Renton police photo: Drugs, weapons, and cash from 2021 drug bust

Renton City Council has just 64 days until possession of all drugs is completely legal in our city– fentanyl, heroin, meth, other people’s stolen prescriptions…. everything, thanks to our state legislature.   And our seven council members appear split on what to do.  It takes four votes to pass an ordinance, and five votes to pass an emergency ordinance (which can move faster).  I’m confident Council Members James Alberson, Ruth Perez, and Valerie O’Halloran will vote to make these hard drugs illegal.  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.  And in today’s Renton Reporter, Council Member Kim-Khanh Van was quoted using the phrases “over-policing” and “fear of law enforcement” just three days after she punted the topic of legislating drug policy out of her Public Safety Committee.  So, it’s not clear Renton has the votes to pass drug legislation.  But what does this mean to our city?  Some have compared it to marijuana legalization, but it’s night and day different.

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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.

Fentanyl pills found in Renton. (DEA Photo)

A few weeks ago the State Senate passed a bill that city officials and law enforcement officers hoped would give them a little more authority in getting people struggling with substance abuse into treatment programs.  Now, the State House is watering down the bill, and threatening to undo the gains from this session.  I gave background on the “Blake” decision that precipitated this legislation in a previous blog entry here.

Mayors of 28 cities have just signed a joint letter on the topic, and the mayors of Renton, Kent and Auburn have signed on.  I suspect many other mayors would have signed if the timing had allowed for it.  The debate is wrapping up now so the letter’s release was highly time sensitive.

Five and a half months ago three of Renton’s councilmembers signaled they are not in step with Renton’s Mayor Pavone on this topic.  Renton Councilmembers Ed Prince, Ryan McIrvin and Carmen Rivera signed a letter with ten other neighboring local officials pushing in a different direction.  Mayor Pavone supports legislation making the use of fentanyl and other potentially deadly opioids a gross misdemeanor, with an opportunity to avoid criminal charges if a user attends rehab; the three council members have apparently called for complete decriminalization.  The Council Members’  letter said in part “Criminalizing low level, non-violent offenses steals our opportunity to divert youth and guide them toward a better track. ”  I don’t want to accidentally misrepresent their opinions, so I’ll let readers interpret for themselves.  The Council Members’ full letter from November 2022 can be found here.  (I also added the full letter to the comments for convenience)

Here is today’s letter from the 28 Mayors: