1. Two weeks ago after PubliCola reported that Police Chief Shon Barnes had picked controversial police captain Mike Tietjen to head up Capitol Hill’s East Precinct, Barnes announced internally that he was removing Tietjen, blaming our “recent article that has raised unease within the East Precinct, leading to a crisis of confidence among our LGBTQIA+ community members.”
As of Thursday, though, Tietjen was still in charge of the precinct, with no clear timeline for replacing him. An SPD spokesperson responded to a list of questions from PubliCola by saying, that “no movement has been made of yet. I do not have a timeline for completion at this time.”
Tietjen has been a high-profile, controversial figure at SPD since at least 2007, when he and his bike patrol partner were accused of planting drugs on a man and arresting him. City investigators later concluded that Tietjen and his partner lied about the arrest (and likely pocketed weed belonging to the suspect). The allegations raised questions about the two men’s credibility in 17 other drug and firearms cases.
More recently, Tietjen became notorious for his actions during the 2020 protests against police brutality after driving onto a sidewalk toward a group of protesters, calling them “cockroaches” when they fled the path of his unmarked SUV. (Tietjen was suspended for that incident and another in which he shoved a protester into a bus stop, slamming their head). During the same period, Tietjen failed to report an incident in which a group of officers, including one who was his direct report, allegedly harassed a trans woman in Capitol Hill, asking her if she “had a dick under” her skirt.
SPD did not respond to PubliCola’s questions about why Tietjen is still at the East Precinct and the process for replacing him.
2. During a recent meeting with restaurant owners at a West Seattle cafe, Mayor Bruce Harrell appeared to commit to considering the reinstatement of the “tip credit” for restaurants or other “exemptions” that could make it less expensive to run their businesses.
Seattle’s minimum wage law, passed in 2015, included a “tip credit” that allowed employers to pay sub-minimum wages as long as their workers made enough in tips to bring their overall “minimum compensation” to the city minimum.
The conversation was overheard by a bystander who provided a brief recording of the conversation to PubliCola. In the recording, Harrell can be heard saying that if reelected, “I fully commit, in January, to convene just restaurants” to discuss “what the city can do, from a policy perspective,” to help them deal with Seattle’s high minimum wage—”whether it’s exemptions, or re-discussion of the tip credit, I’ll have that discussion.”
Contacted by PubliCola, a spokesman for the mayor said, “Rolling back the minimum wage and reinstating the tip credit is not a policy we’re considering now or in the future. The mayor will always meet with small businesses to hear their ideas[.]”
The 2015 minimum wage law, passed unanimously by a city council that included Harrell, gave restaurants and other businesses that rely on customers to pay their workers’ wages through tips 10 years to adjust to the fact that they would have to pay the full minimum wage in 2025. Last year, Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth tried unsuccessfully to preserve the tip credit indefinitely.
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3. Harrell’s proposed budget preserves cuts made last year to the Department of Construction and Inspections’ tenant assistance program, which the city reduced from about $2.4 million to $1.6 million between 2024 and 2025. The tenant services program pays for counseling, legal aid, education, and other assistance to tenants facing eviction or navigating landlord-tenant conflicts. Some of organizations whose city funding was cut or remained flat this year include the Tenants Union, United Indians of All Tribes Foundation, Solid Ground, and the Housing Justice Project, along with half a dozen others.
Harrell’s 2026 budget proposal includes no inflation adjustments, meaning that in real terms, nonprofits whose funding stayed flat will continue to experience reductions in their ability to pay staff salaries and other costs that are funded through SDCI.
In a letter to the city council earlier this month, seven groups that depend on city funding to operate their programs asked the council to reverse the cuts made last year and add more funding to address inflation and augment programs at a time when evictions and homelessness are approaching record highs. The most cost-effective way to address homelessness is prevention, by helping people stay housed,” the organizations wrote. “When rental assistance is paired with tenant services it becomes far more effective, ensuring resources are used efficiently to keep people stably housed.”
Progressive Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck reportedly plans to introduce a budget amendment that would add $1 million to the budget for tenant services, restoring last year’s cut and addressing some of the inflationary cost increases over the past two years.
Last year, then-councilmember Tammy Morales did manage to get $355,000 in the budget to reduce the mayor’s proposed cuts to tenant services, but failed to get support for restoring another $456,000 in cuts. The council is similarly constituted this year, with Rinck, rather than Morales, as the lone consistent progressive on a centrist council focused on boosting the police budget, not helping tenants access legal aid.
We’ve reached out to Rinck about her amendment and will update this post if we hear back.
Did not realize Joy was pushing the tip credit as well. With them it’s always what businesses want, not what workers NEED to afford to live in Seattle.
Yes sir. It’s only for “Small businesses”. Defined as less than 500 employees. Meaning all these elected people from the Mayor on down to the Bruce supporters on the city council. Voted to rob the Jumpstart voter approved funds $309 million for cops and surveillances. 45% raise in 5 years got installed already. They want more. A lot more. All the loyal quitters during Covid and got paid doing nothing got massive raises. Retroactive! So they got raises sitting at home!
These people need to go my friend.
What none of these galaxy brains understand is that high wages and high operating costs are both rooted in high rents…employees have to pay rent just as business owners do and few of them own the spaces they use. So some mechanism that captured a portion of the rents — ground rent, land value tax — might lower the costs for business on two fronts, rent and payroll, while allowing working people to live a little better.
“Landlords grow rich in their sleep without working, risking or economizing. The increase in the value of land, arising as it does from the efforts of an entire community, should belong to the community and not to the individual who might hold title.” John Stuart Mill
I don’t see it happening in a propertarian city like Seattle, but the proof is all around us. Seattle was 84 sq miles in 2000, just as it is now, but since then 150,000 people have moved here, many of them making wages far beyond the dreams of the people who start and run local businesses. Housing costs have little to do with the house itself but the value of the land under the houses and other buildings. And the fact that a skyscraper with thousands of workers pays the same property tax rate as a homeowner will never make sense.
“Like a flash it came over me that there was the reason of advancing poverty with advancing wealth. With the growth of population, land grows in value, and the men who work it must pay more for the privilege.” Henry George