City Council, Mayor Wilson

In First Shakeup, Mayor Wilson Gets New Chief of Staff After Conflict With Council Over Shelter Legislation

By Erica C. Barnett

Mayor Katie Wilson told her staff this morning that she’s removing Kate Brunette Kreuzer from her position as chief of staff and replacing her, on an interim basis, with Esther Handy, the former head of City Council Central Staff who is currently one of six “executive operations managers” overseeing several city departments. Kreuzer is moving to a “special projects” role, according to an email that went out to mayoral staff this morning, and “will continue to hold our Intergovernmental affairs work.”

The decision, announced to mayoral staff this morning, comes after months of deteriorating council-mayor relations. According to sources in both branches, Kreuzer’s style rubbed some council members and staff the wrong way. (At a recent after-work event at a bar near City Hall, people said they heard her declaring herself a “dictator.”)

In an email to staff this morning, Wilson wrote, “While I understand change can be unsettling, I want to assure all of you of that it is common for a new administration to refine its internal staffing roles. Being open to new ideas coupled with an honest assessment of what might need adjustment is key to good governance. I strive to be as transparent as possible through this process, and I value your ongoing input as we move through it together.” 

Recently, after Wilson’s office asked the council to pull a bill allowing larger tiny house villages because the mayor didn’t like some of the amendments, Kreuzer and two other Wilson staffers met with councilmembers and, according to several council sources, directed them to pull the bill and make the changes.

That went over like a ton of bricks—the council and mayor are separate branches of government and councilmembers do not answer to the mayor—and the meeting reportedly erupted into shouting. The council ended up passing the bill, with the amendments, the following day, but only land use committee chair Eddie Lin thanked the mayor. Several alluded to a lack of “collaboration” on the three bills that made up Wilson’s shelter package.

But tension between the council and the mayor, or at least her staff, had been building for a while, with Kreuzer reportedly one of the sources of conflict. The shelter legislation, for example, was fraught from the beginning because Wilson did not work with the council in advance to identify a sponros or decide which committees to send the three bills through. The council had to pick up the ball, and newcomer Dionne Foster volunteered to sponsor the bill that Wilson’s team told the council they needed to amend at the last minute.

Prior to joining the mayor’s office, Kreuzer was the director of external affairs at the environmental group Futurewise and the 2017 campaign manager for Jon Grant, who ran for city council twice. Grant is now Wilson’s chief advisor on housing and homelessness.

According to the mayor’s email, there are more changes coming to the mayor’s office org chart, including the previously planned departures of Edie Gilliss and Jen Chan, Wilson’s directors of Mayor’s Office Operations and Pipeline and director of city operations, respectively. Both will leave in early July as previously announced.

“Esther will continue the process already underway to assess and make recommendations related to our staffing capacity and team structures,” Wilson wrote.

public safety, Taxes

Seattle Considers Using Special Fire District Tax to Close Budget Deficit
Photo by Joe Mabel, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson and the City Council are discussing whether to close a nearly $150 million budget shortfall by moving much of the Seattle Fire Department’s budget out of the city’s general fund by creating a special fire district, which—if approved by voters—could levy additional property taxes, freeing up hundreds of millions of general budget dollars for other purposes.

Wilson’s office confirmed that they are working with the fire department on a potential fire district, saying the city can no longer rely on the usual budget tricks or cuts alone to address a $175 million deficit  next year, which amounts to about 10 percent of the city’s general fund. “The gap is far too large to address with the kinds of temporary fixes that have been used in the past, and closing this deficit with cuts alone would require reductions in critical services and substantial layoffs across departments,” a spokesperson for Wilson’s office said. “Half of the general fund goes to public safety and human services, so there are no easy solutions here.”

A fire district would also be a way to raise revenues while steering clear of a state-imposed cap on local property tax levies that limits local levies to $3.60 per $1,000 of assessed value. The city is quickly running up against that limit.

In a press release Wednesday night, the Seattle Firefighters Union said the union “is currently evaluating the mayor’s plan.” Union president Kenny Stuart did not return a call seeking comment.

The spokesperson called a fire district one “potential path forward to stabilize SFD resources while also protecting other public services. … We have been working closely with SFD Chief Scoggins as well as the leadership of Local 27 to see if we can find a path forward that balances varying needs around revenue, public safety, and good governance.”

Prior to this year, Seattle had the authority to set up its own fire district, but there was no benefit to doing so: Any taxes the district levied would have to be offset by a reduction in other property taxes. The state legislature changed the law governing fire districts this year to give Seattle the authority to levy taxes (or a fee called a “benefit charge”) outside the existing property tax cap—meaning that the city could increase taxes without bumping up against the $3.60 limit.

“It’s just additional revenue flexibility and authority,” said Candice Bock, government relations director for the Association of Washington Cities, which supported the legislation. “Cities have to fund everything within their existing property tax levy authority, and this … creates more capacity.”

Wilson has asked all city departments, including the Seattle Police Department, to come up with potential cuts ranging from 3 to 5 percent of their budgets to close a deficit created in part by “structural issues”—costs, including labor, are growing faster than city revenues—and in part by her predecessor Bruce Harrell’s decision (supported by the city council) to pile on tens of millions in new spending every year, including a $100 million spree in the 2025 budget.

The fire department’s budget is around $350 million. Moving even half that amount into a new fire district would close next year’s budget deficit. However, that would also mean that funding for some of the city’s most basic public safety services—protecting residents from fires and responding to emergency calls—would be put to a periodic public vote. Seattle already uses local levies to fund its libraries, parks, and transportation system, but putting fire services up to a public vote would put the city on a potentially risky limb.

“Cities will have to continue to figure out a way to fund it if voters don’t like this option,” Bock said.

If the city puts the fire district plan on the ballot this year and it passes, the district will be a separate government entity under the direct control of the city council, which would act as its board of directors—similar to the way the council serves as the governing board for the city’s Park District, which oversees parks levy spending.

Elections, Media

Elections Complaint Targets Conservative Podcaster Brandi Kruse and Let’s Go Washington
Screen shot from a recent “unDivided” video titled ‘TRANS DEMANDS”

By Erica C. Barnett

A group called Washingtonians For Ethical Government filed a complaint against Let’s Go Washington and right-wing influencer Brandi Kruse on Tuesday, claiming that the conservative PAC failed to disclose in-kind contributions from Kruse, who has spent hours advocating for LGW’s latest ballot initiatives on her podcast and spoken at their rallies as a supporter.

Let’s Go Washington, which is financed by hedge-fund investor Brian Heywood, has two initiatives on this year’s November ballot.

The first would ban trans girls from participating in children’s sports. The second would give parents the right to inspect all their children’s school records, including notes from mental health counseling sessions, among other new rights. Opponents say the latter initiative would make it dangerous for kids to confide in counselors about problems at home, reveal that they’re LGBTQ+, or ask about reproductive health care.

The second would expand the so-called “parents’ bill of rights,” a Heywood initiative the state legislature passed with some alterations last year, to give parents unfettered access to their children’s school records, including counseling and medical records that might reveal whether a student was LGBTQ+ or asked a school staffer about birth control or abortion.

The complaint centers around Kruse’s activities in favor of the initiative, which WEG says constitute contributions to the campaign that need to be reported on campaign finance reports. The group has tallied up 159 incidents in which they say Kruse engaged in “political advertising” for the initiatives, calculating their value at between $345,000 and $1.25 million based on estimated ad rates for Kruse’s podcast and the reach of her social media posts.

Pam Stuart, the spokeswoman for Washingtonians for Ethical Government, said at a press briefing Tuesday that the difference between editorial advocacy and advertising is that people get paid to advertise specific products. Kruse’s “unDivided” podcast is sponsored, in part, by Project 42, a Heywood-funded group that pays Kruse to cover certain topics.

“If I were a sign maker… [and] I were to make signs for Let’s Go Washington and give them to them, I would have to file [that as] an in-kind donation, because I’m taking the services that I normally get paid for in my daily job, and I’m donating those to influence people to vote a certain way,” Stuart said.  “As a paid online influencer, Ms. Kruse is donating her online influencing services to this particular cause.”

Unlike sign makers, some journalists do support specific issues and causes.  Stuart said Kruse is no longer a journalist, but acknowledged that deciding who counts as a journalist and who is a mere “online influencer” can be a slippery slope. PubliCola, for example, primarily produces traditional journalism, but we also have values and a point of view that’s reflected in much of our coverage; we also publish opinion pieces that are clearly labeled as such. It feels obvious that what we do is journalism, while Kruse’s activities (including her widely mocked participation in a Trump praise circle at the White House) are not. But does that make her advocacy against trans children and kids’ privacy advertising rather than editorial commentary?

Stuart said that’s for the Public Disclosure Commission to decide,. “According to the PDC, advocacy tends to become in kind donations when three things occur: The speaker or the person doing the work normally charges for that service. … the content promotes or opposes a candidate or ballot measure,” and the person doesn’t receive any payment, she said.

” I think the difference is: Is this really just her expressing an opinion, or is this really a coordinated effort with a campaign?”

Kruse has gone back and forth about whether she is a journalist or, as she put it repeatedly on X, “not a journalist.” In an email Kruse forwarded to the media on Tuesday, she accused Washingtonians for Ethical Government of attacking the First Amendment, and appeared to threaten to sue them for defamation and slander.

“I have never received any form of funds or contribution—undisclosed and unreported or otherwise—from Let’s Go Washington,” Kruse wrote. “The claim that I have violated state disclosure law is therefore false and defamatory as a factual matter, and further ignores that state law explicitly makes clear that political commentary and editorials do not constitute political advertising.”  

“Tread very carefully,” Kruse wrote.

homelessness, King County, Mayor Wilson

Mayor Says KCRHA’s Initial Response to Audit Findings “Did Not Adequately Address My Concerns”
KCRHA CEO Kelly Kinnison

By Erica C. Barnett

Mayor Katie Wilson told PubliCola she is dissatisfied with the King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s five-page response to an April 22 letter, sent jointly with King County Executive Girmay Zahilay, directing the agency to come up with a written plan to address five “high-risk” findings from a recent forensic audit.

KCRHA’s response, Wilson said, “did not adequately address my concerns regarding management of City funds, particularly regarding invoicing problems and negative cash balances. All options remain on the table as we await KCRHA’s full corrective action plan.”

The audit found that the KCRHA could not account for $8 million in public funds, and had overspent its administrative budget by $4 million; on top of that, the homelessness agency owes King County around $1.26 million in interest on loans that is not covered by its current budget. Wilson and Zahilay gave the agency until last Friday, May 8, to provide a written plan, including:

“A strategy with a detailed timeline outlining how the KCRHA is going to address issues related to unreconcilable and unrecoverable cash”—the entire $13 million;

“Details of immediate action” to ensure that reimbursements for KCRHA employee spending is pre-approved and documented. According to the audit, there were a number of odd-looking reimbursements, including more than $9,000 in lodging costs for an interim chief financial officer, that weren’t explained, and in general, reimbursements “did not have necessary approval and/or supporting documentation as required by governing policies”;

Immediate actions to ensure gift cards distributed to homeless people during the “point in time count,” which now consists of interviews and a data analysis, are documented and tracked, which they have not been in the past;

A plan to ensure “segregation of duties” for expenditures. Currently, the same person can approve an expenditure, make changes in the KCRHA’s accounting system, and verify that an expenditure was appropriate; and

Actions the agency is taking to control employees’ use of cash-equivalent “purchase cards,” which the audit found have been used by various employees for purchases that weren’t clearly documented, making it difficult or impossible to know if they were legitimate.

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The KCRHA’s response, signed by strategic director William Towey, continues to blame many of the agency’s financial shortcomings, including its ongoing negative balances and the “missing” $8 million, on the fact that it operates on a reimbursement model, meaning that the agencies pays nonprofit homeless service providers before its funders—the city and the county—reimburse them, resulting in periodic negative balances. The audit found that this model doesn’t account for the KCHRA’s financial problems; since it came out, the KCRHA went tens of millions more into the red.

In the letter, Towey also said the KCRHA is working to address other issues flagged by the city and county, by tightening expense reporting rules, working to segregate staff duties to the extent possible, requiring better documentation of purchase and gift cards, and reconciling the budget to address the outstanding $8 million balance, which the auditors said may have to be “written off” if KCRHA can’t account for it.

After a representative from the auditing firm, Clark Nuber, presented their findings to the KCRHA’s governing board late last month, many board members and other elected officials began talking about “winding down” the embattled agency rather than working through all the issues the auditor identified, a process that could cost a million dollars or more and take as long as a year to complete.
“My highest priority as mayor is to bring people inside by rapidly expanding shelter and emergency housing with wraparound services,” Wilson said. “All options remain on the table as we await KCRHA’s full corrective action plan.” That plan, which is supposed to address the remaining audit findings, is due on May 23.
Contacted on Friday, Zahilay’s office said his office and the county’s Department of Community and Human Services “are closely reviewing the letter to ensure the corrective actions meet our expectations. We continue to engage with the King County Council, City of Seattle, KCRHA Governing Board, partner cities, and service providers to gather all the facts and work together on a planned and deliberate path forward without disrupting critical services for people living unsheltered.”

City Council, Mayor Wilson, podcasts

Seattle Nice: Mayor-Council Conflict and a Data Center Moratorium

By Erica C. Barnett

This week on Seattle Nice, we discussed tensions between Mayor Katie Wilson’s office and members of the City Council, whose frustration with a lack of collaboration between the second and seventh floors of city hall erupted last week when a Wilson staffer asked the council to hold off on passing a bill to implement the final part of Wilson’s shelter surge plan.

As I reported, Wilson was apparently unhappy with some of the amendments councilmembers proposed and wanted the council to change them.  The council—already irritated that Wilson sent them the shelter bills without first securing a council sponsor and trying to elicit support—was not pleased that the mayor seemed to be ordering them around, and after a reportedly heated meeting between countil members and three Wilson staffers, the council passed the legislation, which Wilson had asked to be expedited as an “emergency” bill, with the (relatively minor) amendments intact.

The tension, Sandeep pointed out, has been brewing since well before the latest conflict; when Wilson fired former City Light director Dawn Lindell, some councilmembers were sensitive to union complaints and excoriated the mayor for what they called a rash decision. Just yesterday, Councilmember Bob Kettle took up that torch again during a discussion about a proposed one-year moratorium on data centers, saying, “We had top notch leadership with Seattle City Light, and this is a failure of our city right now.”

And speaking of data centers, our second segment is all about whether saying no to companies that want to build massive data centers to power AI is a good idea.

Sandeep argued that if Seattle doesn’t embrace the AI future, we may fall behind economically and turn into a hollowed-out shell of a city, like Rust Belt cities did in the 1980s. David some economists claim AI could help solve the affordable housing crisis and doesn’t want to dismiss possibilities like that out of hand. And I, as the resident Luddite, argued that we shouldn’t hitch our entire economy (and the future of our climate) to technology most people don’t like or want.

FYI: Seattle Nice Patreon donors got an early preview of our show this week. Supporting Seattle Nice gets you access to some of our episodes a day before they go out on the regular feed, along with occasional Patreon-only exclusives and the knowledge that your contributions go directly toward making Seattle Nice for you every week, including paying our editor, Quinn Waller.

Courts, homelessness, Mayor Wilson, Media, Transit

This Week on PubliCola: May 9, 2026
Sound Transit’s four Seattle representatives: Katie Wilson, Dan Strauss, Girmay Zahilay, and Teresa Mosqueda.

Cops burn through sick time, county official accused of stalking must wear GPS monitor, Sound Transit announces “affordable” ST3 alternative, and much more.

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, May 4

Audit: Retiring SPD Officers Routinely Burn Through Months of Sick Time, Costing City Millions Each Year

An audit by the city’s Office of Inspector General shows that retiring Seattle police officers routinely hoard sick leave and use it all at the end of their careers, allowing them to accumulate full pay for those days (which would otherwise “pay out” at 25 percent of an officer’s salary) without providing evidence that they’re actually sick. The pervasive practice costs the city millions of dollars a year.

Tuesday, May 5

County Council Launches Action to Address Homelessness Authority’s Financial Issues

The King County Council is asking King County Executive Girmay Zahilay to conduct an assessment of the the King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s forthcoming “corrective action” plan responding the issues identified in a recent forensic audit, and produce a report on “whether the county should continue, amend, or terminate its participation” in the interlocal agreement that created KCRHA.

After “Cavalier” Social Media Posts, Judge Says County Assessor Accused of Stalking Must Wear GPS Monitor After All

King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson tried to convince a judge that PubliCola’s coverage of stalking allegations against him, which he characterized as unfounded opinions on a “personal blog,” was to blame for the negative reaction to his social media posts gloating that he had convinced a judge that he couldn’t wear an ankle monitor. The judge didn’t buy it, and said he’d have to wear a GPS monitor after all.

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No Wonder the Pundit Class Can’t Stand Her: We Discuss the Mayor’s “Gaffes,” Shelter Buffer Zones, and the KCRHA’s Financial Plight

On this week’s episode of Seattle Nice, we debated whether Mayor Katie Wilson is, as many pundits have recently argued, a “gaffe”-prone buffoon, or if she’s just saying things they don’t agree with. We also discussed a proposal (later withdrawn) to require shelter-free “buffer zones” around parks, child cares, and schools, and we talked about the fallout last week from a forensic audit of the regional homelessness authority.

Wednesday, May 6

Council Committee Approves Larger New Shelters Amid Cloud of Mayor-Council Conflict

A growing rift between the City Council and Mayor Wilson exploded (almost) into the open this week, after Wilson staffers made what many councilmembers and staff described as an inappropriate request to pull the mayor’s legislation to allow larger shelters because she was unhappy with some council amendments. At a meeting the afternoon before the vote, Wilson’s staff reportedly seemed to think they could tell the council, a separate branch of government, what to do.

Thursday, May 7

The Gaffe Faff: Wilson isn’t Misspeaking. She’s Delivering.

In his latest Maybe Metropolis column, Josh Feit takes a swing at pundits who are aghast that Mayor Wilson is openly supporting lefty priorities like taxing the rich and painting bus lanes. These things only seem like “gaffes,” Josh writes, to people in denial that Seattle willingly elected a socialist who ran on the exact progressive agenda she’s now espousing.

Friday, May 8

The C Is for Crank: The News About Sound Transit Is Grim. Why Are Most Seattle Politicians Pretending It Isn’t?

In my column, I wonder why elected officials from Seattle are playing nice about the latest Sound Transit 3 plan, which defers stations in Seattle (including Graham Street in the Rainier Valley, first promised in 1999) and cuts the entire Ballard line, at least until savings and “new revenue” (i.e. bonds regional taxpayers will still be paying back in the 22nd century) can be found.