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Sick Workers Get Attention of Lawmakers
- At Last

Though it didn't go as far as many chemically injured workers had hoped, legislation intended to help people who have been sickened on the job passed the state Legislature this spring.

The bill is designed to provide some relief to the growing legions of people who have been stricken with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) and other debilitating chemically related illnesses.
Sponsored by Democratic Rep. Stan Flemming (himself a physician), the bill had been declared dead in the Senate, only to be resurrected late in the session and passed with the help of Democratic Sen. Rosemary McAuliffe.
The legislation calls for the research of workplace illnesses, the formation of an occupational-illness advisory committee to consult state health officials, and improvements in how the state decides whether a sick worker should receive worker's compensation benefits.
Though far from an aggressive piece of legislation, advocates agree that it represents Olympia's first meaningful effort to deal with a complex problem that has afflicted thousands of workers in Washington state. But, as is the case with many well-meaning laws, there are worries about how the reforms will take shape.
"It's a good step," said MCS activist Karen McDonell of Gig Harbor, "but it's scary because the research really could go either way. I'm real nervous because the research can fall into the wrong hands. If MCS research dollars aren't being used to really try to unlock the mystery, then we just might as well have a bonfire of money. If not, then it's a coup."
McDonell is one of many sick workers who has been battling state government, industry and the medical establishment for years, trying to get them to recognize the validity of MCS and other occupational health problems. Up until this year's legislative session, McDonell and others had been fighting a losing battle.
For example, hundreds - perhaps thousands - of sick workers are employed by Boeing, which has argued convincingly that many workers' problems are psychosomatic. Boeing has funded medical research that makes this assertion.
And the company has close connections with the state agency that oversees the worker's compensation system, the Department of Labor and Industries, the Free Press revealed recently. (See "It's All in Your Head" Feb/March 1994.)
Boeing and other large employers that have a stake in the debate over chemically related illnesses also have connections with the Washington State Medical Association, which has strongly questioned the legitimacy of MCS, despite a growing body of evidence to the contrary.
Generally siding with industry and the medical establishment, state L&I officials have rejected dozens of worker's comp claims filed by people who say they've contracted MCS.

- Mark Worth

Commonosaurus Rex: Time to Die Off

The Seattle Commons has all the momentum of a monster. With heavyweight political and financial support, the project moves forward, yet is nimble enough to dodge thorny questions.

"What's the matter, you don't like greenspace?" seems to be the pat (almost McCarthyist) response to concerns about the fate of Cascade residents, the level of planned "low-income" housing, and who will pay for its $400 million or so price tag.
Now comes word of a proposed (and presumably public-funded) $100 to $200 million Northwest Museum of Natural History at the Commons.
Not to impede urban evolution, but the dinosaur deal is probably as ephemeral as the "move-the-library-to-the-convention-center" plan. But the Commons itself has yet to die off, despite some noticeable flies in the amber.
A 14-page report drafted by the Seattle Planning Department, which posed skeptical questions about the Commons, was buried shortly after it hatched last fall. Among other things, the report asked how the city plans to get hold of $90 million in federal and state transportation funds for the Commons when it only has access to $15 million annually. If that money gets diverted to the Commons, even over six years, what's left to fix the city's streets, bridges and highways?
Groups critical of the Commons found out about the report in February. The report is a public document, but like most memos sent to the mayor, it wasn't meant for prying eyes.
And despite a blase attitude by the Commons Committee, the tax-increment financing (TIF) instrument for raising the $250 million balance of public funding is in disfavor across the country. TIF is a mechanism where bonds are issued to pay for public works projects. The bonds are then supposed to be paid off through real estate tax revenues after the project pumps up the economy and boosts the value of real estate in the development zone. But TIF is increasingly seen as another 1980s real-estate speculation scam. Numerous U.S. cities have been burned when their grandiose (re)development projects soured and the cities cut into fire, police and school funds to make the bond payments.
An article in the February issue of Governing, a city planning magazine, noted problems in the 44 states that allow cities to use TIF. For instance, St. Petersburg, Fla. can't make its bond payments on its flashy $60 million downtown redevelopment. In Minnesota, school districts fell behind on their state-mandated funding levels because cities were paying off bonds for projects that did not generate the expected revenues.
In Washington, TIF is technically illegal. The state constitution says that public money must go to public projects and bans diversion of revenues meant for the state school fund. A Spokane County Superior Court judge recently ruled that an attempt by the City of Spokane to use Community Redevelopment Financing, a variation on TIF, violates the constitution. A State Supreme Court decision on that case may decide if the Commons can use TIF.
Meanwhile, the state legislature just doubled Seattle's $314 million capacity to float bonds, although Governor Lowry has yet to sign it into law.
Maybe when the TIF bonds come due, the Commons can charge admission to an expensive "Jurassic Park" theme zoo. Then again, the Commons is already a showcase for the cold-blooded and the poorly-adapted. "What's the matter, you don't like dinosaurs?" [see previous WFP coverage on the Seattle Commons proposal]

-Eric Nelson

To e-mail Eric Nelson:
WAfreepress@gmail.com


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Contents on this page were published in the April/May, 1994 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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