A coalition of organizations including the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane is asking Spokane mayoral and City Council candidates to pledge not to vote for a Spokane Police Guild contract unless it includes stronger oversight.

The guild's contract expires at the end of the year and is under negotiation currently.

Earlier this month, the City Council repealed its 2010 police oversight law at the demand of an arbitrator, who ruled that it violated the guild's contract. The law gave Ombudsman Tim Burns the right to investigate allegations of police misconduct separately from the police department's internal affairs division.

The city is now operating under its 2008 police ombudsman rules.

Those who voted to repeal the law said the best way to obtain the provisions in the 2010 law are win guild approval of them through negotiations. Some council member said they would be unlikely to vote for guild contract unless the extra oversight is included in it.

League Director Liz Moore said pledge supporters will give candidates until the end of the week to decide if they will sign the pledge. Results will be publicized early next week.

Documents:

Gov. Chris Gregoire is in “the other Washington” today, where she’s talking with a Pentagon panel about states and feds working together if there’s a WMD-type incident. Other familiar faces on the panel are Maj. Gen. Timothy Lowenberg of the Washington National Guard, and former U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt.

Gregoire is also talking with federal officials about Medicaid funding amounts, which have yet to pass Congress but which form the ending fund balance in Washington’s 2009-11 biennial budget. Without the expected payment levels for the money, known as Federal Medical Assistance Percentages or FMAP, the state would have the rough equivalent of pocket change to carry over into the next biennium. 

In Spokane this evening, the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane will be protesting Israel’s strike on the flotilla trying to break the blockade of Gaza. They’ll be holdilng signs at Wellesley and Dviision (near Northtown) between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m.

Elsewhere in Washington state, Democratic state Sen. Craig Pridemore is out of the congressional race to replace U.S. Rep. Brian Baird in  southwest Washington’s 3rd District. In an account in the The Olympian by Jordan Schrader, his withdrawal is partly a result of his inability to keep pace in raising money because of the “intense” pace of the special legislative session. If Pridemore thought the spec sess was intense…gotta wonder what he’d think of life in the U.S. House.

His departure leaves two Democrats, Cheryl Crist and Denny Heck, and two Republicans, David Castillo and Jaime Herrera, running hard.

And on a lighter note, Jon Stewart returns to take a look at the Gulf oil mess: