Category: labor

City Council, labor, Tech

Despite Dire Warnings, Delivery Worker Wages Increased Under PayUp Law; Council Plans Data Center Moratorium

By Erica C. Barnett

1. Former city councilmember Sara Nelson’s effort to repeal a law that increased the way “gig” workers’ salaries are calculated, which would have reduced their pay substantially and increased profits for companies like Uber and Doordash, died that September after six months of heated debate. (The proposal would have effectively overturned the PayUp law, just adopted the previous year, whicih required companies to pay some of the expenses drivers previously had to absorb—expenses that pushed drivers’ pre-tip pay below the legal minimum wage). Although four council members voted for the bill in committee, it died quietly in late 2024.

A recent study by the city’s Office of Labor Standards now confirms what many drivers themselves said when testifying against the Nelson bill: Between January 2024 and July 2025, the average pay for drivers working for the five largest delivery companies average pay increased despite a reduction in tips, indicating that the legislation raising worker pay succeeded at its goal. The study looked at the approximately 92,000 workers who drive for companies like Doordash, most of whom work part-time and use multiple apps.

What’s more, predictions that drivers would get fewer orders did not come true—instead, the number of orders grew by 3.2 percent. The number of drivers increased by a similar amount in the same period—2.8 percent.

Pre-tip pay for “engaged time”—time spent actively completing orders—rose to an average of $30.12 during the study period, after subtracting mileage expenses (the report does not include an average prior to 2024). Pay for “online time,” which includes time drivers spent waiting for orders to come in, rose to an average of $15.98 an hour. This was despite an increase in fees by delivery companies, which add to the cost of orders.

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The PayUp law required delivery companies to report detailed information about drivers and their earnings, which is how OLS had access to such an expansive dataset.

The report did confirm that tips declined a bit (by an average of $2.37 a week) after worker wages went up, increasing the cost of deliveries, but noted that the percentage of workers’ income made up by tips was much lower, since drivers’ new base pay is now more consistent and predictable. Most drivers work part-time, with average weekly wages rising from $314.40 to $341.62, including tips.

2. Three city councilmembers—Council President Joy Hollingsworth, Debora Juarez, and Eddie Lin—will propose legislation next week that would ban large new data centers inside city limits, they announced yesterday. The legislation comes in response to reports that unnamed companies were planning five data centers; according to the Seattle Times, which reported the initial news, two of the companies withdrew their proposals this week.

Editor’s note: This item initially said that the data centers were proposed on City Light-owned property. City Light told PubliCola that none of the centers were planned for City Light property. We regret the error.

 

human services, King County, labor

County Considers New Contract Oversight Office; Return-to-Office Booster Calls In Remotely as County Employees Criticize Three-Day Mandate
Two recent views of King County Councilmember Reagan Dunn, a return-to-office proponent who frequently calls in to council meetings from remote locations.

1. In the wake of an audit that revealed potential fraud and waste at King County’s Department of Community and Human Services, County Councilmembers are proposing an office of inspector general to provide a new layer of oversight to receive tips and conduct investigations into claims about contractor misuse of county funds. A new inspector general’s office would cost around $800,000 a year, according to a presentation by the county auditor’s office last week.

County auditor Kymber Waltmunson said last week that an independent inspector general could augment the work the auditor and ombuds are already doing by setting up a hotline for anonymous tips, investigating fraud (the auditor does analyses but does not investigate), and actively monitoring contracts.

Rod Dembowski, one of the councilmembers who’s pushing for more oversight of county contracts, told PubliCola a new inspector general would “fill in a gap that we’ve identified” between the ombuds office, which oversees complaints about county employees, and the auditor’s office, which comes up with a work plan every year and conducts audits based on that plan.

“I’m trying to cover that gap where somebody believes something is being improperly done by a contractor or recipient of county funds,” Dembowski said. The IG would be “able to look at the actions of contract and grant recipients and see if there’s malfeasance or misfeasance there.”

County Councilmember Claudia Balducci said she agreed with Dembowski’s intention to encourage more active investigations into complaints about misuse of county funds, but isn’t convinced yet that the county needs to add a whole new office for that purpose. “I do think whatever happens needs to be nested within our current oversight [system.] I want to avoid creating overlaps and confusion.

She also isn’t convinced that the damning DCHS audit, which looked at a subset of contracts, necessarily indicates there are similar issues in other county contracts.

“I was hoping after the audit uncovered real lapses in oversight in a small number of our contracts, that someone would raise their hand and say, ‘Is this a bigger problem?'” Balducci said. “It might be. Or is it contained to some areas? But nobody in the system came out and said we should look more deeply.”

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2. More than a dozen King County employees showed up to a King County Council meeting this week to testify against King County Executive Girmay Zahilay’s “return to office” mandate, which would require most county employees, including those who were hired as remote workers, to commute to offices in downtown Seattle three days a week.

The mandate will require King County to rent a substantial amount of private office space in downtown Seattle, since the county does not have enough room for all its employees. Last week, county employees delivered a giant blank check to Zahilay’s office, representing the millions of dollars they estimate it will cost to rent office space so that everyone can have a desk downtown.

One of the most vocal advocates for a strict return-to-office policy has been Republican Councilmember Reagan Dunn, who went on KIRO Radio this week to declare, “There’s a new sheriff in town bringing employees back to King County so they can hang out around the water cooler and collaborate and do the people’s work.”

The county staffers, represented by PROTEC17, had a minute each to explain why commuting to a desk downtown would not make them more effective or efficient. Dunn, who lives 35 miles away from downtown Seattle, wasn’t around to listen, though. Instead, as he often does, he had called in to the meeting from a remote location.

 

Courts, Density, homelessness, labor, Mayor Wilson, Police, Transportation

This Week on PubliCola: April 25, 2026
KCRHA CEO Kelly Kinnison

A forensic audit finds widespread problems at the homelessness agency, county workers rally against in-office mandates, and a ton of other stories you may have missed this week.

Monday, April 20

SPD Gives Medal to Officer Who Chased Man Into Traffic, Leaving Carful of Kids Behind

The Seattle Police Department put out a video congratulating officer Albert Khandzhayan for apprehending a man who had kidnapped his wife’s three children by breaking the window of her car, dragging her out, and driving off with the kids inside. The video includes disturbing audio from the woman’s panicked 911 call; when we contacted SPD, they expressed “regret” for posting the audio without asking the victim’s permission.

Update: After we posted about the video, SPD removed it from Youtube and their website, replacing it with a note said in part: “Recognizing the potential harm this post may have caused, we have removed the video originally posted here.”

County Assessor, Charged With Stalking, Posts Taunting Pics as Council Again Demands His Resignation

King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson posted multiple photos of himself in a tub, shirtless, on Instagram and Facebook Stories, with captions flaunting the fact that a judge ruled he did not have to wear a previously ordered ankle monitor because of a medical condition he claimed requires him to soak both legs every day. His next hearing is May 5, when PubliCola hears he may be asked to address the flippant posts.

Tuesday, April 21

Will Dialing Back Fees on Housing Fix Seattle’s Construction Crash?

On our first of two Seattle Nice episodes this week, we interviewed land use and housing consultant Natalie Quick and the city’s former chief operating officer Marco Lowe about why developers are asking holiday from Mandatory Housing Affordability fees, which pay for affordable housing but are bringing in less money as housing development slows.

Union Members, King County Employees Protest Three-Day Office Mandate

Members of the PROTEC17 union, including King County employees, protested King County Executive Girmay Zahilay’s three-day-a-week return to office (RTO) mandate, which county employees have called punitive, expensive, and counterproductive. Many of the county’s far-flung workers have never been to physical offices, so “return to office” is a misnomer.

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Wednesday, April 22

Seattle Times Fails to Credit PubliCola for Reporting on County Assessor’s Social Media Posts

The Seattle Times failed to credit PubliCola’s original reporting on County Assessor Wilson’s disappearing social media posts, instead representing the find as their original reporting. This is not in keeping with bare-minimum standards for crediting other news sources when doing followup coverage of a story another media outlet broke.

Forensic Audit Finds Homelessness Agency Lacked Basic Accounting Standards, Lost at Least $13 Million

A devastating forensic audit found multiple serious issues with the way the regional homelessness authority ran its finances, including casual accounting practices, commingling of restricted funds, consistent negative balances, and millions of dollars in overspending and money that the agency was unable to account for. The audit led local officials to issue statements calling for accountability and, in some cases, the immediate dissolution of the agency.

Thursday, April 23

Fulfilling a Campaign Promise, Wilson Announces Denny Way Bus Lanes Coming This Year

Mayor Katie Wilson announced a two-phase plan to add a dedicated bus lane along the most congested part of Denny Way, between Lower Queen Anne and Capitol Hill, and create a new pathway to the South I-5 on-ramp. The two-phase plan will fulfill a campaign promise to address chronic delays on the bus route known derisively as the “L8.”

Alarming Audit, Missing Millions: Is the End Nigh for KCRHA?

In our second podcast this week, we discussed the implications of the KCRHA audit for the future of the long-embattled agency. The audit, I argued, is most concerning for what it reveals about the agency’s lax financial controls and casual accounting practices, which included allowing the same person to oversee expenditures from approval to validation that the expense was appropriate and calculated and logged correctly.

Friday, April 24

KCRHA Board Will Meet Today to Discuss Disastrous Forensic Audit

I previewed the KCRHA board meeting to discuss the audit, including the agency’s own preemptive efforts to suggest things were well under control.

Also this week: On Friday, I covered the KCRHA board meeting in detail, including CEO Kelly Kinnison’s insistence that the audit didn’t find fraud and that no money went “missing.” In a presentation, the auditor corrected those claims and added texture to some of the dry details in the audit, including the KCRHA’s extensive use of a private temp staffing agency that charged large commissions and the widespread use of credit cards without clear authorization or line-item receipts.

Coming up: On Monday, I’ll be on City Cast Seattle discussing the audit findings and what they mean for the future of the agency. Tune in!

King County, labor

Union Members, King County Employees Protest Three-Day Office Mandate

By Erica C. Barnett

Members of the PROTEC17 union, including King County employees, held a demonstration in the lobby of King County’s Chinook building on Tuesday to protest King County Executive Girmay Zahilay’s three-day-a-week return to office (RTO) mandate, which county employees have called punitive, expensive, and counterproductive.

Carrying signs with slogans such as “Communities not cubicles,” “King County is Bigger than Seattle,” and—memorably—”I don’t have a desk,” the staffers showed up with a giant “blank check representing the expense King County will incur to rent private office space so that employees, including many who were hired as fully remote workers, will have a place to sit downtown.

A staffer for Zahilay showed up in the lobby to accept the check and said she would make sure he gets it.

The county gave up much of its office space during the pandemic and agreed to allow many employees to work from home indefinitely under an agreement called “Green Where You Work.” Now, many county employees don’t have desks to “return” to as part of the “return to office” plan—a misnomer for county employees who were hired over the past six years and have never had a physical office downtown.

David Dahl, a capital projects manager for the Department of Natural Resources and Parks, was hired as a remote worker for a job that takes him to sites across King County. Living in Seattle, he said, might make it relatively easy for him to come downtown to meet the three-day mandate, but for many of his coworkers, the extra trip would add hours of unnecessary commute time to jobs they could previously do from the part of the county where they lived.

“We have a lot of people who have projects in the south end and live in Auburn or Kent or Tacoma, and they can easily get to those projects in a very short amount of time,” Dahl said, “whereas if they have to come into an office and then go back to a park site, that’s a ton of driving to do something that should be pretty simple.”

King County is much larger than the city of Seattle, where many workers also chafed at return-to-office mandates. The county covers more than 2,100 square miles, and many staffers live far away from Seattle, in areas where housing is more affordable.

Moving more than 1,000 employees into “a space with maybe 80 desks” would be impossible, Dahl said, and the new spaces the county has come up with at the King Street Center aren’t up to ergonomic standards. “It frankly should be the bare minimum that if you’re asking someone to work in an office, you should provide them an ergonomic place to sit and to do their work,” Dahl said.

Another DNRP employee, Brad Moore, said requiring county employees to travel to downtown Seattle for work would lead an “extremely high and unknown cost” for office space “that we feel could go towards much better things—for example, the public service that we’re all supposed to be providing.”

Moore, who lives in Shoreline with his extended family and was hired as a fully remote staffer, said the mandate will add a one-way transit commute of between 45 minutes and an hour to every work day. That will make it harder for Moore to help take care of kids in the family and help his wife, who has mobility issues, get to work.

But Moore added that the situation is much worse for some of his coworkers, who live in places like Everett and “are being told that they have to come into the office two or three days a week. I mean, in the morning, it could take two hours,” Moore said.

City Council, labor, Police

City Council’s Legislative Aides Vote to Unionize, Police Chief Says “We Don’t Take Sides” in Protests
Image via City of Seattle

By Erica C. Barnett

1. Legislative assistants for City Councilmembers have voted to unionize, filing a petition for recognition with the state Public Employee Relations Commission last week. The filing means that organizers have collected signatures from more than half the 30-plus employees who would be represented by PROTEC17 if the effort is successful.

Previous efforts to organize legislative assistants, or LAs, have failed, but this effort received well over 50 percent support. This is reportedly for two reasons: Poor working conditions in some council offices that have contributed to extremely high staff turnover, and low pay for legislative assistants compared to people who do similar jobs in other departments, including the mayor’s office.

Historically, Seattle has treated the legislative branch as a lower-value institution than the mayor’s office and the executive-branch departments. City Council members themselves make far less than the mayor and many department directors: a majority of councilmembers earn around $165,000 a year, compared to $272,334 for the mayor, $373,000 for the police chief, and $530,000 for the head of Seattle City Light.

Pay disparities between legislative assistants have also grown significantly since council members instituted more hierarchical office structures starting around 2024. That was the year that five newcomers joined the council (thanks to appointments and elections, several more have joined since then) and Sara Nelson, defeated by Dionne Foster last year, became council president. Suddenly, legislative assistants had fancy internal titles like “Chief of Staff” and “Director of External Relations.” (One result of these new, unofficial titles is that nearly everyone on a typical three-person council staff is a “Director” or “Chief” of something, and almost no one is a mere council staffer.)

The new titles solidified (and may have worsened) the pay structures that already existed between junior and senior staff. The wage gap between the highest- and lowest-paid legislative has grown pretty dramatically over the past several. For instance, the lowest-paid LAs currently make around $38 an hour, while the highest-paid LAs make around $68 an hour—a 79 percent gap. Back in 2019, according to city wage records, the lowest-paid LAs typically made about $28 an hour while the highest-paid made around $44 an hour, a 57 percent gap.

City council members themselves get to divvy up their own staff budget, which may contribute to pay disparities between offices as well as people within each office. Woe betide the staffers going through the revolving door at a council office where the chief of staff is the council member’s best friend!

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2. During a presentation on the Seattle Police Department’s plans for responding if federal troops or ICE descend on Seattle, Councilmember Bob Kettle took a moment to observe—rather preemptively, when it comes to how SPD will respond to a hypothetical ICE incursion—that SPD is sometimes unfairly maligned for appearing to take one side or another during protests, and to assure Police Chief Shon Barnes that the council knows this is frequently a misrepresentation based on a single photo taken out of context.

Kettle said “let’s put Cal Anderson to the side”—a reference to SPD’s over-the-top response to a counterprotest against a far-right rally on Capitol Hill—and focus on “what can we do that shows that you’re looking to support the rights of Seattleites, and it’s not being something that may visually look one way or the other?” (Kettle said the Cal Anderson protest, at which police collaborated with security for an anti-LGBTQ group and referred to protesters as “transtifa,” will be the subject of an upcoming committee meeting.)

Barnes agreed that social media videos and the press misrepresent SPD’s actions at protests. “[P]erception sometimes is people’s reality,” he said. “And you know, one photo of your back turned to the wrong person could give the impression that we are supporting one side or the other. In regards to your question, when it comes to protests, we are neutral in the protests, and we don’t take sides. … I want to make it clear, that we do not, support federal immigration enforcement at any time. We’re there to keep the peace. If we have to talk to people, that doesn’t mean that we are on their side…  and we’ll try to explain that, should that one second clip or photo be given to the community.”

As for the recommendations from the city’s Office of Inspector General, which included many proposals SPD has promised, then failed, to implement in the past, in the past, Barnes said they’re on it. “We have a captain that will be implementing those things,” he said.

housing, labor, Mayor Wilson, Police

This Week on PubliCola: March 1, 2026

Staff call for civil rights office shakeup, CARE chief says police contract hobbles her team’s ability to respond to crises, state elevator reform bill advances, and much more.

Monday, February 23

Staff Call for Removal of Civil Rights Office Director, Citing “Discrimination, Harassment, Retaliation, and Mismanagement”

Through their union, PROTEC17, staff at the city’s civil rights office have asked Mayor Katie Wilson to remove and replace their boss, Derrick Wheeler-Smith, saying he sent misogynistic texts to staffers, ignored LGBTQ+ rights inside and outside the office, and dismissed their efforts to focus on non-Black racial minorities, including Asian Americans facing xenophobia during COVID and Latino residents under threat of ICE detention.

Tuesday, February 24

Police Contract Has Prevented Unarmed Crisis Responders From Doing their Jobs, CARE Chief Says

Amy Barden, head of the city’s Community Assisted Response and Engagement Team, talked candidly at a council meeting this week about how a police union contract has made it impossible for the team of social workers to respond to most behavioral health crisis calls. Police Chief Shon Barnes, sitting next to Barden, jumped in several times to defend police, saying he didn’t want them “relegated” to responding to just some kinds of calls. The CARE Team was created specifically to respond to crises that don’t require, and may be exacerbated by, the presence of armed officers.

Wednesday, February 25

After PubliCola Story Details Discrimination Claims, Civil Rights Office Director Accuses Deputy Mayor of Threats and “Defamation”

In response to our story on Monday, Seattle Office for Civil Rights Director Derrick Wheeler-Smith sent an email to city leaders and reporters (though not PubliCola) accusing Deputy Mayor Brian Surratt of sending “a few disgruntled staff” our way in order to defame him. Surratt was not a source, much less “the source,” for our story.

Friday, February 27

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SPD’s National Recruitment Push Includes Police Chief’s Alma Mater

Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes sent recruitment teams to several small HBCUs in the South, including his alma mater, Elizabeth City State University, and spent $25,000 of the city’s money to sponsor a basketball tournament for the conference of schools. Most of the colleges in the conference have around 2,000 students or fewer; SPD said the value of the sponsorship can’t be measured in the number of direct recruits.

Chief Attended Tiny Desk Concert with Security In Tow

Late last year, while in town on SPD business, Barnes attended a concert at NPR’s studios, bringing his two security guards with him to the show. SPD has not told us how much it cost to provide Barnes with security at the event.

Elevator Followup: Reform Bill Watered Down

Josh Feit reported that a state bill to allow developers to build apartment buildings with smaller elevators is moving forward, but no longer includes a provision that would have directed the state to support harmonizing national and international elevator size standards. The rest of the world allows smaller elevators, making it more affordable to build accessible apartments.

Former City Department Director Broke Election Law

The state Public Disclosure Commission ruled that the former director of the Seattle Office of Economic Development violated election law when he used the city’s Teams system to solicit the personal email addresses of department heads on behalf of Bruce Harrell’s campaign, but declined to fine the ex-OED director.

City IT Director Resigns

In another department-level shakeup, city IT Department director Rob Lloyd announced his resignation; his last day will be March 27.

LGBTQ Advocates Call for Removal of Civil Rights Director

The Friends of Denny Blaine, a group of LGBTQ+ advocates who organized after learning that Harrell was working with a wealthy homeowner to shut down the longstanding nude beach on Lake Washington, called for Wheeler-Smith’s resignation this week in response to PubliCola’s reporting on what the group called the “repeated dismissal and minimization of LGBTQ+ civil rights issues within the department.”

In Rare Tragedy, Man Dies Inside Rainier Beach Library Branch

A 41-year-old man died from chronic alcohol use inside the Rainier Beach branch of the Seattle Public Library last week after staff and paramedics tried to resuscitate him. It’s extremely rare for a person to die inside a library branch, and staff who were present have access to counseling and can transfer to other branches if necessary.

Seattle Nice: Are These Three Local Controversies All About Union Power?

On the podcast this week, we discussed three local stories that all have links to local unions: The organized backlash to Mayor Wilson’s decision to replace the head of Seattle City Light; CARE Team Chief Barden’s frustration over the police guild’s contract; and the efforts by SOCR staff to get Wilson to remove Wheeler-Smith, which, according to employees, came together after a survey by their union made staffers realize they weren’t alone.