Today's headlines:
- Spokane County Regional Animal Protection Service is over its capacity for care, but they don’t have too many animals. They have too few employees.
- A Seattle science organization is joining three Spokane groups to help biotech researchers develop and build their products and companies.
- SPR's Doug Nadvornick chats with the reporters who broke the story about the investigation into Spokesman-Review editor Rob Curley.
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Spokane County Regional Animal Protection Service (SCRAPS) is over its capacity for care.
This means that the shelter has some vacancies in its staffing, not that there are too many animals.
Shelter Operations Manager Nick Hobbs-Doyle says the county is going through a budget crunch, and SCRAPS is trying to anticipate whether or not they will lose staff.
NICK HOBBS-DOYLE: "We’re preparing, but at the same time, without the bodies, the people to do the work, we don’t want to create what would be like a hoarding situation outside the facility where we’re not able to provide that adequate care."
Hobbs-Doyle says the public can help by adopting animals. He noted that SCRAPS partners with some animal nonprofits that can help the shelter find homes, too.
Animal control is still happening. Hobbs-Doyle says there are legal expectations that SCRAPS must fulfill.
He notes that there is a backlog in spays and neutering the animals since there isn’t a veterinarian on staff. So there may be a little wait before someone’s new best friend can go home.
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A Seattle science organization is joining three Spokane groups to help biotech researchers develop and build their products and companies.
Marc Cummings from Life Science Washington says the goal is to provide scientists with business mentoring.
MARC CUMMINGS: “Oftentimes it's a grad student, a doctor, a nurse, maybe someone with a PhD that spent years in the medical field, which makes them eminently qualified to invent a new medical device or therapy. But it's not surprising that those folks wouldn't have the skillset to go raise tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, have access to capital investors and sort of the skills of building a company.”
Cummings says the partnership will work to match scientists with business veterans to help with their unique needs.
Two of the Spokane organizations are business groups, Greater Spokane and Launchpad Northwest. The third is the Health Sciences and Service Authority, which issues startup grants to life scientists in Spokane County.
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Washington Senator Patty Murray convened state leaders yesterday to discuss Washington’s efforts to regulate artificial intelligence. SPR’s Audrey Nelson has the story.
The roundtable discussion was part of a broader push from Murray and other lawmakers to build guardrails around AI. In recent weeks, tech executives and policymakers alike have raised concerns about the technology’s risks.
Murray says that, ideally, the federal government would regulate the technology. But in the meantime, she hopes states will act.
During Thursday’s roundtable, state leaders brought up the idea of “auditing” AI products with independent agencies.
Yuki Ishizuka leads technology policy for the state attorney general’s office. He said government regulation is essential, but tricky to pull off.
YUKI ISHIZUKA: "All the expertise, the knowledge about how these things work and how to evaluate them, reside in these tech companies. And it’s hard to hire them to government work because they’re getting paid so well."
Other topics raised at the roundtable included worker security, data privacy and chatbot protections for minors.
I'm Audrey Nelson, reporting.
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Communities in Spokane, Stevens, Pend Oreille and Okanogan counties are among those nominated for a federal development program.
Washington Governor Bob Ferguson nominated 99 low-income and rural communities across Washington state for the program. It’s known as Opportunity Zones 2.0. It encourages investors, developers and financial institutions to fund development in exchange for tax incentives. A first generation of the program launched in 2018.
The new designations will take effect January 1, 2027.
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Debate is swirling in Washington state about whether voters should keep or repeal a new income tax on high earners.
A key issue is whether the so-called "millionaire's tax" might one day expand to include households making less money.
Rian Watt is campaigning to save the income tax.
He says the question of lowering the income threshold is not on the ballot and would be unpopular.
RIAN WATT: The governor has been really, really clear that he will veto any attempt to lower the threshold. Senior members of the Legislature have also been clear that they opposed any effort to lower the threshold.
Jaime Herrera Beutler is a former congresswoman campaigning to overturn the income tax. She doesn't believe that the tax will stay on millionaires only.
JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER: I mean, I am way past the pinky promise thing with lawmakers.
She said that two years ago, the state legislature passed a law to completely ban income taxes — only to undo it when the millionaire's tax came up last session.
Voters will decide the fate of the income tax during this November's election.
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Two major players in the Inland Northwest are combining their expertise on wildfires. Washington State University (WSU) and Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories launched a research partnership that aims to prevent fires before they start.
The partnership has two phases. Phase one focuses on identifying wildfire-related challenges. Phase two involves developing solutions for those challenges.
David Whitehead is Schweitzer’s president.
DAVID WHITEHEAD: "When you go into the research phase, let's stand up in front of a blank whiteboard and just write down problems that we're seeing before we jump right to solution space. Because if we haven't clearly identified the problem or the opportunities, we might head down a road that is not productive or fruitful."
Schweitzer, a for-profit company, has experience monitoring and protecting electric power systems. Faults in those power systems — especially in dry conditions — can play a role in starting fires.
WSU will contribute research on forestry and artificial intelligence tools to Schweitzer’s existing knowledge base.
Whitehead says the Spokane Complex Wildfires this summer were a “tipping point” for the partnership.
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If you’re worried about driving in the snow this winter, there’s a class for you. The Idaho Transportation Department and Idaho State Police are teaming up to offer free winter driving classes in the panhandle.
Classes will be offered almost every week from now until December. The first one is Saturday, October 10.
It’s classroom instruction only — no driving. Topics will include preparing for winter, controlling your vehicle on snow and ice and sharing the road with snowplows.
Classes fill up quickly, so book your spot at itd.idaho.gov.
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While the Cowles Company’s investigation into allegations against Spokesman-Review editor Rob Curley continues, SPR’s Doug Nadvornick sat down with the reporters who broke the story.
Rob Curley’s future as editor of the Spokesman-Review is in doubt. Curley is the architect of a plan to transfer ownership of the newspaper to a nonprofit organization called the Comma Community Journalism Lab.
Curley is also accused of bullying employees, among other things. He has been suspended, pending an internal investigation.
Range Media first wrote in August about disagreements in the newsroom related to wildfire coverage. Wilson Criscione, the investigations editor at InvestigateWest, read Range’s coverage.
WILSON CRISCIONE: I was just wondering, like any reader, like, what actually happened? Like, what led to this suspension? And I got a call a couple weeks later in August from one reporter who knew what was going on and told me everything that they knew, and by that point, I wasn't sure if we were going to do a story. It's not exactly the story that we would always do at Investigate West.
DN: Not long after that, Criscione went to a Northwest Press Club meeting. Daisy Zavala Magaña from Range was there too.
WC: And there were no Spokesman-Review reporters there, and towards the end of it, it was — Daisy and I were talking about, just kind of wondering, what was going on at the Spokesman-Review and kind of sharing what we had heard, and it just made sense to do a collaboration at that point because Range had done some of the work before and breaking the initial story, and I could bring kind of what I knew, and so that's kind of how it got started.
DN: So when the two of you sat down, you figured out you should probably do something like this. How do you determine who does what, and how does that partnership work?
WC: It's a good question. So, you know, we are still trying to figure out, like, the best system for this at Investigate West, because we do collaborations pretty often. But I think with this, we had a list of people that we wanted to reach out to, you know, based on some pre-reporting, and we literally just made a spreadsheet of, like, these are the sources that we want to talk to. This is what they might have to say. And then just kind of divided up from there. And then, like, we'd tag, like, okay, well, did we talk to them or not? So that's kind of how we did that.
DZM: I think a lot of people were scared to even talk to us off the record at first, but then I think slowly, when they thought about it, I think when they talked to each other or when they gave us, like, a chance to kind of explain what we were doing and why we were, you know, chasing this story, I think slowly, like, more people were open to just talking to us, and then, you know, pulling out threads led to more people and more people.
WC: Yeah, I would just echo that, and it was a unique experience reporting a story that involved interviewing so many other reporters. That was kind of the unique thing, and I wouldn't say it was so much a challenge. I mean, there's challenging aspects because they were so aware of, you know, whatever they say, how it would come off in a story, but, you know, they were also aware of, like, what we actually needed for the story. It actually might have been weirder for them than for us to do those interviews.
DN: To be the people at the receiving end of questions rather than the firing end of questions.
WC: Yeah, exactly.
DN: So for a story like this, what's the goal? Is it to get Rob Curley out? Is it just to expose what he did?
WC: No, the goal was not to get Rob Curley out. I mean, the goal was just to explain what, you know, to answer our initial question that I think we had of what happened here, or, like, what was going on in the newsroom that led to this big decision to put him on paid leave and is causing this internal investigation? I feel like the — especially now with their plan transition to Comma, that's a big deal for our community, and so I think our community needs to know, like, what's going on behind the scenes that is potentially calling into question some aspects of that plan.
DN: And as word about the story started to get out, did that help with your reporting process?
DZM: Yeah, I had some people call me back telling me like, oh, hey, I know that you spoke with this person, and I think it made it easier for them to realize, like, it wouldn't just be them, especially with so much sourcing on background. I think we needed a lot of people to verify the same thing just to make sure we were getting it right.
DN: So how would you characterize the impact of this story?
DZM: I mean, I think it's very layered. I've seen a lot of people kind of go online and vent about their own experiences. People telling me that like, it felt like — I heard it, like, from one person saying that it felt like closure in a sense. I think we're talking about, like, years of concerns about his leadership. So I think that's one layer. But there's also, I think, a lot to still look at. I keep thinking about some of the interviews that I had or some of the comments people made that we just couldn't verify for this story.
But I don't know, I've been seeing that it's been very widely shared and it's starting up a lot of conversation about what it really means to have Rob Curley at the head of Comma and what they're expecting people in leadership right now to do about it.
DN: Daisy Zavala Magaña is a reporter at Range Media. She and Wilson Criscione from InvestigateWest co-authored the story about Rob Curley’s leadership at the Spokesman-Review. You can read it at any of the Range, InvestigateWest or Spokane Public Radio websites.
I’m Doug Nadvornick.
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SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting today was contributed by Doug Nadvornick, Audrey Nelson, Cat Smith and Lisa Leinberger, today’s host and producer.
Thanks for listening. This is SPR.
Web support was provided by Anna Gyure Havlek
