1. Gino Betts, the director of the city’s Office of Police Accountability, will leave his position next month, after two and a half years on the job. According to the official account—released by Mayor Bruce Harrell’s Friday afternoon, shortly after I reported the news on Bluesky—Betts “announced his intention to resign effective December 13” and will be replaced on an interim basis by his deputy, Bonnie Glenn.
Behind the scenes, though, Betts was under heavy fire. Interim police chief Sue Rahr overturned several of his disciplinary decisions and expressed the view that he took too long to complete major investigations, including into former police chief Adrian Diaz, whom multiple women have accused him of sexual harassment, discrimination, and fostering a hostile work environment.
Diaz, appointed in September 2022, has remained on the city’s payroll since May, when Harrell announced he would be stepping down as chief. The Office of Inspector General (OIG), which is overseeing some of the investigations into the former chief, has reportedly sent one, involving allegations that Diaz used his security detail to run personal errands, to Harrell for review.
Harrell appointed Betts and Diaz in July and September 2022, respectively..
Some OPA staff complained that Betts spent too much time investigating relatively minor offenses while slow-walking major investigations like the ones into Diaz and Kevin Dave, the officer who struck and killed 23-year-old pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula almost two years ago. PubliCola confirmed that the OPA finally wrapped up its investigation into Dave last week, but it will likely be weeks before the office recommends any formal discipline for Dave, who has remained employed by SPD since Kandula’s death in January 2023.
Rahr has expressed frustration about the city’s accountability system—telling the city council in July, for instance, that “because the OPA and some of the other other partners have so many investigations going, there’s a pretty significant time lag between when a complaint is made and when it’s resolved. … We have a lot of minor misconduct investigations that are going to OPA, and I have the perception that it’s clogging up the system to be really good. And I would like to see us figure out a way to better distinguish between those two things.
In July, a group of OPA employees delivered an anonymous complaint to several city council members, along with the OIG and Community Police Commission, saying Betts had “ignored and not investigated” complaints against Diaz, including allegations that he used his security detail for personal errands, retaliated against employees who spoke out against him, and discriminated against female employees. The letter, which PubliCola obtained from a source, also accused Betts of creating a “toxic work environment.”
Betts was the fifth director of OPA, which was previously called the Office of Professional Accountability.
PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.
2. As we reported this week, the City Council voted 6-3 to reject a 2 percent tax on capital gains that mirrors the state capital gains tax, which statewide voters overwhelmingly upheld in the November election. Joy Hollingsworth, who voted for the new tax in the council’s budget committee (which includes all nine council members), switched her vote to “no,” dashing progressive hopes that capital gains would be an easy win just as soon as progressive Alexis Mercedes Rinck joins the council.
As I said on this week’s “Hacks and Wonks” podcast, recorded on Thursday before the vote, Rinck will be an advocate for the tax—in stark contrast to the appointed council member she defeated, Tanya Woo, whose husband is the lead trader at an investment firm. But as I also noted, Hollingsworth’s (and Dan Strauss’s) support for the tax was squishy—it’s much easier to take a controversial position when you know a bill won’t pass then cast the deciding vote in its favor.
However, I said I considered it politically risky to switch a vote on something as consequential as a capital gains tax: Council members have to consider their decision carefully and give a solid reason for doing so. Otherwise, they risk looking flaky—look at former council member Andrew Lewis, who voted against arresting people who use drugs in public before voting for it, and ended up losing to his more conservative challenger Bob Kettle anyway.
Apparently, I was wrong on this point—Hollingsworth didn’t give a substantive reason for her vote, instead offering the explanation that the budget committee (that is, the whole council) ended up with a “do not pass” recommendation, with four of nine council members supporting it. If Hollingsworth remains a no on the tax, it’s unlikely to pass.
3. Prior to Thursday’s vote, Hollingsworth dismissed her legislative director, Logan Bowers. (Unlike previous councils, where each legislative assistant typically staffed a different policy area, most of the current council members have slotted their staffers into a hierarchical structure where a “chief of staff” oversees a couple of “directors.”)
Reportedly, Bowers—an extremely online former software engineer who likes to spar with progressives on social media—had a habit of inserting himself between Hollingsworth and other council members in a way that made it unclear whether he was representing Hollingsworth’s views or his own. It’s unclear what incident, if any, prompted his sudden dismissal on Wednesday. Neither Bowers nor Hollingsworth responded to requests for comment.
Bowers, who owns several weed stores with his wife, tried to challenge Kshama Sawant in District 3, the seat Hollingsworth now holds in 2019. He lost in the primary.