Ballots should have arrived by mail or should be arriving very soon, which means it’s time to fight your procrastinating tendencies and vote now. If you haven’t received your ballot, check to make sure your voter information is updated. If you have moved, you can update your address online. If you are not yet registered, you have until Halloween to register online, though you can register in-person at a voting center up to and including election day November 8.

You can return your ballot by mail or take it to a ballot drop box.

Rep. Noel Frame is the Legislature’s progressive revenue queen. As someone who just led a five-year-long, bipartisan effort to study ways to completely restructure our state’s regressive tax code, she knows more about the issue than anyone else. Those corporate drones in the Senate will need her leadership in this discussion if we’re to make this place even just a little fairer any time soon.

State Rep. Noel Frame has represented the 36th Legislative District since 2016. Now, she is seeking to jump to the state Senate to replace Reuven Carlyle, who announced his departure this year.

Frame has made rebalancing the state’s regressive tax reform a key priority. While voters may justifiably be worried that the end result of these efforts will mean more taxes, Frame did not draw a serious challenger. She is the best option for the district that includes Ballard, Magnolia, Queen Anne and Greenwood.

Reading a draft Supreme Court opinion that portends the potential end of legal abortion in much of the United States, Jennifer Martinez said to herself that people need to hear stories like hers.

So Martinez, 34 years old and 39 weeks pregnant, stood in Seattle in front of the governor, attorney general, members of Congress, dozens of cameras and hundreds of others and talked about the two abortions she had 13 years ago.

As all babies will tell you — at the top of their lungs — soggy diapers are miserable, and diaper rash hurts a lot. So we are pleased to see that both the state Senate and House proposed budgets include funding for diapers for very low income families that receive monthly grants from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.

House Finance Chair Noel Frame declared Thursday for Sen. Reuven Carlyle’s soon-to-be vacant seat in the state Senate.

Carlyle, chair of Senate Environment, Energy, and Technology announced Monday that he wouldn’t seek another term this fall. As we noted Monday, even though he’s coming off a big win with the passage of the Climate Commitment Act last year, rumors persisted that he might face a challenge from the left in Seattle’s overwhelmingly Democratic 36th District.

Following up on last year’s capital gains tax—a major legislative win for progressives during the 2021 session that puts a 7 percent tax on profits greater than $250,000 from the sales of assets, such as stocks and bonds—state Rep. Noel Frame (D-36) has her eye on comprehensive structural change for Washington’s upside-down tax code.

The poorest fifth of Washington state residents pay, on average, 16.8 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes while the richest 1 percent of Washingtonians pay an average of just 2.4 percent.

GALEN HERZ
Jacobin

Last week, Washington State passed a capital gains tax aimed at the state’s ultra-wealthy. The tax is historic because Washington, despite its progressive reputation, until now had the worst tax code in the nation when it comes to fairness, behind Texas, Florida, and South Dakota.

A landmark 2018 report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that the poor and working class pay 18 percent of their income in state and local taxes, while the ultra-wealthy only pay 3 percent.

“It’s so upside-down. . . . It’s completely out of step with our values,” Rep. Noel Frame, a champion for tax reform in Washington’s legislature, told me.

Prashanthi Reddy is passionate about home-style Indian food. The kind she grew up eating at her mom’s house and with relatives. A New Jersey native, Reddy owns the coffee shop Makeda and Mingus in Greenwood. The shop does not have a kitchen, but Reddy cooks a lot at home and has been sharing the food of her family with her community in myriad ways; through Airbnb experiences and online cooking classes. What she would really like to do is cook food for people and sell it to them. Yet, with rent, permits staffing and food costs to consider, the barriers to entry are high for budding restaurateurs.

But a bill is moving through the state channels of government that, if passed, could allow people like Reddy to sell meals made out of their home kitchens.

Noel Frame, Washington State Representative (D-36), joins Yahoo Finance's Kristin Myers to break down her wealth tax proposal.

For some time, Washington state has held a dubious distinction that defies its reputation as a progressive policy haven. According to federal statistics, Washington has been the nation’s longtime leader in jailing children for noncriminal offenses, such as running away or skipping school. Toward the start of the decade, Washington accounted for roughly a third of instances nationwide where kids were jailed for doing things that aren’t actually crimes.

State lawmakers in Washington have made progress on a bill that would decriminalize teen sexting, KIRO 7 reported. House Bill 1742 passed on March 4 and is now in committee in the state senate.

The bill, which has bipartisan support from 15 different sponsors, would change the way teen sexting cases are handled. According to KIRO 7, current law dicatates that teens who send their own nudes can be charged with felony child pornography charges and end up as registered sex offenders.

Lawmakers in Olympia are holding a public hearing Wednesday on a bill that would expand parents’ rights to access mental health care for their adolescent children.

The bill includes changes long sought by parents, who have argued that state law makes it difficult to help mentally ill teenagers if they refuse to cooperate.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Noel Frame, D-Seattle, would allow mental health care providers to give limited information to parents about their teens’ mental health treatment, even if the teens object. Currently, providers can share information only if the teen explicitly consents.

SARA JEAN GREENE
The Seattle Times

Robbing a convenience store at gunpoint or spraying bullets from a moving vehicle are the kinds of crimes that will no longer see 16- and 17-year-olds automatically sent to adult court — and likely, on to adult prison.

Gov. Jay Inslee recently signed legislation that represents what one lawmaker called “a seismic shift” in the state’s efforts to reform the juvenile-justice system. The new law removes a handful of crimes from the list of what are known as auto-decline offenses and extends juvenile jurisdiction for those specific crimes to age 25.