Washington state legislators are headed home after wrapping up their 60-day session Thursday night.
An income tax for millionaires received most of the media attention during the final days of the gathering. But public safety was on the agenda too.
Last year, Sen. Jeff Holy (R-Spokane), the lead Republican on his chamber’s Law and Justice Committee, was one of the architects of a proposal to direct $100 million to local policing agencies so they could hire more cops and other public safety personnel.
It was quite an accomplishment considering the divide between legislators who believe police need more resources and legislators who are skeptical about policing. Holy’s proposal was heavily amended to make it palatable to legislators on both sides.
The Criminal Justice Training Commission created a fund from which local agencies can draw, but the application process isn’t easy. It appears that, finally, some of that money is starting to make its way to police departments. That’s where I started my conversation with Holy.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
DN: I was just reading in the Washington State Standard today or yesterday regarding the $100 million for policing agencies and that money finally starting to be freed. How do you view this just in terms of finally getting some of this money out to where it was you had intended it for it to be?
Jeff Holy: Oh, man, you're asking complex questions. This is a lot of moving parts. It was a policy statement. There's money available. Here's the criteria that has to be met.
CJTC (Criminal Justice Training Commission) was supposed to put together an administrative format that allowed people to have the access to apply. And I mean, for about 10 months, dead airspace. Nobody out there could get everything together. CJTC didn't even have a process yet. It took them a period of time to develop that. And if I remember right, I think I heard that Kent and Black Diamond, both just this week, are the first two that actually have applied for the grant. And Kent was a couple million, I think, and Black Diamond was probably less than a half million on that.
But both of them actually met the criteria, figured out a way to navigate the process that CJTC put in place and got there.
So we're actually seeing some movement on this, although I was getting pretty frustrated with a whole year's worth of non-action on this because it occurred that the criteria was almost prohibitive and the process had not been established. I know there's a bunch of other towns out there, too, that that are, looking at this.
DN: Are there any agencies in your district that are thinking about it or are you hearing that this is just too complicated?
JH: You know, it's not that I think the process is so new here. And I think it's the tenth of a percent sales tax, that you actually have to be first money in. If you don't actually have something like that in place, you can divert the revenue stream to this specific purpose.
I mean, close to me, I've got Colfax, if I remember right. Probably Wenatchee. Who else? One of the Tri Cities, I think. So there's cities out that are looking at this.
There's a half dozen counties that have looked into this that have made inquiries into it. I know everybody's trying to figure out how to navigate this. I'm hoping to see since Kent and Black Diamond broke the ice that the process is viable. It can be accomplished. You start to build that critical masses. Everybody follows when a path has been cut. I see that happening over the next year or so. And if not, maybe I'll try and revisit it and see if we can't get something going.
DN: There's also the bill that that was approved that requires sheriffs to become certified cops, essentially, over a period of time. And that drew a lot of ire from your side of the aisle. Can you explain that the depth of feeling there?
JH: Oh, it's just these are the things that that appear to be as much political messaging as other.
Counties are creatures of state constitution. Cities are creatures of state statute. And the counties out there, there are specific county officers that are defined in the state constitution. They have to be there. Sheriffs are one of them. So it's a constitutionally protected elected position.
I think there's constitutional issues with this bill, and they've been brought up several times and they seem to be ignored. I get a feeling that as soon as this is put in place, that this also will be litigated to determine if it's constitutional, state constitutional viability. And so there's kind of a trying to do something before actually figuring out if it's appropriate. That's part of it.
And quite frankly, the other part is there's a couple of sheriffs that have been fairly vocal about their positions there and refuse to accommodate some of the policy issues the prevailing party would put in place that they would they would like to see accomplished. They're just saying, no, I'm an independent elected position. You're not going to determine specifically outside what my duties are and how I'm going to do my job.
So there's this kind of two schools of thought about this and there appears to be not a lot of room for compromise in the middle. One is going to end up being right when the Supreme Court actually finally gets a hold of this and other be wrong and then we'll move from there.
