By Erica C. Barnett

Back in May, the Burien City Council voted down legislation that would have imposed new conditions, including time and spatial limitations, on churches that want to host homeless encampments on their property.

The vote itself was a bit of a debacle, with both City Manager Adolfo Bailon and Mayor Kevin Schilling claiming—inaccurately—that the legislation had passed. In fact, it failed on a 3-2-2 vote, with Councilmembers Sarah Moore and Hugo Garcia abstaining and Stephanie Mora and Linda Akey voting no. (Jimmy Matta, Alex Andrade, and Schilling voted yes.)

The bill, with its five pages of pointed “whereas” clauses, was aimed at curtailing encampments like the one former councilmember Cydney Moore helped establish at Oasis Home Church in December 2023, which Bailon and city attorney Garmon Newsom III tried to shut down.

The legislation would have required church-based encampments to be open no more than six months in any calendar year (with a mandatory three-month waiting period before they could host another encampment); required extensive neighborhood outreach and a code of conduct, among other permitting conditions; and mandated large setbacks and view-obscuring fences so that Burien residents would not have to see their homeless neighbors. The proposed ordinance even dictated internal encampment details like mandatory spacing between “tent groups” (a term the bill did not define.)

Fresh off that embarrassing defeat, Bailon wrote an email to council members suggesting that the council members who voted against the bill or abstained from voting had “violated their oath of office to uphold state law” by not voting for the legislation, Moore disclosed at last week’s council meeting.

The email claimed that the ordinance—which imposed conditions on churches beyond those already in effect under state law—was necessary for the city to be “in conformance with an established state law. It is my duty to inform you that votes cast in abstention and opposition to Ordinance 861 (on May 19) are a violation of your oath of office, specifically to the section where you have sworn to uphold the laws of the State of Washington,”

The email, signed by Bailon, concluded, “Please keep in mind your oath of office and duty to Burien and Washington when casting votes in the future.”

Noting that the council has the right to vote however they choose, or abstain from voting, on legislation, Moore said, “for the city manager to claim that I do not have the right to vote as I choose and as I believe serves my constituents, was to question the purpose of me on the council and the council and the ability of any of us to fulfill our duties.”

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Moore then explained her decision to abstain from voting, saying that while she supports having rules on the books regulating church-based encampments, the letter of the law would have made it harder for religious organizations to host homeless people on their properties. In the absence of a local law, the state law regulating such encampments, which includes many requirements but is not as restrictive as the proposed law in Burien, applies.

A King County judge upheld Burien’s total ban on sleeping outdoors in the city last month.

“When I read through the proposed ordinance and discussed it with people who have studied state law and who have established various types of shelter, I came to believe that the ordinance added restrictions that would likely limit the actual ability of churches to help the city address this crisis,” Moore said.

Responding to Moore, Schilling piled on to Bailon’s criticism of the council, saying “what you were elected to do” is vote yes or no, and abstaining for reasons other than a conflict of interest is essentially “saying, ‘I’m not even here.'”

A review of Burien City Council minutes from 2024 and 2025 shows that most council members have abstained from votes in the past, including Schilling. Moore, Andrade, and Matta abstained from votes about rescheduling council meetings; Garcia and Moore abstained on several votes related to Burien’s disputed minimum wage ordinance; and Matta abstained from legislation about electing a deputy mayor and a proposal to reduce the number of times the council must consider legislation in public before passing it. Schilling himself abstained most recently in December, when he declined to vote on a list of 2025 proclamations.