City Council, homelessness, Mayor Wilson, podcasts, Police

This Week On PubliCola: June 6, 2026

AI use by SPD, doubling taxes for transit, fare gates at light rail stations, and more.

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, June 1

Seattle Nice: How Badly Did Sound Transit Screw Seattle Over?

On the first of three (three!) Seattle Nice podcasts this week, we disdid a deep dive on the Sound Transit board’s decision last week to indefinitely defer the voter-approved light rail extension to Ballard, a stretch that boasts by far the highest projected ridership of any line in the Sound Transit 3 package voters approved ten years ago. Is Ballard light rail doomed? Tune in to get our takes.

Aide to Councilmember Saka Sought Restraining Order Against Constituent

Elaine Ko, the longtime—and now retired—chief of staff to City Councilmember Rob Saka, got so fed up with a rude and persistent District 1 constituent that she sought a restraining order that would prevent him from contacting her about city business. A judge said the man’s behavior didn’t constitute harassment, but not all our readers agreed.

Tuesday, June 2

Wilson Proposes Doubling Transit Sales Tax to Fund Local Bus Service Expansion

Mayor Wilson rolled out a propsal to double the amount of sales tax Seattle residents pay to get extra transit service in the city. In announcing her plan to increase the regressive sales tax, Wilson said she decided not to impose a vehicle license fee on car owners, in part, because she thought it would prove too “controversial.”

Wednesday, June 3

New Federal Guidelines Put Funding for Permanent Supportive Housing at Risk

After a delay that resulted from a legal battle over an earlier proposal, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed new funding guidelines for housing and services for people experiencing homelessness. Local providers and advocates are still discussing the implications of the guidelines, which could restrict funds for permanent supportive housing but appear less restrictive than the earlier, deeply problematic proposal.

Seattle Nice: Is Seattle’s Housing Market In Trouble?

On this week’s second episode of the podcast, we talked to Redfin’s chief economist, Daryl Fairweather, about the recent slowdown of Seattle’s housing market and whether it means renters and home buyers might see some relief on housing costs.

Thursday, June 4

At City Club Event, Mayor Answers Questions Like “Why Isn’t Pizza Cheap Yet”

FOX 13 anchor Han Kim interviewed the mayor at an event sponsored by City Club Seattle, hitting Wilson repeatedly with bad-faith questions and insisting that she respond to delusional claims about homeless people by D-list former reality star, crystal aficionado, and LA mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt.

No More Laissez-Fare: Pilot Program Will Install Fare Gates at Up to 14 Stations

Sound Transit announced a “pilot” project that will add fare gates to as many as 14 light rail stations, citing high rates of fare “evasion” by riders who board trains without paying at ORCA card readers . The proposal would cost between etween $79 million and $88 million, according to staff, and bring in an additional $30 million a year.

Friday, June 5

Investigation Found That KCRHA Director Retaliated Against Staffers Who Complained

An investigation last year found that a “preponderance of the evidence” supports the conclusion that King County Regional Homelessness Authority director retaliated against two former stffers, Edmund Witter and Xochitl Maykovich, after the two voiced concerns about Kinnison’s leadership at a contentious staff meeting last year.

SPD’s Chief Spokesperson Asked AI for Help with Interview Prep, Rewriting Blog Posts, and More

The Seattle Police Department communications director, Barbara DeLollis, used unapproved AI chatbots to produce a number of SPD-related documents, including a “Comprehensive Communications Toolkit for a Police Department Exiting a Consent Decree. The prompts included “a request to rewrite a published blog post to “ake this a better story for the public of a city that doenst liek crime or disorder” (sic).

Wilson Caves on Stadium Surveillance, Two More Cops Allege Discrimination as SPD Settles Earlier Claims for $2.6 Million

Two stories in this week’s late-Friday Fizz. First, Mayor Wilson decided at the last minute to turn on police surveillance cameras around teh stadiums for the upcoming World Cup games, citing unspecified “general but serious” security threats. She has been under intense pressure from conservatives and police to activate the cameras but had pledged she would not do so unless a credible threat emerged.

Second, four female police officers who sued the city over gender discrimination settled with the city for $2.6 million—right around the time that two different officers, a woman and a gay man, filed a tort claim against the department, alleging they were denied promotions due to anti-woman and anti-gay discrimination by Police Chief Shon Barnes.

Saturday, June 6

Seattle Nice: Mayor Wilson Doubles Down on Transit Sales Tax

On the third episode of Seattle Nice this week, we discuss the mayor’s proposal to double the local sales tax that pays for extra bus service in Seattle. The sales tax is regressive, but it’s one of only two options the city has for increasing local transit service. Wilson rejected the other option, a flat vehicle license fee, as risky; her transportation advisor, Alex Hudson, said this week that the fee would cost car drivers too much for what transit riders would get in return.

 

Mayor Wilson, podcasts, Transit

Seattle Nice: Mayor Wilson Doubles Down on Transit Sales Tax

By Erica C. Barnett

On this week’s third (!) edition of Seattle Nice, we have a short but (I think) informative show about Mayor Katie Wilson’s proposal to double a sales tax that funds extra Metro bus service and other transit improvements in Seattle. The tax, current 0.15 percent (or 15 cents on every $100 purchase) would double under Wilson’s plan to 0.3 percent, bringing Seattle’s sales tax one step closer to 11 percent (we’re already the highest in the nation).

Sales taxes are among the most regressive types of tax, because they gobble up a much larger percentage of your income if you’re poor than if you’re rich. Nonetheless, Wilson is pitching the increase as a matter of affordability, since lower-income people are more likely to need reliable, frequent transit service. The increase will add about $29 a year to a typical Seattle resident’s sales tax burden.

(As an aside, I would really love it if transit advocates would stop explaining why transit is a good thing like people aren’t familiar with the concept of “bus.” Every pitch for new spending on transit, for some reason, has to involve a long explanation of the noble people who rely on buses and why they use them—e.g. “the nurse who just wants to get home after 12 hours on the night shift, the single mother who needs to pick up her kids from school, the teacher who needs to be there on time for her kids…” People know what buses are and what they do!)

As we discussed, the city does have another option for funding local transit: A vehicle license fee of up to $60. License fees, too, are regressive, and I made a misstatement on the podcast by conflating flat license fees with more progressive motor vehicle excise taxes, which cost more for more expensive cars.

At a council committee meeting to discuss the proposal this week, Wilson’s senior transportation advisor, former Transportation Choices Coalition director Alex Hudson, said a a $50 license fee would “only bring in an additional 15% more revenue each year and “nearly double that amount of the annual cost for households with only one vehicle, and triple or double the cost to households with two or more vehicles.”

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

Given that the sales tax is supposed to bring in $138 million a year, another $20 million for transit actually seems worth considering, especially since license fees and vehicle taxes represent some of the only revenue sources in which drivers subsidize people who don’t own cars. (Usually, it’s the other way around.)

Last week, Wilson said she decided not to propose the license fee because it was “controversial,” which is more of a (questionable) political call than a policy one. Hearing Wilson’s office argue against a license fee because it would over-burden car owners (especially those with two, three, or seven cars!) was a bit jarring, especially coming at the very beginning of negotiations with the council over what the final ballot measure will look like.

The council will have the opportunity to amend the measure over the coming weeks. At Thursday’s meeting, Councilmember Debora Juarez said she was “offended” by references to “underserved communities” and people of color, who she accused the mayor’s office of using as “props.” She also said she was “not happy with the legislation and I think it needs a lot of work,” then said the mayor’s office was “not living in the real world” because “some people have to drive a car.” Helpful feedback, I’m sure!

discrimination, Mayor Wilson, Police

Wilson Caves on Stadium Surveillance, Two More Cops Allege Discrimination as SPD Settles Earlier Claims for $2.6 Million

1. Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson used unspecified “general but credible threats to safety and security” during the upcoming World Cup games to justify her last-minute decision to turn on more than 20 police surveillance cameras around the stadiums where the games will take place. In a late-afternoon announcement on Friday, Wilson said this information “has persuaded our law enforcement, emergency management, and FIFA security partners that we should be operating at a heightened risk level.”

SPD has staunchly defended the cameras, arguing the footage has already helped police solve crimes. Opponents have argued that the footage is vulnerable to abuse by federal agencies like ICE, vigilantes targeting people who travel to Seattle for reproductive or gender-affirming health care, and police officers themselves.

Wilson’s office told PubliCola won’t keep the cameras on after the World Cup. “Once the games are over and we return to normal safety and security operations, we will turn the cameras off until we make decisions about the original pilot,” a Wilson spokesperson said.

Wilson previously announced that the city would install the cameras, which connect to SPD’s Real Time Crime Center, but not turn them on until her office has had time to evaluate the “pilot” that placed cameras downtown, on Aurora Ave. N., and around 12th and Jackson. The NYU Policing Project just started work on a data and security audit of the police surveillance program.

Earlier this week, Wilson said in an onstage interview that the city already has access to many cameras around the stadium district, including live feeds operated by the Seattle Department of Transportation as well as private cameras operated by businesses, which have historically provided SPD with footage to help them investigate crimes.

2. The city settled a lawsuit filed by four female Seattle police officers who accused former police chief Adrian Diaz of sexual harassment and gender discrimination. The officers—Lauren Truscott, Valarie Carson, Kame Spencer, and Jean Gulpan—will receive a total of $2.6 million, according to a press release from their attorney, Sumeer Singh. Singh now works for Frey Buck, the same firm that once represented Diaz. Last year, PubliCola reported that Buck had ditched Diaz as a client.

“We are happy to see the City of Seattle take accountability for what was a clear lapse in leadership by the previous administration. We hope new leadership will improve working conditions for everyone within the Seattle Police Department, Singh said in a statement.

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

 

3. News of the settlement comes shortly after two LGBTQ+ officers, Anna Fishel and Doug Raguso, filed tort claims against the city, alleging the department discriminated against them and denied them promotions based on their sexual orientation and, in Fishel’s case, her gender.

Fishel, a detective in SPD’s policy unit, said in her complaint that she passed the sergeant’s exam in 2024, rising to number one on the promotion list in 2025, but has been passed over for promotion by five other people since then. During a meeting with Barnes to make the case that she should be promoted as sergeant over her division, Fishel wrote, “I laid out my credentials and experience and my work on the 30×30 initiative,” which established the goal that 30 percent of SPD’s recruit class will be women by 2030.

“I also told him that I am the sole caregiver to my daughter and the only gay female up for Sergeant,” Fishel wrote in her claim. “Despite this, my ranking, and the support of my chain of command, Chief Barnes refused to promote me in place. Instead, he offered me the position of Third Watch Patrol Sergeant,” a position that would have required her to find an overnight caregiver for her child. The position Fishel was seeking went to a straight man, she wrote.

Raguso, a lieutenant, also said he was repeatedly passed over for promotion—including last year, when Barnes removed him as acting captain of Capitol Hill’s East Precinct and reassigned him to the Real Time Crime Center without a promotion. Instead of Raguso, who had worked in the East Precinct for years and was well-liked by many in the city’s historic LGBTQ-friendly neighborhood, Barnes promoted Mike Tietjen and assigned him to head up the precinct.

Barnes’ promotion of Tietjen, which the chief touted on social media, proved controversial: As a lieutenant patrolling the 2020 protest zone around Cal Anderson Park, Tietjen drove onto a sidewalk full of protesters in 2020 and compared them to “cockroaches” as they scattered to avoid his SUV. He was also involved in an incident in which a trans woman accused officers of heckling her and demanding to know what was under her skirt. Barnes eventually removed Tietjen and replaced him with Captain Jim Britt, another straight white man.

An earlier tort claim, by two former command staff members Barnes fired last year, also accused Barnes and members of his team of gender and anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination. Barnes oversaw a dramatic crackdown on nudity at the nude beach at Denny Blaine Park last year. His chief of staff, Alan Ricketts, reportedly blew off concerns about the optics of arresting people sunbathing at the LGBTQ+-friendly beach, telling one of the former command staff members, “we’re not here for the gays.”

Police, public disclosure, Tech

SPD’s Chief Spokesperson Asked AI for Help with Interview Prep, Rewriting Blog Posts, and More

SPD says the communications director only used AI tools a handful of times, and only “to evaluate their utility”

By Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle Police Department communications director, Barbara DeLollis, used AI chatbots that are not approved for city use to compose a sample script for a woman preparing for her first media interviews, to produce a list of “Interesting best practice on-camera ideas for big police Department,”  to produce a “Comprehensive Communications Toolkit for a Police Department Exiting a Consent Decree,” and to to rewrite a published blog post about a nuisance motel on Aurora.

That prompt reads, in full, “hi make this a better story for the public of a city that doenst liek crime or disorder” (sic).

DeLollis used ChatGPT to produce the sample blog post, and Perplexity to produce the other documents, according to records PubliCola obtained through a public disclosure request. The city’s information technology department confirmed that neither program is approved for use by city employees.

Last September, after noticing that a number of the department’s public communications had many of the hallmarks of AI, PubliCola requested “documents detailing all uses of generative AI” for the first nine months of the year by communications staff as well as Police Chief Shon Barnes and his staff.

The Seattle Police Department provided seven documents, all produced by DeLollis, and closed our request. We asked SPD to confirm that they are asserting that Barnes has never used generative AI, and that the seven documents represent every single use of AI by DeLollis and SPD’s entire communications team. They said yes.

However, the records themselves include two AI-generated documents for which SPD did not produce the written prompts that preceded them—an obvious omission of records responsive to our request that raises concerns about whether the documents really represent every use of AI by DeLollis or other staffers.

Last year, an anonymous person filed two complaints ahout SPD’s use of AI with the Office of Police Accountability, citing the apparent use of AI in a bio of Barnes’ chief of staff, Alan Ricketts, a bullet-pointed statement from Barnes about a violence prevention and enforcement effort, and other documents. The evidence in those complaints included a blog post full of passive-voice, AI slop-style sentences such as “On Thursday, we were confronted with a targeted homicide occurring in front of a place of worship.”  That complaint resulted in a supervisor action (essentially, a reprimand).

An SPD spokesperson responded to PubliCola’s nine detailed questions with a statement that read in part: “Last year, a department employee tested various AI tools to evaluate their utility in communication functions like editing, interview preparation, and blog strategy to see if they could offer fresh perspectives.”

The Office of Police Accountability “determined that using AI tools in this way without appropriate acknowledgement was a violation of city policy at that time,” the spokesperson said. “The department does not condone using generative AI to write narratives or communications.”

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

A spokesperson for Mayor Katie Wilson told PubliCola, “Unapproved AI software is now blocked on city devices to ensure compliance with critical privacy, transparency, and records protections. The Mayor expects employees to use these tools in compliance with city policy.”

DeLollis’ prompts are riddled with typos that make them challenging to credit as official SPD work product and sometimes hard to interpret.

For example, in one Perplexity prompt—”Lost thengoala for a daily police blog where uoupost both police actions and responses to 911 callbut also show in compelling ways the other impactand resorts of work that a cutting edge evidencebased department does”—DeLollis appears to be asking the AI to define the goals for SPD’s Blotter blog. (The response, which includes generic advice like “Combining transparency with compelling storytelling and data will build trust while showcasing the full scope and positive impact of a modern police force,” seems less than useful.)

In two other conversations with the Perplexity chatbot, DeLollis appears to be seeking advice for a female employee doing her first media interviews and who, as a woman, tends to overprepare for things. SPD did not respond to our questions about the purpose of these prompts or whether they were on behalf of a specific woman.

“So we know why woken over prepare for media interviews but for our client we want to frame this advice on a positive way to prevent them from feeling negative. Help,” one of these prompts reads. “Frame this in positive way for client who is going to need prep for her first media interviews. Women typically over prepare for research drive reasons. It is t helpful though,” another begins.

The records SPD provided for the latter Perplexity query include an ongoing conversation between DeLollis and the chatbot, including a request for a sample script and two requests for academic research.

Because it’s AI (and AI sucks), Perplexity responded to the prompt about helping a woman avoid over-preparing with a list of reasons why it’s important to prepare. In the second conversation, the chatbot added 23 “sources” that included 10 duplicative links and several posts that were unrelated to the question, including guides for interviewers about talking to women who are researchers or subject-matter experts.

Perplexity also produced two guides for communicating about the end of the federal consent decree. (These are the two documents for which SPD did not include the AI prompts). The first is a series of bullet-pointed lists; the second, mentioned earlier, is more of a media “kit,” with sample op/ed language and social media posts, like this suggestion for a post on X: “We’ve made big changes in how we train, respond, and build trust. Now that we’ve met the federal standards for reform, our work continues—with you.”

In the final prompt, DeLollis asks Perplexity to come up with “Interesting best practice on-camera ideas for big police Department.”

It’s unclear whether DeLollis created the chat prompts from a city of Seattle computer or personal device. Washington’s public disclosure law requires city employees to produce all records that are responsive to a request, including those produced on personal devices or using personal emails or cell phone numbers.

homelessness, public disclosure

Investigation Found That KCRHA Director Retaliated Against Staffers Who Complained

By Erica C. Barnett

An investigation last year found that a “preponderance of the evidence” supports the conclusion that King County Regional Homelessness Authority director retaliated against two former stffers, Edmund Witter and Xochitl Maykovich, after the two voiced concerns about Kinnison’s leadership at a contentious staff meeting last year.

As PubliCola reported in August, staff questioned Kinnison’s decision to hire two white male executives, at salaries of $200,000 each, at the same time that she was proposing to eliminate 22 positions and lay off 13 people, including lower-paid staffers of color, to cut costs. The KCRHA board resolved the complaints against Kinnison last October by hiring an executive coach.

Simon Foster, then the deputy executive, accused Kinnison of hiring white male executives because she believed it would help the agency politically. He accused Kinnison of retaliating against him by reducing his duties. James Rouse, the agency’s former chief financial officer, said Kinnison retaliated against him by directing him not to present a preliminary 2026 budget after he said he didn’t support the proposal.

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

The investigation, by the law firm Haggard & Ganson, did not find that Kinnison retaliated against Foster or Rouse. Foster’s and Rouse’s positions were eliminated last October. The KCRHA never hired another CFO—a decision that has come up recently as the KCRHA’s funders discuss whether to shut the agency down in light of a recent forensic audit that identified major gaps in financil reporting and accountability.

Maykocich, then the KCRHA’s interim chief program officer, accused Kinnison of retaliating against her by working to undermine her application for the permanent CPO position by, among other actions, sending an email to then-deputy director Simon Foster criticizing her job performance just 20 minutes after the meeting took place.

Witter, then the KCRHA’s general counsel, accused Kinnison of retaliating against him by removing him from all employment-related legal work.

Maykovich left the agency in September. Witter’s position was eliminated in the October purge, leaving KCRHA without full-time legal counsel. Kinnison hired one of the two white men at the center of the complaints, former Lake City Partners director William Towey, immediately after the layoffs.

A KCRHA spokesperson declined to comment on the findings.

On Thursday, Maykovich sued her former employer for alleged violations of the state Public Records Act, alleging that the agency illegally withheld records related to the investigation into staff complaints about Kinnison. Maykovich requested “All complaints against Kelly Kinnison” as well as “All emails, notes, and other materials relating to the investigation into Kelly Kinnison.” According to the court filing, the KCRHA produced 22 pages of redacted records and closed the request, which the lawsuit calls “obviously an incomplete response.”

The future of the KCRHA remains up in the air after a forensic audit found widespread financial failures at the agency, including a growing negative balance, widespread accounting errors, and erroneous invoices, among other serious issues. At a meeting of the City Council’s human services committee on Friday, Kinnison and Towey minimized the audit findings, suggesting that they were almost entirely the result of “historical” problems stemming from the agency’s founding.

Kinnison said the agency will seek funding to hire someone into a a “CFO-type role” from the temp staffing agency Robert Half, which charges significant fees on top of their temp workers’ salaries. Kinnison and Towey estimated that the cost of a temporary CFO would be around $500,000—more than twice the salary of the CFO Kinnison laid off last October.

Mayor Wilson

No More Laissez-Fare: Pilot Program Will Install Fare Gates at Up to 14 Stations
From Sound Transit presentation

By Erica C. Barnett

Sound Transit is recommending a “pilot” project that would add fare gates to as many as 14 light rail stations, citing high rates of fare “evasion” by riders who board trains without paying at ORCA card readers. The proposal would cost between etween $79 million and $88 million, according to staff, and bring in an additional $30 million a year by increasing fare compliance rates from a current estimate of 63 percent to 95 percent or higher.

In addition, Sound Transit’s executive director of security and fare evasion Brian de Place said, “There’s been a significant amount of attention, in transit circles at least, around other benefits from fare gates, including increased perceptions of safety [and] lower maintenance costs. And importantly, fare gates also allow the opportunity to de-conflict compliance-related actions that sometimes result in escalations and can put our workers at safety risk.”

In other words: Putting gates between riders and train make it less likely that people will board for free and argue with fare enforcement officers when they get caught.

According to a staff presentation, the pilot stations will likely include every Seattle station between Northgate and the International District, plus Redmond, Bellevue, Lynnwood, and SeaTac Airport. The pilot will exclude stations that are at-grade, largely for technical and safety reasons, Sound Transit principal architect Gavin Schaefer said.

In a “typical passenger journey,” Schaefer said, the “addition of the gates improves our passenger experience by making the transition [into the]” fare paid zone more legible. Currently, Sound Transit uses signs and yellow paint to designate the parts of stations where only paid riders are supposed to go.

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

Although “fare evasion” is typically coded as a kind of illicit turnstile-jumping, a large percentage of people leaving stadium events, like Mariners games, routinely board crowded trains without paying. Both Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson and Pierce County Executive Ryan Mello asked why Sound Transit isn’t proposing fare gates for the stadium station; Wilson also wanted to know how much this middle-class fare evasion contributed to the overall percentage of non-paying riders and whether Sound Transit had considered the impact of long lines for fare gates after sports events.

De Place said Sound Transit hadn’t calculated how many people fail to pay for light rail after stadium events, adding that “we do see people not paying at those times. Adding fare gates at Husky Stadium, where riders descend to the platform, “could actually help with that queuing and crowd control,” de Place added.

Wilson also wanted to know what the break-even ridership level would be if Sound Transit decided not to install fare gates and simply waited for fare payment to rise back toward pre-pandemic levels. “You would probably need to get back to” the pre-pandemic high of around 85 percent, de Place said, an outcome Sound Transit considers unlikely.

Wilson (who once made the case in PubliCola for a business tax to fund free transit) also wanted to know whether Sound Transit would make a more concerted effort to enroll people in its low-income fare discount program, which is open to people making up to twice the $16,000 federal poverty level.  A staffer said fare ambassadors already tell people about the program when they check for payment on the trains, suggesting that the burden for signing people up for reduced fare passes will continue to fall on social service providers.

King County Executive Girmay Zahilay also asked about “unintended consequences” of fare gates in other cities. But unlike Wilson, he praised some of the outcomes the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) has reported since it installed “hardened” fare gates that can trap riders who fail to pay. “They saw, I think it was $10 million in increased revenue, a 41 percent reduction in crime, [and] hundreds if not thousands of hours saved on cleanup time,” The new 7-foot-tall gates were controversial when they were introduced, with some riders calling them “prison-like” and complaining about long backups at the slow-moving new fare checkpoints.