Category: Democratic Party

campaign finance, Democratic Party, Politics, Women

King County Democrats Chair Bailey Stober Resigns After 13-Hour Trial Finds Him Guilty of Workplace Misconduct

If you enjoy the work I do here at The C Is for Crank, including and especially extended coverage of ongoing stories like this one that get short shrift in the mainstream press, please consider becoming a sustaining supporter of the site or making a one-time contribution! For just $5, $10, or $20 a month (or whatever you can give), you can help keep this site going, and help me continue to dedicate the many hours it takes to bring you stories like this one every week. This site is funded entirely by contributions from readers like you. Thank you for reading, and I’m truly grateful for your support.

Bailey Stober, the chairman of the King County Democrats, resigned last night after a 13-hour internal trial that ultimately found him guilty on five counts relating to workplace misconduct and sexual harassment of a former employee, Natalia Koss Vallejo, whom he fired shortly after a third party filed a complaint against him on Koss Vallejo’s behalf (and, she says, without her knowledge). Stober’s resignation, which will take effect next Saturday, comes after more than two months of internal and external debate about his actions as party chair, including three separate internal investigations into both the workplace misconduct allegations and charges of financial misconduct.

Koss Vallejo, who has been barred from speaking on her own behalf because the entire process, including the trial, has been held under Robert’s Rules of Order, which only gives “voice” to voting members of the group, says she’s relieved by the outcome but does not feel victorious. “This does not feel like a win to me. I am grateful that he did finally step down, because, as everyone knows, his grandstanding and drawing this process out was only hurting Democrats,” she says. “However the fact that I and many other nameless people who were involved had to give their time and their emotional and mental energy to this process for over nine weeks means that the process is still flawed, and we have a lot of work to do to correct this so that this never happens again.” Specifically, Koss Vallejo points to the fact that the King County Democrats do not have a formal HR policy or any policy for dealing with allegations against a Party member by someone who is not within the formal party structure, such as an employee.

Stober has said he fired Koss Vallejo after she “vandalized” a car in a parking lot because it had a hat with the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement logo displayed in the back window; a video of the incident, obtained by Stober and posted to Youtube by an anonymous account called “DemsAre BadPeople,” shows her tossing the contents of a cup on the hood of the car, which she says were the dregs of an iced coffee. The firing Stober has also claimed that he had consent from his then-vice chairwoman, Cat Williams, and his treasurer, Nancy Podschwit, to fire Koss Vallejo, which both Williams and Podschwit have denied.

Yesterday’s trial addressed only the workplace misconduct allegations (I’ve covered the financial charges before, including here and here), which included the following claims:

– That Stober repeatedly pressured Koss Vallejo to drink to excess;

–  That Koss Vallejo had told numerous people that she was afraid Stober would retaliate against her if she brought up her concerns;

– That Stober fired Koss Vallejo without consulting with the board’s vice chairwoman or the treasurer of the group;

– That Stober called her a “bitch” and a “cunt” while they were out drinking;

– That Stober sprayed Koss Vallejo with Silly String while she was driving; and

– That Stober had grabbed Koss Vallejo’s phone while she was in the restroom and posted “I shit my pants” on her Facebook timeline without her knowledge.

Last night, Stober was apologetic but defiant when he emerged from the closed-door trial shortly after 11pm to announce his resignation “after 11 years of Party leadership.” (Stober is 26 and has been chair of the group for a little over one year). “If I have to be the first one to go through this process to open our eyes to the flaws that we have … so be it,” Stober said, adding that it was especially difficult for him to sit through his own trial for 13 hours and listen to people “debate whether or not I’m a horrible person.” Some of Stober’s supporters have insinuated that his opponents are engaging in a racially biased witch hunt against him, even though several of Koss Vallejo’s most vocal supporters, and Koss Vallejo herself, are women of color.

Stober sat in the room throughout the trial as witnesses, including his alleged victim and her supporters, gave testimony and were cross-examined by representatives from both the “prosecution” and the “defense,” much as they would in a legal trial. Yesterday, witnesses described the process as intimidating and re-traumatizing, and said at times it seemed as though Koss Vallejo and other people who agreed to testify on her behalf were the ones on trial. At one point, an executive board member reportedly asked a witness at length about whether Koss Vallejo used illegal substances. Witnesses said the line of questioning seemed intended to imply she had a drug problem and was therefore an unreliable witness—the kind of off-point question that is often used in legal trials to discredit victims and refocus attention away from the person accused of misconduct or worse.

Oddly, given how many statements Stober has made on his own behalf on his own website, on Facebook, in meetings, and in emails to the Party members who would have been voting on his fate next weekend if he had not stepped down last night, yesterday’s trial was Koss Vallejo’s first official opportunity to speak on her own behalf. After the meeting, Koss Vallejo said that the process that led up to the trial has treated her as if “I didn’t exist”; for example, while Stober was given a chance to review all the evidence against him nearly a week in advance of the trial, Koss Vallejo says she still has not seen any of the evidence, and only found out when and where the trial would be held through word of mouth from friends, since she is not on any official Party email list. “The whole process treated me like I literally wasn’t a person, and that was one of the most frustrating things about it,” she says.

Prior to Stober’s resignation, two-thirds of his executive board signed a petition calling for his resignation, which triggered the scheduling of a vote by all the precinct committee officers (low-ranking party officials) in the county; if two-thirds of the PCOs at that meeting had voted to remove him, Stober would have lost his position involuntarily. (Prior to that, district Democratic groups across King County passed resolutions calling for his resignation, and several voted to withhold funds from the organization until Stober stepped down. More than 200 Democratic Party members, including several elected officials, also signed a letter calling for his resignation.) At the moment, the organization is basically insolvent; as of late last month, according to recent a financial report from King County Democrats chair Nancy Podschwit, the group had just $3,200 in the bank, with thousands of dollars of outstanding obligations and a potential fine from the state over campaign finance violations from 2016, before Stober was chair, that could total tens of thousands of dollars.

Separately, a court just ordered Stober to pay more than $5,000 in attorney’s fees in an investigation by the state Attorney General’s Office into campaign finance violations Stober allegedly committed in his capacity as both a candidate for Kent City Council and as King County Democrats chair—a case that has not been resolved, in part, because Stober has refused to turn over documents to the state—and several other campaign finance allegations against him remain pending. And his employer, the King County Assessor’s Office, is spending up to $10,000 on a separate investigation to determine whether his workplace behavior as the Democrats’ chair has any bearing on his ability to perform his job as communications director for the office. He is currently on paid leave from that position, which pays more than $90,000.

 

Democratic Party

King County Democrats Chair Stober Claims Investigation Exonerates Him

Bailey Stober, the embattled chairman of the King County Democrats, has responded to the findings of an investigation into allegations that he sexually harassed and bullied an employee and committed multiple acts of financial misconduct with an email asserting that the investigation effectively exonerated him on “77% of the allegations against me.” The email went out to every precinct committee officer in the county—the very same PCOs who will be voting next week on whether to remove Stober from office—and appears to be an attempt to influence that vote.

“That is correct – my opponents have made up, exaggerated or have nothing corroborating over ¾ of the allegations they have thrown at me,” Stober wrote (emphasis in original.)The report, importantly, did not say anything about Stober’s “opponents” (his accuser and her supporters), nor did it conclude that any of the allegations against Stober were false, much less “made up,” “exaggerated,” or uncorroborated.

As I reported earlier this week, the investigation only “substantiated” those allegations for which there was irrefutable written or video proof, meaning that—for example—the alleged victim’s claim that she feared retaliation for speaking out against Stober was deemed impossible to verify, despite testimony from four other witnesses that she expressed a specific fear of losing her job when she told them about his behavior. (The woman, Natalia Koss Vallejo, was in fact fired by Stober shortly after someone filed a complaint against Stober on her behalf.)

Saturday update: Sharon Mast, who has been filling in as interim chair of the King County Democrats while Stober is investigated, sent out an email late Friday night to the group’s official email list cautioning members that “the investigation report to which [Stober] refers did not exonerate him” and imploring them “to hold off forming any opinions on this matter until you have received the Trial Committee’s report, which will be distributed through official channels.”

As I wrote when I published the full report on the investigation:

Either Stober is lying, or all the people who have given statements against him, including the organization’s longtime treasurer and a former vice-chairwoman who is no longer associated with the group, are. Given that Stober is the one who is on record mocking Koss Vallejo’s appearance, joking about crowning the man who allegedly sexually assaulted an underage volunteer at a Democratic Party function “party rapist of the year,” and pressuring Koss Vallejo to come out for drinks even after she demurred again and  again, I’d say the former scenario is more plausible.  

Leaders of the King County Democrats’ executive board, which has been fixated on finding “leakers” among its members, put “security tags” on the report that were supposed to track who made copies and who shared the information with people outside the organization such as myself. Looks like Stober himself had no trouble getting a copy of the report from someone on the board, and using it to promote the idea that he is an innocent victim of a smear campaign.

The KCDCC will hold a “trial” of Stober under Robert’s Rules of Order this weekend, and the precinct committee officers (some of whom will be unable to vote because Stober has not approved their appointments) will take a formal vote on whether to remove him on April 15.

Stober’s entire response is below the jump. Continue reading “King County Democrats Chair Stober Claims Investigation Exonerates Him” →

Democratic Party, gender, Women

Investigation Into King County Democrats Chair Stober Finds Some Allegations Substantiated, Others Harder to Prove
Instagram screen shot.

An investigation into allegations of sexual harassment, financial misconduct, and bullying by King County Democratic Party chairman Bailey Stober has found several of the charges to be “substantiated,” while others remain “inconclusive,” according to the a report summarizing the conclusions of an investigation that went out to members of the organization’s executive board on Tuesday.

The report, by labor negotiator and executive board member Afton Larsen, is based on interviews with 14 witnesses, plus Stober and Natalia Koss Vallejo, the former King County Democrats executive director who says Stober harassed her, pressured her to drink, put her in physical danger, and required her to make expenditures that were not approved by the executive board or the party treasurer. (Koss Vallejo did not file the initial complaint against Stober and has said she had no intention of filing a complaint herself; she was fired by Stober, supposedly for throwing a cup of ice on the hood of a car, shortly after the complaint was filed by a third-party witness to Stober’s alleged behavior.)

Larsen’s report will be among the materials the executive board will consider at a “trial” on the workplace misconduct and harassment charges this coming weekend. The trial, at which both representatives for Stober and Koss Vallejo will present evidence,  will be the prelude to an April 15 vote by the county party’s precinct committee officers on whether to remove Stober from his position.

In her report. Larsen restricted her findings to the allegations about workplace misconduct; in a separate investigation, the group’s five-member finance committee  found Stober guilty of misspending party funds and called for his removal.

The workplace misconduct allegations against Stober included:

1. Violation of KCDCC Code of Conduct anti-harassment policy as follows. i) Offensive verbal or written comments related to gender and physical appearance. ii) Sexist or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language. iii) Posting without permission [on social media], without permission from that individual, other people’s personally identifying information (also known as “doxing”) in any public forum. 2. Additional allegations, not relevant to the KCDCC code of conduct, set forth by KCDCC Vice Chairs recommendations and findings report of January 8, 2018. i) Pressuring staff to drink alcohol. ii) Creating a hostile work environment of fear of retaliation. iii) Creating a dangerous work environment. iv) Evidence of physical assault.   

Among other allegations, the original complaint against Stober claimed:

– That Stober had pressured Koss Vallejo constantly “to engage in excessive drinking”;

– That Koss Vallejo had told numerous people that she was afraid Stober would retaliate against her if she brought up her concerns, and showed them screen shots and text messages confirming some of her allegations;

– That Stober fired Koss Vallejo without consulting with the board’s vice chairwoman or the treasurer of the group;

– That Stober statement alleged that Stober made derogatory comments about someone’s, perhaps Koss Vallejo’s, physical appearance and relationship status;

– That Stober called her a “bitch” and a “cunt” while they were out drinking;

– That Stober sprayed Koss Vallejo with Silly String while she was driving; and

– That Stober had grabbed Koss Vallejo’s phone while she was in the restroom and posted “I shit my pants” on her Facebook timeline without her knowledge.

Ultimately, Larsen only found the allegations that could be directly verified through physical evidence such as videos and text to be “substantiated.” That included the allegation that Stober made derogatory comments about Koss Vallejo’s appearance, the allegation that he made sexist comments, the allegation that he used her Facebook account to post an embarrassing update without her knowledge or consent, and the allegation that he had created a dangerous work environment by spraying her with Silly String while she was driving, an incident that Stober himself filmed and posted to Instagram.

The allegations that couldn’t be verified by documentary evidence, or which Larsen determined took place in murky circumstances (e.g., when both Stober and Koss Vallejo had been drinking “and were at varying degrees of sobriety”) were all deemed “inconclusive.” No one directly witnessed Stober calling Koss Vallejo a “bitch” in a derogatory manner, for example, and Koss Vallejo herself said Stober was using the term in a gender-neutral way when he called her a “bitch” in multiple texts. (Theoretically, certain language is always considered inappropriate in certain contexts, such as a boss calling a subordinate a “bitch” and a “lying sack of shit” in late-night texts. In practice, a victim’s statement that an inappropriate behavior didn’t really bother her that much can be used to weaken her larger case.) Similarly, although four people said Koss Vallejo approached them about her fear of retaliation, “no direct threats were ever observed or witnessed”—and Stober “received [the allegations] with surprise.” (In a video posted back in February, and in 8,800-word self-defense posted to his website, Stober made a similar claim. “Nobody was as shocked as I was,” he said in February.) In any case, Larsen apparently weighed testimony by multiple women against Stober’s denial and called it a tie.

Texts and photos and video proof are obviously rock-solid evidence compared to  witness testimony after the fact. But the flip side of this approach is that it draws no distinction between the motivation of an accused harasser to deny he did anything wrong and the motivation of a victim and multiple witnesses to lie. Believing women, in this case, means listening to the testimony from all the women who say they witnessed Stober harassing, bullying, and pressuring Koss Vallejo and others and considering that testimony in the context of the evidence that is irrefutable—the texts, the Facebook “prank,” the video showing a terrified Koss Vallejo behind the wheel, screaming as Stober covers her in Silly String. Not believing women means choosing to dismiss all that evidence, the testimony of multiple witnesses, and statements from the reluctant accuser herself, and taking the accused man at his word. Either Stober is lying, or all the people who have given statements against him, including the organization’s longtime treasurer and a former vice-chairwoman who is no longer associated with the group, are. Given that Stober is the one who is on record mocking Koss Vallejo’s appearance, joking about crowning the man who allegedly sexually assaulted an underage volunteer at a Democratic Party function “party rapist of the year,” and pressuring Koss Vallejo to come out for drinks even after she demurred again and  again, I’d say the former scenario is more plausible.

If you enjoy the work I do here at The C Is for Crank, please consider becoming a sustaining supporter of the site or making a one-time contribution! For just $5, $10, or $20 a month (or whatever you can give), you can help keep this site going, and help me continue to dedicate the many hours it takes to bring you stories like this one every week. This site is funded entirely by contributions from readers, which pay for the time I put into reporting and writing for this blog and on social media, as well as reporting-related and office expenses. Thank you for reading, and I’m truly grateful for your support.

Affordability, Bikes, City Council, Democratic Party, Development, Elections, legislature, Morning Crank, Politics, Renters, Transit, Transportation

Morning Crank: The High Cost of Mandatory Parking

1. By a 7-1 vote Monday (Kshama Sawant was absent, having just landed back in Seattle from a socialism conference in Germany), the city council adopted parking reform legislation that will lower parking mandates in certain parts of the city, require more bike parking in new developments, redefine frequent transit service so that more areas qualify for exemptions from parking mandates, and unbundle rent for housing from rent for parking, so that renters who don’t need parking spaces don’t have to pay for them.

As promised last week, council member Lisa Herbold introduced an amendment that would give the city’s Department of Construction and Inspections the authority to impose environmental “mitigation” measures on new developments in areas where there is no parking mandate and where more than 85 percent of on-street parking is generally occupied by cars. (Herbold raised objections to the unbundling provision and the new definition of frequent transit service in committee, too—and voted against sending the legislation to full council—but only reintroduced the mitigation amendment on Monday). Under the State Environmental  Policy Act, “mitigation” is supposed to reduce the environmental impact of land-use decisions; Herbold’s argument was that measures such as imposing minimum parking requirements, reducing non-residential density, and barring residents of new apartments from obtaining residential parking permits would mitigate the environmental impact caused by people circling the block, looking for parking. (At the advice of the city attorney, Herbold said, she removed the RPZ language from her amendment).

Citing parking guru Donald Shoup—whose book “The High Cost of Free Parking” has been the inspiration for many cities to charge variable rates for on-street parking, depending on demand—Herbold said 85 percent occupancy was “a good compromise between optimal use of the parking spots and [preventing] cars [from spending] five, ten minutes driving around looking for a parking spot.” But Shoup never said that the correct response to high on-street parking usage was to build more parking; in fact, he argued that overutilization is a sign that cities need to charge more for parking so that fewer people drive to neighborhoods where parking is at a premium. Shoup’s primary point wasn’t, as Herbold suggested, that the problem with scarce parking is that people burn gas while looking for a parking spot; it was that too many or too few vacancies is a sign that parking isn’t priced correctly, and the price should be adjusted accordingly.

Ironically, after her amendment failed, Herbold turned around and slammed Shoup for using what she called outdated data. But Shoup (and Johnson) got the last laugh. From the council press release on the passage of the legislation:

Council Bill 119221 aims to ensure that only drivers will have to pay for parking, which seems fair,” said Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking. … “If drivers don’t pay for their parking, someone else has to pay for it, and that someone is everyone. But a city where everyone happily pays for everyone else’s free parking is a fool’s paradise.”

2. Now that longtime state Sen. Sharon Nelson (D-34) has announced that she will not seek reelection, Herbold’s onetime opponent, Shannon Braddock, is reportedly considering a bid for Nelson’s seat. Braddock, who serves as deputy chief of staff to King County Executive Dow Constantine, lost to Herbold in the 2015 council election. State Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon (D-34) told the West Seattle Blog this week that he did not plan to run for Nelson’s senate seat.

3. The King County Democrats will hold a meeting for all the precinct committee officers (PCOs) in the county to vote on whether to remove the group’s embattled chairman, Bailey Stober, from his position on Sunday, April 15. The meeting will come one week after a closed-door trial by a committee that will make its own recommendation about whether Stober should stay or go.

Stober, who has been accused of sexual harassment, creating a hostile work environment, bullying, and financial misconduct, has refused to step down from his position despite the fact that more than 60 percent of the voting members of his executive board have asked him to resign. Under King County bylaws, Stober can only be removed by a vote of two-thirds of the PCOs who show up at Sunday’s meeting—and, as I’ve reported, many PCOs who have been appointed will be unable to vote at the meeting specifically because Stober has failed to approve their appointments. Some of those PCOs have been waiting for Stober’s sign-off since last fall.

This document outlines the case against Stober, who is accused of sexually harassing and bullying his lone employee, Natalia Koss Vallejo, before firing her without board approval, “engag[ing] in physical altercations while with staff and other party members,” using Party money to fund certain candidates he personally favored while leaving others high and dry, and spraying Silly String in Koss Vallejo’s face while she was driving, an incident Stober filmed and posted on Instagram.

And this document contains Stober’s rebuttal, which he also posted to his personal website last month. The rebuttal includes a lengthy text exchange in which Stober pressures Koss Vallejo to leave her own birthday party to come out drinking with him and she resists, in a manner that is likely familiar to anyone who has tried to say no nicely to a man who won’t take no for an answer (an especially tricky situation when that man is your boss.) It also includes several claims that have been disputed, including Stober’s claim that the group’s treasurer, Nancy Podschwit, approved Koss-Vallejo’s firing, which she says she did not.

On Monday, Stober responded to a Facebook invitation to the PCO meeting, saying he guessed he would “swing by.”

4. The King County Democrats aren’t the only ones accusing Stober of fiscal misconduct. So is the state attorney general, in a separate case involving one of Stober’s three unsuccessful campaigns for Kent City Council. The state attorney general’s office has been trying to get Stober to hand over documents related to his 2015 council run since 2017, when the AG took the unusual step of  issuing a press release publicly demanding that Stober give them the documents. On March 21, the state attorney general’s office ordered Stober to pay the state $5015 in attorneys’ fees in a case involving campaign finance violations in 2015. According to court records, Stober repeatedly refused to hand over documents the attorney general requested despite multiple orders compelling him to do so. Stober’s attorneys removed themselves from his case in early March.

If you enjoy the work I do here at The C Is for Crank, please consider becoming a sustaining supporter of the site or making a one-time contribution! For just $5, $10, or $20 a month (or whatever you can give), you can help keep this site going, and help me continue to dedicate the many hours it takes to bring you stories like this one every week. This site is funded entirely by contributions from readers, which pay for the time I put into reporting and writing for this blog and on social media, as well as reporting-related and office expenses. Thank you for reading, and I’m truly grateful for your support.

campaign finance, Democratic Party, King County, Mayor Durkan, Morning Crank, Transit, Transportation

Morning Crank: “Unacceptable By Any Measure”

Image result for escalator broken temporarily stairs

1. At Sound Transit’s board meeting Thursday, agency CEO Peter Rogoff said the 40-minute waits many commuters experiencing when escalators at the University of Washington light rail station stopped working last Friday were “unacceptable by any measure.” Sound Transit wouldn’t let commuters use the stalled escalators as stairs—a common practice in other transit systems across the country—because they said the variable stair height on the escalators could result in people tripping. “This resulted in painfully long lines for our customers and rightly resulted in numerous customer complaints,” Rogoff summarized, adding that Sound Transit staff would come back to the board’s operations and administration committee with a set of “remedies” on April 5.

At the same meeting, board members also approved a set of performance objectives for Rogoff, including the development of a “Leadership Development Plan” for Rogoff in collaboration with a panel consisting of board members Nancy Backus, Paul Roberts, and Ron Lucas—the mayor of Auburn, mayor pro tem of Everett, and mayor of Steilacoom, respectively. The board mandated the plan at its last meeting, after (mildly) chiding Rogoff for his alleged behavior toward agency employees, which included looking women up and down and giving them “elevator eyes,” using racially insensitive language, shoving chairs, and yelling and swearing at employees. At that meeting, the board declined to give Rogoff a $30,000 bonus but did grant him a five-percent “cost-of-living” raise, bringing his salary to more than $328,000.

Several board members, including Seattle city council member Rob Johnson, expressed concern about a potential lack of transparency around the development of the plan, but no one raised any objections over the adequacy of the guidelines themselves, which include vague directives such as “Continue to enhance leadership skills, including the areas of active listening, self-awareness, and relationship building” and “develop specific action plans, performance expectation targets, and measurements to improve leadership abilities in these areas.” Last month, Johnson and Mayor Jenny Durkan were the only votes against the plan for Rogoff’s rehabilitation, which they both deemed inadequate given the seriousness of the allegations against him.

2. A petition to begin the process of removing Bailey Stober as chair of the King County Democrats has enough signatures to move the process to the next step: Holding a meeting of all the precinct committee officers (PCOs) in the county to vote on whether to remove Stober, who is under investigation for allegations of sexual harassment and financial misconduct. However, dozens of PCOs who have been appointed but not yet approved by Stober may be unable to vote, including nearly a dozen “pending” PCOs who have signed an open letter calling on Stober to resign.

On Monday, the group’s executive board agreed to hold a meeting to discuss the financial misconduct allegations against Stober; the petition will be presented at that meeting. On Tuesday, Stober said he planned to make an “announcement pertinent to our organization” during his report at the beginning of the meeting. Some in the group have speculated that he may attempt to present “evidence” in a separate harassment case against him that would cast his alleged victim—a former employee whom Stober fired—and her supporters in an unflattering light, and then resign.

One hundred twenty-two appointed PCOs remain in “pending” status waiting for Stober to sign off on their appointments, which is one of the duties of the King County party chair. Some have been waiting for more than a year for Stober’s approval.

3. Meanwhile, Stober has lost his legal representation in a separate case stemming from alleged campaign-finance violations in his 2015 run for Kent City Council.  The firm that was representing him, Schwerin Campbell Barnard Iglitzen & Lavitt, filed a petition formally removing themselves from the case on March 8. The state Attorney General’s Office (AGO) has been attempting to get documents from Stober for nearly a year in a case related to two citizen actions filed by conservative activist Glen Morgan; the first accuses Stober of using campaign funds for personal use and other campaign-finance violations, and the second alleges that Stober campaigned for other candidates on public time (in his role as King County Dems chair) while on the clock as spokesman for King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson. Last June, the AGO issued a press release announcing it was seeking an order forcing Stober to hand over the documents; although that request was granted, subsequent court records reveal that the AGO was (at least initially) unable to serve Stober at his home (where the lights were on and a car was in the driveway but no one answered) or his office (where the process server was told Stober was on vacation.)

Dmitri Iglitzen, a partner at the firm, declined to comment on why his firm decided to stop representing Stober, citing attorney-client privilege, but did say that the firm has “at no time billed King County Democrats (or any other entity) for legal services related to our representation of Mr. Stober” and “at no time has provided legal services to Mr. Stober on a pro bono basis.” In other words, Stober was (or was supposed to be) paying them for their services. Iglitzen declined to say whether nonpayment was an issue in his firm’s decision to cut ties with Stober.

Stober, who ran for the Kent Council three times, has already been fined $4,000 for campaign disclosure violations related to his 2011 and 2013 campaigns for the position.

4. On Wednesday, the city council’s Planning, Land Use and Zoning committee finally approved legislation that will lift parking mandates, require more bike parking at new buildings, and require developers of large buildings to “unbundle” the cost of parking and rent by charging separately for each, on Wednesday, although one controversial provision will be back on the docket at Monday’s full council meeting.

Council member Lisa Herbold raised objections to several changes made by the legislation, including the unbundling provision (she worried that renters would choose not to rent parking and just park on the street); a new definition of “frequent transit service” that allows apartments without parking within a quarter-mile of bus routes that run, on average, every 15 minutes; and a provision removing parking mandates for affordable housing and one lowering the mandate for senior housing.

Most of Herbold’s amendments were unsuccessful, although she did manage to pass one that will impose a special parking mandate on new buildings near the Fauntleroy ferry dock. (Council member Mike O’Brien voted against that proposal, arguing that that there were ways to prevent ferry riders from parking in the neighborhood that did not involve requiring developers to build one parking space for every unit so close to a frequent bus line, the RapidRide C). When the full council takes up the legislation Monday, Herbold said she plans to reintroduce just one amendment: A proposal that would allow the city to impose “mitigation” requirements under the State Environmental Policy Act on new developments in neighborhoods where more than 85 percent of parking spaces are routinely occupied. Those measures could include site-specific parking mandates or provisions barring renters at a new development from obtaining residential parking zone permits to park on the street (currently, RPZ permits are available to all city residents.)

Both Johnson and O’Brien objected that the purpose of environmental mitigation under SEPA is to mitigate against the negative environmental impacts of projects, not build new parking lots for cars. O’Brien pointed to the well-documented phenomenon of induced demand—the principle that adding more parking spaces or highway lanes simply leads people to drive more. Herbold countered that driving around searching for parking has an environmental impact, an argument that equates the minuscule climate impact of circling the block for a minute to that of purchasing and driving a car because your neighborhood has plenty of free parking. “We should be reverse engineering” our existing urban landscape, Johnson argued, “and requiring more green space instead of more asphalt.”

The council will take up the parking reform legislation, and Herbold’s amendment, on Monday at 2pm.

If you enjoy the work I do here at The C Is for Crank, please consider becoming a sustaining supporter of the site or making a one-time contribution! For just $5, $10, or $20 a month (or whatever you can give), you can help keep this site going, and help me continue to dedicate the many hours it takes to bring you stories like this one every week. This site is funded entirely by contributions from readers, which pay for the time I put into reporting and writing for this blog and on social media, as well as reporting-related and office expenses. Thank you for reading, and I’m truly grateful for your support.

Democratic Party

Tide Appears to Turn Against Democratic Leader Accused of Harassment, Financial Misconduct

UPDATE: King County Democrats chair Bailey Stober just sent out an email saying that after talking “with many of you, my family and my friends,” he would make “an announcement pertinent to our organization” at a March 27 meeting of the group’s executive board. Last night, the organization agreed to hold a meeting on that date to consider the financial misconduct allegations against Stober. I have a message out to Stober asking him if he plans to resign his position, as more than a half-dozen legislative district Democratic groups, more than 200 local Democrats, and a majority of his executive board have asked him to do.

Last night, the King County Democrats’ executive board voted for a resolution calling on the group’s chair, Bailey Stober, to resign. The vote was a turning point in the debate over whether Stober should remain at the helm of the organization after allegations that he bullied and sexually harassed his lone employee, former executive director Natalia Koss Vallejo, before firing her, along with separate claims of financial misconduct stemming from thousands of dollars in over-budget and apparently unauthorized expenditures. (More on those financial allegations, including a report from treasurer Nancy Podscwhit outlining the excess spending and unauthorized spending in detail, here and here.)

Heading into last night’s meeting, Stober’s detractors worried that he planned to introduce “evidence” against Koss Vallejo, his alleged victim, that could embarrass other Democrats and change the subject from the substantive allegations against Stober. (The evidence apparently included screen shots in which Koss Vallejo engaged in or played along with fat-shaming remarks about female Party members). They also expressed concern that Stober would try to confine any discussion of allegations against him to a closed executive session, as he did at the group’s meeting last month, when the King County Democrats also voted to expand the investigation into Stober’s behavior to include an investigation to find out who was “leaking” information about the investigation to the press.

Stober didn’t do that. Instead, he kept the meeting open, which eliminated the need to debate several proposals to prohibit or restrict the use of executive session. Before the meeting, Stober told me he was eliminating executive session in the interest of “transparency,” but it’s also true that an open meeting, livestreamed via the KC PCOMG Facebook page, would give him the chance to read a statement and present the potentially embarrassing evidence in front of the widest possible audience.

In the end, though, Stober was not allowed to make a statement or present evidence; the temporary chairman, Pierce County Democrats chair Tim Farrell, ruled his requests to do so out of order. Still—and despite stepping aside as chairman for the meeting—Stober managed to dominate the meeting, proposing procedural motion after procedural motion in an effort, some of his detractors claimed, to run out the clock. (Unlike last month’s meeting, which ran well past 11pm, last night’s meeting had to end promptly at 9:45—thanks to a motion from Stober, which did pass, establishing a hard stop at that time). Most of those motions failed, but so did an effort to move the most controversial item on the agenda, the resolution calling on Stober to resign, higher in the agenda.

Stober insisted throughout the meeting that he has had no chance to look at the allegations against him, which strains credulity. (Both an initial report taking each allegation in turn and the detailed financial report have been widely circulated, and there has been extensive media coverage, here and in other outlets, about the details of the allegations). “I would have no problem resigning …  if there were any sort of a due process or an investigation,” Stober said. “To date, I have not been given a copy of the report by the vice chairs even outlining the accusations against me.” (The three vice chairs of the group, two of whom have since resigned, produced a report last month that concluded most of the financial and workplace misconduct allegations against Stober were founded.)

Stober also he attempted to expand the group investigating claims of workplace misconduct to include not just an employment law and labor expert, but two people appointed by the board itself—the same board that was unable to find volunteers to serve on a proposed five-member investigating panel, which would have included two members chosen by Stober himself.

In the end, the board voted to accept Podschwit’s report as the final report on the financial allegations, appointed labor negotiator Afton Larson to review the workplace misconduct allegations, and called on Stober to resign. The next steps will be another board meeting on March 27 to consider the financial misconduct allegations and a potential “trial” in two weeks. Since the group has never conducted a trial, the rules for doing so are unclear; however, the board rejected Stober’s attempt to appoint two apparent allies—King County Committeeman Jon Culver, who participated in some of the offensive text exchanges that are at the center of the harassment allegation, and King County Committeewoman Jami Smith, who spoke up for Stober last night—to come up with the rules for such a trial.

Finally, if Stober is still chair and if enough members sign a petition to call a meeting, the precinct committee officers will meet during or before the King County Democrats’ convention, on April 22, and vote on whether to remove Stober from office. (Stober made an effort to remain chair over that meeting, but was voted down). An affirmative vote—which requires the presence of 20 percent of all PCOs in the county and two-thirds support from those present and voting—would be final.

I have contacted Stober seeking comment on last night’s vote and asking to see the evidence he was unable to present last night, and will update this post if I hear from him.

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