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Report from Olympia | March 20, 2015
Dear
Friends and Neighbors,
Today we are wrapping up our 10th week at the Capitol; there
are just five weeks to go in the regularly scheduled 2015 session.
While our work on bills continues, I was reminded this week
of why our efforts to pass legislation dealing with human trafficking and
sexual exploitation of children are so important.
As the Spokesman-Review reports,
Spokane County inmates orchestrated sex crimes from their jail cells by
arranging prostitution of underage girls.The article points out that Spokane County prosecutor Larry Haskell has charged one perpetrator with new counts of human trafficking and promoting commercial sexual abuse of a minor -- offenses added to the law as part of our anti-trafficking efforts.
Too often we think of sex-trafficking as a crime that
happens in far-off countries. The reality is child sex exploitation, forced
labor and other forms of modern day slavery are happening right here in our
country, in our state and even in our neighborhoods.
You can read more below about our efforts to end human
trafficking.
Thank you for the opportunity to serve as your state
senator. If there is anything my staff or I can do for you, please don’t
hesitate to let us know. We also encourage you to stop by and say hello if you
are in Olympia. It’s always great to see friends from home.
Best
Regards,
Senator
Mike Padden
On Wednesday the House Judiciary Committee heard
public testimony on Senate
Bill 6019 – our bill to increase the independence of the state’s
administrative-law judges by reducing opportunities for them to be pressured or
punished by state-agency heads.
SB 6019, which passed the Senate unanimously earlier
this month, would:
- require an
administrative law judge in an internal agency or employed by the Office of
Administrative Hearings to issue final orders, which could only be appealed to
a superior court; and
- clarify that improper
“ex-parte communication” includes communications with an agency employee that
requires a presiding officer to decide cases according to the agency head’s
unwritten policies.
It’s really common sense that you don’t want someone
in an agency telling an administrative-law judge that they have to rule a
certain way. We don’t want a rubber-stamp or kangaroo court. The provisions in
this bill will help restore confidence in the public and in the parties who
participate in these hearings.
It is not often that you can see a bill gain support
from both the business community and the trial lawyers, or from advocates for
the underprivileged and employers, but that is exactly who came to Olympia to
testify in support of this bill.
Columbia Legal Services’ Robin Zukowski, who served
for two years as the deputy chief administrative law judge at the state Office
of Administrative Hearings, testified that she has represented low-income
people in administrative hearings for more than 30 years.
She described for the committee members why restoring
public confidence in the administrative process is so important.
“The [Administrative Procedures Act] is the way citizens
can disagree and appeal a decision that a state agency has made about their
lives. It’s a less formal and more accessible system, and for low-income people
in Washington, this is the justice system.
“Those 69,000 hearings each year held by [the Department
of Social and Health Services] or by OAH on behalf of DSHS, are all subsistence
decisions – life and death decisions for those appellants. They deserve the
appearance of fairness and actual fairness,” said Zukowski.
“It’s very difficult to explain to someone that the
final decision in their case is going to be made by the same agency that they
are disagreeing with.”
Thousands of people visited the Capitol in Olympia on Monday to
meet with their legislators and celebrate 10 years of civic engagement on
behalf of Latino groups in Washington State.
The Latino Civic Alliance hosted the annual “Latino
Legislative Day,” which featured various public forums on issues ranging from economic
development, labor and education to health care and public safety concerns. I
provided an updated on our efforts to combat human trafficking.
The Hispanic population grew by nearly 200 percent in our
state according to the 2010 census – making the Hispanic/Latino community in
Washington the 12th-largest in the United States.
 Sen. Padden meets with SNAP Director of Financial Stability Kerri Rodkey (left) and CEO Julie Honekamp
Last week I had a chance to sit down with Julie Honekamp and
Kerri Rodkey with the Spokane Neighborhood Action Partners. SNAP served more
than 3,500 4th District constituents last year alone.
It helps the most vulnerable people living within our
community. For nearly 50 years SNAP has been the local and regional advocate
helping to find solutions for ending poverty in the Spokane region by working
to educate and empower our low-income neighbors.
As they explained to me, SNAP values giving people in need a
hand up rather than a handout. Its mission is to provide access to needed
resources, and to help low-income people make connections that create
opportunities to work toward self-sufficiency.
It was great getting to learn more about the largest private
human-services agency in Spokane County.
If you have plans to visit Olympia, please let us know. We
would love to hear from you directly about your work in our community and how I
can better represent you in the Washington State Senate.
When you read news accounts of teenage girls forced into
prostitution or immigrants working as slave labor, it can’t help but break your
heart and spur you to action.
As lawmakers, sometimes we get lucky – we get to pass one simple
little bill and fix some issue that will make life better for our constituents.
However, we all know ending the trafficking of human beings in Washington is
not one of those issues.
Human trafficking is a billion-dollar industry that often takes
advantage of the most vulnerable members of our society – our children, migrant
workers, immigrants with language and cultural barriers and even those with
mental or developmental disabilities.
Fortunately, a large bipartisan group of legislators is committed
to battling this epidemic.
In the Law and Justice Committee several measures received
hearings this year. Among them:
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Senate Bill 5880,
which would enact the Washington human trafficking reporting act; and would facilitate training for any person employed in spas, hotels, bars, nightclubs, strip clubs,
tattoo parlors, truck stops, restaurants and other high-risk fields;
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Senate Bill 5041,
which would change the name of the crime of “patronizing a prostitute” to “sexual
exploitation” and provide law enforcement with the ability to seize and forfeit
the property of buyers of sex who use that property to commit the crime of
sexual exploitation; and
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Senate Bill 5884,
which would designate the Office of Crime Victims Advocacy as the single point
of contact in state government regarding human trafficking.
SB 5884 is still advancing this
session. It passed unanimously in the Senate, and is scheduled to receive a
hearing in the House Public Safety Committee.
The areas we are looking at this
year deal with training and education so that people in different industries
would be able to spot victims of human trafficking and know where to report
that information.
 Education is the key; many people
are unaware of how serious this problem really is or what to do when they
identify it.
Yesterday, the Senate hosted a symposium
aimed at raising awareness of human trafficking and discussing solutions. The guest of honor for the event was Linda Smith, former congresswoman from southwest Washington, who now
leads Vancouver-based Shared Hope International.
I participated in a
panel discussion on our legislative agenda to combat human trafficking with Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle.
If you were unable to join us in Olympia, I hope you will take a
moment to watch some of the coverage on TVW.org and share it with your friends
and family. We all must do our part to spread awareness and end this modern-day
slavery.
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Click here to watch the Anti-Human Trafficking Panel Discussion
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