Editorial: Panel on concerns of boys, men deserves hearing

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, January 23, 2024

By The Herald Editorial Board

Especially during the state Legislature’s 60-day short sessions, a lot of good ideas get left behind from one year to the next, often without so much as a committee hearing, let alone a vote on the floors of House and Senate and the governor’s signature.

To get an idea of each session’s flood of proposals, consider the more than 400 pieces of legislation that were filed ahead of the session’s start two weeks ago; on top of bills that had been carried over from the previous year.

Time and effort — of lawmakers and legislative staff — are devoted, understandably, to that year’s priorities, which this year have included affordable housing, addiction and mental health programs, public safety, transportation, education, a supplemental budget and more, a considerable to-do list.

One idea that is in danger of being left behind for a second year, without the benefit of a committee hearing — a forum where supporters and opponents can speak to the worth of the legislation and its further consideration — are bills in the House and Senate that seek the establishment of a state commission on boys and men, similar to Washington State Women’s Commission that was launched by legislation in 2018.

As of Monday morning, neither House Bill 1270 nor Senate Bill 5830 had been scheduled for a committee hearing. And time is short. Except for certain bills regarding the budget and transportation, legislation this year must be passed out of committee by Jan. 31. For the Senate bill, it has three more opportunities for hearings before the State Government and Elections Committee: today, Thursday or Jan. 30.

During last year’s session, the House bill, sponsored by Rep. Mary Dye, R-Pomeroy, failed to get a hearing, despite advocacy of national author Richard Reeves in a Brookings Institution article that discussed in depth the struggles faced by men and boys and the strong case for focus on those issues by governmental institutions at local, state and national levels.

Hopes for the legislation were buoyed this year, as the House bill was joined by companion legislation in the Senate, sponsored by Sen. John Lovick, D-Mill Creek. In addition, both bills have additional sponsors; three Republicans and three Democrats for each bill. Locally, in addition to Lovick, Sen. Jesse Salomon, D-Shoreline, has signed on to the bill.

Still, no hearing.

There should be little debate that many boys and men are, indeed, struggling.

The high school graduation rate for boys lags 5 percentage points behind that of girls; only 35 percent of boys achieve a high school GPA of 3.0 or higher, compared to 51 percent for girls; and young men are 19 percent less likely than youpng women to earn a bachelor’s degree. Boys also account for 91 percent of the juvenile detentions. Meanwhile, men account for 70 percent of the state’s unsheltered population, 68 percent of fatal overdoses, 94 percent of the prison population and suffer 79 percent of the total number of suicides, in a state where the rate of suicide deaths exceeds the national average.

The assumption may be that such an effort provides unnecessary efforts on behalf of a class that is not disadvantaged, as expressed last year when House Majority Leader Joe Fitzgibbon, D-Burien, explained why the House bill failed without a hearing.

“I think we want to be really careful that the solutions that we bring forward to help reduce incidents of … youth suicide or gun violence, are solutions that we don’t narrowcast to just the segment of our society that’s been historically most advantaged,” Fitzgibbon said at the time.

But a zero-sum viewpoint — one that assumes that a men’s commission would subtract from needed attention and effort on issues of concern to women — misses the intent of the legislation and its necessity to the broader problems that concern women and men across racial, societal and economic backgrounds.

Reeves, author of “Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why it Matters and What to Do About It,” in an interview with the editorial board last month, emphasized how a commission for boys and men could be additive to the work done on behalf of women and girls.

The proposed commission would concentrate on five areas of concern for boys and men: education, homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction, behavioral health, public safety and criminal justice.

“If one of the issues that the boys and men commission proposes to look at is around fatherhood and family life, that’s obviously an area where the interests of men and women really ought to be seen as kind of two sides of the same coin,” Reeves told the editorial board. “Because helping fathers to be more engaged and involved in their children’s lives, for example, even if they don’t live with the mother, takes some of the pressure off mom, off women.”

As well, ignoring these issues for boys and men leaves an opening for those who are looking to exploit those struggles, he said, to the detriment of women, men, our children and our communities.

“Given that there are some real problems facing boys and men, that reluctance to even talk about it or admit it, does create a market for what I would say are quite reactionary, unhelpful forces, especially online,” Reeves said.

Rep. Dye, who first sponsored the legislation and sits on House committees for the capital budget and appropriations, also sees the commission as a catalyst for the myriad priorities the Legislature has attempted to resolve for decades and has emphasized this year.

“I see how much money we spend on education, on housing, on criminal justice, on homelessness on the opioid problems,” Dye said in December. “And you look at that and you say, ‘Well, why are we not making progress, since we’re working so hard on these issues and spending so much on these issues?’”

As noted, good ideas get left behind every year, and even those that do succeed sometimes take multiple years to win passage. But regardless of chamber, legislation to establish a commission on boys and men — at the least — deserves a hearing before a committee, a chance to better explain what it would do, respond to concerns and make its case to make a difference.