On Monday I attend the meeting with the WA Council of Fire Fighters, WACOPS, FOP and COMPAS on one side and the Retired Fire Fighters, Retired Seattle Police and WA Retired Officers on the other.It was not pretty. Strong comments were made and offense was taken – by both sides. But emotions were high and mutual trust was low.Not a formula for a productive meeting.

Basically it was just a notification to us that a new merger proposal is forthcoming and an attempt to present the arguments for such an action.Kelly Fox set up the meeting and we thank him for that.

Unfortunately there is nothing in the new proposal that is significantly different from the previous proposal and one of the major stopping blocks, governance, remained unchanged in the new proposal.

So the lobbyists are work calling on representatives and urging them to oppose the bill.I am sure the other groups will be doing the same.

We anticipate there will be a lot of new developments if this new merger bill is officially put forward and we will be carefully examining its proposal and giving our take on the bill and the claims made by the supporters.

At this point in time, neither Fire nor WACOPS has taken a formal step to support the bill but the indications are they will do so soon.