AN ORDINANCE proposing to amend the King County Charter relating to the county sheriff and the department of public safety; amending Sections 350.20.40 and 890 of the King County Charter and repealing Section 898 of the King County Charter; and submitting the same to the voters of the county for their ratification or rejection at the next general election to held in this county occurring more than forty-five days after the enactment of this ordinance.
Three numbers are your vote. We have given a do pass recommendation to ordinance 2020 205. We will expedite that to full council one week from today. On the next item on the agenda is the ordinance 2020 231, which which would submit to the voters of King County a charter amendment. To allow the County Council to establish the duties of the sheriff by ordinance. Mr. Bowman will brief face on this measure as well. Mr. Bowman. Mr. Chair, Nick Bowman, again, central staff. For the record, the materials for item 12 begin on page 93 of your packet. As the chair mentioned, a proposed ordinance 2020 0231 would submit to the voters of King County an amendment to the county charter to be placed in the next election, which would allow the County Council to establish the duties of the county sheriff, as well as the structure and duties of the sheriff's office. I ordinance. Under the King County Charter. The sheriff is the administrative head of the Department of Public Safety, also known as the King County Sheriff's Office, whose duties are specified by general law, specifically RTW. Chapter 36.28. RTW 36.2 8.10 provides the general duties of county sheriffs and states. The sheriff is the chief executive officer and conservator of the peace of the county and execution of his or her office. He or she and his or her deputies shall arrest and commit to prison. All persons who break the peace or attempt to break it, and all persons guilty of public offenses shall defend the county against those by who, by rider, otherwise endanger the public peace or safety, shall execute the process and orders of the Court of Justice or Judicial Officers when delivered for that purpose according to law. Shall I execute all warrants delivered for the purpose by other public officers, according to the provisions of particular statutes, shall intended to sessions of courts of record held within the county, and obey their lawful orders or directions, and shall keep and preserve the peace in their respective counties, and quiet and suppress all a phrase riots, unlawful assemblies and insurrections, for which purpose, and for the service of process in civil or criminal cases, and in apprehending or securing any person for felony or breach of the peace, they may call for their aid, such persons or power their county as they may deem necessary. The charter also declares the Department of Public Safety to be an executive department subject to civil service, subject to the civil service personnel system, which shall utilize the services of the administrative offices and the executive departments and which shall not be abolished or combined with any executive department or administrative office or have its duties decreased by the County Council. Now proposed ordinance 2020 0231 would submit to the voters an amendment to the King County Charter to be placed on the ballot in the November general election ballot, which would allow the County Council to establish the duties of the sheriff and the structure and duties of the Sheriff's Office by county ordinance. Specifically, the amendment would eliminate the charters reference to the duties of the Sheriff being specified by general law under ACW Chapter 36.28 and instead allow the sheriffs duties to be established by county ordinance. Furthermore, the amendment would remove the charters restriction preventing sheriffs, the sheriff's office from being abolished or combined with another executive department or administrative office, and would further remove the restriction prohibiting the County Council, prohibiting the County Council from decreasing the duties of the Sheriff's Office. Under the proposed amendment, the Sheriff would remain an elected position and would remain the bargaining agent for the county with represented sheriff's office personnel. The general election county requirements are the same as the previous item, so I want you to go over that. And with that stated, that concludes my staff reports. There are no amendments that I'm aware of for this item. And again, we have Undersheriff Patty Coats and all from the sheriff's office who is available to answer questions. That concludes my remarks. Questions. Questions of Mr. Bowman are underserved coal terminal. Similar questions, I would entertain a motion. Mr. McDermott, may I interrupt for just a minute? Ms.. Moore. I just want to make sure that members know. That there that we should pass these in case my enthusiasm of trying to segregate the appointment versus election. Is not possible because I'm looking at it now and I'm trying to formulate it. But that way we have both of these pieces before you next Tuesday in case we have to. Okay. I mean, is more you're suggesting it might be. If we want to entertain both ideas, it would be advantageous to move both pieces of legislation out of committee to. Yes, sir. Okay. Hearing. No questions. I would entertain a motion. Up the grill by move that the performance be adopted comes a number of to go to some of deduction that we give a do pass recommendation to ordinance 2020 231 council member to go. I would defer to the prime sponsor if he wanted to go first. I was just helping us mate with the motion. I would welcome anyone who wanted to speak. Council members are alive is the pride. Happy to. Mr. Chair, thank you so much. The New York Times reported recently that the Black Lives Matter movement is the largest movement in the history of our country, and millions of people are rising up and saying one central message, and that is defund the police. And a lot of people, when they hear that position, they think that people are saying promote lawlessness, eliminate accountability, decimate public safety. That's not what people are saying at all. It is a catch phrase that means let's invest in better systems of public safety. Let's reimagine policing as a whole. Some of the examples that I gave yesterday, we do not need armed police officers responding to all kinds of situations and challenges that we see on the ground. We don't need armed police officers as a default managing traffic. We don't need armed police officers as a default responding to our homelessness crisis or to people who are having mental health crises on the ground. We do not need armed police officers as a default, responding to noise complaints and all kinds of other issues that don't require that. If we had a better system where we divest from this current system and move into a system that tailors our response to the challenges that we see on the ground, we could be in a much better position. And currently, we have so many legal and structural obstacles as a council to implementing this better vision of public safety . We have a charter that says that as a council, we cannot reduce or amend the duties of a sheriff's office. That's a structural issue. We have union issues. We have oversight issues which are on the ballot that require oversight to be bargained through the union, which is a huge conflict of interest. So what we're trying to do with this proposed charter amendment is to address some of those structural barriers to having a more efficient and better system of public safety that responds to all of the movements, the anti-racism movement that we're seeing around the country. This is just one of those proposed changes. It would give the voters of our region the opportunity to vote on this and see if they agree with us. And that is that we we want a system of public safety where the council and the executive can instruct some of King County Sheriff's Office policies and duties around public safety. And hopefully we can have all of our council colleagues approve this amendment to give voters a chance to weigh in and make their voice heard on this issue. Councilmember of the Grove. Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's my pleasure to join Councilman Xilai in bringing this forward. I think this is, well, kind of a wonky sounding proposal, one of the most important pieces of action we're taking this year in terms of a first step to respond to community voices. I think the purpose of law enforcement is to deliver justice and make sure everyone feels safe. And that's not happening. Everyone doesn't feel safe. And one of the most promising visions that's been elevated in this current movement is the notion of reimagining what the delivery of public safety can look like. And that, yes, that might mean redirecting some resources from the traditional form of policing into other strategies that are proven to not to be effective and to ensure that everyone is feeling safe. All this charter amendment would do would give us, as the policymakers, the ability to have that conversation. The decision, what that looks like would be up to us, informed by the community and hopefully by the community that has suffered from the injustice. And I trust this body to do that in a thoughtful manner. I think we should lean into this and embrace it. I think we have a moment in history where we have a chance to think outside the box and and make some meaningful changes. But we won't be able to do that if we have tied our own hands through our charter. And so. We shouldn't be afraid of this. We should embrace it. And then we should take those best practices work. Not with law enforcement and with the community. I hear from a lot of law enforcement officers who would be happy if some of those duties were taken off their plate. There's some things sometimes one or two officers do that, but they'd rather free up their time for more important aspects of their job. So it's critical that we give ourselves the flexibility to have that important discussion and have that discussion with the community. And if we can't fix this restriction in the charter, then we're not going to be able to have that conversation and move forward. So I really encourage us to put this forward on the ballot, and we'll really be encouraging the people of King County to support it. I mean acknowledge that there's a member of the public in New Zealand participant list who has raised their hand. We take public comment at the beginning of our meetings. We're not in the habit of taking it during council debate and vote. So I want to just acknowledge that as that feature was used in a Zoom call. For the debate from colleagues. Now, Madam Clerk, I'd ask you to please call the Royal. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Council member, Belgium. I council member belted. She votes II. Council Member Dombrowski I Council member Dombrowski votes council member Dunn no. Councilmember Dunn votes no. Council Member Cornwall Council Member Cornwall Scouts I. Council member Lambert oh. Council Member Lambert now councilor above i council member of the group i council member on my fellow. Councilmember Yvonne right there. Councilors. Only Art Council members are alive and signing. Mr. Chair, although Mr. Chair votes on Mr. Chair, the vote is six eyes to nose council member bond rating. They were excused. Thank you. We've given a do pass recommendation to Motion to Ordinance 2231. We will expedite that to the next council. Next week's council meeting. And that concludes the action items on our agenda. Before we move to other business, however, I'd like to make sure that any technical issues didn't prevent council members from voting. Madam Clerk, were there members excused from votes today? Yes, Mr. Chair. On Item 2020 00240. Councilmember Dunn was excused and 2020 0231. Councilmember Conrad Thorne was excused. And you should hear Councilmember Dunn, you. My phone had a juice there for a little while and I had to plug it back in before it reset. Can you tell me about what brought on this? Madam Clerk, do you have the titles at fingertips for those audience numbers? I certainly do. The one that Councilmember Dunn was excused for is a motion declaring racism a public health crisis. And the one that Councilmember von Right they were excused from was the last vote on the sheriff's duty there. Okay, good. Mr. Chair, if you might allow me to give 15 seconds of remarks on that specific issue and cast my vote, I'd be grateful for that chance to take 15 seconds. I'm going to go for it right now. Okay. Thank you. I believe that racism is one of the most serious challenges facing our country and our state, and we need to take great steps and strides to continue to attack it. We've done a lot of work and my time in the council will continue to do so. However, declaring a public health emergency for racism is something I can't support unless we include sexism and in many of the other types and forms of discrimination and bias that exist. And I think we need to preserve things like a declared public health emergency for medical related issues, pandemics and other large scale health related issues. So for that reason, I'll be voting no. Thank you. Councilmember one right there on the last motion regarding duties of the sheriff. I don't know. Mr.. No. Mr.. EDMOND We're both of those words. Yes, Mr. Chairman. Or to borrow, I assure Councilmember Dunn, voting no. Oh, two, three, one. I shall council member upon my thorough voting no. Thank you. Mr. Chair. Thank you, Lord. Council member Balducci. Before we draw mascot, I guess it was a point of order or just a procedural question. Yes. Can somebody remind me what the deadline is for voting charter amendments out of full council to put them on the ballot in November? Is there someone on the line who can definitively walk us through that? It's. Billy Hamacher. Hi, this is Billy. The other deadline, the very last time you can vote to send something to elections is actually August 4th, but that would require your declaration of emergency. Your last regular meeting is the 21st. So you could do a also do a special meeting sometime between the 21st and when you might go on to recess. But in terms of your last meeting that's regularly scheduled, it would be a week from today. What's the deadline to do it without an emergency, regardless of whether we have a meeting or not? I was afraid you were going to ask me that. I believe it is the 28th. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. I was informed. Yeah, let me confirm that. But I think it's one week later than the regular schedule. And just figuring out if it turns out that we need time to work on amendments based on the discussion that we had earlier about the two issues being conflated. But then we have a lot of flexibility and the answer generally is no, not a lot of flexibility. Yeah, definitely does not support that plan. You're a crook. Yeah, he's a he's a born analyst. You go, Billy. Thank you, Mr. Chair. You're welcome. And then I was like a Republican. I think Bill is a Republican. I heard that the way he's going to win, and it sounds very good. Mr. Jarrett, this is Jeff, ma'am. On the staff. Mr. Mom? Yes. Yeah, I just pulled up the clerks. The Clerks election men memo for this year, and I just wanted to confirm the date for. For the better presented council member. I did use request and it looks like. But yeah, that that Patrick is correct that oh, no, not a regular council meeting to pass as an emergency in 728 in the last regular council meeting with the minimum processing time in 721. And of course those dates came out before COVID. So then the 28th is no longer a regular council meeting, it would be a special council meeting. But that's the two parts of the emergency date. So, yes, they go up for the city as well. Thank you. Any other. The order reports from outside counsel. You don't get to do that. Having no other business to share. Is there an easy meeting? There he is. Councilmember WC. We do have an easy U.S. meeting right after this one. And if I may, before we adjourn, would people like to take a break until 430 and then convene an AC or just go right into. Power through. Power. Through your power through. A three minute break. Yeah, I was going to ask for a break, too. No, it's okay. Let's do it. Madam Chair, can Mr. Chair, a council member vote right now? I was talking to council member Val Tucci, council member about duty, where you yield to a question and. Let's hear it. I'm currently at the courthouse. I'm going to be going down to my car so I can call in. So I just want to give you a heads up. That will not be an issue right away, but I will call it. Okay, judging all the input taken. Let's take a five minute break between the end of this meeting and the beginning of the next so people can reset. Go to the bathroom, do whatever we need to do. That sounds good. All right. And with that, knowing of no other business going before the committee, the whole. We are adjourned.