Spokane City Council calls for better, more timely data as overdose crisis deepens

After a reported lack of interest from the governor’s office in declaring a state of emergency, the Spokane City Council still says that more needs to be done to address the opioid crisis that is primarily driven by fentanyl.

Overdose calls to police or fire within city limits have risen 30% in just the last year, with nearly 250 calls from Jan. 1 to Feb. 7 of 2024, an average of more than six overdose calls per day.

On Monday, the City Council voted unanimously to approve a resolution calling for better data and a better plan to decrease overdose deaths and help those struggling with opioid addiction.

The City Council had been slated Monday to request that Gov. Jay Inslee declare a state of emergency, theoretically making it easier to use resources to address overdoses and addiction throughout the state.

Nine states have instituted similar emergency orders in the wake of the country’s deadly opioid epidemic: Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Virginia.

These states have been able to leverage resources to make Naloxone, a lifesaving opioid reversal medication, more widely available, Spokane City Councilman Paul Dillon said in an interview.

But governor’s office spokesperson Mike Faulk told The Spokesman-Review last week that an emergency order would not do much to help the state’s opioid epidemic.

“There’s really not that much that we have available to us that an emergency order would do here,” Faulk said. “Staff already looked a lot into it. … The main thing with emergency orders is to free up state resources or cut red tape to make it easier to deliver resources. There’s not a lot of that applicable here.”

When asked whether Inslee’s office would consider declaring a state of emergency, Faulk said the office would likely decline it.

“I think it would be, ‘No, and here are other ways we might be able to be helpful and address your legitimate concerns about fentanyl.’ ”

Still, the resolution approved Monday asks state elected leaders to promptly address the growing crisis.

Despite repeated anecdotal testimony during City Council meetings in recent months by providers who have seen the opioid overdose crisis deepen in recent years, it can be difficult to quantify exactly how bad things have gotten due to delays in data reporting within Spokane County. The resolution passed Monday night calls on the Washington State Department of Health to add fentanyl overdoses to the list of notifiable conditions and on the Spokane County Regional Health District to publish more real-time data.

On Spokane County’s online overdose dashboard, there is not currently any data listed for the number of fatal overdoses involving fentanyl in 2023 or 2024.

Dillon has pointed to the online overdose dashboards for King and Snohomish counties, which both list county numbers of fatal overdoses that involved fentanyl in the years 2023 as well as up-to-date figures for 2024.

Spokane County Regional Health spokesperson Kelli Hawkins told The Spokesman-Review that the discrepancy has to do with the state not typically verifying yearly overdose death records until months after a year ends. This makes the data reported by King and Snohomish counties “preliminary” and not always accurate, Hawkins said.

But Dillon argues that available data is insufficient for public officials trying to respond to the crisis in real time, saying he felt like the health district’s concerns were “hyperbolic.”

“It just felt like gatekeeping information, and the public has been clear they want more transparency,” Dillon said in an interview. “This is a public health issue and should be treated as such.”

The City Council cannot force the health district to change its reporting procedures. However, Dillon hopes that growing community pressure will convince county leaders to make changes.

“I think that we should be working in the spirit of we should always be doing better, and never being satisfied with our response when it comes to overdoses,” Dillon said. “In that spirit, my hope is the health district does respond and makes the changes this resolution is asking for.”

The resolution also calls on Spokane police and fire departments to regularly report overdose calls, as well as for shelters within the city to report all uses of Naloxone to reverse overdoses within their facilities.

Any data received by the City Council will be made publicly available on a monthly basis, according to the resolution.

The City Council also committed to holding an opioid addiction and overdose town hall meeting on April 9 at the downtown Spokane library.