Mayors often take on staff from other departments, but Harrell has taken the practice to a new level, with 27 staff on “loan.”
By Erica C. Barnett
On Tuesday, Mayor Bruce Harrell will release a 2025-2026 budget proposal that will likely include significant cuts to close a budget deficit of more than $250 million. As preparation, Harrell asked most departments (except the Seattle Police Department and other public safety departments) to come up with potential cuts of 8 percent. One department that has grown steadily despite the budget shortfall: The Mayor’s Office, which now has 63 staffers thanks to a steady influx of employees on “loan” from other executive departments.
Currently, in addition to 36 people who officially work for the mayor, Harrell’s office includes 27 staffers who are funded by, and technically work for, 16 other departments, but in reality work full- or part-time in Harrell’s office. In some cases, these staffers were working jobs in their previous departments that are no longer being done; their relocation to the mayor’s office represents a direct loss to the departments they left.
Harrell spokesman Jamie Housen said only 13 of the 27 loaned staffers “dedicate 100% [of their] time in performing work assigned by” the mayor’s office, but he did not specify the percentage performed by the other 14.
By way of comparison, an org chart from former mayor Jenny Durkan’s office shows that on September 17, 2019, Durkan had 45 staffers, including nine that were “on loan” from seven departments.
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The 27 loaned staffers include two top executives. Aisha Foster, previously a manager at the city’s HR department, is now Harrell’s Executive Director of Talent Acquisition, and Paul Jackson, Jr., formerly in charge of bridge and structure maintenance at the Seattle Department of Transportation, is now head of Harrell’s Graffiti Programs and Initiatives. Two other employees, from Seattle Public Utilities and Arts, are also on Harrell’s in-house graffiti team. The Unified Care Team, which removes encampments and provides shelter referrals to their displaced residents, includes four mayoral staffers on loan from other departments.
Housen defended Harrell’s liberal use of other departments’ staffers and position funding authority, saying the office “is designed to best deliver meaningful progress for the City and its residents, including how we manage staff and capacity. This can mean bringing on out of class and on-loan employees who have relevant subject matter expertise and operational experience with departments under the Executive and for bodies of work that span across multiple different departments, like the Unified Care Team. These employees often work closely with the departments they are on loan/OOC from as liaisons and advisors to help drive efficiencies.”
Housen said the mayor has the authority to “manage positions within the Executive Branch as to best deliver results for the public.”
A full list of the loaned employees is available here.
Any rumors of potential candidates in next year’s mayor’s race?
If Harrell wants another term, who would have incentive to run?
Allow me, please, to describe Harrell as, for this city, “center-right”. So was Durkan. So was Murray (though nearer the center than his successors). The only mayor we’ve had since I came here in 2006 who could be identified with the local “left” was McGinn (despite his kowtowing to the police).
There’s always someone from the (center-)left taking the other spot in the general election – Murray beat McGinn, Durkan beat Moon, and Harrell beat Gonzalez. I expect the same will be true next year, but the left wing candidate won’t be the best possible, because who with sense would run against both this pattern and an incumbent?
Someone from Seattle’s rightmost edge always runs in the primary and loses. Hayakawa, in 2017. I’m sure this’ll happen next year too, but whoever it is will make Hayakawa look like gold, because Harrell is really quite good enough for the local right, and because, again, nobody with sense will want to get into the race.
There could be a scandal that sticks between now and then and makes Harrell vulnerable, the way CHOP and missing texts were for Durkan and boys were for Murray. But if that happens, Harrell probably won’t even run (just as Murray and Durkan didn’t), and the center-right will produce someone else. In that scenario, candidate quality on the left and right will probably be better, but the result will still be another center-right mayor. And so far, Harrell not only seems not to do scandal, but also to have some teflon keeping his bad ideas from sticking. He could be Greg Nickels come again.
Good analysis.
Compared to Durkan and Murray, Harrel is the first of this string of “center-right for Seattle” mayors to have a huge majority on the council of the same alignment. Now, Seattle has a “strong mayor” system, so I don’t think that matters that much in practical terms. But it means his supporters can’t easily pin the council with blame for any failures or problems, so I’m interested to see how that plays out politically over time.
LMAO at your defining these people as “Center-Right” when they are all Liberal Democrats. Not whackjob Progressives that destroyed Seattle with their permissive, let-the-junkies-ruin-the-town nonsense, to be sure. But definitely not “Center-Right”.