[EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is a Letter to the Editor, written and submitted by a verified Burien resident. It represents the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of South King Media or its staff.]

I appreciate your team for adding coverage on HB 1380. This is one of the most important legislative topics this year and has been kept away from the public’s view. I write in response to the article published here. I have copied City Manager Bailon and Rep. Gregerson as I believe in doing government business openly. I request you consider updating your story with my further response to Rep. Gregerson. 

In her email to The B-Town Blog, Rep. Gregerson misrepresents discussion around HB 1380 in a number of important ways and unfairly mischaracterizes City Manager Bailon and the reasonable concerns of the City of Burien. Rep. Gregerson probably didn’t mention that all of the cities in her district share Burien’s concerns and have been intensively reaching out to ask that HB 1380 be withdrawn. Despite months of sustained and good-faith effort by district cities, Rep. Gregerson offered cities only a recent and brief 30-minute phone call during which she declined to withdraw HB 1380. This is not how representative government is supposed to work.

I’ve attached a letter from many of the cities in South King County — including Renton, Kent, Auburn, and Federal Way, the largest population centers in South King — and you will find no agreement with Rep. Gregerson’s unrealistic interpretation of her bill. It seems objectively reasonable to let cities speak for themselves on the question of how activist legislation will impact our residents — and HB 1380 is activist, despite the reasonable-sounding veneer. I ask again that Rep. Gregerson respect municipal government’s role in representing the voters who elected us and acknowledge the expertise of our city attorneys in interpreting how legislation impacts cities. 

You have already covered the Association of Washington Cities (AWC) opposition to HB 1380, but this is more important than came through in your coverage. Virtually all cities statewide join AWC as a membership organization of governments, and when the organization takes a position like it has on HB 1380, you can trust that there are very major problems with the legislation and the likeliest outcome is for cities and residents to be harmed. The Washington State Association of Counties, the membership organization of statewide county governments, agrees with AWC and has testified to that effect. Rep. Gregerson has not been willing to explain why government is united against HB 1380 everywhere outside her co-sponsors and caucus.

Indeed voters deserve to know that Rep. Gregerson is proposing legislation that is unanimously opposed at every level of government statewide which exists below the Legislature, and this should be disturbing to anyone who has ever returned a ballot. By a solid majority the elected officials at the county and municipal levels opposing HB 1380 are also, like myself, Democrats. This is not a party issue, it’s an issue of unrepresentative activism opposing responsible and representative government. I invite you to contact any city statewide and ask if that city council endorses HB 1380. Rep. Gregerson will agree this list totals zero. 

Tragically HB 1380 is part of a destructive national trend of distorting reality in politics and asking voters to participate in fiction. The worst parts of both major political parties perpetuate this. The distortion takes other forms like pretending less policing increases public safety, something Washington voters now know is untrue — a distortion that Rep. Gregerson supported and seemingly continues to support. HB 1380’s distortion pretends it’s in the best interest of our most vulnerable —  disproportionately those with life-threatening addictions and mental illnesses — for local government to wait on the outcome of litigation instead of preventing the kinds of encampments which kill their inhabitants, or in their best interest to divert city homelessness outreach budgets into fighting bad-faith lawsuits. 

I believe an overwhelming majority of Washington voters are tired of government being prevented from doing the job of keeping all people safe, regardless of who they are and what their circumstances are, and are tired of surrendering public spaces to be a hospice where the neglected go to die. Rep. Gregerson should respond to the will of her voters and let government do the job we were elected to do: help people and prevent bad things from happening. 

With appreciation,
Eric Zimmerman
Mayor, City of Normandy Park

EDITOR’S NOTE: Do you have an opinion you’d like to share with our highly engaged local Readers? If so, please email your Letter to the Editor to scott@southkingmedia.com and, pending review and verification that you’re a real human being, we may publish it. Letter writers must use their full name, as well as provide an address and phone number (NOT for publication but for verification purposes).