New SPOG Contract Would Reportedly Give Police More Money Without Additional Accountability
Seattle News:
The huge news in public safety in Seattle this past week has been the announcement of a tentative new contract between the city and the Seattle Police Officers Guild, or SPOG. The last contract was approved in 2018 and expired at the end of 2020, so this new contract has been a long time coming and provides one of the few opportunities to make real improvements to Seattle’s police accountability.
However, news in that regard is not good. While the full contract has not yet been released, PubliCola reported that “The city approved a contract with the Seattle Police Managers Association last year that included new accountability measures, but SPOG’s contract reportedly fails to replicate many of these measures.” The new contract would also only apply until the end of 2023, while the next contract that would begin in 2024 is in mediation and could be delayed for an indefinite amount of time.
While it sounds like we won’t be seeing necessary accountability measures in the new contract, what we will be seeing is raises and back pay for police. PubliCola reports that retroactive wage increases for the past three years (2021-2023) would amount to a 23% pay raise: “The raises would increase the starting pay for new officers, before overtime, from just over $83,000 to nearly $103,000. Officers who have worked at SPD for six months would see their base pay increase to $110,000, and so on up the seniority line.” These raises would mean SPD officers would be receiving the highest base pay in the region.
If this sounds like terrible negotiation strategy to you, giving SPOG members a huge raise while not making real gains in accountability, then we are in agreement. But we’ll have to wait to see the contract to see exactly what is happening here.
In other labor news, the City Council finally voted on the contract with the Coalition of City Unions, which provides a 9.7% cumulative raise: 5% for 2023 and 4.5% for 2024. City workers will also receive raises in 2025 and 2026 based on the region’s consumer price index.
How will this affect Seattle’s budget? The Stranger reports that the City has the money to cover the extra $10.5 million this contract will cost for 2023 and 2024 because of saving $20 million from this year’s hiring freeze and JumpStart bringing in $40 million more than anticipated in 2023. Looking forward into 2025, the contract will cost $11 million more than expected, potentially bringing the budget deficit from $230 million to $241 million. (That being said, it’s possible the remaining hiring freeze savings and extra 2023 JumpStart monies might be applied to decrease this deficit, although of course spending JumpStart funds outside of its spending plan is a fraught question.)
What we don’t yet know is how much that deficit will be affected by the new SPOG contract.
Washington State News:
You can check out my interview with WA state legislature candidate Shaun Scott in the Urbanist from earlier this week.
Results from the latest Healthy Youth survey are out; this is a biennial survey for Washington state students designed to assess their mental health. Crosscut reported that “improved health behaviors and mental health along with increased social support were among the findings from this year’s survey, in comparison to 2021 results. At least seven in 10 reported feeling moderate to high hopes in 2023.”
The article goes on to quote Maayan Simckes, the principal investigator for the survey, theorizing that the improvements in student mental health might be due to increased supports at home and school, with almost 60% of youth saying they had an adult to turn to when they felt depressed.
That being said, while things have definitely improved, we still have a lot of young people suffering in the state. 55% of 12th graders and 49% of 10th graders said they’d been “unable to stop or control worrying in past two weeks,” while 32% of 12th graders and 30% of 10th graders said they’d been “feeling sad/hopeless in past year.” 15% of both 10th and 12th graders considered attempting suicide in the past year.
I’m also struck by that 40% of youth who did NOT have an adult to turn to when they felt depressed. We still have work to do.
Housekeeping:
I’ve received several Substack “pledges” in recent weeks with notes about wanting to support local journalism, which I think is fantastic. Thank you so much! However, I’m not going to turn on Substack’s subscription service. Instead if you’d like to support my work, you can do so with a monthly donation through my Patreon or through a one-time donation via Paypal. And of course, I applaud you if you’re offering your support to any of our fine local media outlets, such as Real Change, The South Seattle Emerald, PubliCola, The Stranger, or my current home The Urbanist.
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I’m going to pull out one of her listed items here for your perusal: “The New York Times did a major piece on Ibogaine, which is coming closer to medical and regulatory acceptance as a treatment for severe opioid addiction in the U.S. (along with other psychedelics, which are gaining a real foothold in the mainstream), writing that: “According to a number of small studies, between a third and two-thirds of the people who were addicted to opioids or crack cocaine and were treated with the compound in a therapeutic setting were effectively cured of their habits, many after just a single session.””