Dedicated to the citizens of Mason County, Washington since 1886
Dedicated to the citizens of Mason County, Washington since 1886
State Reps. Dan Griffey and Travis Couture, Republicans from Allyn, and Sen. Drew MacEwen, R-Shelton, wrapped up the regular legislative session April 23.
On Tuesday, Gov. Jay Inslee said he intends to call a special session on May 16 to address the state’s drug possession law.
Child malnutrition
Couture’s bill, House Bill 1274, to help prevent child malnutrition was signed into law by Inslee on April 13.
The bill is the first from Couture, in his first year as a representative, to pass both houses of the Legislature. The bill directs the state Department of Children, Youth and Families in consultation with the state Department of Health, to create a child malnutrition field guide for staff.
According to a news release, the bill was in response to Karreon Franks, a 15-year-old boy in Vancouver with developmental disabilities who died of starvation six days after he and his malnourished siblings were visited by a state Child Protective Services agent. Franks weighed 70 pounds at the time of his death and an investigation into Franks’ abuse began in 2017 after concerned neighbors contacted state authorities.
A week before Franks’ death, state authorities received another call from an anonymous person describing the state of Franks and his siblings. A state case worker visited the children the next day but did not intervene to protect them, according to the release.
The field guide to assist Child Protective Services, according to the bill, must be concise, be easily accessible, describe how to identify signs of child malnutrition, include appropriate questions to ask the child and others close to the child when malnutrition is suspected, include next steps department staff may take when malnutrition is suspected and include any information the department deems relevant.
“I appreciate my colleagues in the House and Senate for their unanimous support of this important measure,” Couture said in a news release. “The state failed Karreon Franks. What happened to him must never be allowed to happen to any child in the state of Washington ever again. While a child malnutrition field guide may seem like a small step, it will ensure that agents of the state no longer have the excuse that they don’t know what child malnutrition looks like.”
Pill press
Griffey cosponsored House Bill 1209, which will make possession or sale of a pill press outside of legitimate medical uses a class C felony in the state and punishable by five years in prison or up to a $10,000 fine, was signed into law by Inslee on April 13.
According to a news release, Washington will join Mississippi and British Columbia in July as the only jurisdictions to ban the private use of pill presses. The bill was personal for Griffey, who said a close family friend, Tyler Lee Yates, overdosed on fentanyl just a year ago. Yates was the son of a firefighter Griffey came up the ranks with. Yates became addicted to opioids after a motorcycle crash. He bought what he believed to be Percocet in January 2022 in the parking lot of a local casino and the pill turned out to be counterfeit fentanyl made with a pill press. That pill ended his life in the parking lot. The bill was named in memory of Tyler.
MacEwen sponsors Lacey student page
Timberline High School senior Isa Splichal served as a Senate page on April 3 to 7 at the Capitol in Olympia.
According to a news release, Splichal was among 26 students who worked as pages during the 13th week of the 2023 regular legislative session. The page program gives students an opportunity to spend a week working at the Legislature and staff the Senate floor, transport documents between offices and deliver mail and messages. They attend page school to learn about parliamentary procedures and the legislative process.
“Isa is a very smart young woman,” MacEwen said. “It is so impressive that at her age, she already knows what she wants to do and has set such high goals.”
Griffey, Couture on shooting, suicide
Griffey and Couture blamed Democrats for the death of Chantel Peterson in a news release.
According to the release, Griffey and Couture said it is “a cop-out” that Judge Cadine Ferguson-Brown said state law regarding presumption of release constrained her ability to set a higher bail in the case.
“The criminal justice reform experiment we have dealt with over the past several years is clearly failing all,” Couture said in a news release. “Not only did it fail the victim in this case, it failed the suspect. Now the victim is damaged for life and this woman is dead, all because she wasn’t put in jail. Sure, this woman would have had to serve her time had she been correctly held accountable — but she’d also be alive. The left has a motto for these soft-on-crime things they’re doing, like the low bail: ‘No justice, no peace.’ In this case, there is no justice and there will be no peace.”
Griffey and Couture said contrary to the narrative from Democrats, the criminal justice system does save lives.
“This judge’s decision to release this woman on such a low bail — completely disregarding the warning of prosecutors about the threat she posed to both the victim and the public — is not only outrageous, it cost this woman her life,” Griffey said in a news release. “It holds people accountable. It saves lives and it protects the people most at risk in our society. It also gets help to those that need help the most. In this case, the criminal justice system and judge should be ashamed of themselves. This Governor Inslee-appointed judge could have easily used her judicial discretion. She not only had the right to use that discretion, she had the responsibility. She chose not to. She did not do the right thing.”
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