Thanks to the signing Monday by Gov. Jay Inslee of the biennial state transpiration budget bill, there be a full EIS delving into how the region’s highway traffic flows inter-relate, and other topics. As well, 10 Eastside cities led by Mercer Island, plus Seattle and King County in a recent letter are pressing Puget Sound Regional Council and state officials to “convene a major task force” to review “a system-wide approach” to highway tolling and transportation system funding rather than the current “corridor by corridor” basis. That would include using revenues from tolling passenger vehicles to fund transit.

And to boot, the Mercer Island City Council Monday night approved legislation by a 6-0 vote another $125,000 in spending for lawyers and consultants to fight the current I-90 tolling scenario. Deputy City Manager Noel Treat says city officials will be meeting in early June in Washington, D.C. with Federal Highway Administration chief Victor Mendez to press their case that current federal law does not allow tolling an interstate, such as I-90, to pay for a state highway project, such as the unfunded western approach to the new SR 520 bridge.

Continuing its full-court press, Mercer Island today sent a letter to Washington State DOT Secretary Lynn Peterson seeking to ensure there would be a new round of public comments on envisioned I-90 tolling, now that an EIS will be required. The letter also urges WSDOT to “harmonize” the EIS with the proposed “system tolling” probe so that the scope of the EIS is not limited to just I-90 and SR 520. Treat said, “We understand King County and the PSRC are talking to the Governor’s office about how to integrate” that requested analysis with the EIS.

The 1960s-vintage SR 520 floating bridge – which connects Seattle to key Eastside job centers such as Bellevue, Kirkland and Redmond – is classified by the state as highly vulnerable to a disaster in the event of a major storm with winds greater than 70 miles per hour, or an earthquake. Its total replacement cost is projected at $4.1 billion and much of that is covered by an array of funding sources including electronic tolls put in place on the bridge itself, but not on the un-funded western approach which bisects Seattle’s sylvan Montlake neighborhood and the University of Washington’s main campus.

Pblic Data Ferret’s Transportation archive

Treat says it’s too early to say what the best approach to the $1.4 billion funding challenge is, but several options are politically dicey. They include a three-cents-per-gallon hike in the state gas tax remarked for 520; a local option hike in the motor vehicle excise tax, and even the years-distant vehicle miles traveled tax, something under study by a special state task force.

Opposition to the state’s renewed plans for tolling of the I-90 corridor began to build on Mercer Island in late 2012, as word spread of early 2013 public meetings WSDOT was planning for the Environmental Assessment process. The city has contracted with the Seattle law firm K&L Gates and other consultants to press its case.

Treat says the council is not “anti-tax, anti-funding” on regional surface transpiration, and gets that there are major needs. But he says the problem requires a systems approach including a good hard look at whether tolls from one facility should be used to fund work on another. If so, he says, there needs to be a clear road map of how it will all work, something that can be clarified through the new EIS and the envisioned regional study.

The April 22 letter to the PSC and WSDOT Sec. Peterson urging the “system-wide” tolling analysis, is signed by King County Executive Dow Constantine, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and the mayors of Bellevue, Clyde Hill, Hunts Point, Kenmore, Lake Forest Park, Mercer Island, Newcastle, Redmond, Renton and Yarrow Point.

Assistant WSDOT Secretary Craig Stone, of WSDOT’s Toll Division, said that “having leadership in the region step up” and make more clear their interest in a coordinated regional approach to tolling is a positive step. “It’s a healthy conversation that needs to happen,” he added. As for Mercer Island’s concern about using I-90 tolls to pay for SR 520, he said the region has to figure out if its major highways really are a system or not. In the Bay Area, he noted, toll revenues from seven different bridges are used jointly because the facilities are seen as a system.

Tolling the western approach of SR 520 to pay for its construction does represent “a reasonable perspective,” Stone said. There are three distinct segments of SR 520 that theoretically could be tolled, if the state with regional backing chooses to do so, Stone said: the western approach, the currently-tolled bridge; and the segment from the eastern landing of the bridge, going further east to I-405.

The draft EIS on I-90 tolling should be completed by as early as mid-2014, Stone said. It will be followed by public hearings, then the issuance of a final EIS, and by as soon as mid-2015, the final record of decision.

A wild card in funding the $1.4 billion SR 520 western approach is Seattle community concerns about environmental mitigation including lids, parks and more, which could still result in added costs and even litigation against the state.

Public Data Ferret is a news knowledge base program of the 501c3 public charity, Public Eye Northwest. Ferret In The News. Donate; subscribe (free)/volunteer.

Instead he has mainly been civilly committed at Western State Hospital in Steilacoom, but re-charged twice after temporary releases to see his family. Recent court documents hint that cycle – tied to repeated determinations he is not mentally “competent” to stand trial – may well continue as the current and third try by King County prosecutors for a trial unfolds.

His sister Ayan Kaynan, 29, has had enough. She says he’s innocent and deserves to have his day in court.

Child rapes alleged to have occurred in North Highline daycare facility
In the most recent filing of charges in March, Kaynan is again alleged from July 2005 through March 2007 to have on a regular and recurring basis anally raped a boy who was then aged five to seven and enrolled in a home-based daycare center operated by Kaynan’s mother Maryan Dirir in her home. Kaynan’s last known address was in the 400 block of SW 113th Place in unincorporated North Highline, which family members confirm is where the daycare facility was, though they have moved to a nearby location, and the daycare facility has long since been shuttered by the state.

Allegedly put candy in victim’s mouth or taped it shut
According to the King County Sheriff’s probable cause report filed at the time and attached to the current case file, Kaynan, who was age 16 to 18 over the course of the alleged child rapes, “on a regular basis, almost every day as described by (the alleged victim),” took him into a room in the house and anally raped him. The sheriff’s report states sometimes Kaynan put candy in his mouth and sometimes taped his mouth shut. The boy and an older brother were among several children who stayed after school in Dirir’s home daycare center where her son Kaynan lived, and mostly for full days in summer, according to court documents.

Although county prosecutors have been persistent and aggressive in re-filing charges whenever Kaynan is released from Western State, getting the case to trial has been complicated. In court documents he is said to be unable to distinguish between jury deliberations and a judge’s sentence, and to have “cognitive functioning…within the range of mild mental retardation or borderline intellectual functioning.”

At the direction of King County Superior Court James E. Rogers earlier this month, a state psychiatrist will for the third time since 2008 develop a recommendation on whether Kaynan should once more be civilly committed rather than face trial.

In rejecting a mid-April defense motion to dismiss the case, Rogers nonetheless broadly signaled in court documents that given a refreshed expert validation of Kaynan’s incapacity to stand trial, he may well be ready to dismiss the case.

Two prior dismissals already
After initial charges were filed in September, 2008, King County Superior Court Judge Sharon S. Armstrong nine months later dismissed the case without prejudice based on findings by psychiatrists at Western State that Kaynan was mentally incompetent to stand trial, largely due to a diagnosis then of schizophrenia, court documents show. “Without prejudice” means the case can be re-filed at a later date.

Prosecutors re-filed charges in December 2011 when Kaynan was cleared to leave Western State for a holiday season visit to his family. Mental health experts this time diagnosed him not with schizophrenia, but instead as having cognitive barriers to understanding the legal proceedings against him. The case was then for a second time dismissed without prejudice, in August of 2012 by King County Circuit Court Judge Judge Ronald Kessler.

After each dismissal Kaynan was returned to Western State for further treatment. That has included “competency restoration” classes and participating in group discussions in his ward.

When prosecutors learned in September 2012 that Kaynan could earn eligibility in coming weeks for temporary unescorted leave, they began preparing to refile the charges again. That happened in early March of this year, and Kaynan’s defense attorney John Ostermann has since argued that Kaynan continues to lack the basic mental capacity to understand courtroom proceedings and assist in his own defense, and that prosecutors are pursuing a “vindictive” course of action.

Performing the new assessment of Kaynan’s mental capacity to stand trial will be the author of the last one, in August 2012. He is a University of Washington Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry named Ray Hendrickson, who also works for the Washington Department of Social and Health Services at Western State.

The investigation leading to initial filing of criminal charges began after the mother of the alleged victim began to prepare for opening her own in-home daycare operation, according to the county sheriff’s probable cause report in charging documents. In May 2008 she warned her two sons to avoid any improper touching of the girls who would attend. The older brother of the alleged victim then told the mother about Kaynan’s alleged taking of his younger brother into a room regularly at the day-care facility they attended.

About a month later, after his mother once again introduced the general subject, by talking about “good touch, bad touch,” the alleged victim, according to documents, “asked if he would go to hell if someone touched him in a bad way” and told his mother of the alleged anal rapes by Kaynan. He detailed his allegations later to a King County forensic child interview specialist and related charges were subsequently filed for the first time in September, 2008.

Kaynan’s sister wants “the court to listen to our side”
Reached by phone at the home of the mother Maryan Dirir, Kaynan’s sister Ayan Kaynan, 29, firmly insisted he is completely innocent of the charges and said she would like to see a trial go forward so that he can clear his name. “We wish that there would be a trial and a court that would listen to our side,” she told Public Data Ferrt.

Asserts child victim was “coached” on what to say
The mother of the alleged victim “coached” him on what say, asserts Ayan Kaynan. “My brother didn’t do anything. God knows it, we know it. He is just an innocent little boy.” Asked her assessment of his mental capabilities she said, “He is not normal, he is a little bit disturbed.”

Ayan Kaynan confirmed her mother’s daycare center was shut down by the state of Washington shortly after the investigation of the alleged child rapes began. State records show the daycare license of a Maryan Dirir Mahamud in the 98146 zip code was revoked in August 2008. Ayan Kaynan said the family has four children, her and three brothers, and the father remains in Somalia.

A message left for the mother of the alleged victim, seeking comment on the case, has not yet been returned. According to charging papers, she was planning to open a daycare center of her own around the time she learned from her son and his older brother, who was also in Dirir’s daycare center with him, of the alleged abuse by Olad Kaynan. Ayan Kaynan claims the woman was motivated by jealousy of Dirir’s operation of a daycare center to try to drive her out of business by using her son to fabricate charges of sex abuse there.

The charging papers against Kaynan note he had juvenile arrests for assault in the fourth degree/domestic violence in 2003 and two counts of indecent exposure in 2004, but all related charges were later dismissed.

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These are the key assertions in the suit filed by Marcie L. Myers, 30, of Maple Valley, who worked at the district from 2007 until May 1 of last year. The District’s Executive Director Sara Hemphill disputes Myers’ account and says her termination was warranted, but would not discuss specifics of the decision to fire her.

Alleged disparaging of Jews, Chinese, non-citizens, women without make-up
However the lawsuit details allegations of an escalating series of workplace events Myers says forced her to seek changes which she asserts then led to her abrupt dismissal without just cause. According to the lawsuit, supervisors made derogatory remarks about Jews, Chinese, and non-citizens, talked sex at lunchtime to her discomfort, and criticized her clothes and lack of make-up. She says in the suit that she was initially afraid to take action because the district had previously fired other internal critics and/or made them sign silence vows.

Inappropriate touching alleged
Myers claims in the suit that Hemphill often touched her inappropriately, in the small of her back and by massaging her shoulders, and “made unwelcome comments about her lack of femininity,” the suit claims.

Not so, says boss
Hemphill said she never heard race-inflected comments in the workplace and that allegations of unwanted touching by her don’t “ring any bells….” Other insulting comments Myers claims were made also don’t ring true, asserted Hemphill. “People who work in this organization are softhearted, empathetic,” she said, and would not have made such mis-steps. Claims of comments about Myers’ lack of make-up and casual attire “don’t make any sense,” said Hemphill, because almost all the District’s workers go into the field frequently and dress informally out of necessity.

Plaintiff: things got worse after pregnancy
But according to Myers’ lawsuit, things got worse when she became pregnant. Hemphill allegedly told her a woman can’t be a good mother if she’s working full time, and another supervisor allegedly said that “she believed people should’t have children.” As well, supervisors “made derogatory comments about her weight, one saying to her that she “waddled when she walked.” Upon learning after Myers’ return from her November 2011 to February 2012 maternity leave that she planned to have a second child, that same superior advised Myers to “never have more than one child,” the suit asserts.

Myers also charges that Hemphill refused to give her a flexible work schedule although it was in the workplace policy to permit that. Hemphill concedes only that she probably indicated to Myers that being a working mother is “a very challenging task.”

Sandbagged for speaking up, Myers asserts
The crux of the civil action is that after Myers raised her concerns to District officials about alleged unfair treatment and also held an initial meeting with some colleagues to start exploring workplace unionization, she was essentially sandbagged and summarily dismissed, despite unvarying positive evaluations and no prior disciplinary notices.

Myers claims in the suit that she e-mailed her direct supervisor Jason Monoghan on April 27, 2012 to convey that she felt harassed by another superior (not Hemphill) and that three days later on April 30 she met with Monoghan and Hemphill to discuss the concerns. The next day May 1, she asserts in the suit, she was called into a meeting with Hemphill and notified the district had decided to discharge her for “rude, disrespectful and negative behavior” and a “general bad attitude in the workplace.”

Public Data Ferret’s King County+Ethics archive

She was informed, she claims, that there were four specific complaints against her from co-workers – but that specifics weren’t shared with her and that she had not previously gotten any reprimands. Her attorneys write in the civil suit that she sought and got a follow-up meeting May 7, 2012 to try to resolve matters but at the end of it was handed by Hemphill a memo dated May 9 that the district would involuntarily “separate,” or discharge her and potentially object to her attempts to seek unemployment compensation from the state unless she would agree to resign and sign away legal claims and rights to speak out against the district. She refused that, and also asserts in the civil suit that the district has previously taken tangible actions to fire and silence workplace critics.

Hemphill responded to Myers’ allegations of being unfairly forced out by saying that, “It doesn’t have any connection to any reality of which I am aware. We took every action with measure, redundancy, outside oversight, and with a great deal of research, consideration, deliberation and professional involvement.” Hemphill declined to discuss exactly why Myers was dismissed, but added the district would be represented in court by lawyers yet to be hired, through a legal services consulting firm serving the numerous regional conservation districts in Washington state.

Myers in the civil suit seeks economic damages “including but not limited to past and future wages, loss of retirement benefits, and other benefits” as proven at trial; plus compensatory or non-economic damages including emotional distress, plus attorney’s and related fees.

Barring any pre-trial out-of-court settlement, the case is likely to take a year or more to resolve. We will report on the ultimate outcome here. The mission of the King Conservation District, Hemphill says, is to “engage private landowners in good conservation stewardship.” It is one of many such public regional conservation entities around the state, created under Washington law.

UPDATE, 5/17/13, 2:20 p.m.: Myers declined a request to comment further but her attorney Mark Davis of the Seattle law firm Badgley Mullins Turner released the following statement: “Ms. Myers stands by the content of her complaint as filed with the King County Superior Court on May 14, 2013. We anticipate that discovery will corroborate the substance of Ms. Myers’ factual allegations and further establish the merit of her legal claims. We can confirm the defendant’s actions have had a significant and disabling impact upon all aspects of Ms. Myers’ life, including her family life, professional career, personal finances, and overall well-being. Accordingly, we are confident that a jury will return a substantial verdict in her favor.”

RELATED: King Conservation District Rates and Charges; staff; board; landowner incentive programs.

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The May 2013 report from BJS also notes that firearm homicide rates by race continued to decline for all five groups measured. The rate for African-Americans dropped from 30.1 per 100,000 in 1993 to 14.6 in 2011, a new low over that stretch. Over the same span the rate for whites went from 3.7 to 1.9, for Hispanics from 12.4 to 3.8, for American Indian/Alaska Natives from 4.6 to 2.7, and for Asian/Pacific Islanders from 4.6 to 1.0.

By gender, the firearms homicide rate for men dropped from 12 per 100,000 in 1993 to 6.2 in 2010 and for females from 2.3 to 1.1 over the same time.

From Firearm Violence, 1993-2011, U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, May, 2013; * = 2011 preliminary data from National Vital Statistics System, U.S. Centers for Disease Control

By age, the firearm homicide rate was greatest for 18-24 year olds, at 10.7 per 100,000. That compared to 8.1 per 100,000 for 25-34s, 3.6 for 35-49s, 2.8 for 12-17s and 1.4 percent for those 50 and older. This was for 2010 – the most recent year for which data on that measure was available.

Firearms were far more likely than not to be involved in U.S. homicides but much less so in other crimes. Almost seven of 10 homicides in the U.S. in 2011 involved a firearm versus one-quarter of robberies and three of 10 aggravated assaults.

The data in the report on firearms-related homicides is drawn from the National Vital Statistics System of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control; while calculations on non-fatal firearms-related violence are derived from the National Crime Victimization Survey, a series of ongoing, rotating probes of a nationally representative sample of households.

From 2007 through 2011, respondents to the national crime surveys reported they responded to violent crime directed at them in a range of ways. Less than one percent of the time they used firearms. More than one of five times they threatened or attacked without a weapon. More than one-quarter of the time they used non-confrontational tactics; and more than four of ten times they offered no resistance at all.

The biggest cities were not where non-fatal firearm violence was most likely to occur. Its rate was higher in municipalities of half a million to a million, at 4.6 incidences per 1,000 population 12 or older, versus 3.9 per 1,000 in cities of one-quarter to one-half million and 3.2 in cities of a million or more. In only two years since 1993 have cities of a half million to one million not had the highest rate of non-fatal firearms related violence. From 2007-2011 such crimes were reported to the police six of 10 times versus slightly less than half the time for non-firearm violence.

Of all homicides of youth age five to 18 in the U.S., less than two percent each year occur at schools. The high from 1992-93 through 2008-09 was 1.8 percent in 1998-99. Data for the last three school years were not available.

The new report also includes some older data from the last two times – in 1997 and 2004 – that the BJS surveyed state and federal prison inmates about possession of firearms during commission of crimes for which they were currently serving a sentence. In both years, less than one in five in both categories of inmates reported having had a firearm at the time of their crime. State prison inmates surveyed in both 1997 and 2004 reported their firearms came from gun shows less than one percent of the time. In nearly four of five instances, their firearms came from either a family or friend, or a street or illegal source.

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USER INSTRUCTIONS
1) Make your selections. Under “choose grade,” use the pull-down menu to select a type of school (elementary, K-8, middle, high). Using the “compare schools” tool select one school, or all schools within that category, or a custom combination of schools. Under “choose a test,” select either math or reading.

2) Explore the data. Here’s an example. By choosing all elementary schools and state reading test pass rates, you can: a) get a quick comparative overview via a mouse-over of any school’s dot on the map. You’ll see a pop-up box summary for each dot over which you hover, with a combined multi-year pass rate in the chosen subject, and relative ranking versus peer schools within the district; b) drill in to a school’s data by clicking on its map dot. Then you will have two more views of the data – above to the left (percent low-income and not, plus total number of tests taken); and below (yearly results by grade, subject and income group, versus district averages).

Additional technical notes:

RELATED: FAQs on state testing from Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction; additional information on who must take what when, and alternative tests.

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The report emphasizes that what is being measured is based on where the energy is used, not where it is produced. But in the states whose economies are most tied to carbon emissions in the report, a lot of the consumption of that greenhouse gas actually occurs in order to produce fossil fuels.

The states using the most energy-related carbon dioxide per million dollars GDP were Wyoming, North Dakota, Alaska, West Virginia and Louisiana. The report notes, “All these are fossil-energy-producing states. The activity of producing energy is itself energy intensive.”

Another important metric in the report is per-capita, or per person, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions per state. There, Washington ranked eighth lowest among all 50 states in 2010, and between sixth and tenth lowest straight through from 2000 to 2009.

Looking at the percentage decrease in per capita energy-related carbon dioxide emissions from 2000 through 2010, only nine states outpaced Washington, which decreased by nearly one-fifth, in percentage terms.

The EIA also analyzed each state for 2010 energy-related carbon dioxide emissions by major sector of usage. In Washington, the commercial sector was responsible for 3.8 percent, electric power production for 13.1 percent of the usage, the residential sector for 5.1 percent, industrial 12.0 and transportation a relatively whopping 42.1 percent.

RELATED:

Study overview page with tables in .pdf and Excel.

Public Data Ferret’s Energy+Environment archive.

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According to King County Court documents, police signaled him to stop because his taillights were covered with mud. He was very slow to respond and drove half on the shoulder for some distance.

Field sobriety and blood alcohol tests showed him to be clearly impaired.

Asked to place his right heel to his left toe, he kept falling.

When an officer who had taken him to the station noticed a particular smell he admitted he had urinated himself.

Compounded by a high “offender score” from his past record, Casady, 47, of Harrah, Wash. last Friday May 3 in King County Superior Court was sentenced to five years in prison for his felony DUI conviction based on the January arrest in Snoqualmie.

A charge also filed in connection with the January incident, for driving with a suspended or revoked license, a gross misdemeanor, was ultimately not prosecuted.

In the 1991 tragedy in Yakima County, Casady’s impaired driving resulted in the deaths of two and the “serious maiming” of a third person, court records state.

The related convictions for vehicular homicide and vehicular assault earned him a sentence in October 1991 of 89 months, or almost seven-and-a-half years.

Yet records in the recent case also reveal that by 1997 he was out of jail and convicted in that year for one of his nine DUIs, plus two more in 1998.

His most recent DUI conviction prior to Friday’s felony sentence was in 2005.

His extralegal endeavors also include felony convictions in Snohomish County in 2002 for theft and unlawful imprisonment. Overall, Dwight Lloyd Casady has been named as a defendant 57 times in municipal and superior courts in Washington since 1980, primarily in Yakima and Snohomish counties. In 1999, the Seattle Times reported he was attacked with an axe and underwent surgery as a result, after threatening to kill a man for spilling a beer in a Snohomish County bar.

In response to last week’s felony DUI conviction, Casady’s attorney, Seth D. Conant, immediately filed notice of intent to appeal.

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Working for Kelley’s office, the public sector enterprise IT solution consultant Information Services Group looked at 140 representative financial management systems used by the state and 12 key agencies and contrasted their costs and benefits with “a modern, full-featured Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System.” The improvements calculated were used to develop a projection for enterprise-wide savings and efficiencies.

Public sector ERP systems usually cover at least 10 core areas in an integrated manner across the entire operation, according to the audit. Those areas are general ledger, accounts payable and receivable, grant and project management , cost accounting, management of assets and cash, procurement, developing of budgets, and federal transportation aid billing.

Time spent on finance management could be cut by one quarter and cost savings achieved in a range of ways, say the state consultants. Standardized commodity codes not widely available could be employed to make cheaper, multi-agency bulk purchases more often. Obstacles to sharing inventory data could be obliterated, cutting costs from purchasing and storing goods in excess of current needs. Duplication of data entry, manual handling of data, and excess time spent chasing down documents could all be reduced. Accounts receivable balances could be collected sooner and debt collection costs lowered.

Public Data Ferret’s Washington State+Management archive

The report adds, “Besides the inefficiencies previously discussed, the nearly 150 interfaces between centralized state systems and individual agency systems increase the risk of systemic failure…It is also increasingly difficult to hire IT staff capable of maintaining systems based on outmoded technology. In addition, the dated programming languages used by these systems make conforming to new security requirements more difficult.”

The recommended approach, of implementing a so-called ERP – or more holistic and integrated – approach to management of the state’s finances, has been implemented or project planning is underway in nearly two-thirds of U.S. states according to the audit. (See map below).

From Creating a 21st-century Financial Management System in Washington, Washington State Auditor's Office, May 8, 2013

While Washington is currently categorized as one of the laggard states, the audit notes that Gov. Jay Inslee’s 2013-15 budget request and the state House and Senate budget proposals for the biennium include $2.4 million to get the planning effort rolling.

The performance audit contains a 24-page summary including state agency responses, followed by a 204-page technical report.

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