The Belltown neighborhood near downtown Seattle is a charming, vibrant urban locale, located just south of the city's landmark Space Needle. Filled with bars and cafes and desirable condos, it is a nighttime hot spot, but it is also a neighborhood where a relatively small number of problematic drug users have reduced the quality of life for residents and businesses alike. According to a recent study by the Seattle Police Department, some 50 people in Belltown were responsible for a whopping 2700 arrests.

Now, instead of cycling those people through more endless -- and expensive -- rounds of arrest, prosecution, incarceration, and supervision, local officials and the Seattle Defender Association have embarked on an innovative pilot program in which beat officers will offer to take low-level, nonviolent drug offenders to drug treatment instead of arresting them, booking them into jail, and prosecuting them.

The pioneering program will allow officers the discretion to offer treatment to people charged with crimes such as public intoxication or drug possession, but not people with records of violence or those accused of dealing drugs. Offenders can decline the offer of treatment and instead be arrested and go through the criminal justice system.

Known as LEAD (Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion), the pilot program is designed to improve public safety and order and reduce the criminal behavior of program participants. It is based on successful "arrest referral" programs that have been operating in the United Kingdom for the past several years. The program has strong support from local elected and law enforcement officials.

"We are looking for effective public safety solutions,” said Mayor Mike McGinn. "If drug dealing and crime could be solved by arrests alone, we would have solved this problem a couple thousand arrests ago. LEAD offers a promising alternative to traditional responses to street-level drug dealing, and we look forward to tracking its results in Belltown."

"We know that the issue of chemical dependency in our society cannot be solved by law enforcement alone. It is a complex social problem that requires a comprehensive social solution,” said Seattle Chief of Police John Diaz. "LEAD provides our front line police officers with the discretion necessary to ensure that treatment diversion is utilized as a viable alternative to incarceration."

"Sheriff Sue Rahr and her staff support the concepts that act as the basis for the LEAD program, and we look forward to our participation," said King County Sheriff Major James Graddon. "Respect, open communication and common goals among some historically adversarial groups have created a positive environment to move this program forward. Using the formal criminal justice system for all offenses is costly and has proven to not necessarily be the most effective way to impact future offender behavior."

Graddon was referring to strained relations dating back to the last decade between the Seattle Police and the Defender Association, a nonprofit agency that provides legal representation to indigent defendants. In a bid to reduce tensions and work together on the common goal of reducing the number of repeat offenders cycling through the system, the Defender Association and law enforcement began discussing possible responses to the continuing problem of drug-user generated low-level crime with back in 2008. The LEAD program, which rolled out in Belltown a month ago now and which will also be tried in the Skyway neighborhood of unincorporated King County, is the fruit of those discussions.

Defender Association Deputy Director Lisa Daugaard has been a prime mover in getting the program going. Given that the state of Washington faces a $2 billion budget deficit and looming social service cuts, Daugaard managed to obtain $4 million in grants from private foundations, including the Open Society Institute and the Ford Foundation, to pay for four years worth of LEAD services, including not only drug treatment, but also job training, housing assistance, and educational opportunities.

"Now, because of the dismantling of the social safety net, these LEAD resources may be the only way that some people will be able to get treatment, housing, and other services," said Daugaard.

LEAD supporters hope that the by the end of the four-year pilot period, the program will be able to demonstrate that it can generate cost savings worthy of being picked up by state and local government. They aren't the only ones watching with interest. Stateline, a media outlet covering state government issues across the land, reported last week that Baltimore, New Orleans, Oakland, and the state of New Mexico have already expressed interest in the program.

As a pilot program, LEAD will undergo a rigorous evaluation to determine whether it has been a success. It that proves to be the case, it could be expanded in other Seattle and King County locales, officials said.

"The LEAD pilot has the potential to help people struggling with addiction and save public dollars at the same time," said King County Executive Dow Constantine. "We can work in partnership to replace a downward spiral toward jail with support and resources. Our families and neighborhoods are better off when those headed for the criminal justice system are instead given the opportunity to lead a fulfilling and productive life."

It won't take four years to see what kind of impact LEAD has on Belltown and Skyway. Within a matter of weeks or months, we should be able to see whether this experiment in smart policing is working and produces a model that can be adopted elsewhere.

Ever since the Hawaii State Teachers Association (HSTA) agreed to make members submit to random suspicionless drug tests in a 2007 contract with a state, then backed away from that pledge after rethinking the rights it was agreeing to give up, the teachers and the state of Hawaii have been locked in a battle over random drug testing. That battle is now over.

While the administration of Republican Gov. Linda Lingle fought hard to force the teachers to submit, even taking the battle to the courts, the administration of Democratic Gov. Neil Abercrombie has taken a different course. In an agreement reached Monday, the state agreed to end its insistence on random drug and alcohol testing for teachers.

Negotiators for Gov. Abercrombie agreed to the settlement "to avoid further expense and risk of litigation," according to KITV-4 in Honolulu.

"For the past four years, the HSTA the ACLU have been challenging the random drug testing," said HSTA President Wil Okabe, who added the issue had become one of teachers' rights and the constitutionality of random suspicionless drug tests.

"We're very happy to see that no teachers will be exposed to this unconstitutional, expensive and unnecessary program," said ACLU attorney Dan Gluck.

While the HSTA does not support random suspicionless drug testing of teachers, the agreement does allow for drug testing with cause. The union is okay with that. "HSTA believes schools should be drug-free," said Okabe.

School will finally be getting underway in Glasford, Illinois, after the teachers' union and the school board compromised on language requiring drug testing for teachers. Teachers had been on strike since August 17, balking at contract language that would have subjected them to random suspicionless drug testing.

Under the contract agreement reached last week by the teachers and the Illini Bluffs District 327 Board of Education, current teachers agreed to submit to a single drug test before September 15. Then they may voluntarily join a random drug testing pool that will also include the administration and school board members.

New hires will be treated differently, however. They will be subject to mandatory random drug testing.

As a concession to the district for not agreeing to mandatory random drug testing, the teachers' union accepted a 5% decrease in the percentage the district pays for health insurance in the second and third years of the three-year contract.

According to the Pekin Times, neither side was particularly happy with the agreement. The school district didn't get full mandatory random drug testing, and the union didn't manage to kill drug testing completely.

"I think both sides gave a little bit to get the kids back in school," said Board Chairman Dennis Brown. He added that the reason the board wanting random testing was because it wanted to be "proactive in an issue instead of reactive."

It was the union that brought the idea of teachers taking a simple test to the table. Ray Roskos, field manager for the Illinois Federation of Teachers brought with him to the board meeting an envelope he said contained drug tests results for all the teachers -- all paid for at the union's expense. All were negative.

"It's sad they had to prove their innocence in this instance, but they did and we're happy with the result," Roskos said.

Teachers in one Illinois school district went on strike Wednesday after the district failed to remove contract language demanding they submit to random, suspicionless drug testing. The teachers had offered to accept drug testing on reasonable cause, but at last minute Tuesday night meeting, the board rejected the compromise.

The matter had festered since last year, when it had been removed from contract negotiations as an intractable issue. The Illini Bluffs District 327 school board in May brought back the drug testing language in this year's contract negotiations and, remaining immune to suasion from the teachers, included the language in its formal final offer and items not agreed statement to the Illinois Education Labor Relations Board last month. The board did try to sweeten the deal by offering to get drug tested, too, but the teachers weren't buying.

The board's demand for random, suspicionless teacher drug testing came despite its implicit admission that it was unneeded. In a July 21 press release chastising the union for refusing to buckle before its demands, the board wrote: "The testing program is not intended as a 'witchhunt' as the Board of Education believes that all District teachers would satisfactorily pass a drug and alcohol test."

At the same time, the teachers, represented by the Illini Bluffs Federation of Teachers, submitted their final offer, including their proposal for reasonable cause testing. They tersely noted that even reasonable cause testing was a concession, and that the estimated $6,000 cost to test the three-school district's 62 teachers could be better spent.

"While neither mandatory, random drug testing nor cause testing is an industry standard in the education profession, the Union offered the Board of Education a plan that would allow an administrator to deal with an employee drug problem if they ever have cause to do so," teacher negotiators wrote. "The Board admitted they have no specific concerns with any teacher or reason to believe a teacher has a problem. The Union looked at the $6,000 or more cost of the district’s policy and proposed the probable cause policy because they felt the cost of random testing would be better spent on students and classrooms."

School is supposed to start Thursday in Glaston, home of the Illini Bluffs District 327, but it looks like that isn't going to happen. The district has already canceled classes for the remainder of the week, and the teachers will be hitting the picket line instead of the books.

"We’ll be out there [picketing] from about 7:30 [am] to about 4:30 [pm]," said Keith Brown, lead negotiator for the union. "We want to be in a classroom instead of on the street. But they [the school board] didn't have that same agenda tonight," he told the Peoria Star-Journal after Tuesday's failed last-chance meeting.