AN ORDINANCE related to the establishment of a King County immigrant and refugee commission; and adding a new chapter to K.C.C. Title 2.
All right. Our next item is ordinance number 2017 0481, which would establish a King County Immigrant and Refugee Commission. This was a follow up to a recommendation by the King County Immigrant and Refugee Task Force. And today we're just receiving a briefing. And here to brief us are council staff members Andrew Kim and Mike Reid. Welcome. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mike reads as deputy counsel. I'm here, as you indicated, with Andrew Kim, and we will provide a brief bit of background on this. This ordinance actually starts on page 17 of your packets. So as you've indicated, Madam Chair, that the discussions on this this topic began in 2015 when the council was presented with information about the increasing numbers of new arrivals from throughout the world that were settling in King County. Demographic and sensitive information confirmed that there had been a significant increase in the immigrant refugee population. Council discussions at that time centered on means to address the challenges faced by these populations, as well as means of assuring access to county services for these populations. The concept of a commission had been suggested as a means to address these concerns. The parameters, however, of such a commission were uncertain, particularly regarding representation on a such a commission. So the the council at that time in 2015 established a task force on immigrant refugees to make recommendations about the shape and character of such a commission. Again, addressing representation and addressing structure, addressing its purpose and the duties of such a commission. That task force began meeting in October of 2015 and continued this meeting through through June of 2016. I'd held meetings throughout the county and it hosted input from a significant number of members of the immigrant Mexican community to get their their ideas about the shape and character of such a commission. A final report was developed and issued in July of 2016. That report actually is in your packets, I believe, on page 39 of the packet. That became the basis for the development of the measures before you today and which resulted from discussions between the executive and the and council staff for its formulation. Andrew will take it from here. Thank you, Mike. Good morning, Madam Chair. And Council Members, Andrew Kim, a council central staff. I'll continue the briefing by summarizing key provisions of the proposed ordinance. This can be found on page 19 of your staff report. Section three outlines the purpose of the Commission. The two primary responsibility of the Commission are one to act as a central point of contact, communication and coordination of all stakeholders serving and engaging immigrant and refugee residents. The the task force states that this responsibility would fill a significant gap, since no organization or group plays a central role. The task force also states that this will help to take a regional approach to complex issues that stretch across multiple municipalities. And the second responsibility, primary responsibility, is focus on. Focusing on understanding and addressing challenges faced by immigrant and refugee communities living in suburban cities and unincorporated areas of the county. The task force states that this responsibility would help alleviate the lack of county resources invested in suburban and incorporated communities, which disproportionately impact the immigrant and refugee communities . Going to page 20, Section four outlines the criteria of the 17 member board where 13 are voting members and four are non-voting members. I won't list each criteria here, but you can find the criteria of the voting members on page 20. The four non-voting members are to be community leaders that are actively engaged with local government, business or philanthropy, philanthropic organizations to raise the visibility and capacity of the Commission. Section five outlines the joint effort between the Council and executive in conducting outreach to solicit candidates. It also directs that the list of candidates for appointment would be finalized by a Joint Committee of Executive and council representatives and past commissioners. Section six requires the Commission to produce an annual report to the Council and to make the annual report. Related briefly and related briefings available to the community. Section seven requires the Commission to convene at least monthly with four Commission meetings to be held in suburban cities or unincorporated areas and to hold at least one large community briefing each year. Section eight requires that an employee from the Office of Equity and Social Justice and one Council employee staff the work of the Commission. And lastly, Section nine requires the executive to reimburse Commission members for travel expenses and or parking fees for attending meetings, starting on the bottom of page 21 Staff Writer. Some additional analysis the proposed ordinance incorporates, as Mike said, most of the recommendations from the Immigrant and Refugee Task Force report. However, it does not incorporate all the recommendations. Some of the key differences include. Number one, the task force recommended providing an honorarium or stipend to commissioners. However, this is not included in the proposed ordinance. Another difference is that the task force recommended three staffing options where they strongly recommended an option to establish an office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs. The proposed ordinance shows the lowest cost staffing option of of providing one FTE to support the work of the Commission. And lastly, the task force provided no recommendation on age as a factor for Commission membership. But the proposed ordinance includes a requirement that members should represent a range of age groups, including persons representing youth issues. Lastly, the annual cost to support the work of the Commission is estimated to be approximately $147,000. The breakdown of that cost is listed on page 23. Madam Chair, that concludes our staff report. And and we have several members of the Immigrant and Refugee Task Force joining us today and as well as executive staff from the Office of Equity and Social Justice. Okay. Thank you for that briefing. I understand, Councilmember Garcia, your office has been working on this. Would you like to say a few words or begin the discussion? Yes. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I have some questions for our staff, but I'm also going to have some questions for the folks that he mentioned that are present. First of its staff, why does it say that this commission will only deal with issues relative to immigrant and refugee folks who reside in unincorporated Kane County or the suburbs? The reason I ask that is that I represent a district that's 90% okay in Seattle, and I've had bukele meetings. I mean, I've had many meetings in South Asia with Eritreans, Ethiopian Somalis, Thai Vietnamese and on the recent killing and and not dealing with refugee problems in the city of Seattle. What's the thinking? Yes, Councilmember, let me clarify that. So the work of the commission doesn't exclude the work that they would do for the entire county, but it does and includes the city of Seattle and other areas of King County. But what it does do is that it calls out the commission to focus on issues concerning immigrant refugees that live in the suburban and unincorporated areas. So rather than is not limiting their work to those communities, but it's asking them to make that a focus of their work. And I might I might briefly add that you may recall that that over the course of the work, the task force, there was input from members of the community, noting that historically the focus had been on immigrant refugee communities within within urban areas or within the cities themselves or within the city, Seattle in particular. But that there was an increasing concern about the limited access and limited resources that were available to immigrants and refugees who lived in suburban cities or in the unincorporated area, which tended not to receive the same degree of attention. So this was an attempt to highlight and focus on the the that concern. Okay. And Andrew or Mike, originally somebody said that they thought the commissioners should get paid 20 that idea come from. So the concept of the honorarium or stipend was recommended by the task force. So in the task force report which is attached to to your staff report, they they recommended that that the the commission members be compensated for their work because many of the commissioners are often overworked and asked to serve on many other committees. So that was the task force's recommendation. But it's not included as as part of this proposed ordinance. It's not a part of it. See, because I've been involved in I think I've been a county council member for 24 years and we've set up a lot of I mean, I was the sponsor of the Civil Rights Commission back in 96, and my co-sponsor was Kent Pullen. So we wanted bipartisan support. And then I've been involved in sort of a lot of task force and advisory groups and never have we had as part of the mandate to pay people for the advice that they give us. So my fear was that if we set a precedent here, we'd have them all coming back, say, we're overworked and we're giving our service like watch all because that wasn't paid time. So I'm kind of happy that wasn't included in the final document. Thank you, Manager. Thank you, Mr. Bassett. Any other councilmember up the grove? Thank you, Madam Chair. And this may be a question for the sponsor, unless staff has some context. Well, one one super quick, easy question. And then the one I was saying, one is the assumption and I didn't look at the fiscal note. Are there funding sources other than general fund available? Were that 147 likely come out of general fund? It would most likely be coming out of the general fund. A majority of that cost is its personnel cost. And the executive staff have noted that that 0.5 FTE that was staff that commission is that there's an existing employee in the Office of Equity Social Justice. So we wouldn't be adding additional funds, but it would be kind of existing expenses, right. At least from the executive side on the council side, that that has yet to be determined. But yeah, which was my question. And this I don't know if it's more appropriate for the sponsor or to see if you to take a stab at it. In terms of the rationale for having part of the staffing come from the county council staff, it's a little bit different. We the Women's Commission, the Civil Rights Commission, or many of our other county task forces. Art. We have staff here that will support our work on those, but we don't have dedicated staff, that is, to staff the commission and wondering what the thinking was in terms of why. Why for this particular commission, we would have the legislative branch provide part of the staff support. And so against I just kind of want to understand it. Yeah. So when, when, when, when we were drafting the proposed ordinance with members of the different council offices because the immigrant and refugee work was more of a collaborative approach, even the task force, I think, I believe, was staffed by a council staff member and an executive staff member. I believe they wanted to take that collaborative approach to the commission as well. So which is the reason for that? I I'm going to add to that because you said maybe the sponsor might want to say something about this. I support the idea of the commission having on staff and that would be half from the executive and a half from us. But my rationale is more political than anything else. With half the staff, the half time staff person being a part of our staff, the I think that the accountability of that person to the priority issues relative to immigrant and refugee populations in King County that are now almost 19% of the total, we'd have more of a say compared to where they are leaving the staff support and the staff are all in the executive. That was my thinking. Thank you. Any other comments or questions. This is not actually a we can take action today if we're prepared to, but it was on for a first briefing today. So it's the looking around to see the will of the body. Then we will want to just do it. I'm seeing some desire to do it. Councilmember Garcia, would you be willing to put proposed ordinance number 2017 0.1 before us? But of course, I don't care. I refuse. Yasmin, it is commendable. I would like to propose that the King County Council adopt ordinance number 2017. That's 0481, establishing an immigrant and refugee commission here in King County. It's been moved by the do pass recommendation. Any other comments or discussion before we move to a vote? I will say just one thing. I want to appreciate the members of the commission who worked so hard and on a volunteer basis to to make these recommendations that were now starting to move forward with, thank you for your work. I see a lot of friendly faces out there and thank you Martires also for being along with us. I look forward to seeing this body come together and I'm excited about the work that we'll be able to do with this kind of support from the community. All right. Councilmember Tomasky, the. Thing that I'm sure just very briefly, I appreciate the action here by the committee today. I want to also thank the members of the task force. A couple of years ago, when my office was working with Councilmember Gossage to kick start this initiative, I said, why don't we just form the commission? Let's just let's just cut to the chase. Why don't we just have one? And my staffer, Christina Logsdon, who's put a lot of work into this, said, well, you'll get a better product if you work with the community. And I think that today's legislation bears that out, that the task force process and the deliberative approach that they've taken in conjunction with the executive's office has led to a thoughtful proposal, I think, before us today that will stand the test of time. And so I just want to take a moment to thank the task force for their thoughtful work and thank my staffer, Christina Logsdon, for her work on this and commitment to these issues. And just one final thought on the compensation experience that you had. Some some words on. My understanding of this issue is, frankly, it's again and again we go and we turn to leaders in the community for their expertize and advice, who often face additional challenges and hurdles in just kind of getting through the day, to put it bluntly. And this notion of of kind of going to the well for free, I think, to some degree comes from a real privilege, the attitude that some of us have more time and resources to be able to do that. And I think we should think about in the future whether or not we are taking that privileged viewpoint and not reflecting on what we're asking folks to do for free. And it can be a burden and a barrier to service and therefore impede the work that we want and the results we want from organizing from groups like this. So I'm open on that question and I don't think it has to apply universally, but in a particular case, particularly on immigrant refugee community commission, immigrant Refugee Commission, that might be staffed by folks who faced more challenges in our community and we're service without compensation is a higher barrier, but something I think we should look at . So I'm I'm. Okay. I don't have any problem with looking at it. I think that those who advise on juvenile and adult criminal justice issues could make a case that they're providing invaluable services that or they aren't getting paid. I also think that people who are advising us on, you know, any emergency setting up an effective emergency services strategy in King County could make a case and they would bring up Katrina in not having adequate means of reaching out to the poor and disadvantaged. And they're often invisible. So so many groups that we have set up advisory boards and commissions for over the years that would make the case for that. But I definitely do not mind having that discussion with you and other members of the county council and the community as we move forward. Again, thank you. Thank you. Well. My sense is that the. Decision is not made by this action today. It's just not in it. It's a silent as to this issue. And so it remains sort of an open issue, I believe. That's correct. Okay. I will add my $0.02 that I think it's important that we, at a minimum, give people food when they come to these meetings. It just everything goes better when you feed people a second. Yeah. As a member of the group. Thank you, Madam Chair. The discussion made me want to weigh in as well. I think as a matter of philosophy, I agree wholeheartedly. The challenges, as Councilmember Gossett mentioned, this is an are only condition. And are we in a position to be able to afford to do that? And how do we do it equitably among our different volunteer agencies and do it? And which leads me into my my budget grump comment on budget terrorism. I love this work. I'm excited to support it. Obviously, I think we need to watch moving forward for bureaucratic creep and make sure that this is lean, mean and focused on delivering the services. You know, there are some staffing models proposed that were significantly more costly and more robust than other task forces. There's a recommendation to look at opening a new office. I think we need to recognize that we're taking this progressive and exciting step forward in a budget landscape where we continue to have our ability of revenue to grow beyond 1% plus new construction and have other pressures, you know, whether it's underfunded public defense system, a 500 felony case backlog in the courts, you name it. So I think one of our challenges will be to make this as effective and deliver the results that we need for this community while also being able to fund the direct services that benefit immigrants and refugees as well. So that's my my budget grump were a word of caution about some of it. But that being said, this is a long time coming and it's, I think is going to be an important tool, particularly for the folks I represent in South King County. In our discussion with the Harborview appointee, we talked a little bit about the suburbanization of poverty and the shifting demographics. And in these small suburban communities down south, you don't have the centralized government like you have in Seattle. You don't have cities that have the professional staff and expertize to do the kinds of community engagement and service delivery that's needed. At the same time, we have probably the most diverse population and in particular the largest concentrations of immigrant and refugee populations. So having the county take a step forward to centralize and streamline and improve our work to serve that population, particularly with the you know, I obviously don't object to the line that Councilmember Gossett was exploring serving the whole county, but having a little bit of a focus on those suburban and unincorporated areas, I think isn't necessarily a bad thing. And so I'm really excited about this and appreciate Councilmember Gossett, bring it. Forward. Okay. Any other questions? Comments? I'll ask the court to please Calderon. Thank you, Madam Chair. Councilmember Dombrowski. Councilmember Dunn. Hi. Councilmember Garcia. Hi. Councilmember Cornwell's Councilmember Lambert. Councilmember McDermott. Hi. Councilmember of the Grove. Councilmember Yvonne Ricardo. Madam Chair. Hi, Madam Chair. The voters are nice. No noes. Councilmember Caldwell's excused. Thank you very much. By your vote, proposed ordinance number 2017 0481 will move to the full council with a do pass recommendation. I think we will not put this one on consent. Councilmember Gossett So this is an opportunity to speak to it. Okay, very good. All right. Thank you very much. Staff. We will move on to proposed ordinance number 2017 0475. This item would approve and adopt two memoranda of agreement with the Joint Labor Management Insurance Committee, which represents benefits eligible employees represented by labor organizations except transit operators