DRUG TESTING BILL FACES 'UPHILL STRUGGLE'

For the second year in a row, it looks like random drug-testing for
police could be a nonstarter in Olympia.

The version of the bill in the state House, sponsored by Naches
Republican Charles Ross, isn't dead, but it is stalled.

And the fate of an identical bill in the state Senate, sponsored by
Yakima Republican Curtis King, could hinge on support from a Seattle
Democrat who signed on as a co-sponsor but now says he's not sure
whether he'd vote for it.

"It's turned into kind of an uphill struggle," said bill co-sponsor
Rep. Bruce Chandler, R-Granger. "But we still have time to hear the
bill and we're still working on it,"

The bill is similar to the one by Ross last year, which never came to
a vote.

It would allow residents of cities and counties to vote on whether to
randomly test law enforcement personnel. City of Yakima officials
asked for the bill after an arbitrator ruled in 2007 that the city
couldn't impose random drug testing without negotiating it into the
contract with the police guild.

Yakima police believe the matter should have ended there and view the
city's push for state legislation as an end-run to avoid bargaining
the issue. City officials began pushing for the legislation after
losing in arbitration.

"We're just saying that you need to meet us at the table," said
Detective Mike Nielsen, president of the Yakima Police Patrolman's
Association.

Chandler is the only one of the House bill's six co-sponsors with a
seat on the Commerce and Labor Committee, where the bill has been
mired since Ross introduced it last month. Whether it gets a hearing
largely depends on the chairman of that committee, Steve Conway, D-Tacoma.

It may have faced an easier path in the Public Safety Committee, Ross
said. The opposition to it within Commerce and Labor "illustrates the
union pressures around here that some people feel," he said. Yakima
police Chief Sam Granato, who has pushed for random drug testing
since 2004, was more pointed, saying the Washington Council of Police
and Sheriff's is applying that pressure.

"Rep. Conway will not move on it because he fears WACOPS," Granato
wrote in an e-mail response to the Herald-Republic.

Conway did not respond to a call seeking comment for this story
Friday.

WACOPS is working against the Senate version of the bill, too. No
Washington cities Yakima's size or larger have random drug testing
for police, although a few smaller cities such as Sunnyside do.

"The only place it's been an issue is in Yakima, with the fight
between the guild and the chief," said Lee Reaves, director of
governmental affairs for the organization. "We're going to fight it."

Reaves said he spoke with Sen. Adam Kline, D-Seattle, on Thursday to
try to quash the bill. Kline is chairman of the Senate Judiciary
Committee, where the Senate version of the bill awaits scheduling for
a hearing.

"He's always been really good for us to work with," said
Reaves.

Talking with Reaves gave Kline new perspective on the whole
random-testing issue, leaving him undecided as of Friday.

"I was unaware that drug testing was a bargainable issue within
police contracts," Kline said.

That realization left him torn between competing notions. On one
hand, he believes police, like pilots or interstate truck drivers,
hold a position in which public-safety concerns could override
employee-privacy rights and call for random testing.

"Then there's another allegiance," Kline said. "And that is to the
right of all people who work for a living -- including police
officers -- to bargain with their employers the terms of their
employment."

King spoke with Kline about the latter's new concerns on Thursday
night and is hopeful he'll be able to keep Kline's support.

"Unless he's changed his mind," King said. "But we'll see."