State Rep Says Inclusionary Zoning Near Transit Will Prevent Displacement, SPD General Counsel Filed Initial Complaint Against Laughing Cop

1. State Rep. Julia Reed (D-36), who’s sponsoring legislation (HB 2160) that would mandate on-site affordable housing in new developments near some transit stops in exchange for modest increases in density, spoke with PubliCola last week about her bill, which we called a “timid transit-oriented development bill” compared to last year’s more ambitious proposal.

Reed’s bill would allow low-density multifamily housing within a quarter mile of officially designated bus-rapid transit stops (like the RapidRide in Seattle), and larger apartment buildings within a half-mile of rail stations—a smaller radius than last year’s transit-oriented development bill, which would have allowed greater density in more areas that are not currently dense. Reed said she fought to widen the geographic scope of the bill and to include bus stops with frequent service, as opposed to official BRT routes, but was shot down. “I’m one vote out of 98,” she said.

As with last year’s bill, which  died shortly before the end of session, Reed’s proposal wouldn’t impact areas that are already dense.

In addition to enabling some transit-oriented development, Reed’s is also an inclusionary zoning bill—for every new housing development near transit, the bill would require 10 percent of units be affordable to low-income people. Developers oppose such mandates, arguing that they prevent housing from being built. Low-density buildings like row houses and fourplexes, for example, would have to have one affordable unit each, which developers have said would require them to make the market-rate units too expensive to rent or sell.

Reed disputes this. “I think it’s curious that affordability is always held up as the killer of development and never interest rates, or labor costs, or material costs, or the fees that cities themselves are charging on top of development regulations,” Reed said. “I’ve asked them to work with us on a compromise that ensures that we will have some affordability built in and they haven’t been willing to present one.”

2. In response to a records request, PubliCola has received a copy of the initial complaint against Seattle Police Officers Guild vice president Daniel Auderer, caught on body camera footage laughing and joking about the killing of pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula by a speeding officer, Kevin Dave, last January. The complaint, submitted on August 2 by SPD general counsel Rebecca Boatright, confirms (again) that Auderer’s claim to have proactively “self-reported” himself to the Office of Police Accountability, filing a request for rapid adjudication of the case, was false.

Jason Rantz, a conservative commentator for KTTH radio, first reported Auderer’s self-serving version of events as a so-called “Rantz exclusive,” saying Auderer filed a complaint against himself before anyone else could because he feared his comments would be “taken out of context to attack the Seattle Police Department (SPD).” Rantz never corrected his inaccurate reporting, which was regurgitated by right-wing media around the country.

Boatright became aware of Auderer’s shocking comments, made just hours after Kandula was struck and killed by SPD officer Kevin Dave while Kandula was walking in a marked and lighted crosswalk, from another SPD employee reviewing video footage from that night. Boatright’s complaint, filed at 11 am on August 2, quoted Auderer’s side of the conversation with Solan, in which he said “She [Kandula] is dead,” then laughed and, responding to something Solan said, added: “Yeah, just write a check. $10,000 – she was 26 anyways, she had limited value” before laughing again.

“These allegations, if proven, would violate” SPD’s policy on professionalism, Boatright wrote.

Dozens of other people, including the Consul of India in San Francisco, filed complaints against Auderer, which were rolled into Boatright’s initial complaint. That complaint is still pending.