Brave Freshmen Legislators File Suit to Overturn Eyman Initiative on Minority Rule

Northwest Progressive has the story on the suit filed today in King County Superior Court, by twelve courageous freshmen legislators and one former Chief Justice to challenge the Eyman Two-Thirds Rule.

They are doing this on behalf of parents, teachers, students, and lawmakers, because they believe that the I-1053 is Unconstitutional and because "Majority Rule" is clearly required in the State Constitution for all legislation and laws. 


The freshmen were very distressed with the 2/3 requirement in this session, because of the draconian cuts that had to be made to the budget, which severely impact local school district's abilities to fund basic K-12 education and many other needs. 

Rep Cindy Ryu, D-32

Cindy Ryu is one of the freshmen who has put her name on the suit. She has always been a strong advocate for public education and came from a family that believes in striving for the highest educational accomplishments through public schools and public universities. Rep Ryu emigrated from Korea and became an American citizen because her parents worked very hard to give her and her brothers the opportunities through hard work to achieve a good future. She has an MBA from the University of WA and two of her children have already graduated from the same school.


Northwest Progressive Institute


http://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2011/07/parents-teachers-students-go-to-court-to-get-tim-eymans-i-1053-overturned.html

Monday, July 25th, 2011

Parents, teachers, students go to court to get Tim Eyman’s I-1053 overturned

A coalition representing parents, teachers, students, and lawmakers announced this morning that it has filed a lawsuit in King County Superior Court asking that Tim Eyman and BP’s Initiative 1053 be fully stricken from the Revised Code of Washington because it is blatantly unconstitutional.

Plaintiffs include the League of Education Voters, Washington Education Association, State Representatives Sam Hunt, Reuven Carlyle, Cindy Ryu, David Frockt, Deb Eddy, Chris Reykdal, Mike Sells, and former Chief Justice Robert Utter.

The suit contends, as we have for years, that I-1053 violates Article II, Section 22 of the State Constitution, which holds that the standard for passage of legislation shall be a majority vote, in keeping with the intentions of America’s founders. It asks that I-1053 be abolished in its entirety, and our state’s Constitution upheld.

We hope the suit will be successful, but if history is any indication, our courts will try to shirk their responsibility to defend our Constitution and wash their hands of this matter, as they have in the past. The Supreme Court of Washington has dismissed – on technicalities – a grand total of three prior lawsuits that justifiably sought to invalidate I-1053′s predecessors, I-960 and I-601. The Court has never decided the constitutional question that is at the heart of this lawsuit. Hopefully, that will happen this time. But we won’t be too surprised if it doesn’t. We’ve watched the courts dodge having to deal with this matter before. That’s the unfortunate precedent they’ve set.

I will be posting some additional analysis of the suit a little later.

This entry was written by Andrew and posted on  July 25th, 2011 at 11:05 AM . Bookmark thepermalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

Timberrrrr.... Ingraham HS Chainsaw Massacre

A Sad Day for the Tree Stewards who've been advocating for the grove of 70 year old trees at Ingraham High.

At least 27 native trees that have stood watch over generations of students at Ingraham HS are being felled today. Save the Trees - Seattle has stood up for this significant grove of trees for a number of years since the Seattle School District planned to remove them as a part of their High School addition project. The group won several rounds in superior court but the final round went to the Seattle School District cutters.  

Steve Zemke of Save the Trees Seattle is interviewed
this morning by at least 3 TV networks and Seattle PI

The Ingraham Grove had stood for 70 years providing shade, habitat and fresh air for the neighborhood.

Flicker nest in one of the cedars at Ingraham Grove
photo credit - Michael Oxman

The neighbors and Save the Trees - Seattle group had garnered enormous support from many elected officials and community groups. A letter of support had been sent to the School Board in 2008 signed by 8 members of the Seattle City Council and other leaders. Save the Trees - Seattle celebrated many victories in this fight and showed the leadership in the City that there was a good basis for protecting "groves of trees".  In 2009 the City Council passed and Interim Tree Ordinance with a "Groves of Trees" element. 

View of the grove looking SE on Ashworth. 

Many of the trees will be preserved along Ashworth Ave N. But a significant impact will be felt by the loss of at least 27 large trees. It is tragically clear that Seattle School District has a lot to learn about trees and our environment. It's a very sad lesson for Seattle public school students.

Poetry from Memorial Vigil held this month

A School District spokesperson, Tom Redman stated that the trees cut would now become the property of the tree contractors, who would presumably take the logs to be milled. But he really did not know what would become of the logs.

The trees are "screaming" as we speak this morning. And at least the press and neighborhood are listening.  Check KOMO 4 TV News, Fox Q13 News, and KIRO 7TV News, and Seattle PI for more coverage today. Seattle PI covered an earlier chapter in the story by Lisa Stifler in '08. http://www.seattlepi.com/local/356974_ingraham29.html

Loggers working high in these tallest trees.

This tree was over 70 years old and 30" in diameter.

Steve Zemke of Save the Trees - Seattle and Save Our Urban Forest Infrastructure (SOUFI) and blogs at  Majority Rules and has issued a statement there in an article entitled - 

Ingraham High School neighbor Steve Zemke is working to block removal of 80 trees that would be cut to make way for construction at the North Seattle school.
Dan DeLong / P-I

Ingraham High School Trees to "Scream" on Friday!

The Seattle School District is going to cut down 27 trees tomorrow Friday Jan 28, 2011 (about one quarter of the NW Grove) at Ingraham High School. For several days the School District has been assembling equipment and preparing to cut down the trees. Tomorrow students have the day off.

Tonight just before dark I went over to check things out once again and asked a worker in a hardhat when they were going to cut the trees down.  His response was that "tomorrow the trees would be screaming". It's strange but I could not think of a more apt response for the trees.

Ingraham HS Trees Threatened Again by Ruling

This article reprinted from Majority Rules Blog. Activist Steve Zemke is the author.

Seattle has passed some much stricter "Interim Tree Regulations" last year, which were supposed to protect Groves of Trees. But, alas a Seattle Hearing Examiner did not get the message.


photo credit Majority Rules Blog


It was a long shot expecting the City of Seattle to come to the defense of the old trees at Ingraham High School. The Seattle School District also only saw the trees as an impediment to their development plans. Now Seattle Hearing Examiner Ann Watanabe has also chose to ignore the evidence in the Hearing Record and Seattle City law requiring that priority be given to protecting uncommon plant and animal  habitat in the City of Seattle. She has denied the appeal by Save the Trees-Seattle to stop the 70 year old 100 foot tall eveegreen trees from being cut being cut down at Ingraham High School in North Seattle.

The decision is not yet posted on the Hearing Examiner's website.  When it is I will post a link here.

The environmental review now goes back to the King County Superior Court. We will be appealing the decision and it will  be up to the court to make a final decision. They previously issued a restraining order preventing the Seattle School District from cutting down the 70 year old 100 foot tall Douglas fir, western red cedar and Pacific madrone trees until the environmental review was completed by the City of Seattle. That has now been done.

In her most recent decision Seattle hearing Examiner Ann Watanabe chose to ignore testimony from Save the Trees - Seattle that alternative sites for building the school addition were available on the Ingraham campus and that the Seattle School District padded the cost for other sites by adding in features like an additional 2000 square foot entrance on designs for the North side. Of course this raised the cost for any North side addition. The Seattle School District's designs and cost estimates for alternative sites lacked credibility when closely examined.

Many of the issues raised were ignored by the Hearing Examiner.  One obvious early sign of the Hearing Examiner's limiting review of relevant issues was her upholding a preliminary motion by the Seattle School District to exclude testimony on wildlife by one of the witnesses we called, Kirk Prindle, a wildlife biologist who is a member of Seattle's Urban Forestry Commission. This was despite the submitting of new bird studies for the Seattle School District, which were included in DPD's file.

The Hearing Examiner ignored basic ecological considerations, as did the DPD and the Seattle School District. Groves of trees, particularly groves with conifers are not common in Seattle.  The particular association at Ingraham of conifers and madrone trees is an uncommon plant habitat in Seattle. The Hearing Examiner in her previous decision agreed with this. There are only about 52 acres total ofconifer madrone forest  in all of Seattle, mostly at Seward Park. While there are scatterings of Douglas fir and madrone trees here and there in Seattle what is unique about Ingraham is that it is a 1.2 acre site and a grove of some 130 trees  rather than just a few trees.

The diversity of plants and animals in a grove is directly correlated with patch or grove size size.  The larger the patch size, the more diversity of plants and animals.  Because all of Seattle has been logged over, except for some 50 acres of old growth at Schmidt's Park, the Ingraham Grove represents some of the oldest trees in Seattle. This older growth and uncommon plant habitat should be saved.   City environmental law gives a priority for doing this.  Yet at Ingraham  High School, given the  viable option of saving the grove in it's entirety because alternative sites exist,  the Seattle Hearing Examiner has chosen not to. 

Unfortunately the so called Emerald City of Seattle has a policy that we will save trees unless they prevent the development potential of a site.  When this was mentioned by an employee of Seattle's Department of Planning and Development at a recent urban forest symposium on saving trees, thewhole room broke out in spontaneous laughter. Yes it was said seriously but it is a joke obviously when  the absurdity of the policy sinks in.

Unfortunately the consequence is not a joke.  Seattle continues to lose trees, especially during development. Exceptional trees basically have no protection at any time because the whole process is complaint driven.  By the time you hear the chainsaw, it is too late to stop a tree from being cut down. So DPD's proposal is that since the current system doesn't save trees, let's scrap the law mandating  protection for old trees in the city altogether.  It's like BP after they weren't  able to initially stop the oil flow in the Gulf saying,  well this didn't work so lets just stop trying.

One way the city can get some control over continued tree cutting, especially old trees is to expand its current permit system, to require a permit  to cut down any tree over 6 inches in diameter on public and private property.  The  Seattle Department of Transportation already requires a permit before a tree can be cut down or even pruned if it is on the public right of way. Yet the DPD in their just released proposal for a new tree ordinance for the City of Seattle dismisses tree permits altogether and basically argues that we need to just encourage people to do the right thing and save trees by more public outreach and education.  Like this has worked.

What we need is a change of policy and priorities.  In the past people used to shot songbirds to eat.  Fashion also threatened the very survival of many bird speicies as birds were killed for their feathers to create lavish "fashionable" hats. Yet we changed public policy to end this absurd killing of birds for money and fashion.

Trees are no less valuable living life forms than birds. In fact birds need native trees and shrubs to survive.  Unfortunately trees are not mobile like birds. That makes them even more vulnerable. They are living entities of beauty and its an ecological necessity to protect them  if birds and insects and other species are to survive on our planet. Obviously the DPD's proposal is ridiculous to eliminate protection for trees, especially exceptional trees.

We require hunting licenses to kill various wildlife and populations are monitored to ensure that overhunting does not occur and a species is wiped out.  It's time to do the same for trees in our city.  Trusting that people will not cut down trees wantonly and drive species of associated animals and plants to extinction in our city should  not be left to chance and wishful thinking.

The current underegulated and unenforced tree protections are resulting in a continued decline of  our urban forest.  Most tree increases in recent years have been the short lived, small trees that get planted in the parking strips. The large trees and few remaining groves of trees continue to be cut down. Its time to change this. The interim ordinace passed last year limits tree cutting to 3 a year yet even this is not monitored or enforced.  Without permits and tracking of trees cut down we have no idea who is doing what. We see plenty of examples everyday however of trees being cut down.

Save the Trees-Seattle is working to stop trees being cut down in the city and come up with a workable new tree protection ordinance.  You can help support our efforts by making a contribution to Save the Trees-Seattle. Click on the donate button below to make a contribution of  $50 or $100 or or $25 or whatever you can so we can continue our efforts to save the trees in Seattle from the chainsaws.