A labor union representing most staff at Washington’s Division of Fish and Wildlife says it’s troubled {that a} member of a fee that oversees the company might not get reappointed after Gov. Bob Ferguson hit the brakes on his nomination.
The roughly 1,000-member Washington Affiliation of Fish and Wildlife Professionals despatched a letter to the governor Thursday saying that Tim Ragen had helped to offer them recent hope that long-running considerations a few lack of office security, gaps in coaching, and supervisor retaliation towards staff would possibly lastly be addressed.
“He has shown genuine concern about our safety and welfare, devoted the time necessary to understanding our issues, and actively worked to find pathways to improve our working conditions,” says the letter, signed by Candace Hultberg (Bennett), president of the affiliation.
It provides that Ragen is probably not reappointed “precisely because his courage in confronting these sorts of difficult and controversial situations has led to political criticism.”
Former Gov. Jay Inslee introduced that he’d reappointed Ragen, together with appointing a brand new commissioner, Lynn O’Connor, on Jan. 13, two days earlier than Ferguson took workplace. Ragen is retired from a profession in marine mammal analysis. He was first appointed to the Fish and Wildlife Fee by Inslee in 2022 and have become vice chair final 12 months.
The appointments require state Senate affirmation. In one among his first acts as governor, Ferguson requested the Senate to permit him to drag the appointments, a request that lawmakers unanimously granted. Since then, the governor launched a brand new course of to fill the fee seats, with Ragen and O’Connor now into consideration together with 12 different candidates.
Ferguson’s resolution eliminated Ragen from the fee.
‘Failing its employees’
The union is elevating its considerations after a collection of incidents on the Division of Fish and Wildlife that resulted in deaths and accidents. Two division staff drowned in separate on-the-job accidents previously 18 months — in September 2023 and January 2024.
Additionally final 12 months, a employee was hospitalized after sustaining a head harm when a ship they and one other worker had been in capsized on the Nisqually River. On the time, the staff had been trying to make use of a chainsaw to chop particles from a fish entice.
In February, a Fish and Wildlife worker was hospitalized after being uncovered to an unspecified illness unfold by wildlife, based on Hultberg’s letter.
Division of Labor and Industries investigations into the primary three incidents have led to citations and greater than $231,000 in fines.
“WDFW management is failing its employees at the most fundamental level, and our members are literally paying for that failure with their lives,” the union’s letter says.
Hultberg mentioned by cellphone on Friday that she’s led the union since October 2023 and that she contacted commissioners after the 2 drowning accidents. “Tim Ragen was one of a handful of commissioners that reached back out and wanted to hear what the issues were,” she mentioned.
The assertion went on to stipulate a listing of particular measures, together with distributing “updated and work-specific individual first aid kits” to all discipline workers, updating company coverage to state that each worker conducting fieldwork has their very own machine for emergency communications, and requiring primary coaching for all motorboat operators.
Hultberg acknowledged coaching and security efforts by the division however mentioned progress in key areas has been gradual and uneven throughout the company and that extra must be accomplished.
Appointments due April 7
She mentioned the governor’s workplace had interviewed all 14 candidates, together with Ragen and O’Connor and that the brand new appointments are due April 7.
Aho mentioned that Ferguson determined to reevaluate Inslee’s appointments in gentle of considerations raised in a extremely vital report the William D. Ruckelshaus Middle launched in December.
The Ruckelshaus Middle report included findings from greater than 100 interviews with folks conversant in the company and its points. It mentioned interviewees described the fee as “dysfunctional, politically polarized, and caught up in conflict,” and particularly raised considerations a few lack of transparency and choice standards for commissioners.
9 members sit on the fee, every appointed by the governor to a six-year time period. When Ragen was appointed in 2022 he changed a commissioner who’d served a partial time period.
Hultberg mentioned Friday she had not but heard again from the governor’s workplace.
