City Council, Crime, Economy, Mayor Wilson

This Week on PubliCola: Building a Less “Fragile” Seattle Economy, Addressing Gun Violence, and Is It Selfish to Live Alone?

By Erica C. Barnett

Tuesday, September 8

Greater Seattle: Late Press Conferences, On-Time Buses, Selfish Housing

In this week’s column, Josh tackled the media-generated narrative that blamed Mayor Katie Wilson, rather than SPD, for a delayed SPD press release; praised the new Denny Way bus lane for turning the L8 into the Gr8; and wondered whether he should take on several new roommates, in response to a Seattle Times column that blamed people who live alone (rather than Seattle’s endless refusal to densify) for the housing crisis.

Investigation Report: Trip to Strip Club on Civil Rights Office Trip Was Sexual Harassment

An investigation into some of the employee allegations against Seattle Office for Civil Rights director Derrick Wheeler-Smith found that going to a strip club with an employee on a city-sponsored trip constituted sexual harassment, but that misogynistic and transphobic texts did not. Employees accused Wheeler-Smith of discrimination and harassment earlier this year, and he has been on paid leave since March.

Wednesday, September 9

Saka’s Messy Transportation Bill Gets Messier

City Councilmember Rob Saka’s mostly nonsubstantive transportation safety legislation—rolled out hastily one day before the mayor announced executive orders on the same subject—became more bloated over council recess, but would still have very little real-world impact.

Controversial Group We Heart Seattle Makes City’s Official Volunteer Day Roster

We Heart Seattle, a group whose leader films vulnerable homeless people to promote a punitive, staunchly conservative agenda, got city approval to include one of its encampment “cleanups” in this year’s citywide day of volunteerism. The group is under state investigation for allegedly failing to properly train volunteers to pick up and dispose of needles and other potentially dangerous items.

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Thursday, September 10

Consultants, New Staffers Fill Out Mayor’s Communications Team

Mayor Katie Wilson, whose communications staff has seen high turnover through most of her term so far, has hired a permanent communications director and press secretary—along with a number of consultants, including one who’s getting$10,000 to write this year’s budget speech.

Maritza Rivera Overstates Gun Violence, Pushes Mayor to Pre-Commit to Handpicked “Focused Deterrence” Contractor

City Councilmember Maritza Rivera is insisting that Mayor Wilson commit in advance to hire a specific contractor, at a cost of $418,000, to implement a “focused deterrence” approach to gun violence. This approach has been successful in places where most shootings involve a small group of people, which may or may not be the case in Seattle—a city where fatal shootings are much rarer than in other cities.

Friday, September 11

Report Recommends Diversifying Seattle Economy; Wilson’s Plan Would Initiate that Process, But Slowly

A report from Brookings-affiliated researchers concluded that the city is far too reliant on a tiny handful of massive tech companies, and has failed to nurture startups and mid-size companies that could sustain the economy here even if the big tech firms shrink or move to Bellevue. The report, which includes counterintuitive data on Seattle’s economy and tax base, was the basis for a Wilson executive order that directs the city to figure out ways to implement its recommendations.

Also this week: I was on City Cast Seattle with guest host Brett Hamil and Seattle Times reporter Claire Bryan on Friday. Claire got us up to speed on what’s happening with Seattle Public Schools’ budget (and I went off about AI in schools). Then, Brett and I discussed my reporting on the real reason for the communications breakdown after the Bite of Seattle shooting in July. I’ll be a regular guest on City Cast in the future, so tune in!

This week’s episode of Seattle Nice features returning guest Daniel Malone, from the Downtown Emergency Service Center. He got us up to speed on how DESC’s Opioid Recovery and Care Access (ORCA) center is doing one year in (so far, they’ve had more than 10,000 post-overdose encounters), the 95-bed STAR shelter downtown that replaced the Navigation Center in Little Saigon, and the status of the Trump Administration’s efforts to defund the kind of permanent supportive housing DESC provides.

Note to readers: I will be out of town for most of the next two weeks, so look for my stories on the mayor’s new gun violence reduction strategy, further discussion of Dan Strauss’ proposal to ban unregistered RVs from Seattle, and the mayor’s budget announcement after I get back on Thursday, September 24!

Meantime, my birthday is coming up next week, and I would appreciate nothing more than a contribution to PubliCola, the independent news source you’re reading. Lots of options, from one-time or ongoing Paypal contributions to a P.O. box where you can send a check, can be found right here.

Economy, Mayor Wilson, Taxes

Report Recommends Diversifying Seattle Economy; Wilson’s Plan Would Initiate that Process, But Slowly

By Erica C. Barnett

A comprehensive, 127-page report on the city’s business and taxing climate recommends that Seattle start taking steps to diversify its tax base beyond the handful of large tech firms that now dominate the city, by cultivating startups in areas like AI, green energy and the maritime industry and helping them grow into mature, mid-size companies that stay in Seattle instead of expanding somewhere else.

“While Seattle’s startup activity is modest and declining, its ability to grow firms is mediocre at best,” the report, published by a group of researchers headed up by a Brookings-affiliated researcher named Ryan Donahue, says. Of 303 tech companies that were founded in the Seattle area between 2015 and 2019, only 33 have grown to more than 50 employees. At the same time, Seattle has failed to attract midsize firms, adding just 16 net new midsize tech companies between 2017 and 2023, compared to 104 in San Francisco and 51 in Austin. “Scaling that missing middle is the challenge around which economic development should be organized.”

“Seattle needs firms that are economically distant enough from the tech sector for their fates to be disentangled, yet economically close enough that access to tech talent and customers justifies Seattle prices. Envision a battery or satellite company that wants to engineer and assemble prototypes that could eventually be produced at scale, but also needs a few top-tier AI researchers at hand.”

Failing to diversify, the report notes, keeps Seattle dependent on the decisions of the handful of companies that make up its tax base. If those firms shrink or relocate, other local businesses that depend on wealthy tech workers, like restaurants and retail, will also take a hit.

The situation the report describes won’t be too surprising to anyone who has followed the ups and downs of Seattle’s JumpStart tax, which gets 75 percent of its revenue from just 10 companies, all but one in tech. (JumpStart taxes large Seattle businesses based on individual employee compensation above an annually adjusted threshold; revenue from the tax depends not just on how many highly-paid employees are at each firm but how the value of companies’ stock in any given year.)

The tax, which was created to fund affordable housing and other progressive priorities but now goes largely to the city’s general fund, has proven to be extremely volatile—less of an issue if it’s funding one-time adds, more of a crisis if the entire budget depends on its stability. “The report puts it bluntly: “The city’s fiscal health now depends on the marginal location and compensation decisions of a handful of employers.”

“The strategy is to move them deliberately: helping software-adjacent ‘hardtech’ firms in areas like cleantech, commercial space, maritime, and life sciences scale in the city; enabling mid-career engineers leaving anchor firms to start and join new companies rather than leave town; and using climate policy and the City’s control of Seattle City Light as an accelerant for deployment of clean energy technologies, enabling growth and stimulating innovation.”

The report includes a number of specific recommendations—like creating a public development authority that can issue contracts and make investments, investing in child care construction as well as child care subsidies, eliminating parking requirements and increasing density, and and reducing the amount of time it takes businesses to get permits.

In response to the report, Wilson announced a series of actions, via executive order, designed to spur startup development. They include:

  • A new “Seattle Strategic Initiatives Fund” designed to “make a meaningful impact in diversifying our economy and supporting new business creation and growth in targeted sectors”;
  •  A “Resilient Seattle Economy Task Force” that will come up with recommendations for Seattle attract, retain, and grow businesses, “particularly in key and innovative industries where City action can tip the scales towards success including cleantech and the creative economy”; and
  • Regulatory and permitting changes designed to a to make it easier for businesses, from emerging “cleantech” companies to child care, to get started and grow.

As the report notes, any strategy to steer a city’s entire economy in a different direction is a long-term project—and mayors only have four-year terms. Another challenge is the city’s ongoing “structural” deficit, which is approaching $200 million.

While the report lays out potential solutions to the city’s unbalanced dependence on a few tech companies, it also includes a number of fascinating insights into Seattle’s economy and budget that make it clear that the sky is not actually falling—at least not in the way that many of the region’s reactionary centrists tend to claim. Some key stats from the report:

Wages grew faster in Seattle than in almost any other US metropolitan area, across the entire income scale—but costs grew faster. “Workers at the 25th percentile earn roughly 15 percent more after adjusting for cost-of-living than peers in places seen as more hospitable to middle-income earners like Atlanta, Charlotte, or Minneapolis,” which translates to about $6,000 a year.

At the same time, the cost of living grew faster here than in most places, making it much more expensive to be poor or middle-class here than in other parts of the country. For instance, even though the lowest-paid quarter of Seattle workers make more than they do in Austin or Denver, the gap between an “affordable” rent and what they earn is more than $1,500 a month.

Having kids nearly doubles the annual cost for a couple to maintain a “basic standard of living,” driven largely by the $41,000 average annual cost for child care. This is one reason the report recommends treating child care businesses “as workforce infrastructure rather than a social service.”

Adding more people, and allowing them to live densely, is necessary. This isn’t just growth for the sake of growth—it’s the way Seattle will keep its economy afloat and close its budget deficit.

“Seattle needs more people to move to the city and more businesses to start and grow in the city because Seattle’s tax revenue, especially property and sales tax revenue, depends on it. If the city stopped growing, the only way to increase revenue would be to increase the tax burden on existing residents and businesses. … A growing economy, by contrast, generates new revenue even at stable tax rates.”

The barriers to adding more people are familiar: Seattle makes it too hard to build new housing, which drives up costs. The report recommends allowing 12-story apartment buildings within two blocks of major transit corridors and getting rid of most minimum parking requirements, two changes Seattle has historically been reluctant to make because of homeowner opposition.

Much as businesses complain about taxes across the board, Seattle’s taxes are “middle of the road.” However, tax increases in recent years have been heavily weighted toward the largest tech companies in ways they perceive as unfair, and Bellevue is a viable, lower-tax option for firms that don’t want to leave the region entirely.

“Taxes are relatively low, and they are increasing extremely quickly for the firms that Seattle policymakers targeted with recent tax policy changes,” the report says. Jumpstart alone adds about $17,000 in taxes for a senior software engineer making $650,000 a year, “while San Francisco imposes no per-employee tax and New York City’s equivalent is under $6,000.”

Taxes are also significantly lower in Bellevue, which the report identifies as Seattle’s key competitor for tech jobs. For Amazon, identified as “the mega tech company” in the report, moving to Bellevue would save it a total of $400 million a year, including about $12,000 per employee in Seattle-only taxes. Most companies don’t decide where to locate based primarily on tax rates, according to the report, but Seattle may be nearing the limit of its ability to increase taxes on businesses without facing consequences.

 

Wilson’s executive order sets a deadline of next September for most of the its goals, meaning that the city may not start implementing any changes until halfway through the mayor’s term. This is an inherent problem with long-term initiatives pushed by individual leaders, especially mayors, who (in Seattle) tend to serve a single term. If the goals recommended in the city-commissioned report are the right ones, it would almost certainly be more effective to move quickly, especially on ideas—like goosing housing construction through regulatory reform—that have been percolating in Seattle for years or decades.

 

 

City Council, Crime

Maritza Rivera Overstates Gun Violence, Pushes Mayor to Pre-Commit to Handpicked “Focused Deterrence” Contractor

By Erica C. Barnett

City Councilmember Maritza Rivera misrepresented the number of fatal shootings in Seattle by an order of magnitude earlier this week, claiming at a council public safety committee meeting that “fatal shootings in 2012 were 211, and in 2024 there were 541. And post-pandemic, it increased exponentially.”

Councilmember Rob Saka chimed in, saying that gun violence was “the one unique outlier” among crimes that has continued to increase year over year.

In reality, according to King County data, there were 19 firearm homicides in 2012 and 21 in 2024. (Between 2012 and 2024, there were a total of 120 such homicides in Seattle.) Although that is an overall uptick of two deaths, the actual homicide rate was lower in 2024 than in 2012, despite a post-pandemic upswing, because Seattle’s population grew by nearly 200,000 in those 12 years.

The numbers Rivera cited appear to come from this March 2025 city audit, which found that there were 211 and 541 reports of shots fired citywide in 2012 and 2024, respectively.

So why does Rivera’s alarmist overstatement matter? Because she’s using those numbers, and other claims about the rising danger of living in Seattle, to pressure Mayor Katie Wilson to bypass ordinary contracting processes and sign a $418,000  gun violence prevention contract with Rivera’s handpicked consultant, the National Network for Safer Communities.

NNSC, a project of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, pioneered the concept of “focused deterrence,” in which teams of police officers, social service providers, and community leaders focus their efforts on young men deemed most likely to engage in gun violence, with services on the front end and the threat of increasing consequences, including jail, if they commit violent crimes.

Wilson has said she plans to make focused a key component of her gun violence strategy, which she plans to announce next week. But NNSC is not the only consultant the city could choose to contract with to implement focused deterrence, a concept that has been around for decades; Seattle has used versions of focused deterrence off and on since at least 2009, when the city first launched a “drug market initiative” that offered low-level drug offenders the choice of treatment or jail. 

The reason Wilson must hire this specific contractor, Rivera explained, is because unlike “some organizations” King County has partnered with, NNSC “includes law enforcement” by design. King County’s Regional Peacekeepers Collective focuses on preventing gun violence through public health interventions.

Rivera credited NNSC with reducing violent crime in cities including Baltimore, Philadelphia, Stockton, CA, and Chicago. On KUOW this week, she explicitly credited NNSC with reducing gun violence in Baltimore.

But Baltimore, as Rivera surely knows, actually stopped contracting with NNSC after two efforts at reducing gun violence in partnership with that contractor failed to show results. The current, successful model is a more comprehensive approach that includes a type of focused deterrence developed at the University of Pennsylvania, but also “community violence intervention, victim services, improved investigations, and sustained leadership from City Hall,” according to this overview.

It’s unusual, though not unprecedented, for a city council member to insist on hiring a specific contractor for such a large contract. (NNSC facilitated a symposium Rivera convened on gun violence earlier this year.) Rivera has continued to flog the issue, castigating Wilson via press release for telling KUOW that the city needs to be methodical in its approach to gun violence rather than rushing forward with a single “premature, very large investment in an out-of-state organization.”

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Failing to contract with NNSC, specifically, Rivera said, would send a message to “the people of Seattle” that the city doesn’t want to “stop future tragedies.”

Rivera’s resolution passed out of committee 3-0, with Eddie Lin abstaining.

Mayor Wilson

Consultants, New Staffers Fill Out Mayor’s Communications Team

1. Mayor Wilson’s communications office, which has seen a number of shakeups recently (including the recent firing of digital communications manager Amy Piñon and a series of temporary press secretaries), now has a permanent communications director for the first time since Wilson fired her original communications director, Seferiana Day, in June.

PubliCola first reported the new hires on Bluesky yesterday.

Wilson has also hired a new public safety advisor, South Seattle Emerald founder Marcus Harrison Green; Green will report to public safety director Alison Holcomb. (Green says he’s leaving journalism behind to take the gig.) And she has a new city council liaison, Amanda Pleasant-Brown, who was most recently the government relations supervisor for King County Metro.

The council relations position could be more crucial than the mundane title suggests. Wilson has struggled to build relationships with the legislative branch after a rocky start; as we’ve reported, the council felt sidelined and insulted when Wilson’s team failed to consult them on crucial shelter legislation and then tried to order them to pull the bills when they weren’t exactly what the mayor’s office wanted. The previous council liaison has been on extended medical leave since June.

Tara Lee, Wilson’s new communications director, most recently worked for Washington’s health insurance exchange and was previously the comms director for former Gov. Jay Inslee. Prior to that, she was the director of communications and outreach for the Washington Budget and Policy Center, the influential lefty economic think tank.

Wilson is also expected to announce a new press secretary soon. That person hasn’t signed a contract yet, so we’re not including their name here. We are nice, okay?

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2. Crystal Nicole Fincher, whose $58,000 strategic communications contract with the Wilson Administration wraps up this month, isn’t the only outside consultant Wilson has hired in recent months. And while the contracts themselves are all relatively small (especially compared to, say, the six-figure contract former mayor Harrell handed Tim Ceis to lobby Sound Transit before a crucial vote), their details reveal where the mayor and her team perceive gaps that her (until recently, fairly itinerant) staff can’t fill.

Robert Cruickshank, the Mariners-capped Instagram commentator and former Mike McGinn communications staffer, will receive $10,000 to write the mayor’s upcoming budget speech. along with “significant policy speeches on priority topics as assigned by the Communications Director,” according to his contract.

Another former mayoral staffer (for Greg Nickels), Marianne Bichsel, has a one-month contract “to provide strategic communications advice to City leadership and staff on emerging and sensitive issues.” The contract, for an initial $15,000 with a possible extension for $5,000 more, was signed on August 19 and was reportedly for crisis communications related to the fallout after the Bite of Seattle shooting. We’ve reached out to Bichsel and will update this post if we get any additional information.

As we’ve reported, local media and centrist political leaders have hammered at Wilson over her response to the shooting and decision to fire former police chief Shon Barnes, blaming her for decisions SPD made to withhold information from the public for hours after the shooting was over.

Oliver Miska, a political consultant and former campaign manager for 37th District state House candidate Jaelynn Scott, has reportedly also been hired to do social media work for the mayor’s office, although his firm does not appear to have an official contract yet.

The Management Action Center, a lefty leadership coaching firm based in Washington, D.C., has a $7,000 contract to “support a member(s) of the Mayor’s Office team in navigating leadership challenges, strengthening management skills, and developing practical strategies for real-time workplace situations” through biweekly coaching sessions.

The mayor’s office did not respond to our questions about her consultant roster or whether the mayor herself (or another staffer in her office) has been getting management lessons. We’ll update this post if we hear back.

 

City Council, homelessness, Transportation

Saka’s Messy Transportation Bill Gets Messier; Controversial Group We Heart Seattle Makes City’s Official Volunteer Day Roster
Councilmember Rinck wanted to know why Saka gave the council just one day to propose amendments to legislation he hasn’t even formally introduced yet.

1. While much of the city council was on vacation, transportation committee chair Rob Saka apparently spent his two-week summer break padding out his already messy Vision Zero legislation, which is now much longer—but no more substantive—than the draft he introduced as an “information item” in late August.

Saka first rolled out his three draft bills one day before Mayor Katie Wilson issued several substantive executive orders on traffic safety, in what seemed like a clear attempt to get ahead of the mayor’s announcement. (Saka declined to participate in the mayor’s event, which two of his colleagues attended). At his committee meeting on Tuesday, Saka emphasized the fact that his legislation technically came out first.

“I suppose great minds can arrive at some of the same intersections as we appear to have done and aligned on from a legislative and executive perspective, and that’s a good thing. I’m pleased to see additional complementary actions from the mayor,” Saka said. 

But Saka still hasn’t formally introduced his legislation, which remained an “informational item” on Tuesday’s agenda. And his latest draft bills remain almost entirely nonsubstantive, requesting reports from the Seattle Department of Transportation, issuing recommendations on truck side guards to protect cyclists and pedestrians, and giving SDOT the “authority” to do various things that it already has the authority to do. Even sections that appear to require SDOT to produce various reports are essentially just requests, since SDOT does not answer to the city council. (Generally speaking, if the council really wants a department to do something, they pass a budget “proviso” that conditions funding on whatever action the council wants.)

One thing that can be said for Saka’s legislation: It’s definitely longer now, with more statements of purpose than there are letters in the alphabet. Ordinarily, these kinds of statements are known as “recitals” and they occur at the beginning of a bill to establish the purported reasons the legislation is necessary. (See, for instance, the 23 “whereas” clauses used to justify the 2024 ordinance reinstating a ban on “prostitution loitering.”)

But in an unusual twist, Saka is proposing to give each of these individual statements more force by including them in the bill as official findings, which could be used in the future to interpret whether legislation complied with the council’s intent.

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To put this in concrete terms: Saka’s proposal, everything from A., affirming that Vision Zero is “effective,” to Z., stating that 26 percent of streets lack sidewalks, to CC., affirming that the city supports union labor, would have the force of law. Item L., affirming that “Each life lost or constrained due to crashes represents not only loss and grief for affected loved ones but an individual’s unrealized potential,” would be become part of the ordinance itself.

Editor’s note: This story originally said the findings section of Saka’s Vision Zero ordinance—the one with Sections A through CC—would go into the Seattle Municipal Code. In fact, they would become part of the adopted ordinance, but not the municipal code. Findings have more weight than recitals, but less than a law such as a speed limit. We regret the error.

Saka wants to pass his bills out of committee on September 17, which means that even though he hasn’t formally introduced them yet, any amendments are due today. Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, sounding incredulous, said yesterday, “I’ve never seen an amendment deadline for a piece of legislation that has not formally been introduced yet.”

Councilmember Eddie Lin said he would like to hear from SDOT before voting on the bill, but Saka said there was no need. “In fact, it’s pretty standard practice, when we talk about who’s at the table, to have our central staff at the table, sometimes community at the table, but not having the executive branch. This is a legislative effort. This is a legislative effort, I want to underscore,” Saka said. The rest of the council will now have to decide if they want to give Saka his way or put the legislation off until after the budget—or indefinitely.

2. This year’s citywide day of service—rechristened “Show Up, Seattle!”—includes an encampment “cleanup” event hosted by We Heart Seattle, a local group whose founder, Andrea Suarez, regularly teams up with right-wing influencer Jonathan Choe on videos where they harass and shame unsheltered people.

Former mayor Bruce Harrell’s office rejected We Heart Seattle’s initial application to participate in the day of service in 2022, but since then, they’ve gotten the OK every year.

That’s despite a controversial reputation and accusations that they frequently throw away people’s possessions and occupied tents.

In addition to arguing that homeless people “refuse” treatment, Suarez has railed against Narcan distribution and argued for “banning tents” on the grounds that they “enable” homeless people to keep living outside with addiction. (A 2022 story in Willamette Week quoted Suarez saying that giving people food and clean needles amounted to “coddling” a baby in his “crib.”)

The group’s Gresham, Oregon-based co-founder, Kevin Dahlgren, pled guilty last year to identity theft, theft, and misconduct after stealing from at least one unsheltered person as well as the city of Gresham.

We Heart Seattle is currently under a state investigation for allegedly failing to train its volunteer staff on how to properly pick up and dispose of hazardous materials, including needles. Suarez has portrayed herself as a victim of state overreach, using the investigation as an opportunity to fundraise for the group.

A spokesperson for the Department of Neighborhoods, which now sponsors the day of service said We Heart Seattle met the criteria to qualify for its day of volunteerism.So far, just four people have signed up, although don’t be surprised when the group posts—as it did last year—that the city-sanctioned event was a “truly epic” success.

Civil Rights, Mayor Wilson

Investigation Report: Trip to Strip Club on Civil Rights Office Trip Was Sexual Harassment

By Erica C. Barnett

An investigation into complaints against the director of Seattle’s Office for Civil Rights (SOCR), Derrick Wheeler-Smith, found that Wheeler-Smith sexually harassed a male employee by accompanying him to a strip club during a city-sponsored trip to historic civil rights sites in Alabama in 2023.

PubliCola reported on the investigation’s general conclusions in June; two weeks later, we reported on allegations about the strip-club outing. The full investigation report, which PubliCola obtained through a records request, ties those two stories together, confirming that the sexual-harassment finding was related to the strip-club outing.

It also provides additional details about some of the other allegations that the investigators did not believe rose to the level of harassment, including misogynistic and transpobic memes Wheeler-Smith and the employee shared over texts.

The investigation was prompted by a memo from PROTEC17, the union that represents many SOCR employees, containing allegations that Wheeler-Smith and his deputy, Fahima Mohamed, had engaged in discrimination, harassment, and intimidation against civil rights office staff.

“The investigation included a review of OCR employees’ allegations that Wheeler-Smith and/or Mohamed engaged in unwelcome conduct or comments based on religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity” the investigation report says. “However, even assuming all the information provided during the investigation was true, those allegations did not rise to the level of conduct protected by” the city’s rule against discrimination and workplace harassment.

The investigation, which wrapped up in June, found that Wheeler-Smith sexually harassed his male employee, who was also a longtime personal friend, “by taking [the employee] to a strip club on a work trip.” The employee told investigators he didn’t feel he could say no to going to the strip club, given that Wheeler-Smith was his boss. Wheeler-Smith said he only went to the strip club because the employee said he wouldn’t go without him.

Investigators found that the misogynistic texts did not constitute sexual harassment because they were not “unwanted,” and that a change in the employee’s work assignment wasn’t retaliation for comments the employee made about trans women at a group training.

Nor, the investigators found, was it sexual harassment when Wheeler-Smith told a group of staffers a story about accidentally ending up a a swingers’ resort with his wife and being propositioned, or when he gave a toast at a work event that concluded, “May all your ups and downs be in bed,” which some staffers found offensive. (Wheeler-Smith told investigators that by “ups and downs in bed,” he meant getting up in the morning and going to sleep at night.)

Wheeler-Smith sent one of the memes we previously reported on—a fake image of Kamala Harris with bruised knees captioned, “CONGRATS to Kamala on her new promotion! I don’t know how you did it!”—with the message, “This innanet is undefeated.” According to the report, Wheeler-Smith told investigators the message was meant to  “show his distaste for the vile and disrespectful meme,” but his employee said he took the comment to mean the meme was “spot on” and “accurate as hell.”

In another message, Wheeler-Smith sent an X thread by Kanye West that concluded, “WIVES SELL PUSSY FOR LIFE,” saying Kanye was “saying some wild shit but he got a point here.”

A text between SOCR director Derrick Wheeler-Smith and his employee about a trip to a strip club during a civil rights tour of the Deep South

The texts Wheeler-Smith sent the employee also included a meme of a Black woman posting, “My throat hurt but my baby got uniform clothes,” and a screenshot that read, “12 years ago today. my friend Dave came out running and screaming ‘ITS A BOY!!!’ With tears streaming down his face…We never went back to Thailand again.”

According to the investigation, Wheeler-Smith said he exchanged texts with the employee, a longtime acquaintance, out of deference to an elder. “According to Wheeler-Smith, the Black community respected its elder members,” the investigators wrote. “[The employee] was a seventy-year-old Black man. As a result, [the employee] set the tone of their friendship.”

Wheeler-Smith has been on paid administrative leave since March; Mike Chin is currently serving as the second interim director of the department.

PROTEC17, along with the chairs of of the four city commissions SOCR oversees—the LGBTQ,  Human Rights, Disability, and Women’s Commissions—have called for Wheeler-Smith’s removal.

Unlike most department heads, the SOCR director is not an at-will employee. A law passed in 2017 prohibits the mayor from removing the SOCR director except for “just cause.” The provision was meant to shield the office that enforces civil rights laws from political interference and retaliation, but it also makes the prospect of firing the SOCR director challenging and legally fraught.

A spokesperson for Mayor Katie Wilson said the mayor’s office “is completing its review of the investigation report and determining next steps. We expect that process to be complete by early October and can share a fuller update on the outcomes of this process, at that time.”