Burien Racks Up Big Legal Bills Defending its Homeless Ban; More Glitches in Seattle’s New Workday Payroll System

1. The city of Burien spent more than $200,000 last year paying a Seattle law firm, Keller Rohrbach, to fight a lawsuit filed by a group of unsheltred people who challenged the city’s ban on sleeping outdoors last year. Keller Rohrbach’s billing statements, obtained through a records request, span 11 months of 2024; they do not include any invoices from this year, which would include preparation for an appearance in King County Superior Court Judge Michael Ryan’s courtroom last month.

The plaintiffs, who were forced to leave an encampment on Ambaum Blvd. in Burien in December 2023, sued to stop an earlier version of Burien’s much-amended ban on sleeping outdoors in the city. The older version of the law made it illegal to “exercise nontransitory exclusive control over any portion of nonresidential public property” but allowed an exemption if no shelter was available in nearby cities, including Seattle. (Burien does not have a year-round emergency shelter).

In January, the city completely banned sleeping or “residing” in the city without shelter at any time of the day or night, regardless of whether shelter is actually available.

Keller Rohrbach billed Burien between $325 and hour and $385 an hour for its attorneys, and $185 an hour for paralegal services. Last year, Burien budgeted $150,000 for outside legal services, a number that increased to $200,000 in the 2025 budget.

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2. Workday, the glitchy HR system the city of Seattle put in place to handle payroll for its 14,000 employees last year, recently began offering vacation time to employees, including interns, who are not eligible for vacation, PubliCola has learned. The time started showing up on the employees’ pay slips, and at least six people used the new option to take time off, the city’s Department of Human Resources confirmed.

The vacation time snafu is reminiscent of another Workday glitch last year, when the system began showing people that they had weeks of available military leave, even though they weren’t in the military.

More serious problems with the new system, which is being maintained by pricey consultants from Deloitte, have included inaccurate paychecks, missing paychecks, vanishing deferred compensation deposits, and inaccurate job classifications for people in temporary positions or working out of class in jobs where they were being paid more than in their regular assignments.

In addition to the vacation issues, Workday recently failed to pay about 300 temporary employees who are ineligible for city benefits and receive premium pay in lieu of those benefits.

A spokesman for the city’s human resources department, Antorris Williams, said the vacation issue resulted from a “Workday configuration” and was fixed on March 13. “A calculation issue in Workday’s setup caused” the premium pay issue for temporary employees, Williams said, and a city team is working to make sure those employees receive pay they’re owed.

The city “continues to address key issues related to Workday implementation to ensure accurate payroll processing,” Williams said. “Paying employees on time and accurately remains a top priority to the City. This large-scale transition has been very challenging, and we know these issues have a real impact on people.”