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Dear Friends and Neighbors,
What would your answer be if I asked you these questions: Do you feel and believe our homes, communities, district, and state are safe? What do you feel makes them safe? What conditions, policies, and actions make them unsafe? Ensuring our safety across the board, whatever your definition of this may be, is one of my caucus' main priorities this session.
Chronic homelessness, drug addiction, crime, and untreated mental illness have made many communities unsafe. Rather than addressing the root causes of these problems and making difficult decisions, the majority party has enabled destructive behavior and left our law enforcement professionals without needed support.
We must do more to help keep our communities safe, including those who have homes and those who don't. Addressing public safety challenges requires compassion, enforcement and accountability.
I'm offering several solutions and bills this session to do my part to ensure our kids, our homes, our communities, and our environment are safe.
Keeping our kids safe
I played contact, or collision, sports when I was in high school. The concussion problem back then wasn't as serious as it is today. I've introduced a bill that seeks for schools within the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) to report information about each head injury sustained in grades 9-12 during activities overseen by WIAA. This would allow them to create a centralized report to include data on concussion rates, patterns, trends, and other relevant information. This isn't about limiting the sports our kids play. It's about keeping them safe, and potentially preventing head-related injuries. Read more about this bill here.
Keeping our environment safe
I've introduced a bipartisan solution to keep toxins out of our waterways. My hopes with this bill are to give local municipalities the tools to keep toxins and other hazardous waste out of our environment, thus keeping all of us safe. The intent of this bill is to provide education, interventions, and responsible alternatives for places for anyone to dump waste in a safe and responsible manner to ensure our environment, waterways, fish, and communities remain healthy and safe. You can watch my testimony on this bill before the House Environment and Energy Committee here: https://www.tvw.org/watch/?clientID=9375922947&eventID=2020011186&startStreamAt=4110&stopStreamAt=4390&autoStartStream=true
Keeping our communities safe
We had a tragic event happen in Seattle this week. Eight people were shot on the streets of downtown, including one nine-year-old boy and a woman who lost her life, at the hands of three convicted felons. This event happened the same week the House Civil Rights and Judiciary Committee heard several bills on stricter gun control. Unfortunately, this is an event that stricter gun control laws wouldn't have prevented from taking place. This is an example of how we need to fix a broken system that allows convicted criminals to remain in society when they should be locked up. Watch my response and solutions to this major safety concern below.
- https://komonews.com/news/local/lawmakers-on-what-can-be-done-to-prevent-another-deadly-seattle-shooting
- https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/state-lawmakers-respond-deadly-seattle-mass-shooting/JFJ264TC2JEDZCSUDODHNOIZ6A/
- https://www.king5.com/article/news/politics/deadly-seattle-shooting-could-impact-gun-laws-in-2020-legislative-session/281-f72f54b1-a65c-4945-a93c-2f801e27bd96
It's an honor to serve you.
Sincerely,
Morgan Irwin
