Week in Review: Burien, police, and uncommitted delegates

Bill Radke discusses the week’s news with The Stranger’s Rich Smith, Seattle Channel’s Brian Callanan, and political analyst and contributing columnist Joni Balter.

The sheriff of King County is refusing to enforce the new camping ban in Burien. She's challenging the ban as unconstitutional. Burien is threatening to stop paying the sheriff. Burien pays the King County Sheriff’s Office millions of dollars to enforce its laws. Other cities have camping bans. This includes Bellevue, which does have a homeless shelter, Edmonds, Mercer Island. How is this so different?

Seattle has been saying for years that the city wants to hire more police officers. More than half their officers have left in the last five years. They've hired some, but they're still down 375 officers to their lowest staffing since the early 90s. Applications increased so far this year, from six a day to nine. But that pace still falls below the trends of the early 2010s. Why doesn't the city drive a harder bargain?

Our state primary voting deadline passed this week. Fewer than 8% of Democrats wrote in "uncommitted." Was a message sent or not? Our voting deadline was a week after Super Tuesday. Why should we vote earlier than anyone else?

Air travel regulators are trying to understand how that Alaska Airlines door plug blew off. This week, Boeing said they don't have a record of any repairs they might have done on that, and that they don't keep work videos more than 30 days. Alaska Airlines says it was Boeing's fault and wants Alaska taken off the pending lawsuits. Boeing points out that Alaska still flew the plane, even after warning lights came on. Who is going to end up faring worse?

Washington state auctions off the right to emit carbon, and the price plummeted this week to half what big polluters paid in December. The experts say it's the uncertainty around the future of the state’s climate policy. There's a Republican-backed initiative coming to our November ballot that would repeal the state’s carbon cap and auction system. Is this a wait-and-see time period for polluters?