Week in Review: April 18, 2025 - with Ryan Packer

As Federal Rights Rollbacks and Cuts Hit Home, Seattle Council Forms Crisis Response Committee from Hacks & Wonks

April 2025 Cascade PBS/Elway Poll

“Poll: WA voters more politically engaged following 2024 election” by Laurel Demkovich from Cascade PBS

“Had enough Trump? Poll of WA finds we’re once again obsessed” by Danny Westneat from The Seattle Times

“Democrats in Washington Legislature reveal sweeping new tax plan” by Jerry Cornfield from Washington State Standard

“State Budget Proposals Focus on Highway Expansion in Both Chambers” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist

“Inflation worries drive WA lawmakers to jack up I-5 bridge borrowing plan by $900M” by Jerry Cornfield from Washington State Standard

“After 10 years and $31M, WA workers’ comp upgrade has little to show” by Paul Roberts and Shauna Sowersby from The Seattle Times

“POD: Estranged Election Control Board Urges "No" On Fingerprint Levy, Seven Senate Democrats Ruin Rent Stabilization, And A Wealth Tax Referendum So Crazy It Just Might Work” from The Burner

“‘Transformative’ Streets Initiative Goes to Tacoma Voters this Spring” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist

Find stories that Crystal is reading here

Listen on your favorite podcast app to all our episodes here

[00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm your host, Crystal Fincher. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it.

If you missed our Tuesday topical show, Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Urbanist reporter Amy Sundberg joined me to discuss the purpose of Seattle City Council's new Select Committee on Federal Administration and Policy Changes and the challenges Seattle faces from the Trump administration's second term.

Today, we are continuing our Friday week-in-review shows, where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome to the program as a week-in-review co-host for the first time, friend of the show, today's co-host: contributing editor for The Urbanist, covering transportation, land use, public space, traffic safety, and obscure community meetings, and doing the best work out there at those things, Ryan Packer. Welcome!

[00:01:22] Ryan Packer: Thanks so much for having me, Crystal.

[00:01:24] Crystal Fincher: Excited to have you. Well, we definitely have some things to discuss this week, starting with a new Cascade Elway poll that seems to indicate that surprisingly, a lot of people are plugged in. And unsurprisingly, they're worried. What did this poll say generally?

[00:01:47] Ryan Packer: Basically, it said, a majority of Washingtonians are really upset about what's happening in the other Washington and want Democrats to do stuff about it. It's pretty clear that flooding the zone, as the Trump administration's tactics have been consistently referred to, is having an effect. It's a negative one. People are not happy with what is happening.

[00:02:07] Crystal Fincher: A lot of people are not happy with what's happening. Is this something that's generally the same across all demographics? Are there some where they're super plugged in and super unhappy, and others that are happy? Is this pretty universal?

[00:02:25] Ryan Packer: You have a classic partisan divide, where a lot of Republicans in Washington are perfectly fine with what's happening, although I think you're seeing that negative perception creep across the entire spectrum. I think it's not a super surprising result in terms of - when you basically try and dismantle the federal government, people have a pretty negative reaction. I thought one thing that was interesting about it was when you drill down into what people are actually talking about, there was no one topic that really took over people's attention when it comes to the Trump administration - like Signal Gate was only a 5% response rate and there was nothing that was really high. It was just like Trump dominating the entire story, but no one individual element was actually breaking through.

[00:03:12] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, it should be noted that this poll was in the field from March 27th to 31st. So this is before a number of the recent notable news items - the volatility in the stock market, some of the tariff activity, the severity of the disappearings to El Salvador - that are making big headlines now. This is pre-those events. But even before that - that are capturing a lot of news attention now - people were tuned in. Maybe not to anything specific, but the vibes are bad, generally. And getting worse, I think this poll seems to reveal.

[00:03:56] Ryan Packer: Yeah. And the other takeaway is people are paying attention to national news - local news, not so much. I think there was around 10% of people who said that they had been following state politics, which is a little depressing for me as a local state reporter. But I think it's not super surprising, because those things happening on the national level - they are literally flooding the zone, as I said, and so they're taking over and it's really hard to actually be able to pay attention to everything right now.

[00:04:24] Crystal Fincher: Very hard. Like you, I don't find it surprising that people are not very tuned in to local news. I do hope that people see this as an opportunity - whether it's local news outlets, people who talk about news, or just people talking to their friends and family - that drawing those connections to how things are impacting them and their local communities, we're seeing impacts far and wide. We just talked about here in Washington state - the impact of ICE deportations or ICE raids that we're having here, border activity. The impact that the tariff actions are having on our local economy that's so heavily dependent on trade. Two out of every five jobs in Washington are dependent or impacted by trade. To impacts in healthcare - Valley Medical Center had to lay off over 100 people already. Other healthcare systems around the area are talking about how proposed cuts to Medicaid and elsewhere are jeopardizing them. Impacts to Head Start, public education, our universities. Just far and wide, there are impacts felt in local communities on the ground. I think part of that was also underscored by the turnout of the Hands Off protests across the country, across the state - not just in big cities, but in suburbs, small cities, both blue and red areas. That people are figuring out that there are people caring in their community, there are people impacted in their community, that they're not the only ones paying attention. And I think that started to fuel more people tuning in and trying to make sense of what's happening, especially since it's so confusing. Another thing I found notable was just where people say they're getting their news information from. What did the poll say about that?

[00:06:17] Ryan Packer: It confirmed the long-standing trend that people are not really getting their news from print and traditional media. The number one source of news was just a general online news bucket. We can assume that not all of that is straight news, a lot of that is commentary, a lot of that is social media. Social media, I think, was a little bit below online news when it comes to where people are getting their news from in that poll. But kind of a grab bag - I think there's no straight media consumption anymore. It's all just kind of a big soup that people dip into and try and figure out what's happening.

[00:06:49] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and that was really interesting. And I hope people dig into this - we'll link to the actual poll and to some write-ups on the poll in our resources on the website. But like you were saying - 52% online news sites, 47% talking with friends and relatives, 45% getting their news from social media. And then you get down to - 42% national television network news, 38% local television network news, 35% cable news, 25% podcasts, 24% public television or radio, then down to 19% print newspapers and magazines, 16% radio talk shows, and 9% organizations that people belong to. So a whole smattering - think kind of reflects our increasingly siloed news and media environment, where people are not predominantly turning to news for their news. They're getting them filtered through other ways and with a lot of other context around it. I don't know if you guys have all been on social media lately, but almost all of the sites - you're getting a whole side of nonsense with the information you're seeking or what you're going on there for. So even the context around the information is influencing what people are seeing and how they're digesting it. So this is really interesting, but people are tuned in, and so it's important to continue to talk about this, especially with the number two source being talking with friends and relatives. People listening to Hacks & Wonks are right in the center of the group of people who can be influential talking about how things that we see in the news are impacting us here in our community and impacting people every day, helping friends and family understand and make sense of what's going on.

Also want to talk about action in the Legislature. There are a number of things happening as we move closer to the end of the session, as we get into the nitty gritty of some negotiations, getting to the final shapes of some budget proposals. So I guess starting out, wanting to talk about the budget and where we have been is Democrats in the House and Senate have been working on their budget proposals. With some heavy-handed guidance by the governor - saying that the wealth tax that they had previously proposed was not going to fly with him, he said he would not sign a budget that had that in there, and that they needed to go back to the drawing board. And it looks like legislative Democrats did do that. So what have they now proposed for revenue in this budget package?

[00:09:39] Ryan Packer: So we have about 10 days left to approve a final state budget for the next two years. Like you said, the wealth tax had been kind of the central element keeping that budget together, ensuring that there weren't devastating cuts across state government. Wealth tax is seen as really risky. It's a tax not just on what's in your bank account, but the unrealized assets and paintings and all that stuff. And so the governor basically didn't want to have his budget built around a risky revenue source, but the other options are going back to the same revenue sources that we've been depending on for a long time. And so with the wealth tax removed from the budget, the other options that they're going to are basically a tiered capital gains tax. So we already passed the capital gains tax a couple of years ago - we're going back and making it easier to ensure that the even ultra-wealthy people in the state are paying even more in capital gains tax. And we're doing that with the estate tax. And we're doing that with additional taxes on businesses. But also going to the property tax cap and looking at whether property taxpayers are going to ultimately end up paying a little bit more for state services.

[00:10:57] Crystal Fincher: I think overall, as we look at this, it really identifies what the stakes of not having a wealth tax are. And how much more broadly and widely people and businesses have to be taxed if we are not taxing the ultra-wealthy. And the whole conversation about a regressive tax, or where people in the middle and the bottom pay a much higher percentage of their income than people at the very top of the income scale, and also just looking at what that forces. A lot of times you'll hear - Well, Washington has no income tax. It's great. Well, it's great for the super wealthy, but it's not great for most other people. Because then you look at this smorgasbord of taxes here, which does seem like a better alternative than austerity and the massive cuts to services and programs - but they're so broad in the absence of more progressive or equitably distributed taxation. And so businesses are paying, property owners are going to be paying more, large companies with high payrolls are going to be paying more. It is just so broad that everyone else has to make up to a much greater degree on the lower end, the absence of equitable taxation for the ultra-wealthy. And so we're talking about this wide range of taxes, fees that go up and other areas - where they aren't officially a tax, but we've seen fees raising in lots of other areas. These are the types of things that are there because there is no income tax, or there because we don't have a progressive tax. This is what a regressive tax system looks like. And even though it seems when you first hear it - There is no income tax. Everything is great, right? You're not paying any taxes. All of these things stack up and add up massively for everyone else but the super wealthy. Those are the terms of this debate, really - and we don't get into this nitty gritty, but we're seeing it play out in these budget proposals now about how many more people and businesses are affected when we don't do the thing that most other states are doing.

[00:13:18] Ryan Packer: Yeah, I think my takeaway here is - obviously, building the entire budget around a brand new wealth tax is pretty risky. But are we going to just drop the issue? Is it going to just completely fall by the wayside? Are we going to actually have the debate, the legal test - actually get the confirmation that this is a path forward? Or is it just going to become something that was floated and went away?

[00:13:42] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, I do want to talk about the transportation budget. We've talked about the top-line budget there, but we have a transportation budget. We've talked about it a lot over the years. It's very impactful in our everyday lives. And we've seen some changes in this budget here that, frankly, are pretty concerning to a lot of people. Can you give us the rundown of the evolution of our transportation budget this session, and what issues they're currently trying to work through?

[00:14:12] Ryan Packer: So when you bring up the state budget, most people mean the operating budget, which pays for state services. But the transportation budget is a whole separate thing and often doesn't really get a lot of scrutiny in Olympia, especially from the media. In terms of what's happening now, you kind of have to go back to 25 years ago and how we've always been treating transportation budgets and transportation packages in general, which - the transportation package is the big suite of projects that legislators can take home to their districts. For two and a half decades, we have been relying on increases in the gas tax to essentially pay for all the shiny new highway projects that we wanted to build around the state. The consistent construction through Tacoma is a high-profile example of what those projects look like. But we've always relied on - we bump up the gas tax, we bond against that, we go into debt for that revenue and limp along, consistently underfunding the actual maintenance of all these new facilities, the hundreds of miles of state highways and bridges that we have.

And so in 2022, we had the Move Ahead Washington Transportation package, which we thought was breaking the cycle of going into debt to fund highway projects. It didn't include a gas tax increase. It included Climate Commitment Act revenue, which is funding green transportation - some good projects in there - and then figuring out how to raise revenue in some other ways that weren't a gas tax increase. Because up to that point - right now, 12% of our transportation budget in Washington goes toward debt, which is actually more than the entire budget for the state ferry system. And so we thought we had broken that cycle - we were heading into an era of more multimodal transportation, investing in transit, not prioritizing highway expansion as much. But two things happened since then, which is cost increases on the projects we'd already said we wanted to build, like I-405 and the Puget Sound Gateway down in South King County, those cost increases skyrocketed. And gas tax revenue coming out of the pandemic continues to decline. And so lawmakers were faced with a huge budget hole to fill this year.

The House and the Senate took two different approaches. The Senate tried to basically do everything - raising the gas tax, raising a bunch of fees, and included a bunch of really bizarre revenue options, including a e-bike tax. And the idea that we would charge public transit vehicles to not only use our roadways, but to use toll facilities in Washington. And basically, they're trying to do all of the above - fund the highway expansion projects, but also fund good projects like multimodal bike paths and transit projects, as well as preservation and maintenance of our state highways. The House budget was a little more conservative, but it still prioritized getting the highway projects that were in the pipeline over the finish line - before investing in anything really different or needed in terms of what we need to achieve our mobility goals or our climate goals.

[00:17:35] Crystal Fincher: Well, and so this is really interesting. I think questions that I've heard from just people in general conversations are - one, that factoid about we're paying more in debt than the entire budget of the ferry system is kind of eye-popping. But beyond that, looking at the additional money needed to cover cost overruns, increased cost projections - what is behind the increase in cost projections? Are we just horrible at determining what costs are? Or are they things like - because these projects have such a long time horizon that things like inflation and unexpected price increases are what's behind the increase?

[00:18:18] Ryan Packer: Mostly, I think we're pretty good at projecting costs in normal times. We just are not really in normal times. And so obviously see this elsewhere in things like Sound Transit's budget, where West Seattle Link is $3 billion over what we thought it was. And so it is partially and in large part, due to inflation of these materials. Obviously, the act of construction is highly dependent on the cost of the actual goods that you need to do the work. But another factor is the fact that there are very few contractors in Washington state who are available to do a $10 billion project over 10 years. We basically have two or three big contractors - the 520 Bridge project is going from one into another when it comes to its project elements right now. And the fact that things like Sound Transit are also happening is bidding up the price when you have Sound Transit competing against the state to figure out how to move forward on a huge project, it's like - Well, there's only so much workforce, so you're kind of competing against yourself ultimately.

[00:19:28] Crystal Fincher: So, in this situation, where costs are increasing and gas tax revenue, which is funded a lot previously, is decreasing - is there any other choice but to look at fees in different areas and have they chosen the best kinds of fees for this situation?

[00:19:48] Ryan Packer: Like I said, they're trying to pull from everywhere - to a lot of people's frustration. The Senate transportation budget is really trying to ensure that every type of road user pays. But transportation advocates will point out that that's backwards, and that asking transit riders via their transit agencies to pay a little bit more for roads that they're basically ensuring remain open for other people by being on a bus is backwards. And so the question isn't really - Are the revenue sources equitable or regressive? The question is - What is the money going toward? And so, particularly with the Senate budget, we're going to spend $2.5 billion to make these highway projects get across the finish line. We're going to set aside another billion dollars to get some more started, including I-5 down at Nisqually River - a project that absolutely needs to happen - we need to ensure that I-5 doesn't flood and completely get destroyed. But we don't need to add another lane, which is going to have climate impacts, it's going to have cost impacts, it's going to have lots of impacts. And so the question is what we're using the money for. And other states are continuing to pivot toward taking a look at their highway projects - what the impacts are, whether they are the best use of investment. But Washington is still in denial about whether pouring billions of dollars into a marginal increase in the capacity of the state highway network is a good idea.

[00:21:24] Crystal Fincher: Well, we've heard for some decades previously that we really need additional lanes because traffic is really bad and it needs to be made better. How have those additional lanes proven so far in helping traffic, in easing traffic?

[00:21:41] Ryan Packer: You look at the growth in Washington's economy over the past two decades - we've had double-digit increases in our state GDP and our job growth, and we've expanded the highway network by 2%. So I don't think there's a connection between needing to expand the highway network and actually creating a strong economy. And that's ultimately me echoing the sentiments of our outgoing State Transportation Chief, Roger Millar - talked about this a lot. The one thing that Mr. Millar would always bring up is the fact that expanding the highway system isn't as important as making sure that it remains reliable. And so that's really the thing I continue to look at in terms of our state transportation budget.

[00:22:26] Crystal Fincher: As I look at it, even there - we've had some highway widening projects, some that we've seen in the Puget Sound on both I-5 and I-405. And as we have learned later on, despite how those projects were initially sold - at this capacity, adding lanes doesn't reduce traffic anyway, as we see when stuck in traffic on our freeways. So it just seems like we're spending a lot of money on outdated and disproven ideas and hopes and wishes that don't come to fruition, that somehow then get used to justify additional spending of that same kind. And everybody is going to increasingly pay for it.

The other thing that I notice here is - as you talked about, they're trying to get everyone to pay and say everyone needs to pay in here. But as we see, there are things that have more positive impacts or that have less of an impact on the road maintenance needed, how much wear and tear they create by being on the road, and how efficiently people are moved. So things like transit move so many more people efficiently that they effectively reduce traffic, they reduce emissions. And so those are things that are a net positive for all the things that we're trying to do - that they actually reduce budgets because they reduce the type of maintenance and mitigation needed for the impacts of vehicles on the road. And so those things that lessen the impact, that lessen the expenditures needed - you typically want to incentivize. We get that when it comes to business. We're having a debate in the budget about whether Boeing should be given an exemption from some of these new taxes that are being proposed. With some people saying - This is business. We obviously want to incentivize new jobs and making sure that we don't inhibit hiring or inhibit growth and the health of our economy. When other people are saying, especially if there are no firm targets or any accountability to actually producing those jobs, that - Hey, that doesn't work. But there's an underlying assumption that those are the things we want to incentivize, so that's why we're proposing not taxing them further. So it's surprising to see a lot of people who very much get that in the business realm, not understand that in the transportation realm, which also has a great impact on our economy overall. To say those things that are reducing traffic, that are reducing emissions, that are reducing wear and tear on the roads, and the need for very expensive maintenance - are things that we actually don't want to add an additional cost to. The things that do come with a lot of additional costs that require public spending to mitigate and to live with are the things that we should be focusing on getting revenue to recoup those costs. But that doesn't seem to be the way we approach the transportation budget.

[00:25:37] Ryan Packer: No, it's not. And I think the lack of scrutiny on the transportation budget opens it up for a lot of deal-making in terms of getting projects done in different parts of the state. But we continue to try and set aside the climate impacts of these projects. But the thing that I continue to look at is the fact that we are headed toward a disaster when it comes to how old our existing infrastructure is. When you look at the number of bridges in the state that we have, most of them are getting really, quite old. There was recently a bridge over into Mount Rainier that had to close because of maintenance impacts - is probably never going to get fixed because of the cost. In 2020, we had 69 bridges around Puget Sound region that were in poor condition, and now that's at 88. So it's going up, and we're not even talking about the local needs for roads. When you're talking about the state transportation budget, it's treated as totally separate, but the maintenance backlog for the county and state roads in Puget Sound has gone from 6.1 billion to 9.2 billion in just three years. And so we continue to look at the shiny new infrastructure, but we're not really figuring out what's going to happen when all these things need to be replaced at the same time.

[00:26:59] Crystal Fincher: Not looking forward to that. Well, I do want to continue to pay attention to this as we move to the end of this session. You can stay tuned to Hacks & Wonks to get those updates each week.

This isn't directly related to the budget discussion, but it is. One piece of news that came out this week - well-written story, but really irritated me - was the story by Paul Roberts and Shauna Sowersby in The Seattle Times. Headline - after 10 years and $31 million, the Washington workers' compensation upgrade has little to show. And man, that's just the beginning of the irritating and upsetting things to read about this situation. Can you give us a breakdown of what has happened here?

[00:27:51] Ryan Packer: Sure. So the workers' compensation claim system at the state level has been due for an upgrade. We have spent $31 million on that upgrade over the past 10 years, with nothing to show for it. And apparently, the agency needs another $18 million requested in the next budget to continue to work on this program. Lawmakers are kind of scratching their heads and wondering what is happening here.

[00:28:18] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely wondering what is happening here. And this is part of an overall upgrade, an overhaul of their system that pays for and manages claims from people who have been injured. So not at all saying that this is a simple, easy upgrade, but it is disheartening to see $31 million so far result in nothing. And when you get into the detail of what happened here, it's more nothing than it sounds like initially. The plan for modernization of this program started in 2015, with an initial cost estimate of $283 million in total. Now that is a lot of money - don't know whether that's in line or out of line, it certainly was found to be acceptable at the time. That was in 2015. In 2020, the project was paused - there were already lots of delays, complaints of things not happening well. There are whistleblower complaints saying that the department wasn't being cooperative, leaders weren't really tuned in. In 2021, the state Chief Information Officer concluded that L&I lacked the "'foundational governance structures, processes, and practices' to manage such a large and complex project and stepped up their oversight of the upgrade." The agency was accused of not leaning in, saying, "Most of the 'leadership team is not energized by this work' and 'is not leaning in (to) provide support or remove roadblocks." Another quote here, "Team members are polite; little is said during meetings. When challenging (or) difficult statements are made, team members largely ignore them rather than pushing back or voicing a difference of opinion." That turnover was really high in this project - unusually high - and that tough decisions were delayed in favor of just additional planning.

As recently as this past October, a report by a quality assurance contractor urged "a comprehensive project reset focused on reaching Executive Leadership alignment on the Project's path forward." That's like consultant speak saying that the leadership of L&I from the top-down is not really on board with or aligned with this project, and that's why it's experiencing so many problems. And so this money was really essentially just wasted from identifiable causes that don't really seem to have been fixed. Because the cherry on top of this whole thing is that the head of L&I, Director Joel Sacks, was just reappointed by Governor Bob Ferguson to his fourth term. And according to this reporting, "according to several lawmakers and project Insiders, Sacks continues to enjoy good relations with legislative leaders." So someone who was pinpointed as having a role in this issue - certainly, having a major role in helping to define why there's reason to believe it's on a better path now - is not being asked those questions, is not being asked to answer those questions, doesn't seem like they're being held accountable. And I don't know why we should expect any kind of a different result than what we've already seen. This does not inspire a lot of confidence and really is a frustrating thing to be looking at - that we're $31 million in the hole, that we've got another $250 million-ish more to spend, and we're supposed to have confidence that that's all going to be spent wonderfully and right - after this is what we've seen. How do you see this?

[00:32:03] Ryan Packer: Reading the story, my main takeaway was - it's such a familiar dynamic across all state and local government, Which is that we don't have the capacity to do these big projects ourselves, and so we have to rely on these third-party consultants. It looks like L&I doesn't even have the capacity to manage its consultants well. And so that's like a whole different level. But across - I cover transit and transportation a lot, and so I see this dynamic play out over and over and over again. Local governments don't have the capacity to design projects. They have to go to consultants. And so they're beholden to what those consultants charge. They're beholden to those consultants to do the actual work to get these projects across the finish line. And so my takeaway from the story was that we have these continued complaints around what we'll call blue state governance - progressives who have a big vision but aren't able to implement. And a lot of that's because our state capacity has been completely hollowed out. There's another story this week about how our co-president, Elon Musk, is going to eliminate the IRS Direct File. That's an example of a government agency that actually was able to do this work in-house and create a great product. Obviously, they can't let that stand, and so they have to eliminate it. But we just aren't able to do this at the local level anymore.

[00:33:28] Crystal Fincher: Well, and it's frustrating because this has a meaningful impact. We saw an announcement early on in Governor Bob Ferguson's term saying that he was canceling a contract to replace some carpet, I think it was. And I think it was like $70,000, and he was doing that to show he was serious about this budget situation that we're in, this deficit - and pinching every penny. He's the executive of the state. This is one of his departments. And $31 million is not a little bit of money here, certainly compared to $70,000. And it just feels like this deserves more scrutiny and accountability than the carpeting contractor who - they and their employees are out of work and stuff like this is just happening. And it doesn't seem like there's really the urgency in getting at why this happened and actually solving that problem, addressing those issues, demanding accountability and answers from the people getting paid to provide that. Just pretty frustrating. And some of those - we talked about a week before last - issues of just governance and competence there, and management through implementation. And this is another example of that where we've really got to tighten up in these areas, or else they're going to be exploited and used as justification to say - Oh, this and all the governance that comes with it is bad, and here we go. Got to tighten this up.

I do want to talk about a few other things. One, we do have special elections coming up on April 22nd - this coming Tuesday - those ballots are going to be due. Want to make sure that we update a little bit on the conversation last week about the King County Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or AFIS, measure that people are seeing on their ballots that are in their mailboxes. Check your mail if you haven't already - a ballot should be in there. If you don't have a ballot, call to get a replacement. But on there is - for most people, certainly from the county perspective - just one item. And that's whether to separately fund - to use a levy renewal - to continue to fund the fingerprint identification system used by law enforcement agencies across the county. There have been some varying opinions on why people should vote Yes, why people should vote No. Some of them we covered last week. Why people should vote Yes - it's a fingerprint identification system, it's already in place. If the money isn't there, then if this levy doesn't succeed, then the money will be found somewhere else - probably from the general fund, necessitating cuts in other areas in order to pay for this which is concerning to a lot of people. So just keep going with the way things are going - from proponents who say support it.

And then those who are in favor of voting No on this, saying that - One, it's more money to a budget that already makes up a majority percentage of most of these municipal and county budgets. We spend usually more of the general fund on public safety than anything else. Questioning why this is not already part of a general fund expenditure? Why is this separate spending, if this is something that is necessary, fairly routine, it's not some new fangled technology now - why isn't this already part of the budget? Why are you asking us to put this on a ballot and have it compete with funding that is not already part of the general fund? And then concerns about data sharing from this - an additional type of surveillance, that people who are not convicted of crimes could be fingerprinted and can have that data shared. Now, this data isn't shared in any way that existing data isn't already shared. This doesn't appear to be allowing any new kind of sharing, any different kind of sharing. The concern is that - already - other agencies from the state and the state shares with a federal database. So that potentially other entities, whether it be state or federal, could have access to this information - which is raising a lot more eyebrows than it was even previously, given the type of actions that are being taken federally. Especially when it comes to immigration enforcement and deportations and what we're seeing there, with a lack of due process currently - and being concerned that this could feed more into that. So I've heard those arguments from people who are saying, Vote No. So those are the types of issues that people are weighing with this, and that may not have been explained much in the levy information breakdown, or in some news coverage overall. The Burner, the new outlet, did a podcast episode where they talked about this also. But really interesting to try and hunt down this information to at least let people know what it is that they're voting on.

[00:38:46] Ryan Packer: I think the fact that it's the only thing on a lot of people's ballot is really getting a lot of people's attention. But this ultimately goes back to the same issues we were talking about with the state budget. We've had a 1% cap on property tax levy increases for 20 years now, and it is the same root issue - when the county needs to be able to go to the voters to raise revenue. And so this is a very self-contained little program that's able to ensure that the county doesn't need to go into its general fund, like you said, and cut other services to ensure that the fingerprint programming continues.

[00:39:26] Crystal Fincher: Also on ballots in Tacoma and Pierce County is a Transformative Streets Initiative that they'll be voting on in this April 22nd special election. What will this initiative do?

[00:39:42] Ryan Packer: It's basically going to make the First Streets Initiative levy that the voters in Tacoma passed in 2015, permanent. That levy was pretty focused on residential street maintenance, making sure that the potholes on the residential streets in Tacoma were taken care of. But this levy goes further. It's more ambitious. It's more focused on safety. And so it's going to repave a lot of streets, but while it's doing that, it's going to bring safety upgrades. It's also going to include bike boulevards and Vision Zero treatments across the entire city. And so it's a big leap forward for how Tacoma funds its streets. Obviously, cities like Seattle have a pretty big budget for street safety programs, but Tacoma - the third largest city in the state - their Vision Zero budget is less than a million dollars a year. And so this would be a big leap forward for how they're able to fund these very needed improvements.

[00:40:43] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - so that's going to be important. And road maintenance has been a huge issue in Tacoma - over the years, that has been very popular, but also certainly recently. We've seen the demand by residents and a responsiveness by the city council to address some of the pedestrian safety issues and infrastructure issues that help that stuff - certainly, a lot of people are eager to see this pass for that reason.

And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, April 18th, 2025. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was contributing editor for The Urbanist, covering transportation, land use, public space, traffic safety, and obscure community meetings - you should not miss their coverage at all - Ryan Packer, thank you for joining us today.

[00:41:36] Ryan Packer: Thanks so much for having me.

[00:41:37] Crystal Fincher: You can find Ryan on Bluesky at @typewriteralley. You can find Hacks & Wonks on Bluesky at @HacksAndWonks. You can find me there at @finchfrii. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts - I use the Overcast app - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our midweek topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen - it really helps us out. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com.

Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.