Red Scare

We have a revolution right here in the River City, but which one is hard to tell.

Some say it’s a Communist revolution, secretly plotted by Commissars from Eastern States, here to take our rights away. Others say an initiative to include a bill of rights in the Spokane City Charter is akin to the American Revolution — seeking rights for the common man against a powerful few.

In either case it was striking on Monday evening to see a cluster of more than 50 people in front of the double doors of City Hall holding protest signs and often dressed in red. Were these the Communists? Nyet. This group, formed on less than a week’s notice, was accusing the other side — Envision Spokane — of being the Reds.

Envision Spokane, which has spent nearly two years developing a proposed Community Bill of Rights via a string of public meetings, cast themselves as revolutionaries in the American mold, which then makes the red-clad opposition appear to be the Tories who like things the way they are.

The proposed ballot measure to grant neighborhoods the right to have more power in land-use issues, for people to have a right to better access to health care or affordable housing, or fair wages and the like has created so much tension and conflict that it spilled into a rare instance of people beseeching the City Council to kill it before signatures were even validated to see if it can be put to vote.

The council, with nearly 100 people signed up to testify, instead voted 5-2 to send the more than 5,000 signatures gathered by Envision to the county elections office for validation. The measure needs just shy of 2,800 valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. Elections Supervisor Mike McLaughlin says counting should be done by the end of this week.

“I can’t determine where this is coming from,” Brad Read, a Shadle Park High teacher and board president of Envision Spokane, says of the opposition. “I don’t know why a process designed to give more people more voice, more power … why is that seen as socialist or Communist? … Most things in it are in the city Comprehensive Plan. What we are doing is giving the Comprehensive Plan legal teeth.”

And this is just where City Councilman Steve Corker says he objects to promises that the bill of rights will not be costly.

“When the strong mayor initiative passed it took us a year and we had to amend numerous, numerous — it was nearly 1,000 — ordinances, resolutions, rules, processes, everything,” Corker says.

To reshape the Comp Plan would possibly be an even larger task. “We have been talking to legal counsel about it. Would it require rewording of the Comp Plan itself? Or would it require creating ordinances and resolutions for mandates to commit actions or funds,” for all the provisions in the Comp Plan, Corker says.

Mike Cathcart, a former Ron Paul organizer who helped coalesce the grassroots, red-wearing opposition on five days’ notice, says his objections are clear. “This is definitely coming out of an anti-business, anti-corporate and anti-capitalist mentality.”

The language in all nine proposed rights is vague and rose-colored, Cathcart says.

“This is a huge lawsuit waiting to happen,” says Edie Streicher, government affairs director for the Spokane Home Builders Association, says. “The initiative is written in very vague language and it will all have to be defined in court.”

By keeping the initiative alive and, presumably, headed for a vote, Corker says the two sides will continue the fight in the proper place: a campaign for votes.