Letters for March 23

Jackson is howling for the wrong fix

Sheldon Jackson howls for a quick fix for homelessness. The trouble is it’s a problem that is decades in the making and may take decades to fix.

How did we get here? In the 1960s amazing new drugs were developed for schizophrenia. Health experts thought that pharmacological science was on the cusp of curing most mental health diseases. They were wrong.

The Kennedy administration believed in this trend. It’s answer: Close the massive state mental health institutions/asylums (where patient abuse was common) and build 1,500 community-based clinics. Many big facilities were closed, but less than half of the clinics were built. Additionally, courts later restricted enforced mental health treatment to a self-harm/harm-to-others threshold. There were also widespread efforts to shutter cheap flop-house hotels, which were dangerous facilities and blights on their neighborhoods – but also, de facto homeless shelters.

These trends discharged thousands of homeless people to the streets. The Seattle Times headlines of the 1980s read like the same news stories that we have today.

It will take a long time to fix the root causes of homelessness – poverty, insufficient low-cost housing, and inadequate mental health treatment. And, yes, drugs overlay these root causes and make them worse – just like drugs make everything worse in all realms of society.

You can’t police your way out of homelessness. Jail housing is far more expensive than low-cost housing. Incarceration won’t cure mental illness and rarely overcomes drug addiction.

When homelessness becomes a public safety issue, we need to address it. But overall, Jackson is howling for the wrong fix.

Steve McNutt

Spokane

Our representative at the crisis

Michael Baumgartner was courageous and maintained his composure in the face of a hostile audience at his Monday town hall at Whitworth University. A more eloquent and nimbler public speaker might have found a way early on to let out some pressure: acknowledge the depth and sincerity of the emotions in the room or to emphasize a shared concern over the DOGE sledgehammers and Executive overreach. The questions were good, the Whitworth students doing particularly well.

But if the questions were pitches, Baumgartner whiffed every time, bringing his bat back to narrate some personal history or what-abouting over some failing of Biden or reminding the audience that he and Trump had won their elections, while the ball went over the plate. So, emotions were vented, the evening went nowhere, and we all left in our individual huffs.

Still, I hope liberals will not give up on our representative but remember that he is our point of contact in our country’s drama. On Monday, Baumgartner said, “You have a perception that America is spiraling to some kind of constitutional crisis.” Maybe he will join us in that perception.

William Siems

Spokane

Disappointed but not surprised

Rep. Michael Baumgartner has claimed, in his weekly newsletter and elsewhere, that he wants to represent all his constituents, whether or not they voted for him. Thus I found it interesting, and very revealing, that in his Spokane town hall on Monday, when challenged by members of the audience, he responded by asking who had voted for him and Donald Trump. He then proceeded to dismiss the concerns of his questioners, saying they were only angry because he and Trump had won.

So clearly Mr. Baumgartner isn’t actually interested in hearing the concerns of all of his constituents, but only those of the people who share his thinking. His actions speak far more loudly than his words. As one of his constituents, one who in fact did not vote for him, I had hoped he really meant what he said. I’m disappointed – but not in fact surprised.

Jessie Norris

Spokane

Legal immigrants, refugees important to our state’s economy

At Michael Baumgartner’s Whitworth town hall, he said that we would solve our immigration problem if Washington weren’t a “sanctuary state” and just cooperated with the feds. He doesn’t understand the importance of legal immigrants and refugees to our state’s economy.

According to the LWV of Washington state’s 2025 study, Welcoming Immigrants to Washington, “just over 15% of Washingtonians are immigrants. Immigrant households earned about $73 billion in 2022 in Washington . They paid about $20 billion in taxes, $14.7 billion in federal taxes, including $6.5 billion in social security and $2 billion in Medicare, and $5.5 billion in state and local taxes (American Immigration Council 2024). In the workforce, nearly one in five workers in Washington are immigrants. 77% of all agricultural workers in the state are immigrants, 51.3% of all software developers are immigrants, 48.9% of all maids and housekeepers are immigrants and 36.4% of all health aids in the state are immigrants. Immigrants are also more likely than native-born to start businesses; over one in five entrepreneurs in Washington is an immigrant and they generated $3 billion a year in business income.”

Rather than labeling all immigrants as criminals/drug dealers, breaking up families, deporting even those who are legally here, we need federal laws that provide pathways to citizenship for legal immigrants and refugees as well as DACA in order to stabilize our declining population and ensure a skilled and vital workforce and a strong economy.

Carol Landa McVicvker

Spokane

Baumgartner’s stance on Canada

I am pleased that I can finally honestly agree with one of Rep. Michael Baumgartner’s positions – I fully concur that at least for him it would be better to refrain from holding any further public town hall meetings – a U.S. representative who states that the only reason for America not annexing a sovereign nation – Canada – is that it would hurt “Republican election chances” or because it has been a “good neighbor” is no credit to himself, his constituency or his party.

Following his line of reasoning Canada would apparently be justified in invading us if we were a “bad neighbor” (whatever that means) – not that they would be stupid enough to believe they have that right or dumb enough to say so if they did. So, riffing on an old adage, I suggest to Rep. Baumgartner that if you can’t say something intelligent about an issue, any issue, just don’t say anything at all. Especially in town hall meetings where you can’t avoid being challenged on your inane blathering. Better to stay silent and let people think you are ignorant, ill-informed and incompetent rather than open your mouth before the world and prove that you are.

Steve Blewett

Spokane

Raising awareness in local rare disease legislation

Every day in Spokane someone is fighting an often invisible battle, a rare disease. In Washington alone 700,000 people, including 520,858 children, are traversing through demanding disease treatment and education. If you and I can see that there is a fundamental flaw in the treatment of rare diseases, we can invoke real change and growth.

Recently, multiple bills were proposed to help these communities, including Senate Bill 5211.This bill intends to allow parents to act as caregivers and “provide parental caregivers the option to be employed as individual providers, subject to the same training and oversight as other individual providers.” Currently parents of children with disabilities cannot receive payment for their “extraordinary care” of their children.

On Feb. 28, this bill reached the fiscal committees who decided to “take no action,” an inexcusable act of Washington’s legislative processes, resisting federal law. Due to the current caregiver shortage, less than half of these funds are currently being used for their intended purpose. Because this law would ensure compensation for a majority of families suffering with rare diseases the state decided their best interest was to continue supporting other resources. We find this disagreeable and unlawful for our rare disease communities.

We cannot rewrite the past, but we can ripple change. Our communities deserve the highest quality of life, and together we can support each other by educating Spokane through valued resources to better understand and support our rare disease communities.

Hazel Schlazer

Spokane

Keep variety on the library shelves

This is in response to the criticism by Sherry Hartford (“DEI children’s books should be clearly marked,” March 19) that our libraries should be shelving children’s books which depict people of different races in a separate section.

The South Hill Library is my branch library, and all praise to them for combining books which show the world as it is. When my own children were small, the books we found at the library had only pictures of white children and cute animals. This is not reality. What better way to prepare our children for this world than to share books with them that show it like it is.

Marilyn Ring-Nelson

Spokane

Call Elon

Call Elon! DOGE! It seems our bloated state government needs to be DOGED. Tax and spend, it’s never enough.

Wendell E. Smith

Spokane