By Erica C. Barnett
1. Legislative assistants for City Councilmembers have voted to unionize, filing a petition for recognition with the state Public Employee Relations Commission last week. The filing means that organizers have collected signatures from more than half the 30-plus employees who would be represented by PROTEC17 if the effort is successful.
Historically, Seattle has treated the legislative branch as a lower-value institution than the mayor’s office and the executive-branch departments. City Council members themselves make far less than the mayor and many department directors: a majority of councilmembers earn around $165,000 a year, compared to $272,334 for the mayor, $373,000 for the police chief, and $530,000 for the head of Seattle City Light.
Pay disparities between legislative assistants have also grown significantly since council members instituted more hierarchical office structures starting around 2024. That was the year that five newcomers joined the council (thanks to appointments and elections, several more have joined since then) and Sara Nelson, defeated by Dionne Foster last year, became council president. Suddenly, legislative assistants had fancy internal titles like “Chief of Staff” and “Director of External Relations.” (One result of these new, unofficial titles is that nearly everyone on a typical three-person council staff is a “Director” or “Chief” of something, and almost no one is a mere council staffer.)
The new titles solidified (and may have worsened) the pay structures that already existed between junior and senior staff. The wage gap between the highest- and lowest-paid legislative has grown pretty dramatically over the past several. For instance, the lowest-paid LAs currently make around $38 an hour, while the highest-paid LAs make around $68 an hour—a 79 percent gap. Back in 2019, according to city wage records, the lowest-paid LAs typically made about $28 an hour while the highest-paid made around $44 an hour, a 57 percent gap.
City council members themselves get to divvy up their own staff budget, which may contribute to pay disparities between offices as well as people within each office. Woe betide the staffers going through the revolving door at a council office where the chief of staff is the council member’s best friend!
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2. During a presentation on the Seattle Police Department’s plans for responding if federal troops or ICE descend on Seattle, Councilmember Bob Kettle took a moment to observe—rather preemptively, when it comes to how SPD will respond to a hypothetical ICE incursion—that SPD is sometimes unfairly maligned for appearing to take one side or another during protests, and to assure Police Chief Shon Barnes that the council knows this is frequently a misrepresentation based on a single photo taken out of context.
Kettle said “let’s put Cal Anderson to the side”—a reference to SPD’s over-the-top response to a counterprotest against a far-right rally on Capitol Hill—and focus on “what can we do that shows that you’re looking to support the rights of Seattleites, and it’s not being something that may visually look one way or the other?” (Kettle said the Cal Anderson protest, at which police collaborated with security for an anti-LGBTQ group and referred to protesters as “transtifa,” will be the subject of an upcoming committee meeting.)
Barnes agreed that social media videos and the press misrepresent SPD’s actions at protests. “[P]erception sometimes is people’s reality,” he said. “And you know, one photo of your back turned to the wrong person could give the impression that we are supporting one side or the other. In regards to your question, when it comes to protests, we are neutral in the protests, and we don’t take sides. … I want to make it clear, that we do not, support federal immigration enforcement at any time. We’re there to keep the peace. If we have to talk to people, that doesn’t mean that we are on their side… and we’ll try to explain that, should that one second clip or photo be given to the community.”
As for the recommendations from the city’s Office of Inspector General, which included many proposals SPD has promised, then failed, to implement in the past, in the past, Barnes said they’re on it. “We have a captain that will be implementing those things,” he said.
