Tag: King County Council

City Council, Drugs, Elections, homelessness

Burien Mayor Sees No Issue With Distribution of Homeless People’s Private Info, Council Member Blames Her Colleague for Fentanyl Deaths

1. During a debate focusing on homelessness sponsored Wednesday night, Burien Mayor Sofia Aragon, who is running for King County Council District 8, responded to PubliCola’s report that the director of a group called The More We Love that offers private encampment sweeps had shared personal and medical information about vulnerable homeless residents of the city with police, city officials, and a private business owner.

The real issue, Aragon said, was that someone in the city had “leaked” the information to me, not that the person who shared the information, The More We Love director Kristine Moreland, had done so without apparent concern for the privacy of the more than 80 people included in the detailed spreadsheet she created.

“I know that there was some information shared, and I don’t know how that got to the reporter, but I know that you know, things that we share within the city will often leak out,” Aragon said. “I don’t know how that occurred, we definitely would be we would be serious about the protection of health information because in [the nonprofit] industry, that is certainly something important.”

Aragon said it was understandable that Moreland sent her spreadsheet of personal information to the private business owner, Jeff Rakow of Snowball Investment, because he contracted with Moreland’s group to remove an encampment outside a Grocery Outlet property that he owns.

As I reported, I received the information through a routine public disclosure request; Moreland attached the spreadsheet to an email she sent to a city council member, two police officials, and a real estate investor who paid Moreland’s group to remove an encampment on his property. It’s unknown whether, or how widely, Moreland distributed her spreadsheet outside the city of Burien, since only public officials are subject to public disclosure requests.

When debate moderator Scott Greenstone from KNKX noted that I got the information through a records request, Aragon breezed past the clarification, saying it was understandable that Moreland sent her spreadsheet of personal information to the private business owner, Jeff Rakow of Snowball Investment, because he contracted with Moreland’s group to remove an encampment outside a Grocery Outlet property that he owns.

“And what he did, because he did see some success, is he shared that with the city, but that doesn’t excuse leaking out of private information from those who are homeless, and that’s something that needs to be addressed,” Aragon said.

As a side note: Unlike Moreland, I did not publish or distribute any of the private information contained in Moreland’s spreadsheet, because that would be an additional violation of the privacy of the people whose information she distributed.

For context, credible nonprofit homeless service providers do not, as a rule, share their clients’ private information outside their organizations without explicit informed consent, because to do so would violate people’s privacy, damage trust, and potentially break federal laws protecting people’s medical information.

2.In a TV ad for District 7 city council candidate Bob Kettle, Seattle City Council member Sara Nelson accused her colleague, District 7 incumbent Councilmember Andrew Lewis, of being responsible for the deaths of countless people from drug overdoses during the two and a half months when the city did not have a law empowering the city attorney to prosecute people who use drugs in public. Lewis cast the deciding vote against the bill in June, then voted with the majority of the council in favor ot a substantively similar bill in September.

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“Andrew Lewis’ decision to block my drug bill cost the lives of too many people from fentanyl overdose. I trust Bob Kettle to do the right thing,” Nelson said in the ad.

Nelson sponsored the initial version of the bill, which said nothing about treatment, diversion, or overdose prevention, and opposed many of the new provisions in the updated bill that support diversion and crisis intervention training. Lisa Herbold and Lewis sponsored the version that passed, which included language indicating that police should divert people to treatment or other diversion programs instead of jail. Public drug use and simple possession are already illegal across the state, thanks to a law passed in May that made both a gross misdemeanor.

“When you have nothing substantive to say, I guess the only thing to do is resort to Republican-style attack ads,” Lewis said. “I will continue my campaign of bringing people together to achieve real results for the people of District 7.”

Elections, King County, LGBTQ+, Police

Seattle Cop Mocks Trans People, Blames Jan. 6 Riots on Pelosi; County Council Plays It Safe by Proposing Flat Levy Renewal

1. Seattle police captain Keith Swank, a 33-year department veteran who is currently out on long-term paid leave, has posted dozens of tweets that appear to violate SPD’s social media policy, which says SPD employees “shall not post speech that negatively impacts the department’s ability to serve the public,” including any post that “ridicules, maligns, disparages, expresses bias, or disrespect toward any race, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, or any other protected class of individuals.”

In the past several months, for example, Swank has posted tweets that are that are transphobic (March 24: “Transwomen are men. #KeepTheRepublicSafe”), racist (March 24: “Democrats let violent animals like this [Black attacker] back out on the streets to kill Americans”) and conspiratorial (March 21: “It’s time for Republican prosecutors across the country to start investigating Pelosi, Schumer, Swalwell, etc. I’m giving you the names, now find the crimes.”)

In addition to denigrating trans women and promoting conspiracy theories about—among other things—election fraud and Paul Pelosi, Swank has repeatedly expressed his support for the rioters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, calling the killing of Ashli Babbitt—a woman who was shot while breaking into the US Capitol—”state-sanctioned murder.”

“Pelosi coordinated the deadly attack, and Ashli Babbitt was murdered,” Swank wrote in March. “Would be great to see this criminal face accountability for her crime.”

At least six SPD officers went to the pro-Trump rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol, and two who trespassed on Capitol grounds were fired in 2021 after an Office of Police Accountability investigation in 2021. Shortly after the attacks, Seattle Police Officers Guild director Mike Solan faced calls for his resignation after blaming Black Lives Matter for the attacks, which were coordinated and carried out by Trump supporters.

When PubliCola inquired about Swank’s tweets attacking marginalized people and defending the January 6 rioters, a spokesman for the police department, Sgt. John O’Neil, said the “department will evaluate any policy violating statements that we become aware of and refer them to OPA as appropriate.” Asked if SPD does believe Swank’s tweets violate SPD’s social media policy, O’Neil responded, “It’s the view of the Seattle Police that any employee that violates social media policy will be referred to OPA.  There is a process. We have no further comment on this.”

UPDATE May 4: The Office of Police Accountability confirmed that SPD did not file a complaint about Swank’s posts, indicating that SPD does not believe his comments violated its social media policy. OPA disagrees; after PubliCola contacted the office, the OPA opened a complaint into Swank’s social media behavior.

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2. The King County Council rejected a measure that would have asked voters to increase the size of the Veterans, Seniors, and Human Services Levy by 2 cents per $1,000 of property value, or about $17 a year, opting instead for a flat renewal at an initial 10 cents per $1,000 that will result in cuts to services and build only half as many housing units as the most recent levy renewal.

“Going to the ballot with a property tax increase opposed by the suburban cities puts at risk the funding for the underlying levy, and I’m not willing to do that.” —King County Council Chair Dave Upthegrove

The seven-year VSHSL levy pays for housing, domestic violence prevention, senior centers, and supportive services for low-income and homeless veterans, seniors, and other King County residents. Over the last six years, it has raised around $350 million. Because property values have increased dramatically, the next seven-year levy will raise an estimated $565 million and cost the owner of a median (in 2024 dollars) $838,000 home around $100 a year.

Council members who supported the higher levy, including North King County Councilmember Rod Dembowski, noted that a flat 10-cent renewal will severely constrain the uses of the levy for the next seven years. “Ten cents is a cut,” Dembowski said. “It’s a cut because of inflation, [and] because of increased demand for the services that exist and for things we might want to do.”

Suburban council members said they feared a higher levy would lose outside Seattle, potentially dooming it. Eastside Councilmember Claudia Balducci, voted for the 12-cent rate, noted that the levy to build mental health crisis centers, which passed countywide in April, fared poorly in suburban districts, including hers.

Council chair Dave Upthegrove, said he had “no political problem” with the higher, 12-cent rate, but added, “I do worry about passage. … Going to the ballot with a property tax increase opposed by the suburban cities puts at risk the funding for the underlying levy, and I’m not willing to do that.”

After rejecting the larger levy proposal on a 5-4 vote, the council unanimously voted to put the 1o-cent levy on the ballot in August.

housing, human services, King County

After Ambiguous Election, Council Will Decide Whether to Expand Human Services Levy
Auburn Mayor Nancy Backus

By Erica C. Barnett

The nine-member King County Council is expected to vote this afternoon to place the Veterans, Seniors, and Human Services Levy renewal on the August ballot, although the size of the levy was still up for debate going into Tuesday’s meeting.

The two options on the table are a flat renewal at 10 cents per $1,000 of property value—the plan King County Executive Dow Constantine sent the council for approval back in February. A levy renewal at that level would raise about $565 million over six years, but—due to inflation and increased construction costs—would produce only about half as much housing as the expiring levy and require 45 percent cut to housing-related services. The other option on the table is to increase the levy to 12 cents per $1,000, which would raise about $678 million over the same period. The higher levy would cost the owner of a median ($838,000) home about $17 more per year.

The levy pays for housing, domestic violence prevention, senior centers, and supportive services for low-income and homeless veterans, seniors, and other King County residents. Over the last six years, it has raised around $350 million. Placing a levy on the ballot requires a six-vote supermajority, which means that in order to pass a higher, 12-cent tax, at least six of the county council’s seven Democrats will need to be on board.

In a special meeting last Friday, the county’s 12-member Regional Policy Committee, which makes recommendations to the county council, failed to reach agreement on the appropriate size for the levy, with five members voting for the lower rate and four holding out for the 12-cent option. (Because county council members on the RPC get two votes each, a 5-4 vote in favor of the smaller levy option resulted in a 6-6 vote).

Originally, the RPC was supposed to make a recommendation at its regularly scheduled meeting last Monday. Instead of voting then, the RPC decided to hold off on a recommendation until after Tuesday’s election on another countywide property tax levy—the King County Crisis Centers Levy, which will build five mental health crisis centers across the county, restore some residential mental health care beds, and increase behavioral health workers’ pay.

“Sadly, there is a bond measure for the Kent School District that failed by almost the same percentage, if not more, than [the crisis centers levy passed by] I think that is a pretty good indicator that there are individuals in our communities that have tax fatigue and are not looking for adding any new taxes.”—Auburn Mayor Nancy Backus

That levy is currently passing with nearly 57 percent of the vote. However, both County Councilmember Claudia Balducci, who represents Bellevue, and Auburn Mayor Nancy Backus noted last week that the levy was failing in parts of rural and suburban King County—suggesting a lack of appetite for higher property taxes outside Seattle.

“Sadly, there is a bond measure for the Kent School District that failed by almost the same percentage, if not more, than [the crisis centers levy passed by],” Backus said. “I think that is a pretty good indicator that there are individuals in our communities that have tax fatigue and are not looking for adding any new taxes.”

“I have to say that I hear very clearly the message that Mayor Backus is sending,” Balducci said. “We need to look at what our voters are telling us.”

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Last week, around the same time that the RPC was meeting, King County Executive Dow Constantine posted a “community survey” asking voters to pick which services to cut in light of a $100 million projected 2025-2026 shortfall Constantine said was “due to the state’s arbitrary one percent limit on property tax collection.” Constantine’s announcement noted pointedly that services for domestic violence and sexual assault survivors, gun violence prevention, programs for BIPOC youth, and public health clinics were all among the options on the chopping block.

In the legislative session that just concluded, lawmakers proposed, but did not pass, a bill that would have raised the cap to 3 percent. The bill never got a hearing. A fiscal analysis by legislative staff found that it would increase local tax revenues statewide by about $480 million during the 2025-2026 biennium. According to an analysis of the legislation by Constantine’s staff, however, a 3 percent cap would have increased property taxes for the median King County homeowner by $7.96 a year, an amount that would not make up for the $100 million biennial shortfall Constantine blamed on the legislature.

Alison Eisinger, the executive director of the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, said it was absurd for Constantine to blame the legislature for the county’s budget shortfall, especially when he chose to leave money on the table by proposing a flat renewal of the levy.

“Are people supposed to think that government can actually be part of the solution if, on the one hand, government is saying we have a $100 million shortfall and we’re going to have to cut critical services, and on the other hand, they’re debating something that would cost the average homeowner pennies?” Eisinger said. “This is about elected officials not having the courage of their convictions and taking the necessary votes to let the public decide whether or not we are going to house veterans and seniors and support our communities.”

The services identified in the county’s survey are funded with the general fund, not the veterans’ levy, and the county can’t legally use levy dollars to supplant items that would ordinarily be paid for by the general fund; Eisinger’s comments were about the contrast between Constantine’s complaint about the county’s taxing authority and his support for the smallest version of the levy under consideration.

The last time the veterans, seniors, and human services levy was on the ballot, in November 2017, it passed with 69 percent of the vote.

criminal justice, King County, public safety

Over Protests, King County Prepares to Transfer 60 to Des Moines Jail
Former city attorney candidate and public defender Nicole Thomas-Kennedy testifies: “The people that are [in jail] cannot afford to buy their freedom. That is why they are there. “
By Erica C. Barnett

Last week, the King County Council held off on a decision on whether to approve a contract that would move up to 150 men living at the downtown jail to the South Correctional Entity (SCORE), a non-county-owned jail in Kent, after several council members said they had concerns about the scope of the agreement, access to visitors and attorneys at SCORE, and the use of additional jail space to address persistent problems at the downtown jail, where the population and average length of stay have increased.

As PubliCola reported last year, the county’s approved 2023 budget includes $3.5 million for a contract between the county and SCORE. The agreement to move an initial 60 people, which the council will vote on tomorrow, April 4, is that contract.

During a lengthy public comment period at last week’s council meeting, attorneys, advocates, and people who had been incarcerated asked the council to reject the agreement, arguing that moving people from one jail to another would not address the underlying problems at the jail, where six people died—four of them by suicide—last year.

The proposed agreement includes a list of conditions that would make a person ineligible for transfer to SCORE. Several commenters, including a former psychiatric evaluations specialist at SCORE, said it was easy for people to fall through the cracks or develop mental health conditions in jail.

“Your choice is not between overloading SCORE and overloading the King County Jail,” public commenter Madeleine Pfeiffer said. “Just three years ago, you were faced with a public health crisis and the King County Jail and you reduce the population by 50 percent in a matter of days—why not now? Why aren’t the deaths in the King County jail a crisis now that warrants the reduction of population there?”

Several commenters noted that SCORE has also seen its share of high-profile deaths, including that of Damaris Rodriguez, a woman with mental illness who died after four days in solitary confinement; her family received $2 million in a partial settlement with the jail. According to a staff memo, the county “intends to contract with SCORE to house people who do not have serious mental or physical health issues … low-level, healthy people[.]”

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The proposed agreement includes a list of conditions that would make a person ineligible for transfer to SCORE, including people who have attempted suicide in the past or shown suicidal ideation in the 72 hours before booking and people displaying a “current psychotic episode.” But several commenters, including a former psychiatric evaluations specialist at SCORE, said it was easy for people to fall through the cracks or develop mental health conditions in jail.

County budget director Dwight Dively told the council the executive branch had issues with several amendments council members proposed to make the agreement more palatable, including restrictions on how many people could be moved to SCORE without additional council approval and an amendment that would require SCORE to meet the conditions the Department of Public Defense says it requires to adequately represent their clients housed there. Dively called these amendments “problematic”—in the first case, because the county is continuing to jail more people for longer periods, and in the second, because “different jails operate in different ways.”

The council will meet and vote on the agreement at its meeting at 1:30 Tuesday afternoon.

Courts, criminal justice, King County

Amid Lawsuit Over Jail Conditions, County Moves Forward With Controversial Inmate Transfer Plan

By Erica C. Barnett

A King County Council committee tentatively moved forward on an agreement to move up to 150 men currently incarcerated at the downtown King County Correctional Facility to the South Correctional Entity (SCORE), a jail owned jointly by six south King County cities. The contract, which will cost the county around $3.5 million over two years, is supposed to “help King County mitigate the impact of the unprecedented levels of employee vacancies on staff in the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention,” according to a letter from King County Executive Dow Constantine that accompanied the legislation. Under the agreement, DAJD would initially transfer about 50 men to SCORE starting in April.

PubliCola first reported on the county’s decision to fund the SCORE contract last year.

The county council’s Law, Justice, Health and Human Services Committee moved the agreement forward without recommendation, citing the need to balance concerns raised by attorneys who represent incarcerated people with the abbreviated timeline laid out by Constantine and the county’s Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention, which runs the jail. The council plans to work out the details over the next two to three weeks and adopt the agreement by the end of March.

The union that represents employees at King County’s Department of Public Defense, SEIU 925, believes the proposed agreement fails to address their concerns that moving defendants to SCORE will impede attorneys’ access to their clients and put them at a disadvantage during court proceedings; the union sent a letter to the council laying out their concerns with the contract last night.

Currently, SCORE only allows inmates to access court hearings virtually, and has just one booth where attorneys can talk to their clients and pass documents back and forth, along with several booths where one member of an inmate’s defense team (which might include investigators, paralegals, and mitigation specialists) can communicate with them at a time.

“We frequently have to get documents signed; we frequently have to work through documentation; we frequently need interpreters. Trying to do this over video will be impossible.”—Department of Public Defense union president Molly Gilbert

SCORE also has video visitation booths where visitors can speak with incarcerated people virtually; the jail, unlike those operated by King County, has no in-person visitation.

“Once you get above the misdemeanor level and start talking about felonies, you’re talking about really convoluted court hearings and legal concepts that are difficult to explain,” DPD union president Molly Gilbert told PubliCola. “We frequently have to get documents signed; we frequently have to work through documentation; we frequently need interpreters. Trying to do this over video will be impossible.”

Last November, the union filed a demand to bargain over the proposal to move inmates to SCORE, arguing that the agreement creates changes to their members’ working conditions; the county has not agreed to negotiate with the union.

“I don’t want to be an alarmist here, but we are at a critical stage. Delaying simply creates one more day, one more moment where the opportunities for people in our custody won’t get met.”—Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention director Allen Nance

At Tuesday’s meeting, interim DAJD administrative division director Diana Joy said SCORE had assured the department that it would transfer defendants to court and that attorneys as well as other DPD staff, such as investigators and paralegals, will have direct access to clients.

However, the contract itself says only that “SCORE will provide a minimum of one transport to a King County designated facility every twelve hours for King County inmates newly booked at SCORE or housed at SCORE and requested by King County to be returned.” It says almost nothing about defendants’ access to attorneys and others working on their cases; the sole reference to these rights in the contract is a line stipulating that “confidential telephones or visitation rooms shall be available to a Contract Agency Inmate to communicate with his or her legal counsel.

At Tuesday’s meeting, DAJD director Allen Nance said it was important for the county to move forward on the contract quickly because conditions at the jail have continued to deteriorate amid an ongoing staffing shortage.

“I don’t want to be an alarmist here,” Nance said, “but we are at a critical stage … Delaying simply creates one more day, one more moment where the opportunities for people in our custody won’t get met.”

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Understaffing at the jail reached unprecedented levels during the pandemic, as the jail struggled to hire and retain applicants for high-stress jobs that pay less than other law enforcement positions and lately have required frequent mandatory overtime. Currently, according to King County Corrections Guild president Dennis Folk, the jail is 111 guards short of its staffing target—an improvement since last year, when the shortage reached 129 absent guards.

“This is [DAJD’s] way of trying to decrease our numbers [of people] that are in custody, which ultimately results in us having less posts that we need to fill,” Folk said. Removing 50 people from the jail, for example, could eliminate the need to staff one floor of the jail, for example. “I don’t think it will make that big of a dent, but they seem to think it will.”

Guard shortages, combined with a dramatic increase in the number of people housed at the downtown jail, have led to untenable and sometimes dangerous conditions in the jail. In February, the ACLU of Washington filed a lawsuit against the county, alleging that conditions at the jail violate an agreement known as the Hammer settlement, which requires the jail to meet minimal health and safety standards, including adequate access to behavioral and physical health care.

The contract says the inmates who will be transferred to SCORE will be men accused of Class C and “non-violent B level” felonies, such as burglary, auto theft, and  stalking. “SCORE would not be used for people doing service work in King County jails, who have frequent court appearances, or who have significant medical or mental health needs,” the agreement says. Gilbert says a stable group of inmates without “frequent court appearances” doesn’t really exist; everyone in the jail, except people waiting to go to Western State Hospital for competency evaluations, has to appear in court. “We don’t understand what population it is they’re talking about,” she said.

“Yes, it’s challenging, yes, there are tradeoffs, but I think we owe it to the folks who are trying to make the best of a very dangerous situation, to take up their request … and give the best answer we can within the timeline they have asked for.”—King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci

King County Councilmember and committee chair Girmay Zahilay said Tuesday that while “on the one hand, we want to be able to relieve pressure on… the downtown jail,” which is facing “crisis” conditions, “on the other hand, we’ve heard some some downsides,” including the need for defense attorneys to travel to a third jail, on top of the downtown jail and the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent (which has suspended new bookings) , in order to meet with clients.

Councilmember Claudia Balducci, who worked for DAJD for 15 years and directed the department from 2011 to early 2014, countered that both DPD and the jail itself have asked the county to do something to improve conditions inside the facility. “So yes, it’s challenging, yes, there are tradeoffs, but I think we owe it to the folks who are trying to make the best of a very dangerous situation, to take up their request … and give an answer the best answer we can within the timeline they have asked for.”

Folk, from the jail guards’ union, said that once the jail has 473 guards on staff—the point at which guards who volunteer for extra shifts are no longer eligible for overtime pay at 2.5 times their regular wages—”I want that contract canceled.” Hiring more than 100 new guards presents challenges that go beyond recruitment. One issue, Folk said, is that many new recruits can’t pass the state law enforcement academy’s physical fitness test; in a recent batch of 13 new guards, he said, “over half failed” and had to be let go. Still, he said, the jail has 19 new hires coming on board this month.

In July 2020, King County Executive Dow Constantine pledged to close the downtown jail “in phases” after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the intervening years, the county’s overall jail population has rebounded, reaching about 1,600 (compared to a pre-pandemic average of around 1,900) last year.

City Council, Elections, King County

City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda Will Run for King County Council

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, who’s in the middle of her second four-year term, will run for the King County Council seat longtime County Councilmember Joe McDermott is leaving at the end of the year. (PubliCola first reported that Mosqueda might run for this position on Monday). In an interview, Mosqueda said she was “pulled” by the appeal of serving on the county council rather than “pushed” out of her current job by the factors—public hostility, divisiveness, and personal attacks—that have contributed to several colleagues’ decisions not to run for reelection.

“Throughout my career, but especially on council, it is evident that I can rise above the fray, that I can pull people together who have diverse perspectives, and we can pull solutions together and pass them with near unanimous or near-unanimous support,” Mosqueda, a former labor lobbyist in Olympia, said.

As an example, she pointed to the JumpStart payroll tax, which succeeded where previous “Tax Amazon” efforts by her council colleague Kshama Sawant had failed, thanks in large part to Mosqueda’s efforts to win at least tacit consensus from groups that opposed previous efforts to raise taxes on large businesses.

“I think there really needs be a shift from thinking about ‘peak hours” to thinking about what workers need and what accessibility truly means to families,” Mosqueda said. “Also, making sure that our light rail is going to communities and not through communities.”

Similarly, Mosqueda said, she would have handled the siting of a controversial homeless shelter expansion in SoDo—which King County abandoned under pressure from advocates in the Chinatown-International District who said the county never consulted them—differently.

“Folks who were concerned about the siting [of the shelter] there are also interested in solutions— they’re concerned about people not having a place to use the bathroom or sleeping outside business establishments,” Mosqueda said. “We have shared interests… but we have to start with talking to the community first—especially in the CID and the [Asian and Pacific Islander] population who have also been on the receiving end of other services over the years.”

If voters pass a ballot measure to build six behavioral health crisis centers around the county in April, the council will play a role in deciding where those are located, a decision Mosqueda said “has to start with community conversations” about “where those six sites are going to be.”

In addition, Mosqueda said, she wants to support efforts to build “workforce housing” in places like Vashon Island (one of several parts of the district outside Seattle), improving participation in apprenticeship programs and broadening their scope, and bolstering the infrastructure that supports high-paying jobs—everything from funding to “create a career pathway for child care workers” to restructuring King County Metro’s bus system to better serve people who work outside standard office hours.

“I think there really needs be a shift from thinking about ‘peak hours” to thinking about what workers need and what accessibility truly means to families,” Mosqueda said. “Also, making sure that our light rail is going to communities and not through communities.”

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If Mosqueda wins, she will be the first Latinx person to ever serve on the King County Council, and one of only four council members of color in county history—one of whom, Girmay Zahilay, represents what has historically been the council’s only majority-minority district.

Mosqueda wouldn’t take the bait on a question about whether she, like the four council members who have announced they’re leaving this year, is actually fleeing the council, rather than being “pulled” toward the county. After all, I noted, if the county council was more compelling than the city council, she could have run for that position in the first place.

Instead, she chalked up the city council exodus to the fact that seven of the nine council seats are all on the ballot at once—a recipe, she said, for instability. If elections were split more evenly—with half the district seats and one citywide seat on the ballot every two years—”then you wouldn’t see that kind of instability,” Mosqueda said. That’s something she said she plans to work on this year, whether she wins or not.

Since the Durkan administration, Mosqueda has over multiple city budget cycles to prevent the mayor from raiding proceeds from the JumpStart tax to fill a general budget hole. Without her vigilance, will JumpStart—which is supposed to fund housing, small businesses, and equitable development—become a slush fund for other priorities or a permanent emergency reserve to fill funding gaps?

Mosqueda said she was confident that it wouldn’t, citing “structural requirements” the council has codified as well as future revenues, to be identified by a new progressive revenue tax force, that will address long-term budget gaps. Even so, Mosqueda had to negotiate a deal this year that allowed some JumpStart revenues to help backfill a massive general-fund shortfall—and even with new progressive revenue on the table, there’s no guarantee that the mayor, or a future mayor, won’t try to use JumpStart taxes for purposes outside the scope of its adopted spending plan.

Mosqueda has already rounded up more than c80 endorsements, including that of current Mayor Bruce Harrell, and her decision to run seems to have neutralized some potential opponents, including West Seattle attorney Rob Saka, who was reportedly considering a run for the county council seat but now appears likely to run for the West Seattle seat being vacated by Lisa Herbold.