Report to Covenant United Methodist Church Administrative Board

CUMC’s Spokane Alliance Core Team

 

The Spokane Alliance consists of 37 member institutions representing approximately 30,000 people in Spokane. The Alliance currently supports four Research/Action Teams. These four teams are Sustainable Jobs, Youth and Education, Health Care & Drug Costs and Tax Equity.

This report is designed to outline for the Board some of the successes experienced to date, and to provide the Board with some insight into the current and future direction of the Spokane Alliance.

The Spokane Alliance:

  1. Has persuaded the Bonneville Power Administration to include contractual incentives in their $1.5 Billion power line upgrade project to reward contractors for hiring locally: Rick Itami, an Executive with the BPA has credited the Spokane Alliance with the "creative idea" of giving financial incentives to contractors to hire locally for this project. He has reported during the first phase that 95% of the contracts had been with regional firms and 50% of those had been non-profits or minority owned. Most projects of this type typically bring much of their needed labor into the region where the project is being built instead of managing these projects with local labor and businesses. This effort is designed to enhance the development of sustainable jobs in Spokane and the region;
  2. Went door to door in five low-income neighborhoods on a Saturday morning with 150 people from the Spokane Alliance member institutions, inviting people in those neighborhoods to take advantage of various opportunities. As a result, 81 people registered to vote, 331 uninsured people pursued health coverage for themselves and their families, and 287 people pursued unclaimed Earned Income Tax Credits. On May 19, 2003, Mayor John Powers credited the Spokane Alliance with helping to pump millions of dollars of EITC money into the Spokane economy through this effort. Jerry Littlefield from the IRS in Seattle confirmed that the total effort by all those who participated in this campaign in Spokane this year brought another $5 Million into the Spokane economy in 2003. This effort is designed to expand the number of people covered by basic health insurance and to increase the number of poor working families who can benefit from existing tax benefits;
  3. Brought hundreds of Alliance members together with members of the Japanese-American community, the Muslim community and the developmentally disabled community through the Alliance's three "Strangers to Neighbors" programs for the purpose of helping create a more tolerant and relational culture in Spokane;
  4. Assisted VOICES, an advocacy group for low-income individuals in Spokane with the development and implementation of a campaign to double the City of Spokane's human resources budget from 1/2 to 1% of the City budget, which now makes approximately $1 million available for those services for local citizens. The vote at the City council was unanimous. This effort was designed to provide additional assistance to poor families looking for work and otherwise dealing with poverty;
  5. Assisted the Sheridan Elementary school PTA in the development and implementation of a campaign to persuade the City of Spokane to install a streetlight at the corner of 5 and Freya by the Sheridan Elementary School. The vote at the City Council was unanimous. This campaign was designed to enhance the ability of these children to attend school safely and cut down on the number of "car-pedestrian" near misses;
  6. Is in the process of researching the creation of a community development corporation, "Stewardship Works", which would retrofit non-profit institution buildings with energy efficient modifications. This is designed to maximize the dollars available to these non-profits for their individual missions in the community and minimize the amount paid for utilities. This effort would also advocate for the utilization of environmentally sound materials/systems in new construction;
  7. Joined a larger coalition in support of the Bulk Prescription Drug bill, which just passed the Washington legislature on June 6 and which sought to minimize the projected cuts in the state's Basic Health Plan for the poor and actively encouraged local legislators to vote for this bill. The Alliance also successfully persuaded the Spokane City Council to amend the City's legislative agenda to support these efforts in Olympia through its lobbying efforts prior to the vote. The vote by the City Council was unanimous. The Prescription Drug bill passed in the face of intense lobbying by the Pharmaceutical industry, and the legislature cut only 20,000 people from the State's Basic Health Plan instead of the 60,000 that they proposed cutting;
  8. On September 10, 2003 the Spokane Alliance was invited to be one of three local organizations to make a presentation to the Governors Sustainable Washington Advisory Panel. The Alliance made formal recommendations to the Panel that are included in its current campaign to implement nationally recognized LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environment Design) standards in building construction. This "Green Building" campaign is designed to persuade local organizations such as School District 81 to adopt the "silver" standard, which will enhance the internal environmental health of future school construction as well as the local environment for projects costing $1 Million or more. The Spokane Alliance Strategy Team recently voted to expand this campaign to other sectors of the local community including other school districts, and possibly governmental entities. This effort is designed to enhance the quality of life for our students and minimize the long-term cost to the ° community of new construction;

  9. Developed an apprenticeship program attached to its "Green Building" initiative, which will provide for "job-shadowing" to help students assess career choices and enhance movement into meaningful employment. The Alliance is proposing the use of state certified apprenticeship programs for 15% of the workforce on these projects to develop a skilled pool of workers for present and future environmentally sound construction;

  10. Joined a broad-based coalition of institutions from around the State of Washington in opposing the conversion of Premera Blue Cross from a non-profit to a for profit entity. This effort was motivated by the experiences of other states where such conversions were approved. Those experiences led to a significant reduction in services and access to health care in rural areas and resulted in thousands of people being dropped from health insurance rolls. This effort is designed to ensure that rural hospitals and medical care providers continue to receive the funding they need to remain viable to their local communities and to maximize the number of people with affordable access to medical insurance. (At the time of the vote, Covenant actually voted against joining the coalition);

  11. Partnered with Project Access, the Spokane County Medical Society's program to provide a full continuum of care for those who cannot pay for medical care or are uninsured, to help Project Access procure sustainable funding. The Alliance is currently preparing to approach the new city of Spokane Valley to enlist their financial support for this project. The purpose of this effort is to maximize the ability of those who are uninsured and poor to access the services being donated by doctors, nurses, clinics, hospitals and pharmacies through this program; and

  12. Commissioned a Tax Equity Research Team in May 2003 at its Annual Countywide General Assembly. This team is currently studying and working on the development of a long-term strategy for reforming Washington State's tax system. The team's leadership has already met with Senator Lisa Brown who has agreed to work with us, and will be meeting with her again as a committee on October 14, along with Gonzaga University Professor John Beck, a member of the Washington State Tax Structure Study Committee chaired by William H. Gates, Sr. This team is evaluating how the State tax structure can be reformed to make it more equitable and fair and provide better stability for the State in the funding of services for our citizens, especially the poor. Part of this effort is also to identify ways of making Washington more "business friendly" to encourage the development of a more solid and sustainable job base in the State. The effort is expected to last up to four years and may involve a variety of legislative initiatives, statewide initiatives, and other strategies. The first goal of this effort is to make a recommendation for equitable and fair tax reform to the member institutions of the Spokane Alliance, which is consistent with their institutional values, to be followed by a statewide campaign for reform.

 

 

Covenant United Methodist Church
15515 N. Gleneden Drive
Spokane, WA  99208-9743
509-466-1768