Rep. Travis Couture details his public safety priorities for the 2024 legislative session

[Music] hi I'm representative Travis cotor of the 35th legislative district which covers all of Mason parts of thirston and kpp counties first I have House Bill 2202 that would help fund our police and also our indent defense in all of our counties to the tune of almost $200 million we have the lowest per capita police in Washington state we are dead last in North America for police coverage not only in Washington state but also in the 35th District it's critical to morale and also Public Safety that we get more of our brave men and women in Blue on the streets to protect us from rising crime that we see in Washington state right now we must fund the police It's Not the Only Solution but it's a great start on top of that we need to ensure that everyone has a legal defense if people who have been accused of a crime do not have a legal defense those people get let out of court and do not have a court date and do not go to jail if they committed a crime defense funding is important because in order to hold criminals accountable they have a constitutional right to a legal defense and if they can't get that legal defense then they're released back onto the streets to probably commit more crime again over the last couple years fenol of course is prevalent in everyone's Minds a very dangerous drug that has led to record amounts of overdoses and deaths in our streets unfortunately those deaths aren't just in our streets they're in our homes as well the child welfare system run by department of children youth and families is broken and they need some help our social workers need help to be able to stop the DraStic increase of needless child deaths mostly Toddlers and infants and a lot of it almost 70% of it due to fentol or other hard drugs like meth and heroin we need to have the ability in the state of Washington to to take the keys away from parents who are abusing hard drugs and putting their kids at risk for accidental ingestion or overdose and of course needless deaths in order to protect those kids we have to pass my bill that would create an imminent harm for that kind of drug abuse to be able to remove kids from those homes and we have to do it this session because if we don't hit a bullseye on this topic we are looking at a potential of a 100 more needless child deaths until the next session when we would have another opportunity to do so so we must do so now we must put radical ideology aside and protect the innocent at risk youth in our state another big priority of mine is affordability in our state we need to make sure that the cost of living isn't so high that it's pricing people out of their homes and out of their cars the gas prices are too high groceries prices are too high we need to make sure that people can live here in this great state and that it does not cost them a fortune to do so in order to do so we need to have responsible spending in our state government and we need to lower or stop new taxes uh from happening so that people can have more of their own money back in their wallets hey I'll keep you updated throughout the session this is the first of many to come uh you can always contact me on my website uh where you can find all my contact information and I look forward to hearing from you