On this week’s episode of TVW’s Inside Olympia, host Austin Jenkins explores key issues facing Washington state: overcrowding in juvenile detention centers, data privacy legislation, and the potential role of nuclear energy in the state’s future.
First, Jenkins sits down with Tana Senn, recently appointed by Gov. Bob Ferguson as the new leader of Washington’s Department of Children, Youth and Families.
On Green Hill School in Chehalis, which has been much in the news of late: “The two things going on at Green Hill is, with so much overcrowding, it’s less safe, and we can’t do the job that we really want to do, which is rehabilitation, the education, the workforce, the mental health, [and] substance abuse treatment.”
Next, an interview with State Reps. Shelley Kloba and Stephanie Barnard about Kloba’s major new data privacy bill – plus, Barnard discusses her bills to advance nuclear power in Washington.
Kloba’s bill would create a private right of action for consumers. “All have a private right of action, and this is based on the long standing principle that our justice system has, that there is no right without remedy.”
But not everyone supports the private right of action. “I cannot support the private right of action,” Barnard said. “What we’re looking at here is just opening the floodgates to line the pockets of lawyers.”
Previous data privacy bills have failed to cross the legislative finish line, but Kloba thinks this year’s bill has momentum. “It’s almost like somebody just kind of tossed all the dice in, shook it all up, and now we’ve got a whole new ball game.”
Barnard is sponsoring bills with the goal of incorporating nuclear into the state’s clean energy portfolio. “I think a lot of the confusion comes from that people remember The Simpsons, and they think of the green goo and all of the bubbly things coming out of these tanks or these barrels, and it’s just that is more that is more analogous to the Hanford legacy waste from the Manhattan Project. It is not, it is not what’s happening at Columbia Generating so I think, I think it is because the Columbia Generating Station is located on the Hanford Nuclear reservation. It’s natural to conflate the two, and I think that is just such a misnomer.”