Today's headlines:
- A lawsuit over new requirements for law enforcement leaders is moving from Pend Oreille County to Olympia.
- The Kootenai County jail isn't always hitting staffing requirements even though officers are working thousands of hours of overtime.
- Some members of the Spokane Transit Authority board are pushing to get a sales tax renewal in front of voters this August.
Plus, local government journalists team up for a reporter roundtable. RANGE's government and labor reporter Erin Sellers gives updates on the upcoming trials for three Spokane activists who were arrested and charged with conspiracy after last summer's anti-immigration enforcement protest. And SPR's Eliza Billingham offers insight to Spokane City Council's latest move to give renters a "right to cooling."
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SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting contributed by Doug Nadvornick, Amy Radil, Eliza Billingham, Erin Sellers and Owen Henderson.
Owen Henderson hosts and produces the show. Eliza Billingham provides digital support.
TRANSCRIPT
[THEME MUSIC]
OWEN HENDERSON: From Spokane Public Radio, it’s SPR News Today.
I’m Owen Henderson. It’s Friday, April 17, 2026.
On today’s show, the challenge filed by four northeast Washington sheriffs to new state requirements for law enforcement leaders is getting added to a similar lawsuit in Thurston County. That means the case is headed to court in Olympia.
Plus, the Kootenai County jail is sometimes unable to meet staffing requirements, and the sheriff’s office says it’s running out of money to pay what workers it does have for overtime.
And we recap some major events in local politics, including a hearing for demonstrators arrested in last summer’s anti-immigration enforcement protests and a Spokane City Council push to guarantee renters the “right to cooling.”
Those stories and more, coming up on SPR News Today.
[FADE OUT THEME]
A legal challenge to Washington’s newly elevated eligibility requirements for sheriffs is moving from Newport to Olympia.
But the new law may still take effect next month.
Two groups of law enforcement officials are suing the state.
The Washington State Sheriffs Association’s lawsuit is scheduled for a hearing in Thurston County Court on May 1.
Four northeast Washington sheriffs filed the other suit.
The law requires sheriff candidates to undergo background checks and attest that they meet the requirements for office.
Attorney Mark Lamb represents four sheriffs seeking to have the law struck down.
MARK LAMB: “It’s an emergency because my clients for the first time in the state of Washington are being asked to swear a penalty as a condition for filing for office, which nobody has to do.”
OH: Judge Adam Walser presided over the hearing yesterday in Pend Oreille County.
ADAM WALSER: “This case, the interests of justice, require that they be litigated together, in one court, and one opinion be issued that everybody can follow. To do so otherwise would be pretty chaotic.”
OH: Both lawsuits challenge the part of the law that allows the Criminal Justice Training Commission to remove sheriffs if they don’t comply with the certification requirements.
Attorneys for the sheriffs had asked for a preliminary injunction to keep the law from taking effect on May 1.
But Walser rejected that, saying the court in Olympia should address that issue.
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Despite increased pay and benefits, the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office is still having a hard time staffing the county jail.
Captain Jeremy Hyle says that means the jail is sometimes staffed below required minimums even though officers are working thousands of hours of overtime.
JEREMY HYLE: “The sergeants are not calling in people to prevent burnout. We've instructed them that they can call and have 13 people, but when they have six people because so many people call in sick or whatever, they're calling in multiple people on their days off and they're trying to prevent burnout from our people.”
OH: Hyle says the main issue is the job itself.
JH: “The job’s not a desirable job. But if you look at the numbers, we’ve been able to curb that and retain a lot of people and hire a lot of people. But I believe that jails across the country and especially in the state of Idaho are just revolving doors, people coming in, get some experience—I don’t believe anyone grows up playing jailer with their friends.”
Hyle is asking the county for $1.8 million to cover the rest of the year’s anticipated overtime hours for jail staff.
The sheriff’s office does say a handful of new officers will start work in the next few months.
Still, Hyle expects corrections officers will incur roughly 34,000 hours of overtime this year.
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The clock is ticking if Spokane Transit officials want to get a funding proposal in front of voters.
SPR’s Eliza Billingham has more.
ELIZA BILLINGHAM: In 2016, Spokane voters authorized a 0.2% sales tax to help fund Spokane Transit Authority’s long-term goals. That sunsets at the end of 2028.
But the STA is hoping to ask voters to renew the current tax sooner rather than later—possibly even on this August’s ballot.
Council member Kitty Klitzke was recently in the other Washington advocating for funding for the Division Street Bus Rapid Transit.
KLITZKE: “We have a very competitive, high-scoring project proposal right now but we can’t say that we’re funded throughout the life of the project right now. So, if push comes to shove and that’s one of the things that we’re judged against, it’s much better to say that we have addressed that and taken that to the ballot already. So that is the reason for the urgency, not necessarily the expiration date.”
EB: Some STA board members want to delay the ballot measure until February.
The board decided to make a final decision after a special meeting on April 29. They have until May 1 to submit a measure for the August ballot.
I’m Eliza Billingham, reporting.
[SHORT MUSIC BED]
OH: It's been a busy week in Spokane politics, so to look back at a couple of major items, we're joined now by two journalists who've been covering the goings-on.
Eliza Billingham is SPR's local government reporter, and Erin Sellers is the politics and labor reporter at Range Media.
Erin, we'll start with you. This week we saw the first pre-trial hearing for some people arrested after last June's anti-immigration enforcement protests. First, just lay some groundwork for who is charged and with what.
ERIN SELLERS: Yeah. After those June 11th protests, originally there were nine people charged on the federal felony charge of conspiracy. Six people have already taken guilty pleas. It was a really complicated legal thing to where they are going to take a misdemeanor, but they will still have to go back to court to have some conversations around that in a few months. But we've got three people who are going to trial.
They pled ‘not guilty’ to that felony, and that is Jac Archer, Justice Forrall, and Bajan Mavalwalla II. Justices and Jac's attorneys had put in two separate motions, which is a legal term for a request, and they were asking the judge just to dismiss this case. Let's not go to trial.
We have these reasons that we think you should dismiss the case entirely before we even get before a jury. What was their reasoning for dismissing this case? Yeah. Jac Archer's motion was relatively simple.
It was a request to dismiss on First Amendment grounds. Jac's lawyer was saying, ‘Maybe my client did some things that were technically illegal. There were some things at this protest that happened that might have counted as local misdemeanors. There may have been some vandalism. There might have been some refusal to disperse or trespassing. But a lot of those things and a lot of what else happened at the protest could be considered protected speech, possibly.’
Jac's lawyer was arguing, you have a right to speech. You have a right to what you say on Facebook. And what Jac did was protected by the First Amendment. And so he was asking, ‘Hey, judge, please just throw this out because this was First Amendment protected activity.’
Justice's lawyer's motion was a little bit more complicated. They were charged with impeding or trying to impede or injure an officer. And Justice's lawyer was saying, when the statute was originally written, officer meant somebody who was confirmed by Congress, which really archaic. But federal ICE officers wouldn't have been confirmed by Congress. So she was trying to make this point. This statute doesn't even apply to them. And also the property that was potentially being damaged wasn't owned by the federal government. It was owned by federal contractors.
Both of those motions were ultimately dismissed. The judge did say that maybe these were First Amendment protected activities. But what the federal government is arguing is that the intent of the protesters was to injure, impede, otherwise negatively impact federal officers.
And that intent is going to be what they have to prove to a jury in order to convict.
OH: So these motions have been dismissed. Where do things go from here?
ES: A bunch more motions have been filed. We're still, it looks like, going to trial. None of the motions on the table right now are motions to dismiss, but it's motions around what can and can't be discussed at trial. The federal government is like, ‘We don't think you should be able to bring up things like Bajan Mavawalla II's status as a Afghanistan war veteran. We don't think you should be able to talk about the First Amendment at trial.’
And then on the defendant's side, they're mostly asking for, ‘We don't want to be associated with the guilty pleas that were already made by six protesters.’ And Justice's lawyers have asked for Brady List material. So they want the federal government to disclose whether or not any of the federal officers who were there that day have histories of excessive force or history of lying.
OH: So when is the next hearing before things go to trial?
ES: Yeah, there's a hearing set for May 5th, when a lot of this back and forth motion stuff will get decided, as well as likely what's going to be on a questionnaire sent out to potential jurors. Then there is another hearing set for like 8.30 a.m. on the day that this is going to go to trial.
So they have one last little chance to hash stuff out on the morning of May 18th, and then it hypothetically goes to trial.
OH: Thank you for sharing that reporting with us, Erin.
Now, Eliza, you've been following some things at Spokane City Council, including a prospective measure that would guarantee renters a “right to cooling.” How did this proposal come up?
EB: Well, this is actually kind of the next step in what Spokane and the state have been doing recently in regards to renting and cooling apartments. In 2024, Spokane passed an ordinance that said landlords can't prohibit renters from putting, like, a portable air conditioning unit into their apartment. And this legislative session, the state did that too.
So now that's a statewide rule that landlords can't stop a tenant from doing that in most cases. But now this proposed ordinance that they're brainstorming is saying, not only can landlords not prohibit a portable air conditioning unit, but they have to provide a certain way for renters to cool their apartment.
And it comes from this idea that bedrooms that are really hot are pretty dangerous, especially for people who are elderly or for young people as well. So it's an inhabitability issue.
OH: Now, this was introduced in committee. Essentially, council members were brainstorming about this. Where did the conversations about this measure go from here?
EB: A lot of it was other council members who aren't necessarily against the idea, but they are concerned about enforcement, because you're not going to have a temperature gauge in everyone's bedroom to know if it's 80 degrees or not. And it's also like, if it's 80 degrees for five seconds, does that matter?
But what lead sponsor, Paul Dillon is imagining is a complaint driven rule so that if renters are in a really hot bedroom for a long time, this gives them a way to complain and say, my landlord needs to help me out.
Often ordinances like this, people imagine and debate over cost to landlords, cost to renters. But this also costs the city money to go through these processes, to pay code enforcement officers.
And the city's in a really tight spot right now. They're trying to cut back. They're facing a lot of budget constraints. So anything like this, city council members are going to be and are concerned about what the costs to the city are to make sure they're not just passing rules that they can't do anything about.
OH: Given that challenge, how likely do we think this is to actually go anywhere?
EB: So the ordinance does have three co-sponsors already: Paul Dillon, Sarah Dixit, and Kitty Klitzke. And it only needs four votes to pass. And I do think you're going to get either Zack Zappone or Kate Tellis to support it. But even if it does pass, this doesn't go into effect until 2031. So it's not like it would help renters this summer or anything like that.
OH: Erin Sellers covers politics and labor for Range Media and Eliza Billingham covers local government for SPR News. Thank you both.
ES: Thank you.
EB: Thank you so much.
[SHORT MUSIC BED]
OH: SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting today was contributed by Doug Nadvornick, Amy Radil, Eliza Billingham, Erin Sellers and me, Owen Henderson.
I’m also your host and producer. Eliza Billingham provides digital support.
Thanks for listening, and have a good weekend. We’ll be back in your feeds next week.
It’s SPR.
