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April 24 meeting of Renton City Council. Mayor Pavone sitting in back row fourth from left, and Council President O’Halloran sitting second from right.
Mayor Armondo Pavone is aiming for a May 15 presentation to the full Renton Council of a draft drug ordinance for Renton. The new Renton law will plug the hole left by the legislature when the legislature let the state drug law expire in less than two months from now, on July 1st. The Renton law will not affect marijuana, but will target highly addictive and dangerous drugs like fentanyl, meth, heroin, and stolen prescription drugs.
Details are not yet public. The City of Renton is bound by the State’s Open Public Meeting Act, and any private exchange of email between a majority of council members on a topic, even by accident, can constitute an illegal public meeting. To avoid this type of mistake, the details of the draft ordinance would typically not be shared with the majority of City Council until they are shared with the public– most likely on Thursday prior to the May 15 meeting, May 11 (note these dates are estimates and not firm at this time).
So as of now, based on council procedures, Council President Valerie O’Halloran is coordinating with Mayor Pavone and his staff including the City Attorney’s office to get a draft ordinance prepared. While President O’Halloran is engaged in planning for Council review, she has informed me she’s letting staff make the specific recommendations and write the draft ordinance at this stage– she plans to review it along with the rest of the Council. Council President O’Halloran is coordinate this process for council not because she is Council President, but because she is the Committee of the Whole Chairperson, and the ordinance was referred to her Committee of the Whole. If the ordinance had been referred to Public Safety Committee, as several Council Members had requested at the April 24 council meeting, Public Safety Chair Kim-Khanh Van would be engaged in coordinating the ordinance with the Mayor. Council Member Van had passed on this option at the April 24 meeting, preferring to send the ordinance to Committee of the Whole.
Since the draft ordinance would normally be kept private even from council members, I did not ask the Mayor for any details about the proposal–I’ll find out around May 11 or so, along with everyone else. But it’s not too hard to predict what the Mayor and staff would propose based on letters that have been written to the legislature when asking for state action on the drug law.
Mayor Pavone has signed onto letters with many other Mayors on at least two occasions, with the most recent being April 20. Council President O’Halloran did not sign these letters, but she has appeared to generally support them. The Mayor is the City’s official spokesperson, and it’s the Mayor’s responsibility to ensure public statements about the city’s interests do not stray far from the views of a majority of the City Council. The Renton Council had adopted a legislative agenda asking for firmer drug laws prior to the spring Legislative session.
In his most recent letter, Mayor Pavone and other Mayors asked for use of hard drugs to be a gross misdemeanor (punishable by up to a year in jail). They supported a drug treatment alternative for those arrested, but it needed to include accountability to a judge to ensure rehabilitation work happened, as opposed to just making a voluntary recommendation. They also wanted cities to be allowed to make laws specifically about the public use of drugs, similarly to city laws about public consumption of alcohol.
I would expect to see these elements in the Mayor’s proposal for a Renton law, and I would expect Council President O’Halloran to be in general agreement with them. One detail that I can’t predict is how typical penalties might escalate with repeat offenses– there have not been a lot of public statements on this point. It’s possible that a first offense could be a misdemeanor and later offenses a gross misdemeanor, for example. In any case, the full council will have the opportunity to review and approve all the details beginning in mid May.
Yesterday Governor Inslee announced that he is calling the Legislature back to a special session to try again to pass drug legislation, and that session is expected to convene on May 15– the same day the Renton Council is predicted to review an ordinance.
I spoke with Council Member Ruth Perez yesterday after hearing this news, and she told me she didn’t expect the governor’s announcement to change Renton City Council’s plans for a city ordinance. She said that there was uncertainty whether the legislature could agree on anything this month when they were unable to last month, and the City of Renton can not afford to lose time waiting to see what happens. Renton’s ordinance needs to be in place by the end of May to be applicable by the end of June when the state law ends.
Going to be fun watching councilmembers Ed Prince and Ryan McIrvin squirm….
Do they stay true to their letter and appease Carmen?
Or do they do what’s right for Renton’s people?
I suspect I know the answer as there’s an election for both of them coming up.
Carmen hates to be on the outside. Going to be fun… and if we see Carmen capitulate to the law and order crowd even better. White supremacy FTW.
White Cis Male Supremacy to be exact.
Probably should let WC know this is satire before he cries.
It’s disheartening to hear about the secret talks behind closed doors, especially when there’s a risk that the laws could disproportionately target BIPOC communities.
It’s disappointing to see O’Halloran and Pavone taking this approach. There is a clear need for open dialogue and collaboration with communities affected by drug addiction. Don’t rush into creating laws that have the potential to further marginalize already vulnerable populations.
If we want to create a just and equitable society, we must ensure that our laws are not designed to target and harm BIPOC individuals and communities.
Blink twice if the voices are telling you things.
All I ever see is white zombies everywhere. Stop trying to bring race into a matter it doesn’t fit.
Drugs and their consequences choose no race.
You can cry about it supposedly “targeting BIPOC communities” while now we have people of all colors using their legal fatal drugs and basically committing suicide.
If there are no consequences for their failures they will never have reason to stop. That’s the facts. If the increase of deaths in the past 2 years since drugs were decriminalized hasn’t proven it to you yet, you’re not paying attention!
Every single person using these lethal drugs including fentanyl will die. It’s just a matter of time. One needle at a time.
You are doing nothing to protect the BIPOC community. Wake up!
Well put
I hope they don’t automatically imprison someone addicted to illegal drugs. Jail isn’t the answer for an addict.
The model legislation floating around is basically “get treatment or go to jail.” It’s a good wakeup call for those in the midst of a very difficult addiction.
They need to specify you are going to do jail time unless you participate in active treatment. Until they prove otherwise people need to be held accountable.
Kent new ordinance makes possession of controlled substances, other than cannabis, a gross misdemeanor, and creates an alternative two-year deferred prosecution program for individuals charged with these crimes.
They’ll be given the choice to participate in treatment and have their charges dismissed, or convictions vacated after successful completion of treatment.
http://kentwa.iqm2.com/Citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=30&ID=17365
Kent’s Mayor Dana Ralph is pretty sharp, and I would not be surprised if she was already working on this, or at least planning for it, a few weeks ago in anticipation of the legislature failing. She often seems to be a step or two ahead of everyone else. The South County Mayors have formed an effective team, and they’re all working together, trying to get our region’s crime under control. We’re not there yet, but it’s not the fault of these Mayors. Our Mayor has also brought a lot of value to this team. I’m sure our Mayor and staff will be studying Kent’s law, if they were not already coordinating with Kent during the writing of it. Mayor Ralph is enjoying full council support for much of her work, which makes some aspects of her job a little easier than Mayor Pavone’s.
Thank you, Randy, for keeping us updated. Much appreciated. Laws on the books must be followed up with enforced consequences for those who break the laws. Slaps on the wrists never worked. Police can arrest the law breakers, then the court systems let them go back out on the streets…to repeat. Jail time and treatment for addictions must go hand in hand. But there’s also the theft rings, robberies and deliberately feeding others’ addictions through sales of illegal drugs. Let’s work with better networking among the systems.
My question is….is there an adequate treatment option in place…..??
Anonymous asked “My question is….is there an adequate treatment option in place…..??”
This is an excellent question, and the short answer is no, there are currently not enough rehab spaces to accommodate everybody currently using these drugs. We need more rehab spaces.
Every version of a state drug law that the legislature considered during this past session had funding for additional treatment in it, which is one of the many reasons it was irresponsible of the state legislature not to pass any of the versions.
Locally, King County’s taking the Housing First model to such an extreme that policy makers seem to believe we need to have everybody in their own new apartment before we can ask anyone to go to rehab. So instead of paying for inpatient rehab which would cost about $20,000 per person, we’re holding out until we can somehow pay for and construct 40,000 new $600,000 apartments, along with thousands of beds in multi-million dollar shelters with wrap around services, for a grand-total of $25-$50 billion or so. Only then can we ask people with substance abuse to go to rehab, says those leaders that subscribe to this extreme version of the housing first philosophy. Ironically, if many of the drug users could get cleaned up, their parents, spouses, children, or other family members could bring them home, and they wouldn’t need their own place.
This topic is in important one, and I’ll plan to cover it in it’s own blog entry.
Meanwhile, if Renton and other cities pass new drug laws that gives arrestees an opportunity to seek treatment instead of jail (which I support), these laws should include provisions for the arrestees to accept the next available rehab bed– the penalty could be deferred as long as they were making an effort to obtain and attend treatment. When more beds are demanded by the court, maybe THEN the State and King County will finally quit making excuses, and step up and provide the necessary rehab facilities.