and cultural concerns.
Roland Springer from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said there’s also widespread support for tribal efforts to reestablish salmon populations above the dams.
“I hope we will see the benefits within the U.S. as well as Canada over the next 20 years.”
That’s the projected length of the new treaty, assuming it’s ratified by the U.S. Congress and the Canadian Parliament.
AI hiring models biased by race, gender, UW study finds
Artificial intelligence is often used in screening job applicants, but new research shows the models have biases.
University of Washington doctoral student Kyra Wilson tested 500 job applications across nine job industries using three large language models commonly used in hiring.
The results found preferences for men over women and for white applicants over non-white ones.
Wilson told KUOW public radio the group most affected by the bias was black men.
“In some cases [it was] a very severe outcome, where, in comparison to white men, Black men were preferred zero percent of the time by no model for no career,” she said. “And so this is a huge problem when these technologies are used in society.”
Wilson said most of the large language models are trained on stacks and stacks of existing data, so biases that currently exist are replicated in AI.
To address that, Wilson said, there needs to be more focus on evaluating and improving the models.
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Reporting was contributed by Brandon Hollingsworth, Doug Nadvornick and Libby Denkman.