Note: The following e-newsletter was sent to Sen. Padden’s subscribers November 1, 2024. To subscribe to Sen. Padden’s newsletter, click here.

Dear friends and neighbors,

The lack of safety on our roads and highways continues to be a serious crisis in Washington.

Traffic fatalities remain at a record high, based on the latest figures from the Washington Traffic Safety Commission. Excessive speed is a glaring reason for this alarming statistic, because it reduces a driver’s reaction time.

This past Sunday an estimated 45 vehicles were involved in a terrible chain-reaction collision on southbound Interstate 5 between Seattle and Tacoma. Fortunately, there were no fatalities and only a few minor injuries, but our state’s largest freeway was closed for several hours, causing a backup of up to 5 miles and forcing many drivers to make time-consuming detours.

Collisions like this are often associated with weather conditions, like fog blanketing a roadway. But this report by Seattle-based KOMO-TV had a Washington State Patrol trooper citing excessive speed by drivers as the cause of Sunday’s wrecks, not weather.

The safety of our roadways is diminished further by factors like impaired driving, which has not received the legislative attention it deserves, and the very low number of law-enforcement officers in Washington.

In fact, for several years Washington has ranked 51st in America (all 50 states plus the District of Columbia) in the number of officers per capita. When drivers don’t see officers on patrol, they may be more inclined to act illegally. The same is true for other lawbreakers, which helps explains why our communities feel less safe and secure.

Fortunately, steps are being taken at the state level to correct this problem.

The Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission has worked with legislators and other state officials in recent years to expand the number of criminal-justice training facilities in our state. They include the new training facility west of Spokane, operated jointly by Fairchild Air Force Base and Spokane County. Other new training facilities are in Pasco and Vancouver.

Last week, I attended a news conference for the new regional law-enforcement training academy scheduled to open in February in the Snohomish County community of Arlington. The many state and local elected officials I joined there included 39th District Sen. Keith Wagoner of Sedro-Woolley; Sen. John Lovick of Mill Creek, who serves the 44th District; 21st District Sen. Marko Liias, from Everett; Sen. June Robinson, also from Everett, representing the 38th District; and Sen. Sharon Shewmake of Bellingham, from the 42nd District.

Monica Alexander, a former Washington State Patrol captain who is now executive director of the Criminal Justice Training Commission, emceed the event. A link to TVW’s coverage of the news conference is here.

A couple of years ago I had introduced a bill to expand access to criminal-justice training in Washington, knowing it would help newly hired officers to complete their required training and get out on the streets sooner.

As Monica Alexander noted at last week’s news conference, the wait time for an officer to start training used to be about one year, when the only option was the state training center in Burien. Now it’s down to 30 days or less. This is very encouraging.

Thank you, as always, for the honor of representing you in Olympia!

Best Regards,

Senator Mike Padden

 Employee Ownership commission to meet here Tuesday; important milestone reached

The director of the Office of Employee Ownership at the state Department of Commerce recently shared some good news: the state Department of Revenue approved and granted the first $100,000 tax credit to a new Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP).

As prime sponsor of the bipartisan legislation that created Washington’s ESOP law in 2023, I see the announcement as a wonderfully appropriate way to end the month of October, which is ESOP month!

The next regular meeting of the Employee Ownership Program commission will happen from 10 a.m. to noon this coming Tuesday at the Spokane Conservation District office in Spokane Valley. I am among the four legislators who serve on the commission along with representatives of the private and public sectors.

This link allows for attending the meeting virtually, on the Zoom platform; the meeting ID is 896 5401 1387, and the passcode is 799570.

Here’s a link to a new source of information about the ESOP program: a question-and-answer interview I did with The ESOP Association, published on page 19 of its September report.

New fields officially open at Liberty Lake sports complex     

Last week, I attended the ribbon-cutting for the new sports fields at the HUB Sports Center in Liberty Lake. Others participating in the ceremony included Spokane County Commissioner Mary Kuney and Liberty Lake Mayor Chris Kaminskas.

The new fields will be used for several sports, including lacrosse, football, soccer and T-ball. They complement the indoor court/studio space the HUB has supplied for more than 20 years.

In 2023, I was able to help secure just over $1 million in the state capital budget for this project, which costs about $7 million overall and saw strong engagement from the Valley Chamber.

After months of work…it’s open!

It was my privilege to attend Tuesday’s opening – or reopening, to be more accurate – of the new and improved Bigelow Gulch Road between Spokane Valley and Spokane. The road had been closed for months to enable major improvements to the Bigelow Gulch-Forker Urban Connector. This is important both for commuters and freight mobility. More information is available from this KXLY-TV report.

From the calendar:
Recent and upcoming events

• Hundreds of us participated in the ninth annual Walk for Life Northwest in downtown Spokane this past Sunday.
• Between legislative sessions, members of Senate and House committees often go out into the field to collect information related to issues that are or could come before them – and if that means a visit to a state facility, local legislators are often invited to join in, as a courtesy and to offer some local knowledge.
  That’s what had me spending part of Tuesday with members of the Senate Human Services Committee. They were touring the Airway Heights Correctional Facility as part of a larger round of visits they are making to Department of Corrections-managed facilities in eastern Washington.
• On November 12 there will be a celebration of the Spokane Conservation District’s effort to meet our area’s growing need for a permanent structure that can host farmers’ markets and offer a fully functional commercial kitchen. This work is transforming an old rock quarry scale house, on land purchased by the conservation district in 2017, into the Scale House Market & Kitchen. The capital budgets approved in 2023 and this year provided a total of $1,050,000 toward this project.

Contact us!

If you have a question or concern about state government, please do not hesitate to contact our office. During the interim we are conducting business from our district office in Spokane Valley. We are here to serve you!

Phone: 509-921-2460

Email address: Mike.Padden@leg.wa.gov

PLEASE NOTE: Any email or documents you provide to this office may be subject to disclosure under RCW 42.56. If you would prefer to communicate by phone, please contact Sen. Padden’s Olympia office at (360) 786-7606.

To request public records from Sen. Padden, please contact Randi Stratton, the designated public records officer for the Secretary of the Senate and Senate members.