Expanded notification for sex offender releases
Plus banning grocery-pricing bots and some wrinkles on that sports betting bill
An increasingly familiar scene played out in Kennewick last week, when a standing-room-only crowd showed up at city council to protest a proposed sex offender halfway house. Scenes like have cropped up in the past couple of years around the state as more men1 labeled sexually violent predators have left the state’s creepy treatment center on McNeil Island bound for the mainland.
A hearing Monday in the House public safety committee takes up the messy, contentious issue, via a bipartisan bill by Rep. Mari Leavitt, D-University Place,, whose district includes McNeil Island’s Special Commitment Center. It would expand notifications of off-island placements of those men, which currently only have to go to local law enforcement, to a host of local and state officials, including lawmakers.
Placement of the so-called SVPs can become social media bombs in a community, and widening the heads-up pool raises the odds that the blowback gathers force. That’s understandable, but it also puts lawmakers in a tough place, caught between angry parents and the state’s interest in making sure the McNeil Island’s Special Commitment Center remains at least somewhat functional, after decades of dysfunction.
