City Council, Elections, homelessness, King County, Police

This Week on PubliCola: Council Opponents Bash Mayor’s Balanced Budget, Controversial Cop Gets Slap on Wrist, $17 Million Deficit at KCRHA, and More

By Erica C. Barnett

First things first: We’re hosting a City Council debate! Come to the National Nordic Museum (2655 NW Market St.) to hear from the candidates for City Council in North Seattle’s District 5, Julie Kang and Nilu Jenks. (PubliCola will be running interviews with both candidates, conducted last week, before the debate). The outcome of this election will impact the balance of votes on the council, so it matters to the entire city. Hope to see you there!

On to the week’s news:

Monday, October 12

No, King County Didn’t Write a $10 Million “Blank Check” for Youth Homelessness

Danny Westneat’s latest column for the Seattle Times condemned a proposed sales tax increase of of 0.01 percent, claiming the (maximum) $10 million it could bring in annually amounted to a “blank check” for the county to fritter away on… whatever, we guess. In fact, the county will adopt a spending plan for the money as part of its budget process, and has identified half-dozen specific youth and family homelessness programs to receive the money. That’s not the only thing Westneat got wrong in his column, as we learned from doing some basic reporting.

Tuesday, October 13

Greater Seattle: A Supermajority, a Mistake, and a Chance

In this week’s column, Josh Feit considers what it will mean if progressive Nilu Jenks wins the D5 council election, praises SDOT’s decision to (finally) charge for parking in one West Seattle neighborhood, and has praise for Metro’s workhorse Route 7, which King County is planning to eliminate and replace with a RapidRide with far fewer stops.

Wednesday, October 14

Council Critics Accuse Wilson of Creating “the Unfund Budget”

Councilmembers who opposed Katie Wilson’s election as mayor can’t help themselves, it seems: They’re claiming her proposed budget defunds (or as Bob Kettle puts it, “unfunds”) the police department, encampment sweeps team, and graffiti removal efforts. They also seemed caught off guard by budget problems plaguing SDOT, despite their own adoption of a budget last year that included a large and growing deficit at the department.

Thursday, October 15

Regional Homelessness Authority’s Overspending Grows to $17 Million, According to New Report

Turning Point, the consultant hired to reconcile the King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s budget after a forensic audit found widespread irregularities earlier this year, discovered a nearly $17 million net deficit in the agency’s accounts, the result of excessive administrative spending on staff and the implementation of SalesForce to manage homeless services grants. The money (which includes growing interest on the KCRHA’s massive negative bank balance) will have to be paid, somehow, by the city and county, the agency’s primary funders.

Friday, October 16

Council Budget Fizz: Rinck Wants to Fund Survivor Services, Saka Wants to Defund Restrooms, and Strauss Says the Mayor Is Weak on Homelessness

A week of all-day budget meetings included more convoluted Wilson-bashing, as Rob Saka came out against Wilson’s proposal to add more of the same kind of public restrooms Saka added funding for last year, and Dan Strauss accused the mayor of being “uncomfortable” addressing homelessness after she proposed moving the city’s encampment response team back to the Human Services Department, rather than keeping it under her direct control.

And, earlier in the week, Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck proposed adding $8 million to the budget for organizations that help survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and trafficking. HR1, Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” drastically cuts funding for these services.

Complaints Filed Against Pass-Through Campaign Funding Group Created by Former Councilmember Sara Nelson

Former Councilmember Nelson’s new group, Seafor, promises to keep its donors’ identities “private,” funneling money to elections through political action committees that will only show Seafor as the donor. They’re doing a “test run” with Julie Kang, funding a PAC that is spending $30,000 on her behalf. Except—oops—you aren’t actually allowed to conceal the source of campaign funding in this way. A progressive group has filed two complaints against Seafor and its affiliated “news” website, CivicTide.

Cop Who Encouraged Fellow Officers to “F___ People Up” At Pro-LGBTQ Counterprotest Gets Written Reprimand

Seattle police lieutenant Matthew Didier, who was caught on tape encouraging officers to go hard on people protesting a far-right anti-trans rally at Cal Anderson Park, will get a slap-on-the-wrist written reprimand for his actions. Interim police chief Andre Sayles said a critical review of the incident earlier this year “made clear that our department did not understand the depth of concern within the LGBTQ+ community before this event.”

Also this week: I was a guest on CityCast Seattle, where we discussed Rinck’s “Seattle Stands With Survivors” budget proposal, a recent lawsuit filed by a woman who said the University of Washington failed to protect her from the frat member who raped her, Saka’s bizarre 180 on public restroom funding, and our favorite pizza places in Seattle (shout out to Dantini!)

Police

Cop Who Encouraged Fellow Officers to “F___ People Up” At Pro-LGBTQ Counterprotest Gets Written Reprimand

By Erica C. Barnett

Matthew Didier, the Seattle police lieutenant who was caught on body camera footage encouraging his fellow officers to “fuck people up” at a counterprotest during the far-right “Mayday USA” rally in Cal Anderson Park last year, has received a written reprimand for his actions that day. Didier’s statements to his fellow officers, who he said would be “going in with guns blazing” and were “here to fuck people up now,” have made him a symbol of police intolerance to the city’s LGBTQ+ community, which turned out to protest the anti-trans event held, provocatively, in the middle of Seattle’s historic LGBTQ+ neighborhood.

PubliCola broke the story about on the light disciplinary decision, made by interim Police Chief Andre Sayles, on Bluesky Friday afternoon.

The video of Didier’s directives went viral earlier this year.

“We are about to do some fucking work, but we’re going in this time with guns blazing and all our pieces in place. We we we are past talking to people. We’re here to fuck people up now,” Didier can be heard saying in the footage. “We’re done with these guys doing this shit. They’ve pushed the envelope, and now they’re going to get the full fucking deal.”

Officers responded violently to the counterprotests. During the event, police used pepper spray and other “less lethal” weapons against demonstrators, throwing many to the ground and arresting 23 people. SPD officers also used bike rack-style barricades to prevent protesters from entering the rally area and arrested people for pushing against or knocking over barricades that had been linked together and placed at the top of a hill.

On Friday night, Interim police chief Andre Sayles issued a statement saying he followed SPD’s principle of “progressive discipline” in issuing a written reprimand to Didier. Sayles noted that Didier had only “minor prior disciplinary history” and that his decision fell “within the range” of what the Office of Police Accountability recommended.

In Seattle, complaints about police officers, except the police chief, go through OPA, a semi-independent body (it’s housed in the police department) that reviews each complaint. If OPA decides a complaint is warranted, it will sustain the complaint and recommend discipline to the chief, who ultimately makes the call.

According to the closed case summary for thje investigation, OPA found that Didier had acted in an “unprofessional, escalatory, and disrespectful” manner.

Didier’s “statement appeared to reflect an intent to use impermissible force against the counter protesters. Such a viewpoint undermines public trust in [Didier] and SPD because it erodes the legitimacy of SPD’s objective to uphold every individual’s constitutional rights and created an impression that [Didier] viewed the purpose of officers being ‘here’ was to “fuck people up.”

The OPA recommended light discipline for Didier, ranging from an oral reprimand to two days’ suspension.

DivestSPD reported that there had been sustained findings in the case last month.

In a statement to PubliCola, SPD cited mitigating factors for the decision to give Didier a slap on the wrist, noting that he “voluntarily participated in the Sentinel Event Review. The employee was forthcoming and engaged with community panelists. The employee accepted responsibility and willingness to learn from their actions,” an SPD spokesperson said.

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However, the investigation shows that Didier made many excuses for his behavior and statements, including short staffing at SPD, the fact that officers were called to police the counterprotest on short notice, and a supposed incident from 2020 when, according to OPA’s summary of Didier’s explanation for his actions, “officers had to stand in line, observe crimes, and take no action.”

In his statement, Sayles said the sentinel review “made clear that our department did not understand the depth of concern within the LGBTQ+ community before this event, and that our actions that day damaged trust. I accept that finding.”

“We have already begun this work, and we will continue it. That includes acting on the OIG’s recommendations, strengthening our crowd management practices, expanding the work of our LGBTQ+ liaison and advisory council, and engaging directly with community organizations before — not after — events that affect them.”

Last December, Sayles filed a sweeping OPA complaint against a longtime officer who spoke, with SPD’s permission, at a rally against two anti-LGBTQ initiatives. In the complaint, Sayles said he believed the officer was spreading “inaccurate and untrue things” about the initiatives. (The first initiative would ban trans girls from playing children’s sports; the second would give parents access to all notes about conversations their kids had with trusted adults at school.) The source of Sayles’ information, it would turn out, was right-wing podcaster Brandi Kruse, who ran an online campaign to get the officer fired. Kruse volunteers and raises money for the campaign behind the two initiatives.

The OPA dismissed two other complaints against Didier—one alleging he and other officers failed to use de-escalation tactics, and one saying he targeted a protester because of their political views or perceived LGBTQ+ status. “SPD officers, including [Didier], were on site to support everyone’s rights to free speech and peaceably assemble, enforce the law, preserve order, protect people, and preserve property,” the OPA report says.

A “Sentinel Review” of SPD’s response to the counterprotest, conducted by the city’s independent Office of the Inspector General, concluded that SPD officers demonstrated a bias against counter-protesters who showed up to demonstrate against the right-wing event, referring to protesters as “transtifa” and assuming “that the rally organizers represented no real threat, while assuming that “‘black bloc’ and ‘antifa’ are established, hierarchical organizations intent on inciting disorder and criminal activity.”

Mayor Katie Wilson said in a statement: “Like many people in Seattle, I was disturbed to see what occurred at the protests at Cal Anderson in 2025. I’ve spoken with Interim Chief Sayles to understand the disciplinary measures taken in this incident. It is the role of the Seattle Police Department to serve and protect the people of Seattle, and to do so with respect, dignity, care, and consideration— especially for our most vulnerable community members. I will continue to work with the leadership of SPD to ensure that the culture of the department fully reflects and upholds my expectations and this commitment.”

Elections, public disclosure

Complaints Filed Against Pass-Through Campaign Funding Group Created by Former Councilmember Sara Nelson

 

From Seafor’s website.

By Erica C. Barnett

The Progressive People Power (P3) PAC, a group that supports lefty candidates and causes, has filed dual complaints with the state Public Disclosure Commission and the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission against Seafor, a new organization set up by former city councilmember Sara Nelson to support centrist candidates.

The crux of both complaints is an allegation that Seafor is illegally funding election campaigns without revealing its donors, which is illegal under state law.

Specifically, the complaints charge that Seafor is a political action committee disguised as a C(4) (yes, pronounced “Seafor”) nonprofit advocacy group, and that the purpose of the organization is to serve as a pass-through for anonymous political donations to campaigns. This would be illegal, because state law requires PACs—unlike nonprofit political groups—to disclose their donors, so that the public can see which people and organizations are bankrolling outside campaigns for candidates.

“If you are an organization in Washington state raising money for politics and then spending money on politics, then you are a political committee. You have to report where your money came from,” Dmitri Iglitzin, the attorney who filed both complaints on behalf of P3, said Wednesday. “The source of political expenditures can’t be cloaked through an intermediary entity.”

Iglitzin filed the complaints before Seafor funded a last-minute $30,000 independent expenditure, by a new group calling itself North Seattle Neighbors, on behalf of District 5 City Council candidate Julie Kang, who came in second in the August primary, trailing frontrunner Nilu Jenks, a progressive, by 21 points. North Seattle Neighbors registered as a PAC just days before a state deadline for independent expenditure campaigns to file, meaning that it’s no longer possible for anyone to register a similar campaign on Jenks’ behalf. It has since reported one additional $5,000 donation, from the founder of a private equity firm.

The complaint notes that Seafor’s website explicitly says one purpose of the group is to elect a “pragmatic majority” of “moderate candidates” to the city council, starting with the District 5 race. The site describes Seafor as a “permanent civic organization” that “recruits candidates, funds their campaigns, defends them between elections, and stays in the field after November.”

What’s more, Seafor’s site touts the fact that “Donor identities are not publicly disclosed,” allowing people who spend on local campaigns to keep their donations “private.”

From Seafor’s website.

“Washington’s 501(c)(4) structure protects the privacy of businesses and individuals historically punished for backing fiscally responsible causes,” the website guarantees. “Many of our supporters operate businesses, sit on boards, or hold positions where political activity isn’t tenable.”

Nelson, the founder of Seafor, initially responded to a phone call but did not respond to followups. The other governors of the group are former councilmember Tanya Woo, lobbyist Dan McGrady, and former Nelson policy director Erik Nielsen. Jordan Royer, the VP of external affairs for the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association (and a longtime background player in conservative Seattle politics), registered the North Seattle Neighbors PAC.

“Seafor just donated $30,000 to a political campaign. So where did that $30,000 come from? We have no idea,” Iglitzin said. “But we know from Seafor’s website that they’re raising money to make political expenditures in the fifth [council] district, which makes Seafor a political committee. The fact that Seafor then goes and says, by the way, give your money to us and no one will know that you gave it to us, just shows that they know exactly what they’re doing.”

The city’s rules for registering as a political committee go further than the state’s; Seattle requires any PAC that raises or spends more than $5,000 to register as a PAC and disclose its donors. Seafor has spent $30,000 so far—five times the legal limit—and, according to reporting in Geekwire, had a budget of $163,000 through September.

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Both complaints also allege that Seafor’s affiliated website advertising “news about city hall,” CivicTide, is also subject to city and state public disclosure rules, because it’s part of the larger Seafor political action group. Unlike actual journalism and commentary, the complaint says, CivicTide’s opinion pieces and AI-powered meeting summaries are part of a political campaign to support candidates, so their funding, too, is subject to public disclosure.

The SEEC complaint also alleges that Seafor is operating illegally as an unregistered grassroots lobbying group. Under the city’s grassroots lobbying rules, groups that raise and spend money to lobby the city on issues, including advocacy for legislation, have to register as lobbyists, which Seafor hasn’t done.

The Ethics and Elections Commission seems most likely to take up the complaint, since it deals with a local campaign; also, the PDC is facing a significant complaint backlog due to hundreds of complaints filed by a single person. On Thursday, SEEC director Wayne Barnett would only confirm that he had received the complaint.

The strongest case that Seafor violated election laws is almost certainly the fact that it advertises itself as a “private” way to fund “serious candidate support” without disclosing who is behind that funding. It’s “really blatant,” Iglitzin said.

The most recent comparable case he could think of, he told me, was a case involving the Grocery Manufacturers Association, a group of corporations including PepsiCo and Kellogg’s that poured millions into a 2013 campaign against a genetically manufactured organism (GMO) labeling initiative without disclosing the source of the money. A protracted lawsuit eventually resulted in the group (now known as the Consumer Brands Association, paying a $9 million fine, including a $3 million donation to food-security nonprofits, in 2022.

Seafor’s $30,000 spend on Kang’s behalf doesn’t compare to the food brands’ massive donation to the anti-GMO campaign. But it is, as Seafor points out repeatedly on its website, merely a “test run” for the “2027 progressive majority play,” when seven city council seats will on the ballot.

City Council, homelessness, human services, Mayor Wilson

Council Budget Fizz: Rinck Wants to Fund Survivor Services, Saka Wants to Defund Restrooms, and Strauss Says the Mayor Is Weak on Homelessness
City Attorney Erika Evans speaks at a press conference about Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck’s budget proposal at City Hall on Wednesday.

1. Seattle City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck announced Wednesday that she’ll propose adding $8 million to this year’s city budget to restore services for domestic violence and sex trafficking survivors that the council funded on a one-time basis last year, and expand services and shelter for victims of gender-based violence that are losing federal funds due to the passage of HR1, Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”

The money, Rinck said at a press conference on Wednesday, would help fund legal services, flexible funding for needs like apartment deposits and childcare during court dates, support groups and counseling for survivors and their children, and prevention programs like consent education and bystander intervention.

“Gender-based violence is not inevitable. It is learned, which means it can be unlearned, and it also means it can be stopped before it starts,” Rinck said.

City Attorney Erika Evans said she started her term this year with a backlog of 1,700 domestic violence cases, which has resulted in some victims, like a woman she identified as “Sarah,” waiting years for her case to go to trial. “She said waiting two years made her feel like Seattle didn’t care about what happened to her,” Evans said. Councilmember Dionne Foster said she’ll propose a one-time add to next year’s budget that will help close that backlog; we’ve reached out to her for more details about that separate funding proposal.

HR1 cuts millions of dollars for survivor services and domestic violence prevention programs, impacting groups like the  King County Sexual Assault Resource Center (KCSARC). Meanwhile, changes and cuts to grants made through the US Department of Housing and Urban Development have left local survivor housing programs with less ability to provide shelter and housing to people fleeting abuse.

“The administration has proposed cutting the Office of Violence Against Women by 29 percent. It has moved to terminate millions of dollars in federal grants to hundreds of organizations. It has cut housing assistance,” Rinck said. “Every one of those cuts has an address, and too many of those addresses are right here in Seattle.”

Rinck didn’t offer specific details about her proposal on Wednesday, saying she’ll introduce a detailed budget amendment next week.

2. The city’s Office of Economic and Revenue Forecasts, whose October revenue forecast has recently provided the city council with more (projected) money to play with in its November budget, had sobering news on Friday: The new forecast projects just $7.8 million in additional revenues between 2026 and 2028 compared to previous forecasts. In reality, the true number will be $2.8 million in the negative, city economist Jan Duras told the Economic and Revenue Forecast Council, because the city intends to continue exempting health care providers from the JumpStart payroll tax.

The city also expects revenues to dip below previous forecasts in 2028.

What this means for the council’s budget deliberations is that for all their bluster about funding more police, more surveillance cameras, more Unified Care Team staffers, and more firefighters, they’ll be facing an even tougher budget reality this year. Funding everything council members have said they hope to add to the budget would cost tens of millions of dollars, which would require equivalent cuts to other parts of the budget. So far, no one on the council has said where they plan to cut (or what budget tricks they plan to use on the budget they received from the mayor’s office, which shows a positive balance through 2023) to pay for those additions.

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3. During one of several all-day council budget meetings this week, City Councilmember Rob Saka took several minutes to rail against Mayor Katie Wilson’s proposal to install 12 new restrooms, including two permanent Portland Loo-style restrooms at parks in Northeast and Southeast Seattle, using both general-fund and King County and Seattle parks levy revenues. Wilson’s proposal would also add 10 new Throne restrooms, like the ones installed in Pioneer Square earlier this year, across the city.

Overall, Wilson’s budget includes about $6.5 million, roughly half of that from the King County and Seattle parks levies, to pay for the new permanent and prefabricated restrooms, along with maintenance and renovations at existing parks restrooms, including at Judkins and Cal Anderson Parks.

Saka, who has previously complained that restrooms in his West Seattle district are poorly maintained and covered with graffiti, characterized the new toilets as a waste of money given the poor condition of the permanent restrooms in other Seattle parks. (His comments came during a discussion of the city’s parks and recreation budget; the restroom spending is spread across several budget areas).

“We’re a year plus away from an audit, a damning, scathing audit, that revealed can’t get our own house in order—quite literally, bath house in order!” Saka siad. “We can’t even solve the problem of maintaining properly our existing restroom inventory fleet. And how many new bathrooms are proposed for expansion under this? And yes, my council district is the worst off. It’s no secret, in terms of inability to properly maintain because of graffiti and vandalism our existing restroom fleet!. And now we want to expand, create new shiny names, and we can’t take care and look after the things that we have properly today.”

Saka’s opposition to new public restrooms represented a dramatic reversal of his position just one year ago, when he added $1 million in funding to then-mayor Bruce Harrell’s budget for new public restrooms in his district. Citing the exact same “scathing audit,” Saka argued last year that his district should be prioritized for new Portland Loo-style restrooms.

Adding these restrooms, Saka argued, would help “to harden the parks restrooms, to make it more tamper resistant, to make it more vandalism resistant, to make it more graffiti resistant.” Funding restrooms in his district, Saka said, was a way of respecting “the gravity and severity of the underlying problem at issue” in the audit.

Saka’s total reversal on the issue of public restrooms may seem perplexing, but two things have changed. First, this year’s proposed new restrooms are not in his district. And second, the mayor is Katie Wilson, a person many on the council, including Saka, seem determined to oppose even when it means they have to completely reverse positions.

4. For another example, look no further than Dan Strauss’ dark insinuations on Thursday about Wilson’s proposal to move the city’s huge (more than 100-member) encampment sweeps team out of her direct control and into the Human Services Department, which oversees homelessness programs and, until Harrell vastly expanded the city’s encampment removal apparatus, oversaw previous iterations of the team.

Logically, taking the UCT out of Wilson’s office is a way of depoliticizing it, and that’s how a staffer characterized the change. Council central staffer Ann Gorman said, “this was undertaken in order to protect the UCT across mayoral administrations, so that it continues” no matter who is in office. “To someone who is interested in the continuation of the UCT, that’ss good news that would seem to reflect the the achievement of efficiencies.”

Strauss said he took “a little bit of issue” with Gorman’s comments, calling the claim that moving the sweeps team back to HSD would insulate it politically “the largest pile of horse pucky I’ve ever seen occur in my life.” The city needs “executive leadership”—that is, direct control by the elected mayor—for the UCT to be effective, Strauss said.

The real reason Wilson wants to move the team, Strauss continued, is that she doesn’t want to deal with homelessness—quite a thing to claim about a mayor whose budget includes $37 million for new shelter, far more than any of her predecessor’s budgets.

“I believe that that transfer happened because the mayor is likely uncomfortable addressing homelessness, because addressing homelessness requires both a lot of compassion and firm boundaries, and it can be very uncomfortable,” Strauss said. 

Strauss also assailed Wilson for using existing funds—$3.5 million—for an RV safe lot where people living in RVs could access services and shelter and move toward housing. Strauss wants to use that money on his plan to eventually ban RVs from the city, with a transitional period where people currently living in RVs would be required to register with the city and accept services and shelter offers. Strauss said he was “deeply disappointed in the lack of collaboration from the Wilson administration regarding this funding, and my door remains open.” 

 

homelessness, King County, Mayor Wilson

Regional Homelessness Authority’s Overspending Grows to $17 Million, According to New Report
KCRHA CEO Kelly Kinnison

By Erica C. Barnett

The city of Seattle and King County will be on the hook for at least $16.7 million in previously unreported costs accrued by the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, city and county officials said Thursday afternoon.

The additional shortfall, a combination of excessive administrative spending and growing debt, was revealed in a new report from Turning Point, the consultant hired to reconcile the agency’s finances after a damning forensic audit found widespread, longstanding accounting irregularities earlier this year.

In a joint statement, King County Executive Girmay Zahilay and Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson said, “The $17 million unrecoverable balance is unacceptable, and the County and City are working together to address repayment while protecting critical services for people experiencing homelessness.”

Elected officials who previously called for the KCRHA to shut down immediately, including King County Councilmembers Reagan Dunn and Rod Dembowski and Seattle Councilmember Maritza Rivera, issued statements calling the latest news “shocking” (Rivera) and “outrageous” (Dembowski) and describing the KCRHA as a “failed experiment” in a regional approach to homelessness (Dunn).

Tough talk aside, city and county taxpayers are now on the hook for the KCRHA’s overspending; according to deputy county budget director Aaron Rubardt, paying back the KCRHA’s unpaid debts will likely take several years.

According to Turning Point’s report, as of July 31, the KCRHA had a net negative balance of more than $31 million, which was offset by money it was owed by the city and county, resulting in an overall negative balance of $16.7 million as of that date. Here’s the high-level breakdown:

For context, KCRHA has long blamed its persistent negative balance on its reimbursement-based model, in which the agency pays homeless service providers for their annual contracts and gets reimbursement from its funders, chiefly the city and county, after the fact.

However, if this was the only reason for the negative balance, the homelessness agency’s bank account should end up with a positive or zero balance once all those reimbursements come in; instead, the KCRHA’s negative balance grew larger and larger over time. “This was an argument for needing large cash advances to avoid those negative cash balances,” City Budget Office director Aly Pennucci said on Thursday. “However, even after those cash advances were approved, the cash position remained negative, raising further concerns.”

The overall net deficit of $16.7 million is what will remain after every entity that owes KCRHA money has paid everything they owe.

The bulk of the shortfall resulted from KCRHA overspending the amount of administrative funding they had coming in. That excessive spending included lavish outlays on high-priced temporary staffing firms like Robert Half, which charges hefty recruitment fees to do work that would more typically be done by regular full-time employees. It also includes the salaries of KCRHA CEO Kelly Kinnison and recently promoted Chief Operating Officer William Towey, who make a combined total above $600,000, according to the union that represents many KCRHA employees.

The largest portion of the KCRHA’s overspending resulted from errors in calculating how much money the agency would receive as the result of grants to homeless service providers.

Every dollar of funding the KCRHA receives and sends to service providers in the form of grants comes with an “administrative allowance”—a percentage of the contract amount that enables the KCRHA to administer the contracts. But that allowance is based on how much of the money actually gets spent—if a provider can’t use all the money it receives in a certain year, the amount the KCRHA receives to administer that money also decreases.

What the KCRHA did, according to the report, was assume that 100 percent of every grant it administered would be spent each year, and spent the administrative allowance that would apply if that was true. This resulted, over time, in an administrative “overspend,” based on contractor underspending of $259 million, of $15.7 million by July 2026. On top of that, the KCRHA overspent what it was bringing in by another $3.3 million on top of the amount that resulted from that miscalculation. And the KCRHA owed an outstanding $4.4 million in interest on its debt to King County, which serves as the KCRHA’s bank.

“The general idea is because they didn’t have the [necessary] financial practices in place, it was difficult for KCRHA to see this happening,” King County’s Rubardt said. “We have asked for a followup on the timing of all the accumulation, but my sense is that’s been occurring over the entire time the KCRHA has been in existence.”

Pennucci said the total amount of outstanding administrative debt will probably “come down” by the end of the year, as grantees spend more money. Interest payments, meanwhile, will keep accruing on the KCRHA’s negative bank balance, resulting in a larger interest balance by the end of the year.

The KCRHA’s governing board, made up of elected officials from across the region, will discuss the findings of the report at its meeting on November 6. When I asked whether anyone will be held accountable for the agency’s expensive errors, Wilson’s director of city governance and human services, Mark Ellerbrook, said it will be up to the governing board “to work on and wrestle with” that question.

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City Council, City Hall, human services

Council Critics Accuse Wilson of Creating “the Unfund Budget”

By Erica C. Barnett

Mayor Katie Wilson’s centrist critics on the Seattle City Council spent most of Wednesday accusing the mayor of creating a budget that, as Councilmember Bob Kettle put it repeatedly throughout the day, “unfunds” (rather than defunds) critical services, including encampment removals, graffiti and park restroom cleanups, and transportation projects.

The theme of the day was insinuation: Council members complained about things that have supposedly fallen apart that Bruce Harrell is no longer in office, like the state of parks restrooms or the swiftness of encampment sweeps, then blamed them on Wilson and her budget priorities. Dan Strauss, for instance, said a business owner’s complaint about an encampment that stayed in the same spot for three months shows that there’s been “a complete change in how effectively the city is addressing homelessness,” while Rob Saka assailed the mayor for proposing 10 new portable public restrooms when “we can’t even get our own bathhouse in order!”

“How many new bathrooms are proposed for expansion?” Rob Saka asked rhetorically, projecting to the rafters. “Now we want to expand, create new shiny things, when we can’t even properly take care of the things we have today? Hmm!”

In general, the day’s two budget meetings (which I covered in detail on Bluesky, starting here) were an opportunity for councilmembers who opposed Wilson’s election to overstate the likely impact of her proposed budget cuts and suggest that she should have made different, unspecified decisions to address a $175 million budget deficit.

Take, for example, the “unfunding” of the city’s Unified Care Team, which would lose two and a half administrative positions—desk jobs—that have never been filled.

This cut, Kettle said, represented a larger “deprioritization” of encampment removals—one that has deprived the Parks Department of the “heavy equipment” it needs to haul tents, trash, and people’s possessions away after encampment sweeps. Piling on, Maritza Rivera claimed Wilson’s “budget renders us incapable” of addressing homeless encampments. And Saka railed against the mayor’s decision to move the city’s Unified Care Team back to the Human Services Department rather than having its duties spread across four separate city departments.

Addressing the mayor (who, quite possibly, could hear him from her office five floors above), Saka said, “Now, this might be a good thing to deprioritize [the UCT] t and bury that work down in a department somewhere. I might be a political bone to throw at your democratic socialist base, but it does our communities harm!”

Last year, Saka sponsored a budget proviso, or spending restriction, that required Wilson to maintain the $30 million, 116-member Unified Care Team and keep spending money on specific priorities, such as $2.2 million for police to be present at sweeps.  “Some people on the far, ultra-left lost their national minds!” when he sponsored the proviso, Saka bellowed. “Calls to employee wellness programs skyrocketed, apparently, in some circles after I did that! But it was a wise and responsible thing to do.”

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Later in the day, during a discussion about how to resolve a growing deficit in the Seattle Department of Transportation’s transportation fund ($41 million on average each month this year), council members suggested this was the first they were hearing about the seriousness of SDOT’s financial problems. (SDOT has said the shortfalls stem from higher-than-anticipated costs and lower-than expected revenues.) “I did not know up until a couple weeks ago, right during the budget, as part of the budget process, that SDOT was operating basically in the red in this way,” Rivera said. “This is a new development for council.”

In fact, a staffer reminded her, the budget the council adopted last year showed a growing negative transportation fund balance starting in 2027. That same budget noted that SDOT had finished paying off a previous interfund loan, unanimously approved by the council in 2020, last year. “I think there was some awareness that the transportation fund was having challenges,” the staffer said. “Now it may not have had awareness that starting in 2026, after the interfund loan was paid off, that we continue to have those challenges, but … I looked at last year’s financial plan, and it was a negative balance, and projected for it to be negative balance for this year and the coming years.” 

The council has the authority to revise the budget to reflect their own priorities. But there’s a difference between expressing genuine concern about cuts and deficits and continually rehashing the last election.

Instead of responding like the business community has to Wilson’s budget (with a tone of surprised approval, since the budget funds centrist priorities, like police, with minimal cuts and no new taxes), the council is spending a huge amount of rhetorical energy this year grandstanding over relatively insignificant cuts (rarely have so many budget speeches centered on the elimination of two vacant administrative positions) without acknowledging that for every program they restore, they’ll have to find commensurate cuts elsewhere in the budget. It’s as if Wilson’s opponents on the council think the mayor made up a mean budget just to spite them, and that their job is to righteously restore funding for all their pet projects without balancing the ledger.

Which is to say: Get ready for tomorrow’s meetings, which will focus on the human services, police, and fire departments, three areas where many on the council have, if anything, even bigger feelings about the mayor’s budget proposal.