Greetings and welcome.
It is 933 a.m.
On March 12th.
This is the Civil Rights Utilities Economic Development and Arts Committee.
I'm Lisa Herbold.
I'm the chair of the committee and council member representing District 1, that is West Seattle and South Park.
On today's agenda, we have a reappointment of Michael Garrett as the member of the Seattle LGBTQ Commission.
His reappointment will follow public comment.
And after his reappointment, we will receive a update on a draft bill regarding public accommodations and closed captioning.
Short agenda today.
So, with that, we'll begin with public comment.
We have one person signed up.
Alex Zimmerman.
You'll be keeping time.
Two minutes.
Thank you very much.
Dear Heil, my dear Fuhrer.
A Nazi garbage rats, a pure anti-Semite and criminal.
All of you, without exception right now.
So you're talking about disabled.
I'm disabled too, but I don't understand what is every meeting.
Council worries trespass me because I go for position number five, very consul position number five.
And you consul, you consul, don't stop in here.
You sit in this chamber for 20 years.
You know rule and regulation.
You know what has been fascism?
And you broken rules, and you not protect me.
You in Civil Rights Committee.
You supposed to be protect me.
So nothing surprise me right now.
So all America, from East Coast to West Coast, from the Atlantic to the stranger, North Seattle number one fascist city in America.
This not only fascist city in America.
This become unique situation because Consul Gonzalez violate constitutional law five times.
She's supposed to be out from this, and you are supposed to be doing this because you represent civil rights.
She's supposed to be out five times.
Five times she's broken law, constitutional law.
And why other people, what I call a brown Nazi garbage race, support coronavirus or mosquito?
What's going on with you guys?
We have a four brown consul in chamber, what is represent only 7% of people, and this a mafia, a bandit, a pure fascist.
You know what this mean?
Control everything.
So Alex Zimmerman, a Jew, a old man, a disabled man, come for two minute in talking everything legally, not broken law ever for one second.
Trespass all the time again and again.
And when you don't do this, nothing.
When you chair of civil rights, you're supposed to be stopping this brown mafia, brown council.
It's a pure Nazi criminal and fascist.
Stand up, Seattle.
Clean this dirty chamber.
Thank you very much.
First item on the agenda today is appointment 01266.
Reappointment of Michael B. Garrett as member, Seattle LGBTQ Commission, for a term to October 31, 2020.
Greetings and welcome.
Introductions, please.
Hi, I'm Erika Pablo from the Seattle Office for Civil Rights.
Thank you, Erika.
We are here to do a reappointment of a member to the Seattle LGBT Commission.
This is a mayoral appointment.
Can we start off with just a quick overview of the commission and what it does?
I think it's a City Council appointment perhaps.
Oh, you are right.
Okay, I just want to make sure I didn't miss an error.
Yes, so I staffed the Seattle LGBTQ Commission and as we all know they help advise City Council and the Mayor and City Departments on on issues pertaining to the LGBTQ community.
They're currently working on their work plan and excited to present that to city council, I believe in the end of April.
And I'm excited to be here for Michael's reappointment.
He's been great on the commission, has been really involved, especially around trans healthcare last year.
And then he's hoping to, you know, continue some of that work on the state level as well.
Great.
And remind me, when was Michael first appointed?
Was he appointed to fill a vacancy?
I believe so.
So that's why he's joined in the middle of a term.
I'm not, I don't know the exact dates, though.
Yeah, but it was in the middle of the term.
Yeah.
Right.
So this will be his first full term.
Yes.
Great.
And his background, as you state, is focused on health care.
And that is the focus he brings to the commission.
Yes, and that's, he actually joined a committee of the commission before he was a commissioner.
So did some work for about six months before he was confirmed.
And then now he was just the last meeting he was voted in co-chair of the community outreach committee.
So he's working on developing some of that work plan right now.
Fantastic.
And just to restate, you'll be joining us in April?
Yes.
I'm sorry, I don't know the date right now.
The 23rd, I believe.
Okay, thank you.
Fantastic.
And we'll hear an overview of the work plan.
Will some commissioners be able to join us?
Yeah, for sure, the co-chairs and then co-chairs from the other commissions as well.
That's fantastic.
Thanks.
I don't have any questions.
I don't have any questions.
I just wanted to make a mention of how great it was that the LGBTQ Commission took an explicit stance in support of the trans healthcare demands that UAW Local 4121 had in their last contract negotiations.
They also had a really great one-day strike action.
around all of their demands, and one of them was about expanding healthcare rights for their trans members.
And my officer discussed this with the LGBTQ commission, and they were very open to, you know, issuing a statement of solidarity with them, and I'm sure Michael was part of that as well, although I have not had a chance to talk to him.
Thank you.
Might have had something to do with it.
Great.
Well, with that, I will move appointment of 01266. Second.
All those in favor, vote aye.
None opposed, none abstaining.
And Michael's appointment will move on to a full council on Monday.
Great, thank you.
Item two is a draft council bill regarding public accommodations and closed captioning.
Greetings and welcome.
Could we start with introductions?
Asha Venkatraman, Council Central Staff.
I'm Eric Scheer, Commission Co-Chair for People with Disabilities.
Great, thank you.
Who would like to start?
So we discussed the or not we you all discussed the concept around this bill that would require closed captioning in all areas of public accommodations a little while ago and so since that time since having that discussion we have drafted legislation to put that into the Municipal Code.
It would create a new chapter 1405 in the Muni Code and we modeled some of the enforcement around this on how the Office for Civil Rights currently enforces all gender restrooms.
So if it's useful, I'll go through the main points of the bill, what enforcement looks like and then we can move from there.
That'd be perfect.
Okay, great.
So what this would do, as I mentioned, is require public areas of all places of public accommodations during their regular hours to activate closed captioning on television receivers.
There are a few exceptions.
If the TV is not being used in the public area, if the only TV that is there is technically incapable of using closed captions, or the program itself does not have closed captioning in it.
The way enforcement is currently drafted is by the Office for Civil Rights.
It will only begin 180 days after passage of the bill itself to allow time for education and outreach to make people aware of that obligation.
If after that 180-day period, if it turns out a person is not in compliance, then the Office for Civil Rights will send an advisory letter.
At that point, the person must provide a written response to the Office for Civil Rights within 10 business days, which describes how the violation will be fixed or disputing that the violation took place at all.
At that point, if there's no response from the business or the director is not satisfied with that response, the Office for Civil Rights has the ability to issue a notice of violation, which would include a penalty of up to $125 for the first violation and then up to $300 for the second violation.
At that point, you could go further into an appeal to the hearing examiner, which could, and the hearing examiner can consider a variety of factors in determining what a penalty would be.
And those factors include the extent and nature of the person's involvement in the violation, whether harms occurred or were suffered as a result of the violation, and those could be economic, financial, or otherwise.
Whether the violations were isolated or temporary, or they're repeated and continuous.
the magnitude and seriousness of the violation, the cost to the city of investigating the violation and or attempting to correct the violation, and any other facts that could bear on the nature or the seriousness of that violation.
Given that this is going, would likely go into effect 180 days, excuse me, the enforcement would go into effect 180 days after passage, it's possible that the Office for Civil Rights might need assistance in terms of outreach and education, especially to small businesses, those who may need translation or technical assistance to be aware of their obligations to fully comply.
And as I mentioned, some of this was modeled on the all-gender restroom bill.
And so depending on this bill's level of compliance, there may also need to be additional staff to help with technical compliance.
But that won't be clear until obviously this goes into effect and the Office for Civil Rights sees what that looks like.
And when you say it's modeled off of the all-gender restroom bill, what do you mean?
What's similar?
In terms of the enforcement piece, so our other bills, other parts of the Muni Code, so for example, compliance with public accommodations generally.
There's a full investigation process.
It goes straight to notice of violation.
This bill is closer to all-gender restrooms because it speaks more to how to get into compliance.
So the way all-gender restrooms played out is that there are very few businesses that aren't willing to actually, you know, create an all-gender restroom.
It's more about knowing what compliance means, how they can be in compliance, being aware of the obligation.
And so this is very similar to that.
It's unlikely that there will be businesses that will refuse to do this.
Of course, there may be.
And that's why the Office for Civil Rights has the discretion to be able to issue the notice of violation and decide what the penalty is.
But more likely than not, this will be about educating businesses about what the requirements are.
making sure that they know how to comply, even if it's as simple as, you know, where on the remote you need to figure out how to turn on the settings and which specific settings it is, because there are technical standards in here.
So it's focused more on that.
Fantastic.
We are joined by Councilmember O'Brien.
I think, thank you for joining us.
An important point to put right up front for folks who don't know it is that since 2002, the FCC has required closed captioning requirements in all digital television receivers.
So whether you know it or not, your television very, very likely has this capacity.
It's literally just a matter of turning it on.
Council Member Swan.
Yeah, just if you can go over how How has the compliance, I mean, how long has it been since the All-Gender Restroom Bill was passed?
And what has been the track record of that?
And what, is it, does it offer any guidance for us to, for us in this sense?
And also, I really agree with the point that Council Member Herbold made.
It should not be hard for businesses to comply with this because it has, FCC has made it so that you can use it.
And to be honest with you, I use it.
I find it very helpful, and I'm running into more and more people who are not necessarily hearing impaired, but they actually appreciate having that.
So it seems like it should be an easy thing, you know, one of the easiest things to do.
Yeah, that's absolutely the understanding at the moment.
And so for all gender restrooms, from what I understand in talking to the Office for Civil Rights, Most of the work has been around not necessarily issuing notice of violation or any of that, but actually what compliance looks like.
So, like taking a photo of the difference between the restrooms before and the restrooms now that have the sign that says, alternative restrooms.
So, it's been very much more, the staff there has been working very much more around technical compliance and they have around investigating intentional violations or refusals to go about complying.
Another piece of that that may be a little more challenging for this bill is determining how exactly compliance will be shown.
Because it is so easy to turn it on, it's also super easy to turn it off.
So in those particular situations, it may be difficult to sort of figure out what it looks like to provide a written response to the director and prove compliance.
And so it's likely that in rulemaking, there'll be public input about what that looks like.
how one would go about proving compliance and then what that looks like on an ongoing basis.
There may be lessons to learn from Portland's experience.
They have a similar piece of legislation.
I don't know if they're also taking a similar approach towards enforcement, having it be very compliance-based rather than punitive.
But that might be worth checking out.
I don't know how long Portland's ordinance has been in play there.
Perhaps, Eric, you do, because you were the one who let us know.
It's been there a year and a half.
A year and a half, OK.
There were a lot of loopholes in their bill, and I researched other cities and states nationwide to try to fill some of those loopholes to prevent those issues from becoming here.
Like having the captioning on, the business can also make the captioning difficult to see.
If it's with a gray background or a very small font, people that have visual issues will not be able to see the captioning.
So if, for example, the captioning right now with your television, that's exactly what we want to see.
So we put specs within the bill to clarify what the captioning needs to look like.
Fantastic.
Thank you.
Appreciate that research on the experience of other cities and the guidance that you've provided us in not only identifying this as something that the council should take up, but also in working with Council Central staff on drafting the legislation as well.
It's very appreciated.
I want to mention that we've received a letter of support from the Hearing Loss Association of America and we've received also a number of letters and emails from constituents over the last few days.
Somebody must have told them that we were hearing this in committee.
The plan is to introduce a bill next...
In two Mondays.
In two Mondays, okay.
And then hear it in committee in our first April committee, is that correct?
March 26th.
March 26th.
I'm getting all the dates wrong.
I'm glad you're here.
And then I just also want to cue up the fact that I'll be working to get and solicit the input of both the Seattle Restaurant Association, the Seattle Hotel Association, and the Mayor's Small Business Advisory Council to get their input on the bill as well before a committee vote.
If there are no further questions on this, all right, well, fantastic.
That's our last item on our very short agenda today.
Thank you all for joining us.
It's 9 50 a.m.
And we are adjourned