logo
Spokane City Councilman Zack Zappone running for reelection

Spokane City Councilman Zack Zappone running for reelection

Yahoo25-04-2025

Apr. 24—Spokane City Councilman and high school teacher Zack Zappone is running for re-election, saying he wants another four years to work on public safety, homelessness, housing affordability and city infrastructure reforms.
Zappone is one of two council members representing council District 3, which covers the northwestern third of the city stretching north from the Spokane River and west of Division Street, and after redistricting in 2022 also includes Browne's Addition. Councilwoman Kitty Klitzke is the district's other representative, and her term runs through 2027.
He already has two opponents: Meals on Wheels board member Chris Savage, who ran unsuccessfully against Zappone in 2021, and private cigar lounge co-owner and retired SERE specialist Cody Arguelles.
Asked for his priorities in the next four years, Zappone said he has learned not to predict what city government will need to respond to. But he did highlight behind-the-scenes efforts to bring forward a compromise version of a failed 2023 sales tax package to build new jails and other, often unspecified, public safety initiatives. Zappone was among those across the aisle in 2023 saying the $1.7 billion ballot measure lacked specifics.
"I think both the left and the right realize we can't make any meaningful progress without some meaningful collaboration and compromise to move forward," Zappone said. "It would likely be a detailed proposal to voters about what community health and safety would look like in the next decade or so in Spokane."
Zappone also said he was excited to see further reforms to encourage development, particularly residential, and reduce the burden of vacant lots and nuisance properties on neighborhoods.
Zappone is the first openly queer leader elected to the council and has spent much of his first term supporting reforms to increase housing density, advocating for pedestrians and bicyclists, trying to eliminate fare to ride Spokane transit, and reducing barriers for community festivals and fairs.
In an interview, he also highlighted his work to help secure funding for CHAS health clinics in low-income high schools and for neighborhood business districts, which fund investments to benefit local businesses.
Though the progressive politician has frequently publicly clashed with conservatives in city government, he has also on occasions worked with them on policy. He and conservative Councilman Jonathan Bingle have traded barbs on the dais, but the two have also co-sponsored legislation, such as to relax parking requirements for new development and potentially lower costs near bus routes. Zappone joined others on council to later expand that reform citywide.
He was the only left-leaning council member to join Bingle and fellow conservative Councilman Michael Cathcart in supporting the reinstatement of Proposition 1, the voter-approved ban on homeless encampments near schools, parks and day cares that was recently struck down by the state Supreme Court on technical grounds.
"I've been reflecting on my first term, and I think that one area I've really come to understand better to be effective as a council member, is it really does take a lot of compromise to do stuff," Zappone said. "Being an advocate or activist really pushing for a position, I think that's an important role, but I'm much more pragmatic than purist in my approach."
Zappone has also been accused of partisan gerrymandering after he drew the map of council districts that was approved by the City Council, notably drawing a liberal neighborhood into his district and theoretically making it easier for him to be re-elected.
A judge ruled in April 2023 that the map was not illegally gerrymandered — but also ruled that council members should not have that level of involvement in the process going forward. Voters in 2024 approved reforms to create more distance between the council and the boundaries of which voters got to elect them.
The district was fiercely competitive in 2021, with Zappone edging out his conservative opponent Mike Lish by 1.3%. Klitzke won her election in 2023 against Earl Moore by nearly 20 points, though redistricting that happened between those two elections appears unlikely to account for the majority of that shift.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

What Trump's 2026 Budget Would Mean For Older Adults
What Trump's 2026 Budget Would Mean For Older Adults

Forbes

time5 days ago

  • Forbes

What Trump's 2026 Budget Would Mean For Older Adults

WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 22: President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. ... More Kennedy Jr. attend an event introducing a new Make America Healthy Again Commission report. (Photo by) President Trump's 2026 budget would freeze spending for many services for older adults, deeply cut others, continue his efforts to slash government staffing for key programs, and abolish a critical federal office that manages many of those initiatives. It would retain, but sharply reduce funding for, the National Institute on Aging. It would restructure and cut funding for low-income housing, including for older adults and people with disabilities. And it would kill a jobs program for low-income older adults and several initiatives aimed at assisting people with disabilities. Trump's draft 2026 budget is separate from the many staffing cuts he already made through Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. And it is unrelated to the 2025 budget bill passed by the House May 22 and now pending in the Senate. His 2026 budget will need to be approved by Congress, where its fate is uncertain. Lawmakers will consider it sometime after they complete the 2025 fiscal bill, which the House calls the One Big Beautfiul Bill Act (OBBBA). According to a budget description released by the federal Department of Health and Human Services, Trump would fund most programs under the umbrella Older Americans Act in 2026 at roughly the same levels as this year. That means programs such as Meals on Wheels and other nutrition assistance, support for family caregivers, the long-term care ombudsman program, and the like would get no additional funding, but neither would they see their budgets cut. In a time of inflation, flat funding means the buying power of these programs would shrink. Yet, Older Americans Acy programs fared far better than other domestic spending, which Trump would cut by about 22 percent. The biggest immediate change, which the White House announced earlier this year, would abolish the Administration for Community Living, which oversees those OAA programs as well as a federal initiative aimed at supporting family caregivers called the RAISE Act. HHS initially announced it would divide ACL's work among three other agencies within the department. Now, Trump would shift all of ACLs work to an office that had been known as the Administration for Children and Families. It will become the Administration for Children, Families, and Community. HHS leadership also announced earlier this year it would eliminate about 45 percent of all positions in ACL, which had about 200 staff at the beginning of 2025. It is not clear from the budget how that number will change. After receiving pushback from key members of Congress and advocacy groups, the final Trump budget reverses several program cuts the White House proposed back in March. For example, it now saves and funds at current levels the ombudsman program that investigates consumer complaints about nursing homes, a respite program for family caregivers, and the State Health Insurance Assistance Program, which provides consumer advice about Medicare. Some programs still would be killed, however. They include several for people with disabilities and the White House conference on aging. The Administration also would cut federal rental assistance by almost $27 billion, or 43 percent. It would combine six different programs into a single State Rental Assistance Block Grant, funded at about $32 billion. The combined programs would include Section 202 Housing for the Elderly and Section 811 Housing for Persons with Disabilities. Absent those subsidies, it would be difficult if not impossible to build affordable housing for low-income older adults. The new model would give states greater flexibility in spending the funds. But it also would create something of a zero-sum game, where housing needs of older adults could be pitted against the needs of young families. Trump also would kill a long-standing Department of Labor program aimed at helping low-income older adults find work. Over the long term, the most profound cut proposed by Trump may be slashing the National Institute on Aging budget from $4.4 billion to $2.8 billion. NIA funds a broad range of critical research into ways to improve the health of older adults. NIA would remain an independent entity at the National Institutes of Health, unlike several others Trump would eliminate. But losing nearly 40 percent of its funding would be a severe blow to the current and future study of aging. These budget proposals are separate from House plans to substantially cut the federal contribution to Medicaid or impose a work requirement on Medicaid recipients. Trump's budget proposal now goes to Congress, where its fate is uncertain. On one hand, many programs for older adults and people with disabilities enjoy widespread support on Capitol Hill. But bond investors are getting increasingly nervous about the rapidly rising federal budget deficit, a concern that is likely to grow if Congress approves anything close to the $3.9 trillion in tax cuts the House adopted in May. The Senate is considering even bigger tax cuts. But bond market resistance could force Congress to either scale back those plans, which would be a tough sell among GOP lawmakers, or look for ways to pay for some tax reductions by cutting domestic spending even more deeply. If lawmakers go that route, Older Americans Act funding still could face a struggle on Capitol Hill. It seems improbable that the Trump Administration will fight hard to retain many of these programs, since it proposed cutting them in its initial budget draft. The Trump budget could have been much worse for older adults. But it remains to be seen how those programs are managed following the major staffing cuts at HHS. And don't be surprised if services for seniors and people with disabilities get caught up in congressional efforts to further cut domestic spending later this year.

5 Things Elon Musk Can Tell His Manager He Accomplished As A Federal Employee
5 Things Elon Musk Can Tell His Manager He Accomplished As A Federal Employee

Yahoo

time30-05-2025

  • Yahoo

5 Things Elon Musk Can Tell His Manager He Accomplished As A Federal Employee

Elon Musk — world's richest man, major government contractor, top donor and adviser to the president of the United States and guy who pays to cheat at video games — ended his tenure as a special government employee on Friday with a cheerful goodbye and thank-you from President Donald Trump. Asked by a reporter Friday if his time in government was worth it and what he would have done differently, Musk, sporting a bruise over his right eye, complained his 'Department of Government Efficiency' had become a 'bogeyman' and seemed to concede defeat to the federal bureaucracy. 'There are many things that occur in the government because it's, it's the banal evil of bureaucracy. It's sort of the frankly, largely, largely uncaring nature of bureaucracy,' he said. So was it worth it? 'I think it was an important thing,' Musk said. 'I think it was a necessary thing and I think it will have a good effect in future.' One of Musk's key early initiatives was a requirement for all federal government employees to send emails to their bosses outlining five things they accomplished the week prior. Musk originally threatened to fire any employee who didn't send such an email, but later backed down. Workers at the Social Security Administration are still sending the emails as of this week, while the Department of Defense asked employees for their final submissions this week as well. In honor of Musk's departure, HuffPost has compiled a list of five things Musk could point to as accomplishments in a sign-off email to Trump. In a February appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the president of Argentina, who is a darling of right-wingers, handed Elon Musk a power tool and, in so doing, created the indelible image of the Musk era of Trump's second term. 'This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy,' Musk said as he waved the chainsaw around, posing for the photographs that would be used for hundreds of news stories about his efforts to cut federal agencies. The chainsaw at once symbolized Musk's power and his recklessness. Musk and his team had already pushed federal agencies to fire thousands of employees and halt grants, causing courts to jump in and order the money unfrozen, but not before nonprofits that oversee things like Meals on Wheels and heating assistance warned their services were imperiled. Courts ordered federal agencies to rehire workers, only for the Supreme Court to put the rehiring on hold while the case moves through lower courts. On Friday, a reporter asked Musk about the bruise on his face. He said his 5-year-old son did it. 'I said, 'Go ahead, punch me in the face,' and he did,' Musk said. Musk's signature achievement as head of DOGE was the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the part of government most contrary to Trump's notions of 'America First.' Musk bragged he put the agency 'into the wood chipper.' (This was before he'd been given the chainsaw.) The decapitation of the agency resulted in the cutoff of lifesaving aid to people, including children, in poorer countries around the world. A Boston University professor estimates more than 300,000 people, two-thirds of them children, have already died in the four months since the cuts were implemented. Musk took big swings against federal agencies and picked some questionable targets, including the Social Security Administration, purveyor of monthly benefits to more than 70 million Americans. He falsely claimed Social Security was full of fraud and championed cuts to services Democrats used to portray Musk as the biggest villain of Trump's government. 'What we found was happening was that if there were any cuts anywhere, people would assume that was done by DOGE,' Musk said Friday. 'And so we became, essentially, the DOGE bogeyman, where any cut, anywhere, would be ascribed to DOGE.' Musk's approval rating tanked, sinking lower than the president's, and so did the stock performance of his electric car company, Tesla. He mused last week that he might have spent too much of his time on politics. On Friday, Trump vouched for his top campaign funder and efficiency czar. 'He's done a lot of things,' Trump said. 'Frankly, I don't think he gets credit for what he's done. He's a very good person. He happens to be a really good person who loves the country.' Musk claimed during the campaign that he could easily save the federal government $2 trillion out of its nearly $7 trillion annual budget simply by rooting out fraud and waste. After Trump won, Musk scaled his ambition down to $1 trillion in savings. On Friday, Musk conceded that DOGE had come up with only $160 billion in savings, though the estimates posted on the DOGE website have frequently proven unreliable. 'I'm confident that, over time, we'll see a trillion dollars of savings,' Musk said Friday. Much of what generated public opposition to DOGE was the agency's seemingly relentless quest for more data. For privacy reasons, government data is often siloed off, with access restricted only to key decision makers at different agencies. DOGE pushed aside agency heads and cybersecurity professionals to get previously protected data from the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Social Security Administration. Why? According to published reports, it was to build a master database to speed up immigration enforcement and make it easier for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to find local undocumented immigrants and deport them. The database would be key to achieving Trump and top White House adviser Stephen Miller's goals of 'mass deportation' at a time when ICE is reportedly not meeting its deportation goals. Elon Musk Explains Why He Has A Black Eye Tim Walz's 6-Word Response To Elon Musk's Government Exit Is Hilariously Accurate Elon Musk Is Leaving The Trump Administration After Criticizing 'Big Beautiful Bill'

Eaton County officials discuss major budget cuts
Eaton County officials discuss major budget cuts

Yahoo

time30-05-2025

  • Yahoo

Eaton County officials discuss major budget cuts

EATON COUNTY, Mich. (WLNS) — The Eaton County Board of Commissioners is meeting Friday to discuss making major cuts to the county budget. In May, 57% of voters in Eaton County voted 'no' on a millage, which would have raised taxes by about $12 a month on average. The cuts the commissioners are talking about are not yet binding and will be recommended to other elected officials and department heads. The list below is not complete and more will be added throughout the day: 30% cut to the Community Mental Health collaboration 25% cut to the Barry-Eaton District Health Department 75% cut to the Eaton County Health and Rehabilitation Services 75% cut to the Capital Area United way vital services – maintain their payments to the 2-1-1 program ($20,000) The commissioners did vote to keep funding for the Tri-County Of which provides Meals on Wheels to seniors. Other cuts to be discussed involve the sheriff's office and the prosecutor's office. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store