Today's headlines:
- Spokane City Council moves $100,000 from the police budget to create a grant for the Spokane Immigrant Rights Coalition.
- Panhandle Health District releases a scathing warning against kratom as Spokane and Spokane Valley consider citywide bans.
- The Washington Senate and House released their operating budget proposals for the state.
- Advocates for Washington's proposed 'millionaire's tax' are alleging fraud. They say their names are showing up on the "opposing" list as the bill treks through the legislature.
Plus, as a bill to add tribal representatives to the Washington Board of Natural Resources heads to a House committee hearing today, we bring you a conversation with the chairman of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, Jarred-Michael Erickson.
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SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting contributed by Eliza Billingham, Doug Nadvornick, Sarah Mizes-Tan, Scott Greenstone and Owen Henderson.
Eliza Billingham provides digital support.
Owen Henderson hosts and produces the show.
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TRANSCRIPT
[THEME MUSIC]
OWEN HENDERSON: From Spokane Public Radio, it’s SPR News Today.
I’m Owen Henderson. It’s Tuesday, February 24, 2026.
On today’s show, Spokane is redirecting some money from the police budget for direct assistance to immigrant and refugee families.
Plus, with Democrats’ so-called “millionaires’ tax” moving through the Washington legislature, lawmakers are trying to reconcile budget proposals while advocates claim opposition to the tax has been fraudulently inflated.
And we’ll bring you a conversation with the chairman of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation on energy sovereignty, Indian Health Service reform and more.
Those stories and more, coming up on SPR News Today.
[FADE OUT THEME]
One hundred thousand dollars originally designated for community policing in Spokane will now be used for direct assistance to immigrant and refugee families.
Spokane City Council approved an ordinance last night [MON] to grant those dollars to the Spokane Immigrant Rights Coalition.
The group is made up of nine local nonprofits.
The coalition says it’ll use the money to help local immigrant families with emergency needs like transportation, rent, legal fees, or food.
Multiple councilmembers said this is a unique step from the police department to build trust with community members.
Here’s Council President Betsy Wilkerson.
BETSEY WILKERSON: “I really want to thank Chief Hall for looking at his budget, his community engagement support funding, and saying there is more to policing than just arresting people. There is actually taking care of people.”
OH: Progressive advocacy group FUSE Washington was originally a fiscal sponsor of the grant.
But according to a statement from the coalition, when the city made it clear that no funds could be used for lobbying efforts, FUSE stepped away.
The fiscal sponsor is now Muslims for Community Action & Support.
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The City Council also last night introduced an ordinance that would ban selling kratom citywide. They plan to vote on it next week.
Meanwhile, health officials in north Idaho also have the psychotropic drug in their sights. SPR’s Doug Nadvornick reports.
DOUG NADVORNICK: The Panhandle Health District has issued an advisory to warn about kratom’s potential negative health effects.
Kratom comes from the leaves of a tree found mostly in southeast Asia. It’s widely available in many forms in the U.S. It is not a drug regulated by the federal government.
Lower dosages cause users to become more alert. Higher dosages can cause more opioid-like effects.
Some public health advocates say kratom is a viable harm reduction method for people who are addicted to more dangerous substances like fentanyl.
The Food and Drug Administration reports that kratom can cause liver and kidney damage, as well as heart and neurological problems.
Panhandle Health District Medical Director Gregory Pennock says Kootenai County’s coroner told him north Idaho residents have died as a result of ingesting it.
Pennock is urging people to avoid using any products that contain kratom, especially those with the component 7-OH. He encourages people who have had bad reactions to the drug to report them to the health district.
I’m Doug Nadvornick reporting.
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OH: Democrats in the Washington legislature have released supplemental budget plans that rely heavily in future years on their proposed income tax on high income earners.
State Government reporter Sarah Mizes-Tan has more.
SARAH MIZES-TAN: The Senate would use about 2 billion dollars from the tax on millionaires— the House a little less—to balance the budget starting in 2029.
In the short term, Democrats would draw from the rainy day fund, revenues from the state’s carbon market, and surplus from a pension fund for firefighters and law enforcement officers.
That’s despite plans to follow the Governor’s recommendations to make significant cuts to childcare subsidies, higher education and transitional kindergarten.
Lawmakers say these cuts were necessary, given the priority of maintaining other services like food assistance and health care coverage that were undercut by Congress.
In Olympia, I’m Sarah Mizes-Tan.
OH: The state House and Senate have less than three weeks to reconcile their plans before the session ends.
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A number of union groups and progressive advocates are alleging fraud … in the state legislature’s public hearings for bills. KUOW’s Scott Greenstone has more.
SCOTT GREENSTONE: If a member of the public wants to register support or opposition a bill in the state legislature, they can do that online before a hearing.
But this weekend, Democratic state Sen. Victoria Hunt was surprised to find her name registered as opposing a bill she helped introduce.
VICTORIA HUNT: "Somebody had signed in without my permission, on my behalf."
SG: She and other Democrats call this bill the millionaire’s tax. It has a hearing on Tuesday, and over 100,000 names have appeared opposing it, but at least some are leaders of unions backing the tax and others who support it.
Tens of thousands more are allegedly duplicates. Tax supporters are asking the Attorney General and House clerk to investigate.
I’m Scott Greenstone in Seattle.
[SHORT MUSIC BED]
OH: From natural resources to health policy to energy, tribes in the Northwest and across the U.S. work and maintain government-to-government relationships with states and the federal government on a variety of issues affecting tribal citizens and land.
I'm joined now by Jarred Michael Erickson, the chairman of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, to share his perspectives on some of these topics.
Chairman, thank you so much for your time this morning.
JARRED-MICHAEL ERICKSON: Glad to be here, thank you.
OH: So just to jump right in, you've already testified to the Washington Legislature this session on a bill that would add tribal representatives to the state board of natural resources.
That bill has now been updated to specify there should be two new seats, one for tribes from the west side of the state and one for tribes from the east side.
Yours and other tribes already do that government-to-government work with Washington and co-manage lots of lands. Walk me through where you stand on this legislation.
JME: Yeah, so this won't get rid of the consultation requirements for each tribe in their respective areas, treaty areas or their tribal trust areas. Just being in those conversations in those rooms and educate the people in those seats as well, I think it's important.
So having their representation from both east and west side is important because our issues are the same in some regards but different in others. So I think having their representation from the west side gives a perspective that I don't necessarily have on all issues and then vice versa here on the east side.
OH: Yeah, you weren't exactly shy during the public testimony about, kind of, throwing the Confederated Colville Tribes hat in the ring, so to speak, to put a representative on the board. Tell me a little bit more about what makes y'all specifically qualified to weigh in on these matters.
JME: Almost all tribes are natural resource-based tribes, right? But we're, well, one, we have the biggest reservation in Washington state. Two, we have 39 million acres we cover when it comes to things that deal with natural resources and agricultural resources up into Canada, Oregon, Idaho, and Washington.
So we have a big area we cover, and we have a lot of great expertise. Our natural resource programs with 500, 600 employees. Our fish and wildlife program alone is, I think, close to 180 now.
We have a lot of expertise. I was a biologist before I was on council. I know that realm.
My dad was a silviculturist and forester, so I know that pretty well. I think we'd have good representation on that board just knowing we know a lot of the issues we work with. A lot of our introduction of species like lynx more recently on our reservation antelope.
We do a lot with forestry and wildfire management. You name it, we pretty much cover it. So I think we'd be a good candidate for it no matter who that is at our tribe.
OH: Aside from state-level policies, you've also been advocating for policy changes at the federal level. One of those bills has to do with purchased and referred care improvement in the Indian Health Service. First, do you mind setting a bit of a baseline and explaining how healthcare through IHS is supposed to work, and then we'll talk a little bit about this bill.
JME: When you go to IHS, you're not able to do everything within our clinics, our facilities. A lot of those are referred out to specialty care. Those services are referred out to these other providers to help get that done.
Those will be paid after the procedure, whatever the individual's getting seen for, but those bills haven't been getting paid. I mean, I've had my own personal experiences of not getting my bills paid and going to collections, whether they're not supposed to go to collections at all, period.
But they do, and then there's no reimbursement or process that we've had to get people's money back if they have paid them when they've gone to collections or if they had to pay them out of pocket themselves to be reimbursed.
So we're trying to make it law to require that and then not to be reported to any credit bureaus, credit agencies. So it ends up impacting people's credit negatively and then increasing higher interest rates when they're going for a home loan, a vehicle loan, or a personal loan, right?
Then they're getting higher interest rates on those and paying more. So not only are they paying more on bills they shouldn't be having to pay, but they're also paying more money down the road when it comes to higher interest rates.
OH: And so it sounds like the bill that you're advocating for would make those changes, would tighten that up and ensure that folks are actually getting the money to pay for the care that they need. Is that correct?
JME: Yeah, and so it's been such a struggle with our membership and they've been frustrated at us when it was out of our control, being we were a direct service tribe before. So we finally got those services taken over on October 1st, 2025 here.
We 638-ed our facility, so it's under our control now. But the biggest thing that we saw was that there was over $40 million worth of carryover due to PRC money specifically for bills that haven't been paid. And so it's no wonder people were upset and people, I'm sure, passed away, had other things that could have been more preventable happen because things were left unchecked, unseen.
Some people didn't want to go because they're worried their bills wouldn't get paid. So there's a lot of preventive stuff that could have happened too that wasn't being done.
And so it doesn't matter who you are, where you're at in the government, where you're at in the tribe, we're all being seen by the same people, the same clinics, and just not having our bills paid. The federal government's responsibility is to pay those and provide that health care.
OH: Yeah, you mentioned earlier the 638 process. And just to clarify for listeners, that is when a tribe takes over the operation of health clinics from the Indian Health Service and then provides the care to their own membership.
Changing topics. The Confederated Colville Tribes recently got some air time for the microgrids that are coming to the reservation. Tell me a little bit about this project.
JME: So we've been pushing towards energy sovereignty and this is kind of one of those first steps. So we have our communities that are impacted a lot here by natural disasters, including wildfire, wind storms, ice storms. And so one of our communities, Inchelium community in particular, has a lot of issues with power outages.
They're on Avista and sometimes there's outages that have lasted a week. And so these microgrids help. We're hoping to get some of our smaller communities online, but the main thing is having access to gas, any direction from Inchelium.
If the gas station isn't running, it's 30, 45 minutes anywhere to even get to a gas station or a store. So these microgrids will help keep those essential services online and running while the outage is going on. And then also they can produce power to even put back into the system potentially and sell back.
So we're going to be putting solar on our government center, as well as potentially covered parking, which will also help with snow removal, but also produce power. We've done some EV chargers already, and so the microgrid is kind of the next step of work on helping with our government services as well for the same purposes. We've had fires burn right around the government center and knock power out for an extended period of time.
Might not be, you know, crazy long because they're usually pretty good about getting power back on in a timely manner, but for the longer outages we have had, we want to make sure our members aren't impacted, at least not if they can. So that's kind of the first step with these microgrids.
OH: You used the term energy sovereignty. Do you mind explaining that for me?
JME: There's all forms of sovereignty. Financial sovereignty has been a big thing for us as a tribe. We've been pushing towards energy, that’s a big one as well.
I mean, we have the two biggest hydropower facilities in the country on our reservation, yet we still have high electric bills for our elders. Some might be homes that aren't energy efficient, but $500 a month on a fixed income for an elder is just unacceptable for them to pay towards. So we're trying to figure out how we can acquire, potentially acquire utilities and also build our own infrastructure out.
Microgrids is a part of that, but we're looking into microhydro, solar, and different other energy forms to help feed our grid. And then try to help our membership kind of keep their costs down as much as we can, but also the fact that we're not relying on anyone else for our power needs is the whole point. So we're not at someone else's mercy.
OH: Chairman Jarred-Michael Erickson, thank you so much for your time this morning.
JME: Thank you. Appreciate it.
[SHORT MUSIC BED]
OH: SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting today was contributed by Eliza Billingham, Doug Nadvornick, Sarah Mizes-Tan, Scott Greenstone and me, Owen Henderson.
I’m also the host and producer. Eliza Billingham provides digital support.
Thanks for listening.
It’s SPR.
