On May 15th Renton City Council voted unanimously to place a new drug ordinance on second and final reading at the May 22nd Council Meeting

In a suprise recovery, the Washington State Legislature succeeded in getting a new drug law approved through both chambers and then signed by the Governor over just two days. The special session was convened at least in part to try to prevent every county and city across the State from coming up with their own drug ordinances.

Renton’s ordinance is complete and simply needs a second reading and council roll-call vote on Monday, followed by the Mayor’s signature on Tuesday to become law.  Some residents are wondering if this will still happen given the State law that just passed.

I think the Renton ordinance can and should still go forward, and Ruth Perez, a council member I spoke with, shares this view.  Council Member Perez reminds me the new state law specifically gives cities the authority to control drug paraphernalia, and Renton’s ordinance includes this element.  Controlling paraphernalia is important for at least a couple reasons.  It’s dangerous for smoking-pipes and heroin needles with residue to be lying all over parks and sidewalks where children and others can access them and potentially overdose on them, and it’s easier to prosecute public drug consumption if paraphernalia is itself a crime since often the drugs are consumed by the time the officer is present to make an arrest.

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Renton Mayor Armondo Pavone (center right) addresses questions about the proposed Renton drug ordinance at a Kennydale Neighborhood Association meeting last Tuesday

The Council will be discussing a new drug law at Monday’s Committee of the Whole meeting at 5:45 PM, and then again at the Council Meeting at 7:00.  The agenda for the Committee of the Whole can be found here, and the agenda for the Council Meeting (where you can comment) can be found here. The proposed drug ordinance can be found here, with a staff presentation about it here.

Emails to Renton City Hall from Renton residents who want to make possession of addictive drugs like fentanyl, meth, and heroine illegal are now significantly outnumbering Seattle-centric emails encouraging decriminalization. And many of you have also been outspoken about your positions at public meetings, one-on-one conversations with officials, and social media.  Renton residents have shown immense support for criminalizing possession of these deadly drugs, even while Renton’s 11th district Senator Bob Hasegawa voted along with a majority of the Washington State Legislature not to criminalize possession of these drugs last month.

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Two million dollars worth of drugs confiscated by Renton Police in February 2023 drug trafficking arrest. (RPD photo)

With both the Renton City Council and Washington State Legislature poised to discuss new drug laws next week, action on this important topic could become confusing for residents.

The Legislature is convening in a special session which is essentially a do-over after they failed to act in April,  effectively decriminalizing possession of all hard drugs in our state as of July 1st– including fentanyl, meth, cocaine, stolen prescription drugs and other highly addictive substances.  Meanwhile, Renton City Council is working on a city ordinance to make possession of these drugs illegal, and public use of drugs even more illegal, because of the Legislature’s failure to enact legislation the last time.

The Legislature is expected to pick up where they left off with Senate Bill 5536, which still had a number of areas of disagreement in it.

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Fentanyl pills found in Renton. (DEA Photo)

I have good news to report.  Council Member Ed Prince notified me that he supports criminalizing hard drugs in Renton.  Council Member Prince’s support could provide a critical fourth vote to Council President Valerie O’Halloran as she brings forward a proposed ordinance, expected in another week or two.  I’m confident Council Members Ruth Perez and James Alberson will also be joining Council Member O’Halloran in supporting an ordinance criminalizing fentanyl and other highly addictive drugs.

I appreciate Council Member Prince’s position on this issue, and thank him for his support of a sensible Renton ordinance making deadly drugs illegal in Renton when the state legislature chose not to.

In my previous blog on this topic I wrote “Conversely, Council Members Carmen Rivera, Ed Prince, and Ryan McIrvin all signed a letter six months ago indicating they favored decriminalizing “low-level non-violent” offences, and the letter implied drug offenses.”

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Councilmember Kim-Khanh Van (second from left) makes a motion to put subject of Renton’s Blake Decision response into committee, at tonight’s council meeting.

Renton Chamber of Commerce CEO Diane Dobson spoke to council at tonight’s Renton City Council Meeting regarding her 4/23 letter, which I posted in my previous blog post.  On behalf of herself and the Chamber, she asked council to urgently refer to committee the topic of the lack of legislative response to Blake Decision, and the need for a Renton solution.  (Please see my previous posts here and here for more background on this request.)

Councilmember Kim-Khanh Van, Chair of Council’s Public Safety Committee, responded affirmatively to Ms. Dobson’s request during the agenda’s new business section a few minutes later.  Councilmember Van moved to put the requested topic into a Council Committee, with the only difference from Ms. Dobson’s request being that she moved to send it to Committee of the Whole instead of Public Safety.  She explained that she knew the topic needed a timely response, and she knew the whole council would want to weigh in, so she recommended going straight to Committee of the Whole.  (Note that Committee of the Whole is attended by all seven councilmembers, and Public Safety Committee is only attended by three councilmembers.) The Council had a five minute discussion about the merits of referring to Committee of the Whole vs. Public Safety Committee, with several reasonable points brought forward in favor of each choice, and ultimately decided to send it to Committee of the Whole.  During the discussion multiple councilmembers referred to receiving significant urgent input on this topic.

What is expected to happen next is the Mayor’s administrative staff will prepare a recommendation for Council action, and work with Council President Valerie O’Halloran to schedule a meeting on the topic. Hopefully a meeting will occur within a couple weeks or so (any Renton legislation that is implemented will typically have public notice and public hearing steps,  and the state drug law sunsets on July 1).  There will be no public comment allowed at Committee of the Whole meeting, but emails are accepted at any time, and public comment on this topic will be allowed at regularly scheduled weekly Council Meetings.  Anyone wishing to email the Council on this topic can send their email to council@rentonwa.gov.

Late last night the Washington State House effectively decided that as of July 1st, we will have no drug possession laws in our state. Because the legislature couldn’t agree on a new law, they are letting the law revert to the old law, which is not enforceable.

The majority of Washingtonians favor interventions and rehab over harsh criminal penalties to save those struggling with addiction to dangerous opioids like fentanyl.  Very few people want these drugs to be continued to be sold and used in public areas, around children, and those recovering from substance abuse.  Almost everyone wants more rehab centers, and many people favor court ordered rehab for those that have lost their judgement on this issue.  The legislature went into this session charged with the responsibility to work through these issues, and find the best solution for our state. They tried, and the politics got hard for them.  So instead of completing their work, they punted to an unconstitutional law.  The expiring version of the drug possession law and the previous unconstitutional version that will again take effect (unconstitutionally) July 1 can be found here.  The key phrase missing from the unconstitutional law is “knowing possession”– the Blake decision determined the old law was unconstitutional because it violated due process by prosecuting unknown and unintentional drug possession.)

The failure of the legislature to act will leave a need for Renton City Council and other local legislative bodies  to debate the issue in the next nine weeks, and hopefully agree on local restrictions to try to reverse staggering overdose death rates and avoid public areas becoming/remaining open air fentanyl markets.  Renton Council will have to debate this during an election cycle when three Council Members and the Mayor are running for office. I’ll discuss this further in a later blog entry, but for today I want to express my displeasure at the State legislature choosing to go with an unconstitutional option as their best choice.

Our state legislators as a group have struggled with dysfunction all session, and last night they hit rock bottom.  Over two years after the State Supreme Court ruled our old drug law unconstitutional,  the State Legislature effectively selected that same rejected unconstitutional (and unenforceable) choice as the right one for our state.  They specifically decided to let an interim, constitutional drug law expire in 9 weeks without replacing it, so that our state will revert to the unconstitutional law that was thrown out.   Since the unconstitutional law is unenforceable, this could be seen as a clever political move by those who want complete decriminalization of all drugs, except for the fact that it looks and smells a lot like like a violation of their oaths of office to purposefully select an unconstitutional law.

Every elected official in the state swears the following upon taking office (emphasis added):

I, ______________________________, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully and impartially discharge the duties of this office as prescribed by law and to the best of my ability, and that I will support and maintain the Constitution of the State of Washington and of the United States of America.

Sure, it’s hard.  They might have even needed to stay on the job in Olympia a few more days to work this out.  Too bad.  It seems like too many people in office don’t want to put in the effort anymore.

In keeping with the legislative session they’ve had this year, perhaps they need to add the following to their oaths:

It will not be considered a violation of this oath to knowingly revert to laws that violate the constitution when legislators decide that legislating is so hard that they don’t feel like doing it, and that making the effort to pass constitutional laws would require actual working together to find common ground when their political parties are polarized.

The University where I earned my engineering degree, UC Davis, posted a thorough law article on the topic of legislative oaths here.  From the article “State legislators are typically required to swear an oath of office as articulated in their respective state constitution. Generally, state oaths of office are akin to the federal congressional oath, pledging to uphold the U.S. Constitution as well as the state constitution. To the extent that the federal oath of office prevents federal congresspersons from knowingly passing an unconstitutional law, the same analysis applies to all state lawmakers whose oath of office incorporates a similar duty. “

For further background on the Blake Decision and polling regarding drugs see this blog here.