Category: Courts

Courts, Mayor Wilson, Parks

King County Assessor Says He Can’t Wear Ankle Monitor In Stalking Case Due to Medical Condition, Burien Puts City Manager on Leave, and More

1. King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson failed to appear at his court hearing in Seattle Municipal Court on Tuesday, where he was scheduled to explain why “medical issues” prevent him from wearing an ankle monitor while he awaits trial on charges of stalking his ex-fiancée, Lee Keller. Wilson’s attorney said his client was confused about the date. The court will hold another hearing tomorrow so that Wilson can attend.

According to a court filing, Wilson told a staffer for the company that provides GPS monitors, Sentinel, that he can’t wear a monitor because he “must regularly soak both legs in water to help reduce swelling” from a medical condition. “Sentinel policy states that the GPS device must not be submerged in water,” the “failure to enroll” filing says. Wilson also said he has to wear compression socks and “reported the device felt tight and indicated that additional space would be necessary to allow him to properly remove and put on his compression socks. Due to these factors Sentinel did not enroll Mr. Wilson on the GPS with exclusion zones obligation.”

Wilson was arrested earlier this year after showing up repeatedly outside Keller’s home in violation of an existing no-contact order. In court filings last year, Keller detailed Wilson’s history of stalking and harassing her over a period of several years. Seattle Municipal Court magistrate Noah Weil issued a five-year no-contact order against Wilson last week  and ordered him to wear a GPS monitor that would alert Keller if Wilson comes within 1,000 feet of her. During that hearing, Wilson said he would have “no problem” complying; the ankle monitor was meant as an assurance that he would not violate this protection order as he has with previous orders to stay away from Keller.

2. The Burien City Council decided, in a closed-door executive session, to place city manager Adolfo Bailon on administrative leave last night, voting 4-3 to remove him and direct the city’s contract interim city attorney, Ann Marie Soto, to find an interim replacement.

The reason the city has a contract city attorney is that Bailon summarily fired former City Attorney Garmon Newsom III earlier this month, PubliCola has learned. (Newsom would have been the person providing legal advice to the council as they discussed whether and how to remove Bailon). This could be among the reasons the council’s four progressive members voted to place Bailon on leave after a lengthy executive session with Soto Tuesday night.

Officially, the council has not given a reason for removing Bailon from his position, and PubliCola was unable to get any councilmember to comment on the record about what led them to consider removing him in the first place. (Executive sessions are closed to the public and considered attorney-client privileged.) Administrative leave is paid and is not considered punitive in itself.

However, it’s not hard to imagine any number of possible reasons beyond Bailon’s decision to fire the city attorney. Back in 2023, the city council (then dominated by more conservative members) stood by Bailon as he shot down efforts to stand up a homeless shelter on land owned by the city, threatened legal action against a church that hosted an encampment, turned away $1 million in shelter funding from King County, and more.

Bailon also berated council members who disagreed with his political views on homelessness, filed a complaint against Councilmember Hugo Garcia over  tweets, demanded the removal of the King County sheriff’s deputy who served as Burien’s police chief, and apparently spent much of his time calling 911 on unsheltered people in the park outside his office, among many other actions that arguably stretched the limits of his authority as a city employee.

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Under Burien’s city manager-council form of governance, every city employee technically works for the city manager, and he works for the seven-member city council. Three years ago, an outside firm resigned over what they described as the council’s refusal to take critical evaluation of Bailon’s performance seriously. With a council less sympathetic to Bailon’s actions and political opinions, he could be on his way out after four years in the role, for which he is paid around $240,000.

3. Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson announced the dates for Seattle’s annual “Bicycle Weekends” event, in which the city opens up Lake Washington Boulevard in Seward Park to cyclists and pedestrians during summer weekends. And unlike her predecessor, who killed longstanding plans to install stop signs and speed humps on the dangerous lakefront boulevard, Wilson is expanding the safe-street program to include nearly every summer weekend, except during Seafair, and three holidays.

That means that cyclists and pedestrians, including wheelchair users, will have access to the roadway more summer Sundays than any year in the past. Under Harrell, who lives nearby, the car-free celebration happened only on alternate weekends, for a total of 20 days. Wilson is expanding that to 15 summer weekends and a total of 33 days, including three holidays. Details (including where drivers can park outside the car-free zone) on the city’s website.

City Council, Courts, Density, homelessness, housing, Mayor Wilson

This Week on PubliCola: April 11, 2026

Shelter expansion, anti-apartment pushback, Northeast Seattle gets dedicated cops, and a bunch of other stories you may have missed this week.

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, April 6

Seattle Nice: Mayor Wilson Wants to Expand Housing Faster

On this week’s episode of Seattle Nice, we talked about how Mayor Katie Wilson’s personal experience renting in Seattle may have impacted her decision to go “bigger, taller, and faster” on the city’s comprehensive plan. We also talked about City Councilmember Maritza Rivera’s still-vague proposal to “audit the Human Services Department.”

Councilmember Rivera Wants to Audit Human Services

Speaking of which, here’s what we know about that proposal: Rivera believes that in light of King County’s audit, which found serious problems with some its own human services contracts, the city should audit its own human services contracts. The auditor’s office told us this would be a long, involved process; generally, their audits are more focused and happen at the direction of more than just one councilmember.

Tuesday, April 7

Seattle Council Hears from Renters Who Want Quality of Life and Homeowners Who Want to Keep Neighborhoods to Themselves

A meeting on the proposed comprehensive plan update, which could allow some apartments in parts of the city that are not directly on large, polluting arterial roads and highways, broke down along predictable lines: Renters and housing advocates asked for the right to live in Seattle’s quieter neighborhoods, and housing opponents argued that allowing apartments near them would be tantamount to clear-cutting Seattle, murdering orcas, and making birds go extinct.

Wednesday, April 8

SPD Dedicates Three Officers to Magnuson Park, Citing Success with “Disorder” and Property Crimes During Pilot

The Seattle Police Department is permanently assigning three officers to the area around Magnuson Park, a large lakefront park in an affluent part of Northeast Seattle where residents, and Councilmember Rivera, have been calling for more cops to crack down on loud summertime parties and street racing. The park is home to hundreds of low-income residents who live in apartments run by two nonprofits; it’s also where police shot and killed Charleena Lyles, a woman who called 911 during a mental-health crisis.

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Thursday, April 9

Larger Library Levy Moves Forward

The city council added nearly $70 million to a $410 million library levy renewal that will be on the ballot this year, including new funds for repairs and maintenance at the downtown library, air conditioning for libraries that don’t have it, and more electronic copies of popular books. Rivera voted against every amendment, citing the need for fiscal responsibility as the city approaches a state-imposed cap on property tax levies.

Founder of AI Worker Surveillance Startup Appointed to Ethics Commission

Evan Smith, formerly of Starbucks, created a system for companies to spy on retail workers by recording all their conversations and using AI to analyze their speech for compliance with company policy. Councilmembers Rivera and Joy Hollingsworth nominated him to serve on the city’s Ethics and Elections Commission.

County Assessor Pleads Not Guilty to Stalking, Must Wear Ankle Monitor in Five-Year No Contact Order

John Arthur Wilson, who has refused to step down from his elected role as King County Assessor despite being arrested for stalking and harassing his ex-fiancée, was slapped with a five-year no-contact order while awaiting trial on stalking charges. He’ll have to wear an ankle monitor to ensure he doesn’t come within 1,000 feet of his ex; his term expires at the end of this year.

Friday, April 10

Developers Ask for Mandatory Affordable Housing Fee Holiday as Permits for New Apartments Dry Up

Seven years ago, the city approved Mandatory Housing Affordability fees on new development; the fees fund affordable housing projects, or developers can build affordable units on site. Since then, development has slackened and the cost of building has gone up, and developers say the fees are a major reason. Now, they’re asking the city to lower the fees temporarily. But the request raises larger questions about how Seattle funds affordable housing, and whether it’s smart to treat apartments like a negative thing by charging special fees on new development.

Also this week: I covered two stories exclusively on Bluesky.

First, the mayor met with opponents of police surveillance cameras in a Zoom town hall that was clearly frustrating for both sides. (I attended a watch party at Stoup on Capitol Hill.) Wilson seems committed to turning on the cameras proposed by her predecessor, Bruce Harrell, and approved by the previous city council, and opponents of police surveillance feel betrayed by the mayor they supported, in part, because they thought she shared their commitment to getting rid of the cameras.

Second, Wilson announced that the city has secured a site for the first 75 units of new shelter of her term—a small step toward the 1,000 new shelter units she promised during her first year. The announcement came at a public meeting where the mayor moderated a panel and took questions from the public, a dramatic departure from the way most previous mayors have rolled out big announcements.

I also talked about these stories and more on Hacks and Wonks with Crystal Fincher on Friday; we also discussed the lawsuit that was filed this week to stop the state’s new high-earners’ income tax, some sheriff’s opposition to a new law saying they can’t serve if their law enforcement certification has been revoked, and more.

 

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Courts, King County

County Assessor Pleads Not Guilty to Stalking, Must Wear Ankle Monitor in Five-Year No Contact Order

By Erica C. Barnett

King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson will have to wear an ankle monitor and stay 1,000 feet away from his ex-fiancée, Seattle PR consultant Lee Keller, while he awaits trial on the two charges of violating a no-contact order Keller obtained against him last year. Wilson pled not guilty to both charges; his next pretrial hearing is scheduled for May 5. The no-contact order is for five years, expiring in 2031.

Wilson was arrested last July for showing up repeatedly at Keller’s home while a no-contact order was in effect. Keller accused Wilson of stalking and coercive control; the two reconciled briefly while the restraining order was in effect. Before his arrest, Wilson used a photo taken during that period in which Keller was smiling to argue in court that he posed no danger to her and that the order should be lifted.

According to a Seattle Municipal Court spokesperson, the company that provides GPS monitoring to the city, Sentinel, has to inform the court if a defendant violates a no-contact order. In domestic violence cases, the victim can opt in to an app that alerts them if the person under the order comes within 1,000 feet of wherever they are. Keller said she plans to use the app.

Keller told PubliCola by email that she’s “deeply grateful to the Judge, the Seattle Police, the City of Seattle and the prosecuting attorney’s office for their careful work around this. I feel better knowing there are people keeping track of his whereabouts. I just hope this is not prolonged and that my protection order stays in place for the longest period possible. And that he now understands the seriousness of breaking the law.”

The no-contact order prohibits Wilson from messaging, emailing, or calling Keller or from speaking to or going near her even if she “invites or allows you to violate the order’s prohibitions.” It does not prohibit Wilson from creating social media posts that subtly allude to Keller, which she has accused him of doing in the past.

Wilson appeared virtually at Wednesday’s hearing, and said little more than “I’m more than happy to comply with the no contact [order].”

The King County Council voted unanimously last year to demand Wilson’s resignation. Assuming he remains defiant—last month, he stood up and waved when a speaker at a Downtown Seattle Association event invited elected officials to stand for applause—he’ll be in office for the rest of 2026. He is not running for reelection.

City Council, Courts, homelessness, King County, Mayor Wilson

City Pays $750,000 In SPD Discrimination Suit, Council Queues Up Questions on Mayor’s Shelter Plan, King County Employees Push Back on In-Office Mandate
King County’s beautiful Brutalist Administration Building, closed since the pandemic. Photo by Another Believer, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

1. The city of Seattle finalized a settlement last week with Seattle police officer Denise “Cookie” Bouldin, a longtime officer who sued the department in 2023, alleging gender and racial discrimination. Bouldin will receive $750,000 in an agreement that also requires her not to sue the city again over the same claims.

SPD has settled a number of discrimination lawsuits in recent years, for amounts ranging from around $200,000 (paid to SPD sergeant John O’Neil, who was himself the subject of multiple discrimination complaints) to $3 million (paid to police captain Deanna Nollette, who claimed former chief Adrian Diaz discriminated and retaliated against her by demoting her and moving her to overnight duty after she alleged discrimination.

Bouldin, best known for her chess club for students in Rainier Beach, claimed in her lawsuit that her fellow officers and SPD officials subjected her to “race and gender discrimination on a daily basis that had “been ongoing and continuous throughout her entire career.” Among other allegations, Bouldin said SPD staff refused to give her a parking pass, mishandled her personal property, and retaliated against her when she complained about officers who allowed their dogs to “roam around” SPD’s south precinct.

The size of the settlement is unclear. Bouldin’s attorneys did not respond to a request for comment.

The City Attorney’s office would not say how much the settlement was for. In the initial tort claim that preceded the lawsuit, Bouldin sought $10 million from the city, according to media reports.

In a statement, City Attorney Erika Evans said Bouldin “is a pioneer at the Seattle Police Department who has been a beloved and deeply trusted presence in our community for decades. The City is thankful this case was able to resolve.”

2. The city council is poised to consider legislation that would make it easier for the city to site and build tiny house villages, but the three bills—sent down by Mayor Katie Wilson without prior conversation with council members or staff—will likely face scrutiny.

Two of the proposals—one that would provide about $5 million in funding for future tiny house villages, and another that would allow the city itself to lease and prepare land for shelters—do not have committee assignments yet. The other, which would increase the maximum size of tiny house villages from 100 people to as many as 250, is sponsored by Councilmember Dionne Foster and will be heard in Councilmember Eddie Lin’s land use committee.

It isn’t the cost of the proposal itself that’s currently raising eyebrows on the council: Most of the funding would come out of this year’s budget, which already includes money for shelter that can be used to build out the first set of 500 beds Wilson wants to add before the World Cup games in June.

Instead, councilmembers are raising questions about the size of the potential shelters (there’s a big difference between 25 to 50 tiny house units and hundreds), the fact that Wilson seems committed to tiny houses, specifically (Jon Grant, her chief homelessness advisor, worked at the city’s main tiny house village provider, the Low Income Housing Institute, immediately before joining Wilson’s office), and the level of services the new shelters will be able to provide for an average cost of $28,000, which is less than existing shelters that provide 24/7 on-site staff and wraparound support for chronically homeless people.

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Behind the scenes, councilmembers have grumbled that Wilson didn’t work with them before dropping her legislation in an announcement that only Rob Saka, whose district includes SoDo and other areas with a large number of unsanctioned encampments and RVs, attended.

3. By June, most King County employees will be required to work from physical offices three days a week, and many employees are pushing back. (Seattle also has varying in-office mandates that we’ve covered extensively.) Editor’s note: This sentence has been corrected to reflect that June, not March 30, is the general deadline for Return To Office. According to the county executive’s office, different departments are implementing the new mandate on different timelines.

In a recent internal newsletter, King County Executive Girmay Zahilay expressed his “commitment to building a Better Government includes listening to staff and empowering you to identify challenges and bring forward solutions” [emphasis in original]. Some county employees, taking him at his word, used the newsletter as a forum to express their frustration with the mandate.

King County covers more than 2,100 square miles, and many King County staffers do not live in or near Seattle, where the county’s central office space is located. Several noted that their jobs require them to go to far-flung locations; forcing them to commute to an office downtown will mean sitting in a cubicle and attending meetings remotely instead, they argued.

A number of staffers said the return-to-office mandate takes away valuable family and leisure time, contributes to stress and demoralization, and costs real money. “As a blanket and rigid policy, it disproportionately harms parents and caregivers who must secure new, costly childcare to cover mandated office days,” one staffer wrote. “It places the greatest strain on lower-wage workers and especially single working parents. The mandate forces parents to spend less time with their children, so they can sit in a cubicle alone with a headset, taking the same Teams calls they would at home. It forces employees to budget for new expenses (childcare, gas, parking, etc.) in a burgeoning recession when gas, groceries, and utility prices are on the rise.”

“Many staff moved to more affordable housing when positions were fully remote. That is how many of us are surviving,” another staffer wrote. “The long-term effects of this lowered productivity will negatively impact the work we do and the providers we support.”

Several staffers raised concerns about crowding in the county’s downtown office spaces, including King Street Center and the Chinook Building. The county scaled back on office space during the pandemic, and is now scrambling to find places for workers to sit. One staffer from the Department of Public Defense said staffers will now be forced to conduct client interviews from offices where three desks have been crammed into spaces built for one, compromising confidentiality in the name of “boots on the ground” and office camaraderie.

Asked about the employees’ concerns, Zahilay spokeswoman Callie Craighead said the executive wasn’t taking a “one-size-fits-all approach” and has, for example, allowed employees to meet their return-to-office requirements by working from county offices outside downtown Seattle. “Departments are currently developing plans to meet the three-day in-office expectation while continuing to preserve telework flexibility where possible,” Craighead said. “This includes coordinating in-office schedules and using existing space creatively.”

Responding to concerns about new expenses and the need for work-life balance, Craighead said, “The Executive recognizes that employees are balancing many considerations, including commute times and family responsibilities. As the father of a newborn and a toddler, he understands firsthand how important flexibility is for working families. His goal is to strike a thoughtful balance between maintaining the flexibility we value and strengthening in-person collaboration so the County can continue delivering strong results for residents.”

Courts, Crime

Facing Thousands of Backlogged Cases, New City Attorney Says She’ll Reorg Her Office for Faster Results

By Erica C. Barnett

When former city attorney Ann Davison started her term in 2024, she pledged to swiftly eliminate a “backlog” of some 5,000 cases she said her predecessor, Pete Holmes, had carelessly allowed to pile up during his final term. And while she did clear out much of that backlog, largely by dropping thousands of older cases, her strategy for eliminating future case pileups—a “close-in-time” policy that required attorneys to decide whether to file cases within five days of receiving police reports—was largely unsuccessful.

When she left office at the end of last year, Davison left behind a backlog of thousands of unresolved cases—between about 4,700 and 5,100, depending on which DUI cases are included in the backlog. The larger number, from City Attorney Erika Evans’ office, includes nearly 400 DUI cases that have been reviewed, but not filed, because of testing delays at the state toxicology lab, while Davison’s office did not count that type of case as part of the backlog.

“My predecessor, former city attorney Davison, also inherited a backlog from former city attorney Pete Holmes,” Evans said. “It seems like it’s common to have [a backlog], and it shouldn’t be at all.”

Scott Lindsay, the former deputy city attorney, told PubliCola his own team had identified about 1,000 cases they believe shouldn’t count toward the backlog, including the DUI “tox hold” cases as well as around 200 cases where attorneys made filing decisions before December 31 but the filings didn’t go through until this year.

“We have some real questions about how they’re doing the math,” Lindsay said. But, he added, “It’s absolutely true that there was a backlog at the end of the Davison administration, and it was growing.”

In addition to the DUI cases that are sitting in tox-lab limbo, the backlog includes around 800 criminal traffic cases, 1,700 domestic violence cases, and more than 1,000 other misdemeanor cases, such as shoplifting, trespassing, and public drug use.

The total also include around 1,000 cases that are unclassified—meaning they could be anything. This problem apparently emerged last year during a long-overdue migration from a case management database, called DAMION, to a modern replacement called JusticeNexus. The new system is designed to handle more complex case files than DAMION, but the transfer has been rough. Apparently, whenever a case category didn’t fit the new system’s parameters, JusticeNexus gave it a blank, or unclassified, status; for example, incoming cases that were previously classified under “review”—as in, ready for the filing unit to review—got categorized as blank in the new system, which didn’t have a corresponding “review” category, according to Lindsay.

“I think it’s much better, as you can imagine, to be using a system that’s not from 1999,” criminal division director Jenna Robert said during a joint interview with Evans on Friday, “but there are definitely growing pains that are going to take  while for us to resolve.”

Evans is a former federal prosecutor; Robert worked in the domestic violence division under former city attorney Pete Holmes before joining the state attorney general’s office in 2021. Evans said this experience gives them an important perspective that her predecessors lacked. “I think that perspective matters, when we’re talking about … understanding that not every case that comes in should be filed, and we really need to be looking at cases that affect public safety,” she said.

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Davison, a Republican, supported new laws cracking down on sex work and drug use and believed in treating “prolific offenders” more harshly than other misdemeanor defendants. But Evans acknowledged that despite her “weird fixations” on certain types of crimes, Davison “did have a lot of cases in diversion, including quality of life crimes” like shoplifting and trespassing.

Evans says there are a few key changes that could help her office address the backlog. First, legislation that just passed the state House, after sailing through the Senate, will allow cities to use private labs to analyze blood samples in suspected DUI cases. Evans testified in favor of the legislation in Olympia last month.

Second, she says the city needs to fund more prosecutors to review and handle increasingly complex cases, which often involve hours of video evidence. Evans is well aware that any request for additional funding will probably fall on deaf ears this year, when the city is facing a $148 million budget deficit. Although Davison managed to squeeze around $300,000 out of the city for two additional domestic violence prosecutors in 2022, Mayor Katie Wilson has asked each department to propose cuts between 5 and 10 percent, and Evans acknowledged that this year’s budget fight will be about preserving her office, not expanding it.

Third, Evans and Robert are restructuring the department so that a single attorney will handle each case from filing to resolution, a “vertical” structure Evans said would give prosecutors a greater sense of “ownership and responsibility” over their cases and prevent a situation where the city attorney’s filing unit is simply “filing for numbers.” Evans said that in her experience as a federal prosecutor, “there’s a different mentality when you’re like, ‘Okay, yeah. This is mine all the way through.”

For crime victims, “just getting the quality they need up front is really important, and I think that that naturally happens when you get a case, it’s yours and it’s not going to just be handed off to someone else to go and try,” Evans said.

These proposals don’t address other factors that could be contributing to chronic case backlogs, such as slow filings or the difficulty of hiring highly qualified lawyers to relatively low-paying government positions. By this time next year, we should have some sense of whether the changes Evans is implementing have started to make a dent in the city prosecutor’s workload, or if this recurring problem is due to other, more intractable forces.

Courts, King County, Police

State Ruling Represents a Blow to Public Defense; Settlement In SPD Killing of 23-Year-Old Will Cost Taxpayers Millions

1. The state Public Employee Relations Commission ruled earlier this month that King County was not required to bargain with unionized staff for the county’s Department of Public Defense (DPD) before moving inmates from the King County jail in downtown Seattle to the South Correctional Entity (SCORE), a jail in Des Moines owned by several cities in South King County.

The decision to move people to SCORE, which the county argued was necessary to alleviate understaffing at the downtown jail, was controversial. Unionized staffers for the county’s Department of Public Defense, which represents indigent clients, argued that the move limited defendants’ access to attorneys and created logistical hurdles that made it harder for DPD to provide the best possible defense.

SEIU 925, the union that represents DPD employees, filed a demand to bargain over the proposal to move inmates to SCORE, arguing that the agreement creates changes to their members’ working conditions and was a mandatory subject of bargaining. A hearing examiner ruled in the union’s favor; PERC’s decision overturns that ruling.

The county’s contract with SCORE ended in 2023. But the PERC decision, which the union is appealing, has potentially serious implications for issues that remain ongoing, including caseloads and staffing levels at DPD and other local public defense agencies around the state attorneys and non-attorney DPD staff such as investigators, paralegals, and legal assistants.

According to public defense union president Molly Gilbert, “there has never been a decision like” the examiner’s initial ruling, which “would have required the county, and any other public defense office in that state, to negotiate with the union over caseloads and staffing.” In practice, Gilbert said, this could force the county to hire more staff, including paralegals and investigators, to lower caseloads make it easier for attorneys to handle the cases they have.

Public defender caseloads are an ongoing issue in Washington state; last year, the state Supreme Court ruled that jurisdictions like King County must reduce caseload standards dramatically over the next 10 years. According to Gilbert, a favorable outcome for the union wouldn’t necessarily result in a directive to hire dramatically more attorneys—a scenario that could set King County up for a consequential McLeary-style funding mandate to “lock in” complex caseload standards.

Instead, Gilbert said, the union has been making “proposals that are far cheaper than the bar standards that we could live with” by “having more staff support, which is cheaper than hiring all these attorneys. But they refuse to bargain with us on that.

The union is appealing PERC’s decision.

2. As PubliCola reported, the city settled with the family of Jaahnavi Kandula, a 23-year-old student killed in a crosswalk by a speeding Seattle police officer, earlier this month for a total of $29,011,000—$29 million plus $11,000, the amount a Seattle Police Officers Guild leader “joked” that the city would pay her family, given her “limited value.”  The comment, made by officer Daniel Auderer to SPOG president Mike Solan and caught on Auderer’s body camera, caused international outrage and led to Auderer’s termination.

SPD officer Kevin Dave was driving 74 miles an hour down a 25-mile-per-hour street when he struck Kandula, who was in a crosswalk; he claimed he was racing to provide medical care to an overdose victim who turned out to be a a guy concerned he had used too much cocaine.

After we published, a number of people asked PubliCola what Dave’s reckless driving would cost the city—and who would pay. We asked the Office of City Finance, and learned from a spokesperson that although the city’s insurance will cover $20 million of the settlement. The city itself is liable for the first $10 million of “any covered loss,” including lawsuit settlements. That $10 million deductible also includes the cost to defend SPD against the lawsuit filed by Kandula’s family.

That $10 million will come out of the city’s Judgment and Claims fund, which is part of the city’s general fund.

According to OCF, $20 million is the “full amount of available insurance and the insurers’ policy limits.” The city, in other words, is on the hook for its deductible plus any settlement amount above $20 million.

As we’ve reported repeatedly, the city has had to increase the judgment and claims fund routinely for several years running, thanks in large part to growing settlements in lawsuits against SPD. In addition to this ever-increasing line item, large settlements raise the amount the city pays for insurance; as of 2023, when Kandula was killed, the city was paying just under $9 million a year for insurance, the OCF spokesperson said. In short: SPD does not pay directly for any of the lawsuits it loses or settles.