Many common trees, the Muckleshoot Tribal Council’s letter noted, will reach 12 inches’ diameter within a couple of decades. “”This not a standard to determine whether a tree was a tree that was historically modified by native people in the Seattle area.” Image via City of Seattle.
By Erica C. Barnett
The Muckleshoot Tribe came out strongly this week against a proposal from City Councilmember Alex Pedersen that would require state approval for the removal of any tree larger than 12 inches in diameter. The new regulation is necessary, according to Pedersen, to ensure housing developers aren’t destroying trees that were culturally modified by indigenous people before Seattle was developed.
“Most trees will become more than 12 inches in diameter in 20 to 30 years,” the letter, signed by Muckleshoot Tribal Council chair Jaison Elkins, says. “This not a standard to determine whether a tree was a tree that was historically modified by native people in the Seattle area.”
Pedersen, who has frequently used “tree protection” to justify proposals that limit housing density in single-family neighborhoods, said this latest proposal was necessary to protect culturally modified trees, or CMTs, which include trees whose branches were bent to mark important locations. Earlier this year, the developer agreed to reduce the number of units in a housing project in northeast Seattle in order to preserve a large Western red cedar tree the state designated as a CMT after consultation with the Snoqualmie Tribe.
“Rather than enacting this proposed bill, the City Council instead, should fund and the City hire professional archaeological staff as the other major cities in the State of Washington have done. This would be a better, and more effective and efficient way of assuring that cultural resources in the City are not adversely impacted.”
Noting that Pedersen’s proposal was limited to trees, Elkins said it “does not deal with the fundamental problem of the City’s failure to meaningfully deal with potentially impacted cultural resources of all types. The bill also seeks to prevent the City from carrying its duties by, instead, relying on a state agency that has no obligation to do the City’s work.” As we reported last week, the state Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation (DAHP) says it does not have the capacity to examine every medium- and large-diameter tree slated for removal in Seattle to see if it was culturally modified in the past.
“Rather than enacting this proposed bill, the City Council instead, should fund and the City hire professional archaeological staff as the other major cities in the State of Washington have done,” Elkins wrote. “This would be a better, and more effective and efficient way of assuring that cultural resources in the City are not adversely impacted.”
DAHP director Allyson Brooks told PubliCola last week that reviewing potentially thousands of trees in Seattle for cultural significance “doesn’t seem realistic—what I told [the city] was, you need a city archaeologist,” not a law passing the responsibility on to a state agency, she said.
A memo from City Council central staff notes that the new requirement “is likely to be administratively burdensome for [the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections], DAHP, and affected Tribes. It could also lengthen permit processing times and increase costs for applicants.”
During the city council’s meeting on Tuesday, Pedersen said he had seen the letter from the Muckleshoot Tribe and that the city’s Office of Intergovernmental Relations “was engaged” with the tribe.
Elkins did not respond to a request for an interview, and Pedersen did not respond to questions about his proposal, which he will have to formally introduce next week for the council to consider it before the end of the year.
A crane against Seattle’s downtown skyline. A new audit spotlights concerns from city employees about potential conflicts of interest and preferential treatment at the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections. Photo by Joe Mabel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Erica C. Barnett
Earlier this year, the Seattle city auditor released a report that raised serious concerns about ethics and culture at the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections, which issues building and construction permits, conducts most of the inspections associated with building and construction, and enforces the city’s landlord-tenant laws, including the rental housing inspection ordinance, among many other responsibilities.
The audit, conducted at the behest of City Council land use committee chair Dan Strauss, was supposed to focus on the byzantine permitting process itself—a frequent source of complaints from developers and homeowners trying to keep projects on schedule.
But as the auditors talked to SDCI employees, they kept hearing similar concerns about potential ethical issues within the department: Managers with second jobs advising developers on the permitting process in nearby cities. Supervisors who pushed employees to approve or expedite projects for big developers, particularly those represented by the Master Builders Association, while allowing smaller projects to languish. Employees with spouses, children, and other close relatives working in the department—including at least one whose family owns multiple rental properties across the city.
In all, about 30 percent of the people the auditor’s office interviewed raised concerns related to ethics or equity in permitting, prompting the auditors to expand the scope of their report.
“There are reasons why you prioritize one project over another, but there should be a good reason, it should be transparent, and everyone should be able to see it—and it’s more opaque [in SDCI] than then we have liked,” City Auditor David Jones told PubliCola. “All we can say to SDCI management is, ‘Some of your employees, a decent number of them, have these concerns—so we should do something about it.'”
The auditors didn’t find any wrongdoing or legal violations by SDCI staff, who are required by the city’s ethics code to avoid conflicts of interest and report potential conflicts to their supervisors. (Wayne Barnett, the head of the city’s Ethics and Elections Commission, said he was unaware of any cases in which an SDCI employee was accused of breaking the ethics law).
However, the audit did find a “lack of consistency” and transparency in how permits get processed and prioritized as well as a lack of internal ethics policies for issues specific to SDCI, which could lead to ethical issues going unaddressed.
“The major players have been in power for decades, and they can call the SDCI Director, Mayor, and Council members to get their projects expedited,” an interviewer summarized one staffer’s remarks. “Those favored by the existing power structure (older white men) can take advantage of workarounds for the permitting process, to the detriment of those with less experience (who may also be bipoc communities).”
“As part of our audit, we did not investigate these concerns to the extent necessary to substantiate them,” the report notes. “SDCI should consider… an internal ethics policy to address situations that are unique to SDCI’s work environment” along with ongoing ethics training.
Many SDCI employees told auditors they believed the Master Builders Association—a trade association for local developers—gets special treatment and access to the department, while less-established developers and builderd, including many small and BIPOC businesses, have little direct access to SDCI staff.
PubliCola obtained hundreds of pages of the auditors’ interview notes through a public disclosure request.
“The major players have been in power for decades, and they can call the SDCI Director, Mayor, and Council members to get their projects expedited,” an interviewer summarized one staffer’s remarks. “Those favored by the existing power structure (older white men) can take advantage of workarounds for the permitting process, to the detriment of those with less experience (who may also be bipoc communities).”
During a land use committee meeting last week, SDCI director Nathan Torgelson said the department meets with many groups, including the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber, the Downtown Seattle Association, and affordable housing developers. “We, for a long time, met with BIPOC developers who are going through the design review process on how we can better serve that constituency,” Torgelson said.
One developers’ attorney confirmed that big developers, who pay significantly more in permitting fees for their large, complicated projects, can “get things done faster if you actually talk to the right people” in the department. In an environment where permitting, design review, and other delays can slow housing projects by months or years, this kind of access prevents projects from being “glacial,” the attorney said.
However, this also means that a homeowner trying to add two units to their property may have little recourse when a code reviewer sends over correction after correction, adding time and expense to a routine project. “What they need to do is get rid of the codes that are unreadable and get rid of the procedures that are not written down anywhere,” the attorney continued. “As we get into the middle-housing stuff, there’s going to be a lot of small builders out there that are not going to have any idea” how to navigate the process.
SDCI employees brought up this disparity in their interviews with the audit team, noting that when established developers get to jump to the front of the line, that can have race and social justice implications. “Those favored by the existing power structure (older white men) can take advantage of workarounds for the permitting process, to the detriment of those with less experience (who may also be bipoc communities),” one employee told the auditors.
“If you are a large developer, you know the game, the rules, what managers and directors will bend to you to get your project through,” another said, according to the audit notes. “If a developer that knows the system well needs a 15-minute phone call, but a bipoc first time applicant needs a 4-hour meeting, why should the person needing extra help be charged more [for the extra time]?”
“The big developers know and feel comfortable contacting SDCI leadership and asking for their projects to be completed more quickly,” another staffer said. “SDCI leadership will often ask staff to prioritize certain projects over others based on these interactions. …SDCI staff know that those monthly meetings [with the Master Builders Association, or MBA] ‘do not end well for staff,’ because they are often asked to change something based on MBA requests.”
SDCI employees told PubliCola that managers frequently told them to expedite permits based on no specific criteria, bumping larger builders above dozens of other projects. When this happened recently, one employee they told their manager that “’in the interest of equity, we’re supposed to go through our queue [in order], and this person is 98 down in. Why are they getting fast tracked?’ These conversations get killed,” the employee said
Many SDCI employees have second jobs in development, housing, or consulting—a practice that’s allowed under the city’s ethics code, as long as a city worker’s outside employment doesn’t directly conflict with their government job. This includes running a firm that helps private developers sail through the permitting process in other cities—as long as the SDCI employee doesn’t do business in Seattle, the city has allowed this kind of outside employment.
The auditors didn’t attempt to substantiate the issues SDCI’s employees raised related to compliance with the city’s ethics standards, many of which would be hard to prove. “We really wanted to avoid being in a position where we were evaluating whether something was ethical or not, because we’re not experts in the code, and we don’t have authority to do so,” assistant city auditor Melissa Alderson, who co-authored the report,” told PubliCola.
But interviews with current and former department staff, along with the notes from auditors’ interviews with staff, show a widespread concern among staff that many of the department’s longstanding practices are out of touch with modern ethical standards.
For example, many SDCI employees have second jobs in development, housing, or consulting—a practice that’s allowed under the city’s ethics code, as long as a city worker’s outside employment doesn’t directly conflict with their government job. This includes running a firm that helps private developers sail through the permitting process in other cities—as long as the SDCI employee doesn’t do business in Seattle, the city has allowed this kind of outside employment.
“The city’s ethics code says secondary employment is allowed at the city, but [it also says] that when your ability to remain impartial comes into question, like when a reasonable person would question your ability to remain impartial, then that’s when you need to have a conversation with the ethics office, with your supervisor, and figure out what needs to occur, whether that’s disclosure or removing yourself from that situation,” Alderson said.
SDCI employees brought up several examples of managers, including division-level supervisors, who hold this kind of second job. Andy Lunde, the emergency response manager in SDCI’s engineering services division, owns a company called Lunde Code Consulting that teaches classes on the state building code in the Washington Association of Building Officials’ code accreditation program.
“To address potential conflicts of interest, I maintain strict separation between my professional activities and consulting services, and the roles held by my father and brother at SDCI,” Lunde said, a reference to the fact that his father, Al Lunde, and his brother, Larry Lunde, both work in SDCI’s building inspections division.
Al Lunde did not respond to questions, and SDCI’s communications manager, Bryan Stevens, sent a warning to staffers not to talk to reporters shortly after PubliCola started reporting this piece.
Lunde’s boss, engineering services director Andy Higgins, has his own firm—CA Higgins Companies, Inc.—that, according to Higgins’ LinkedIn, helps “local governments effectively enforce, and private entities creatively comply with, the construction codes adopted in Washington State and the surrounding Cascadia Region through Plan Review, Code Consulting, Management Consulting and other Professional Services.” Higgins is also the president of WABO.
Contacted by email, Higgins said his firm “has actually been dormant for many years,” adding that he used to conduct plan review for “a few” cities outside Seattle. “I have also provided technical support for design professionals unsure of how to address a specific building code issue. I have not obtained permits on behalf of anyone in those jurisdictions,” Higgins said.
Several SDCI employees mentioned other close familial relationships among SDCI employees, including at least two married couples who work in the department, which some employees argued could give them an advantage when seeking promotions or reassignments.
Al Lunde has another business that directly intersects with SDCI’s mission: He’s a landlord who owns several buildings across Seattle, including single-family houses, a six-unit apartment building, and an apartment complex in West Seattle that has been the subject of several complaints from tenants. (Members of the Lunde family own other rental properties in and around Seattle, including vacant and formerly vacant buildings that have also elicited complaints from neighbors over junk storage and alleged break-ins).
Dan Strauss, the council member who originally ordered the audit, said the ethical concerns that emerged in the report “were a surprise to me.” Given the lack of ethical requirements specific to SDCI, he said, “there may be employees engaged in behavior… that, to an everyday person, seems unethical, but is not [technically] unethical because there is not a policy in place.”
Over the years for instance, tenants at Lunde’s building in West Seattle have complained about black mold, broken sinks, holes in the ceiling, missing smoke detectors, and other issues, prompting the city to issue multiple citations. Although publicly available inspection records don’t provide details about how most issues at the West Seattle complex or a smaller building in Ballard were resolved, it’s worth noting that SDCI oversees landlord-tenant law, including citations and inspections in response to tenant complaints.
SDCI does not have its own code of ethics, and employees aren’t required to disclose “the appearance of conflict or impaired judgment for non-financial matters,” according to the audit report. Nor does the department have an anonymous channel for employees to register ethical concerns. Instead, the department follows the city’s general ethics code, which requires certain managers and supervisors to file annual financial disclosure statements. According to the auditor’s report, “over half of the managers and one director had not completed the form.”
Documents obtained through a records request show that 44 SDCI employees had filled out the form, a simple, four-item checklist that asks about financial interests inside the city, including real-estate ownership. A review of responses showed that all but 16 of those 44 answered “no” to all four questions indicating that most had done no business with the city in the last year and did not own any real estate inside the city, including a primary residence.
Strauss, the council member who originally ordered the audit, said the ethical concerns that emerged in the report “were a surprise to me.” Given the lack of ethical requirements specific to SDCI, he said, “there may be employees engaged in behavior that I, Dan Strauss, would not engage in because I try to stay 10 feet about the ethical line … behavior that, to an everyday person, seems unethical, but is not [technically] unethical because there is not a policy in place.”
The audit report includes 11 recommendations, including several that touch on the ethical concerns raised by employees and people outside the department. (While most of the recommendations are about making SDCI’s processes clearer, faster, and more transparent, several of the process-related recommendations overlapped with the issues employees brought up as potential ethical concerns.)
Those recommendations included adopting an SDCI-specific code of ethics; addressing racial disparities in permitting and barriers to access for small developers, including those who don’t speak English or require in-person services; providing more transparency into how the department prioritizes projects; and giving applicants more opportunities to talk directly with reviewers instead of interacting exclusively through the department’s official online system.
SDCI director Nathan Torgelson told PubliCola, “SDCI has already reviewed and revised several policies related to the Financial Interest Statement process and are working with the Office of Ethics & Elections on additional staff trainings,” which—according to the audit—have not taken place for several years.
“Also, in the next couple of months we will be moving forward on planned customer service enhancements and feedback tools.” At a recent meeting of the city council’s land use committee, Torgelson said. SDCI has also published its prioritization criteria on its website—something several employees recommended in their conversations with the audit team.
Strauss, who chairs the land use committee, said he was encouraged by the department’s response to the audit, but wanted to see progress on some of its promises. “If a nail salon can’t get a tenant improvement permit, that means we are creating a vacant storefront, that means we are putting someone’s personal capital on the line, that means that commerce is not occurring,” Strauss said. “So it is important for groups across the city to have that access and that there is not preferential treatment.”
The Seattle City Council won’t take action on a proposed local capital gains tax or a related proposal to repeal the city’s water utility tax until after an effort to repeal the state capital gains tax, which pays for public schools, has run its course. The news of the delay, which will put both tax proposals in the hands of a mostly new council next year, came during a meeting of the council’s budget committee on Thursday.
Opponents of the state tax, which has brought in far more than expected in its first year, have filed an initiative to repeal it, part of a suite of anti-tax proposals backed by Redmond hedge fund CEO and Republican donor Brian Heywood. The campaign will have to gather more than 300,000 valid signatures to get the measure on the ballot.
Councilmember Alex Pedersen proposed repealing the water tax, currently 15.4 percent, and offsetting the lost revenues—around $40 million a year—with a 2 percent tax on capital gains, effectively replacing a regressive tax with a progressive one. The two proposals came as a package, with the capital gains tax proposal explicitly calling the tax “a more progressive method of taxation to replace revenues from regressive taxes no longer collected by The City of Seattle including, but not limited to, the tax on water.”
“People aren’tfillingupmyinboxcomplainingtomeaboutthewatertax. They’recomplainingprimarilyaboutcrimeandhomelessnessandotherissuesthatSeattleisfacingandwonderingwhyaren’twedoingmoreabouttheseissues.” — City Councilmember Sara Nelson
An analysis by city council staff estimated that the capital gains tax could raise around $38 million a year, based on Seattle’s share of state capital gains tax revenues from the state capital gains tax. However, the staff report cautions, that estimate doesn’t take into account “tax avoidance” by wealthy people who can move their assets around, and is based on “an extremely concentrated tax base,” which could make it an unreliable revenue source from year to year. Just 163 people are responsible for 85 percent of state capital gains tax revenues originating in Seattle.
Councilmember Lisa Herbold proposed amending Pedersen’s proposal to increase the capital gains tax to 3 percent, which would offset the water tax and provide a modest cushion against next year’s estimated $218 million budget deficit.
After the meeting, council budget chair Teresa Mosqueda said the council decided to put off the decision on capital gains “to protect the viability of that [revenue] source,” noting that a new, local capital gains tax might increase support for the campaign to repeal the statewide tax.
Councilmember Sara Nelson said during the meeting that she showed up “prepared to vote against this today. And I just wanted to make sure that I got this on the record if it does come back” in the future, she added.
“People aren’tfillingupmyinboxcomplainingtomeaboutthewatertax,” Nelson said. “They’recomplainingprimarilyaboutcrimeandhomelessnessandotherissuesthatSeattleisfacingandwonderingwhyaren’twedoingmoreabouttheseissues.”
If the council’s goal was “really to help low -income people,” Nelson continued, the city should be “working harder to enroll them into our utility discount program,” which provides a 50 percent discount to eligible residents. Unlike the proposed utility tax repeal, however, the utility discount program requires a lengthy application process, and is only open to very low-income residents: For single people, the cutoff is a little over $41,000 a year, and a two-person household has to make less than $54,000 to qualify.
Pedersen said his intent in proposing both tax proposals was to make the city’s overall tax system less regressive. “As a centrist who cares about business in the city and worked really hard on public safety issues here in the city, I support a capital gains tax,” he said. “I think it’s fair, and we should do it…. And I think we could also repeal the water tax. We could do both.”
Whether the council will do either is now up to the incoming council, which will no longer include Pedersen, Herbold, or Mosqueda. Nelson, who actively campaigned for several of the council’s new centrist majority, reportedly wants to be council president, a role that would give her authority over how (and whether) legislation moves through the committee process.
The budget committee did pass two proposals imposing new transparency requirements on the budget process on Tuesday, along with an ordinance requiring human services providers that receive funding for worker wage increases to spend that money only on worker pay, not for other purposes.
Screengrab via Councilmember Alex Pedersen’s official Facebook page.
By Erica C. Barnett
City Councilmember Alex Pedersen, who’s leaving at the end of the year, may get one parting shot at developers after his proposal to advance “impact fees” on new housing (co-sponsored with another departing councilmember, Lisa Herbold) failed last week.
Just before budget deliberations began earlier this fall, Pedersen proposed legislation that would require a state archaeological agency to sign off on the removal of any tree larger than 12 inches in diameter—a class of trees that is already explicitly protected by the city’s new tree ordinance, which added new protections to about 48,000 trees, largely by making it more difficult to remove smaller trees. According to the legislation, the new regulations are necessary, in part, because the a new state law exempts “missing middle” housing, such as fourplexes, from state environmental review.
Pedersen’s proposal would require the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (SDCI), the agency responsible for review tree removal applications, to notify the Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation (DAHP) about every request to remove a “Tier 2” or “Tier 3” tree (those 12 inches in diameter or greater) and to “receive confirmation” from the department about “whether the tree is part of an archaeological site”—that is, whether it is a culturally modified tree. Put another way, the city would assume that every tree larger than a foot in diameter is culturally modified until proven otherwise.
“I’m not an attorney, I’m an archaeologist. But I don’t see how a local government can pass a law that binds a state agency.”—Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation director Allyson Brooks
Asked about the potential impact of the proposed new regulations, a spokesman for SDCI said that although the agency “is committed to identifying workable protections to preserve Culturally Modified Trees, we believe this proposal would cause significant delays in permits for new housing… create resourcing issues, and cause delays on permit approvals including Master Use Permits, construction permits, and simple over-the-counter permits.”
Generally speaking, “culturally modified trees” are trees that were altered by indigenous residents in the past to serve a cltural purpose, such as peeling bark for baskets and construction materials, marking important locations, or wayfinding. Earlier this year, a developer agreed to preserve large Western red cedar tree in the Wedgwood neighborhood that the Snoqualmie Tribe said had been culturally modified to “mark a trail system that predated the city, and settlers in the area,” according to KUOW. The developers’ own analysis concluded that the tree was around 85 years old, but supporters claimed it was 200 or older, which would make it an ancient outlier among other Western red cedar trees in Seattle.
The decision to save the tree, which Wedgwood residents named “Luma,” on cultural modification grounds paved the way for Pedersen’s legislation, which would make it more difficult and expensive to remove any medium-to-large tree in Seattle.
It’s unclear, however, if the city has the authority to require a state agency to do anything—especially a small agency like the DAHP, which has just six staff to review around 16,000 federal and state projects every year.
“I don’t know how we would do this and on what timeline,” DAHP director Allyson Brooks said. “We don’t even have any staff in Seattle. It’s not realistic.”
“I’m not an attorney, I’m an archaeologist,” Brooks added. “But I don’t see how a local government can pass a law that binds a state agency.”
Neither Pedersen nor SDCI responded to questions last week, and a spokesman for the City Attorney’s Office said he couldn’t comment on whether the city attorney had offered advice to Pedersen’s office on the legality of his proposal. The Snoqualmie Tribe also did not respond to questions last week.
In its stage-setting “whereas” section, the legislation argues that a state law allowing more density in previously exclusive single-family neighborhoods could threaten the existence of many “previously unidentified culturally modified trees” in Seattle, including trees “of particular importance to the Indigenous peoples who have resided in the Puget Sound area… since time immemorial.”
Similarly, despite Pedersen’s lofty language about cultural preservation, his efforts to “save the trees” have long been inextricable from his opposition to new apartments, and he and other density opponents have relied on many different arguments to push for legislation that makes housing harder to build.
Wedgwood, where the median home price is now well over $1 million, was founded as a whites-only outpost in the 1930s, when a builder dredged and cleared the area for development. Today, according to the to the University of Washington, the neighborhood is still “overwhelmingly White,” and its residents have vociferously opposed changes that would alter its suburban character. In 2018, the neighborhood opposed (and ultimately killed) a bike lane that would remove parking spaces along one side of 35th Ave. NE. Initially, the residents focused on the loss of parking, but eventually pivoted to claim that bike lanes were only for “the privileged.”
Similarly, despite Pedersen’s lofty language about cultural preservation, his efforts to “save the trees” have long been inextricable from his opposition to new apartments, and he and other density opponents have relied on many different arguments to push for legislation that makes housing harder to build.
Brooks, from the DAHP, says the need to identify and protect culturally modified trees and other Indigenous archaeological resources is great, but that if Seattle wants to make it a priority, they should hire a city archaeologist, rather than asking the state to come out every time a property owner wants to cut down a mature tree. Seattle City Light and Seattle Public Utilities, whose work often involves digging, have their own archaeological experts, but they deal with utility projects, not tree removal on private property.
The City Council adopted a 2024 budget on Tuesday that provides pay increases for human services workers, funds a controversial gunfire-detection system, sets aside money for a new $225-a-shift bonus for cops who direct traffic at concerts and other events, and increases the JumpStart payroll tax to pay for mental health services in public schools. The police bonuses will have to be approved through separate legislation in December. The budget also restores funding for Truleo, an AI-based system that monitors officers’ body camera footage for inappropriate behavior; SPD abruptly stopped using the technology earlier this year.
In a statement to PubliCola, Seattle Chamber director Rachel Smith called the Jumpstart tax increase “another example of the City Council taking a ready-shoot-aim approach to public policy” and called the plan, which Sawant first put on the table earlier this month, a “tax with no plan and no process” that “will increase taxes for 500 businesses, without considering any alternatives—when we are desperately trying to spur downtown recovery and when we see headlines every day about vacant office space.”
The adopted budget also reverses an attempt by Mayor Bruce Harrell to use revenues from the JumpStart payroll tax, which is supposed to be earmarked primarily for affordable housing, to pay for unrelated programs. Every year the tax has been in effect, the mayor—first Durkan, now Harrell—has raided the tax to pay for basic city services that would ordinarily come out of the city’s general fund. This year, Harrell proposed using $27 million in JumpStart funding to pay for, among other things, the relocation of a tiny house village off Sound Transit property, mandatory pay increases for human service workers, and two new strategic advisors to evaluate the JumpStart program itself.
Also Tuesday, the council voted down a fast-tracked bill to amend the city’s comprehensive plan—the document that governs future growth and housing development across the city—to allow transportation impact fees on new apartments.
The budget does not include any increase in pre-arrest diversion programs, despite assurances from Councilmember Andrew Lewis and Mayor Bruce Harrell that the recently passed law empowering City Attorney Ann Davison to prosecute people who use drugs in public would come with ample funding for alternatives to arrests and jail. Lewis did add $200,000 for pre-filing diversion programs, but, as we have reported, these are “light-touch” programs that aren’t appropriate for unhoused people with severe addiction who are the primary targets of the new drug law.
Nor does the budget include specific funding for pay increases for thousands of city employees which remain unresolved after months of negotiations between Harrell’s office and the Coalition of City Unions, an umbrella organization for the unions that represent more than 6,000 city workers. Harrell initially proposed a 1 percent “cost of living adjustment,” which is significantly below the rate of inflation; a tentative contract with the firefighters’ union included wage increases between 2 and 4 percent, indicating the mayor’s current bargaining position for that (unrelated, but potentially telling) contract. Earlier this month, the Coalition held a series of rolling “practice pickets” across downtown Seattle.
Next year, three returning council members—Sara Nelson, Tammy Morales, and Dan Strauss—will be joined by six newcomers, including Mosqueda’s replacement, whom the council itself will choose next year. Before then, though, the current council still has a few decisions in front of it. In December, the council will decide in whether to pass a new progressive tax to help the city fill a projected 2025-2026 budget shortfall of around $500 million; options the council could pass in the short term include an increase in the JumpStart tax and a capital gains tax. They’ll also have to pass legislation approving the memorandum of understanding between the Seattle Police Officers Guild and the mayor’s office that will allow the $225 bonuses to start flowing into police officers’ pockets.
Also Tuesday, the council voted down a fast-tracked bill to amend the city’s comprehensive plan—the document that governs future growth and housing development across the city—to allow transportation impact fees on new housing. Such fees, which would increase the cost of new apartments, are based on the premise that housing density has a negative impact on cities; or, as the Seattle Times’ conservative editorial board argued, “growth” should pay for the negative costs of growth.
The five-vote majority was an unusual coalition: In addition to housing proponents Teresa Mosqueda and Dan Strauss, lefty Tammy Morales, centrist Sara Nelson, and frequent swing voter Andrew Lewis voted down the proposal.
Housing advocates who oppose impact fees, such as Habitat for Humanity and Seattle for Everyone, have pointed to studies showing that density is more efficient and affordable (not to mention environmentally friendly) than the suburban-style development pattern dominant across Seattle. People who live in apartments tend to use transit and walk, not drive, to get where they need to go. Additionally, making apartments more expensive in cities forces people who aren’t wealthy into sprawling, car-dependent suburbs while adding to the wealth of incumbent homeowners and those who can afford seven-figure houses in Seattle’s goldlined single-family neighborhoods.
The new council will have to decide next year if they want to resurrect Herbold and Pedersen’s legislation, which includes a potential fee schedule as well as a list of specific transportation projects the fees could fund.
Partial map of the RapidRide road safety improvement project on Delridge; the arrow points to the daycare Saka says the city is discriminating against.
By Erica C. Barnett
City Councilmember-elect Rob Saka, a former Meta attorney who will represent West Seattle’s District 1 starting next year, sent a series of increasingly heated emails to Seattle Department of Transportation employees during 2021 and 2022 seeking the removal of a road divider that SDOT installed in front of his kids’ preschool. The divider was part of the RapidRide H project connecting Burien, White Center, and West Seattle to downtown.
The curb-like divider is a variation on a common traffic calming device known as a hardened centerline. The curb, which replaced a double yellow line, physically prevents northbound drivers from making an illegal left turn to access homes and businesses on the west side of the street, including a bilingual preschool called the Refugee and Immigrant Family Center. According to an April 2022 South Seattle Emerald story about the dispute, Saka’s two children attended the preschool as of last year.
In the email thread (reproduced in part here), which PubliCola obtained through a records request, Saka compared the mid-block traffic barrier to Trump’s border wall and said it was “triggering” and “severely traumatizing” to immigrants who “have faced significant trauma during their perilous journeys, including by navigating divisive structures and barriers designed to exclude lives in the US.”
“First, it might be helpful to reset on physical barriers as a social construct and how SDOT’s dangerous barrier here has severely traumatized and upset our community at the Refugee & Immigrant Family Center (RIFC),” Saka wrote. “Historically, barriers have been used to exclude, isolate, divide, discriminate against, project power over, subjugate, render less than status to, punish, segregate, humiliate/embarrass, harass, degrade, and so much more.”
“Historically, barriers have been used to exclude, isolate, divide, discriminate against, project power over, subjugate, render less than status to, punish, segregate, humiliate/embarrass, harass, degrade, and so much more,” Saka told project staff last March. “More recently, the Trump administration sought to build an enormous wall on the southern border with Mexico – presumably, to exclude certain individuals deemed ‘undesirable’ in the name of national security.”
The border wall is a 30-foot-high barrier, spanning hundreds of miles, that has contributed to the deaths of countless migrants, including a growing number of deaths and injuries due to falls. The Delridge barrier is an 8-inch-high road divider that runs for about 100 feet. Although Saka described the divider as “highly unique and bizarre,” SDOT has installed similar road treatments across the city, including along 15th Ave. NW in Ballard and Rainier Ave. South between I-90 and the Rainier Valley.
Even before SDOT installed the divider, left turns were illegal along the length of the RapidRide project, which also includes new bike lanes on both sides of the street. The divider is one of many new road treatments designed to keep people from attempting to pass stopped buses and prevent collisions with pedestrians and cyclists.
Many of the new safety measures along Delridge are much larger and more permanent than the raised centerline outside the RIFC. Just to the north of the preschool, for example, a new RapidRide bus stop in front of Louisa Boren K-8 school features a raised concrete island in the middle of Delridge, along with wide markings between the lanes to indicate that drivers should not turn left or pass buses at the RapidRide stop. Immediately to the north, a broad, landscaped median protects patrons at the Delridge library from cars turning illegally into the bike lanes and parking lot.
Nationwide, about a quarter of all car crashes involving pedestrians are caused by a driver turning left and hitting someone in their path.
The South Seattle Emerald’s story about the preschool’s concerns also notes that the new bike lane took out several parking spaces parents had used to drop off and pick up their kids.
POV: Driving north on Delridge Way SW, the new barrier blocks drivers from turning into a new bike lane and the sidewalk used by transit riders. It also prevents illegal left turns into a preschool parking lot.
In his emails, Saka suggested that community members, not roadway designers at SDOT, were in the best position to know what keeps their roadways safe.
“For clarity, we don’t need a secretive ‘design team’ to impose their errant decisions on us in the name of ‘public safety’. Nor do we need a benevolent king to do the same,” Saka wrote. (Emphasis in original.) “SDOT must immediately remove the most egregious feature – a concrete barrier that directly targets our RIFC community and was erected without our prior consultation, input, or knowledge.”
In April 2022, an SDOT public engagement manager offered to set up a meeting with Saka to discuss the project. Saka responded that he would only meet the SDOT team if the agency guaranteed in advance that they would remove the barrier. “Like I mentioned earlier, we need this pretty simple confirmation from SDOT in order to ensure any meeting would be an effective and efficient use of time,” Saka wrote. “I strongly urge you to NOT overthink your response.”
SDOT has not yet responded to PubliCola’s inquiries about the project, and Saka did not respond to detailed questions sent on Tuesday. The operator of the RIFC also did not immediately respond to questions sent Thursday. A search of court records did not show any legal action by Saka, either on his own or on behalf of the preschool, and the road divider remains in place.
The outgoing city council is making its final amendments to Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed 2024 budget—the final city budget for six of the council’s nine members, and the final year of budgeting before the city enters a period of ongoing $200 million-plus “structural” deficits resulting from a combination of increased costs (construction prices, for instance) and lower revenues from volatile sources, such as taxes on real estate transactions.
Members of the council’s progressive bloc flexed their muscles on some issues, such as funding pay increases for human-service workers, while capitulating on others, like Councilmember Sara Nelson’s proposal to direct $300,000 in city funds to private addiction treatment companies.
Here are some of this week’s budget highlights:
• Although the council plans to wait until after they pass next year’s budget before taking up new tax proposals to address the structural deficit, the biggest progressive win this year is a small tax increase that will fund something entirely new. Councilmember Kshama Sawant, who is leaving at the end of the year, proposed and pyearassed a 0.1 percent (0.001) increase to the JumpStart payroll tax to fund mental health counseling and community-based programs for kids in Seattle Public Schools. The tax increase will increase annual revenues from the tax by $20 million, making this new program by far the biggest new investment in this year’s budget.
Sawant’s mental-health proposal had a compelling constituency. On Monday, dozens of current and former public school students testified at a budget hearing about the high rates of mental illness, depression, and suicide among their peers, making a convincing for a large new investment at a time when other needs—such as wage increases for thousands of city workers—remain unmet. Sawant did propose two amendments that would establish a fund to sustain worker pay increases in the future, but neither passed.
• Two proposals to address wage inequity between human services workers that were initially part of the council’s “consent package“—amendments the council has already hashed out and agreed collectively to support—got pulled out for further discussion by Councilmember Sara Nelson. Both amendments, which ultimately passed, addressed a problem that emerged when the city handed its homelessness contracts to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority: Although a 2019 law requires the city to fund annual inflationary adjustments for all the human services contracts it funds, a small number of contracts are funded directly by the federal government and aren’t subject to the annual pay increase requirement. The amendments will bring worker pay under those contracts in line with other human service workers.
Citing a column by Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat, Councilmember Nelson noted that recent polls showed the council has a low approval rating and that voters don’t trust the city to spend their money well—a comment that prompted Mosqueda to retort that if the city fails to pay social service workers enough to live here, “more of the very people that continue to serve our most vulnerable will themselves be unhoused
Nelson argued that the changes, which will cost the city about $2 million next year, create an ongoing obligation without identifying a specific funding source to pay for it, and said the contracts were now the KCRHA’s responsibility, not the city’s. “We no longer have a statutory obligation to pay an inflationary adjustment,” Nelson said. “I understand that that is a desire, but again, we’re talking about another agency, and we’re not really responsible for how they run their books.” In response, council budget chair Teresa Mosqueda noted that the city is the KCRHA’s primary funder, and that the agency has no ability to raise money on its own “When wetransferredthesecontracts,theintentwastoensurethattherewasinflationaryadjustmentandwagestability … nomatterwhoheldthatcontract,” Mosqueda said.
Later in the afternoon, Nelson raised objections to a proposal by Herbold that would require agencies to demonstrate that they’re using city funds dedicated to annual wage increases for that purpose. Nelson argued that the city shouldn’t be assuming annual wage increases in the first place, but should base cost-of-living adjustments on performance standards.
Citing a column by Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat, Nelson noted that recent polls showed the council has a low approval rating and that voters don’t trust the city to spend their money well—a comment that prompted Mosqueda to retort that if the city fails to pay social service workers enough to live here, “more of the very people that continue to serve our most vulnerable will themselves be unhoused, living in cars, living paycheck to paycheck, and that’s not how we create sustainability.”
• A 10-cent fee on app-based “network” companies like Doordash passed after a lengthy debate over which companies should be subject to the fee, whether the fee was too large, and who should have the authority to increase the fee in the future. Councilmember Lisa Herbold sponsored the underlying legislation, which applies to all app-based workers except Uber and Lyft drivers (who are now subject to a preemptive state law), along with an amendment that would reduce the fee for so-called “marketplace” network companies like Rover and TaskRabbit. These companies aren’t subject to minimum-pay requirements that apply to other gig-work companies because they allow workers to set their own rates and give workers more autonomy over which jobs they accept.
Nelson and Councilmember Alex Pedersen, who is leaving at the end of the year, both unsuccessfully attempted to water down the legislation. Pedersen’s failed amendments would have exempted marketplace companies from the fee and required council approval for any fee increase— a departure from the current system, in which the Department of Finance and Administrative Services (FAS) can increase or decrease many city fees on their own.
Nelson, meanwhile, proposed amendments that would prohibit the Office of Labor Standards to use fee revenue to implement the city’s minimum pay ordinance and cut the 10-cent fee in half. Both councilmembers’ proposals failed by narrow margins.’
According to a recent report by the Chicago inspector general, more than 90 percent of Shotspotter calls that resulted in a police response turned out to be false alarms; that city is joining several others, including New Orleans and Portland, in ending or canceling Shotspotter contracts.
• After the council rejected Harrell’s proposal to fund a gunshot detection system last year, the council appears ready to invest $1.5 million in a “pilot” that will include CCTV cameras in addition to audio surveillance devices. The system is generally referred to as Shotspotter after the company that provides the only widely used gunshot detection system.
As we’ve reported, Shotspotter is not a new or innovative technology, nor does it “detect” gunfire on its own. Instead, sensors installed on utility poles detect and determine the approximate location of outdoor sounds that resemble gunfire and alert human “acoustic experts” who listen to the audio and determine which ones sound like gunshots. These experts then alert police, who can be dispatched to the scene.
On Wednesday, the council voted to reject a proposal by Sawant to remove funding for Shotspotter from the budget and use the $1.5 million to fund behavioral health care at non-congregate shelters, foreshadowing next week’s overall budget vote. (Since Harrell’s budget includes Shotspotter by default, the council does not have to take a separate vote to fund the program.) Mosqueda did manage to add an amendment requiring a separate racial equity analysis for each new location where the city deploys the system; one frequent criticism of Shotspotter is that it leads to overpolicing in communities of color while doing nothing to reduce gun violence in those communities.
Shotspotter has been around for decades, so there’s a large body of evidence suggesting it doesn’t work to address gun violence and consumes scarce police resources by repeatedly sending police out on false alarms. According to a recent report by the Chicago inspector general, more than 90 percent of Shotspotter calls that resulted in a police response turned out to be false alarms; that city is joining several others, including New Orleans and Portland, in ending or canceling Shotspotter contracts.
• As we noted above, the council plans to put off a formal tax discussion until after the budget passes in late November, but we’ll have a separate update on the revenue discussion well before then, so stay tuned. Today, the council discussed Pedersen’s proposal to eliminate the utility tax and fill the $38 million gap by passing a 2 percent local tax on capital gains; skeptics of Pedersen’s proposal argued that the city needs more funding to fill the looming budget deficit, not a revenue-neutral tax swap. And council staff revealed that one of the potential taxes identified by the city’s progressive revenue task force—a “surtax” on JumpStart for very large companies whose CEOs make hundreds of times more than their median employee—would only net a relatively paltry sum of $2 million to $4 million a year.
Financial tips for city workers included putting money into savings before paying bills and stopping “money leaks” like unnecessary subscriptions.
By Erica C. Barnett
Mayor Bruce Harrell’s human resources department sent out an email sent out an email to city workers this week containing tips and tricks for spending less money. Harrell has proposed giving thousands of city employees a “cost of living adjustment” significantly below the rate of inflation.
The email, titled “Financial Self-Care,” informs employees that “Making small changes to your money mindset and habits can have an immediate impact on your financial picture.” For example, it says, city workers could get rid of subscriptions that can add $12 to $30 to their monthly costs; consolidate their debts; and “pay yourself first – set aside money for emergency funds or long-term savings every paycheck before paying bills and spending.
The council did approve a $20 million increase in the tax to pay for mental health care services at public schools, with Council President Debora Juarez joining Tammy Morales, Teresa Mosqueda, Lisa Herbold, and amendment sponsor Kshama Sawant to vote for the increase
“Pay yourself first” is a concept popularized by the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” series of self-help books, which argues that people should put money toward investments before paying for rent, food, electric bills, and other immediate needs.
The email also advise workers—who are seeking an annual wage increase that at least keeps up with inflation, instead of a sub-inflationary increase that will amount to a significant annual pay cut—to start thinking about whether they really need the things they’re buying. “Start defining wants and needs – Ask yourself: ‘Is this a need or want?’ with each purchase, to avoid impulse buys,” the email says.
Harrell, who initially proposed a 1 percent wage increase at a time when inflation had recently topped 8 percent, has reportedly more than doubled that offer, but even a 2.5 percent increase represents a significant pay cut in a city where the cost of living is rising much faster than that.
“When we stop seeing financial self-care as a chore and start incorporating it as part of a routine, we become empowered to build a stronger future,” the email concludes. “What steps can you take next?”
For many city workers, the answer is: Continue working for a wage increase that won’t put them even further behind. Earlier this month, city employees held a series of “practice pickets” across the city.
On Tuesday morning, the city council voted 5-4 against two proposals that would increase the JumpStart payroll tax, paid by the city’s largest companies, by a fraction of a percentage point to fund $40 million for future pay increases for city employees.
The council did approve a $20 million increase in the tax to pay for mental health care services at public schools, with Council President Debora Juarez joining Tammy Morales, Teresa Mosqueda, Lisa Herbold, and amendment sponsor Kshama Sawant to vote for the increase.
Dozens of students and former students showed up at a public hearing Monday night to testify in favor of the modest tax hike, noting the recent increase in diagnosed and undiagnosed mental illness and suicide attempts among public school students in Seattle. Before voting against the proposal, Councilmember Sara Nelson said it was important to sit down with “both sides” before passing any tax increase.
1. UPDATE: On Friday afternoon, District 2 incumbent Tammy Morales pulled ahead of challenger Tanya Woo and now has 50.15 percent of the vote, a gap of 317 points. Alex Hudson conceded to Joy Hollingsworth in District 3, and District 7 incumbent Andrew Lewis conceded to Bob Kettle.
Dan Strauss (District 6, Northwest Seattle) officially pulled ahead of challenger Pete Hanning after King County Elections posted its latest set of results on Thursday, while the other two incumbents seeking reelection—Tammy Morales (District 2, Southeast Seattle) and Andrew Lewis (District 7, downtown and Queen Anne) began closing the gap on their opponents, Tanya Woo and Bob Kettle.
As is typical in local elections, progressive voters who were losing (or barely winning) on election night pulled ahead significantly in this first large batch of later results, though generally not enough to come back from election-night trouncings.
With another 47,000 votes counted, Strauss now leads Hanning 50-49, while Woo is a little more than three points ahead of Morales, at 51.5-48.2. That’s a big gain for Morales since election night, when Woo was leading by almost nine points, making this a competitive race.
Lewis, meanwhile, is now 7 points behind conservative challenger Kettle, at 46.2 to his opponent’s 53.4—a seven-point gap that’s unlikely to close unless the remaining ballots are wildly lopsided compared to those counted so far.
In the open seat for District 4 (Northeast Seattle), Ron Davis is now 6 points behind Maritza Rivera, with 46.7 percent of the vote to Rivera’s 52.9. In the other races in which no candidate has conceded (Districts 1 and 3—Rob Saka v. Maren Costa and Joy Hollingsworth v. Alex Hudson), the more progressive candidates remain double digits behind their centrist opponents.
In short, the new council will most likely consist of seven moderates (Sara Nelson plus six new members, one appointed by the council when Teresa Mosqueda leaves to join the County Council), plus Strauss and, potentially, Morales—a major shift from its current, more progressive makeup, and a sign that voters were in the market for candidates who promised harsher policies toward drug users, unsheltered people, and people committing low-level crimes.
2. Council budget committee chair Teresa Mosqueda, the presumptive winner of the King County Council seat being vacated by Joe McDermott, has come under pressure from left-leaning activists to resign now, before the council loses as many as seven progressive members, so that the council can appoint a progressive to serve until the next election. Under the city charter, the council has 20 days to replace a council member who resigns after their final day in office.
It’s an absurd argument, for a number of reasons, not least among them that most of the current council already votes in lockstep with Mayor Bruce Harrell, who openly backed many of the moderates who are currently leading in the races for open seats. A scenario in which Mosqueda “pushes through” a left-leaning candidate like former Lorena González aide Brianna Thomas would require support from both Andrew Lewis and Dan Strauss, against a council president (Debora Juarez) who would almost certainly oppose the idea, assuming that all the other progressives on the council got on board.
More important than that hypothetical, however, is the fact that Mosqueda’s budget committee will still be meeting to hammer out revenue options for future budget years until December, when the council is scheduled to vote on new taxes that could include expansion of the JumpStart payroll tax, which is earmarked primarily for affordable housing, and a local capital gains tax. “We have unfinished business in the Budget Committee that we won’t even get the chance to start voting on” until December, Mosqueda noted.
Neither Mosqueda nor her staff are independently wealthy, and living without a paycheck for six to eight weeks could represent a significant hardship, as it would for most people.
Whoever the council appoints next year will serve until the end of next year; if they run for the seat in 2024 and win, they will serve until Mosqueda’s original term ends in 2025, and will have to run again then.
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A public hearing to consider an amendment to the city’s comprehensive plan that would allow transportation impact fees on new development was bumped by more than two hours to make room for public comment on a resolution from outgoing councilmember Kshama Sawant demanding “an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, an end to U.S. funding for the Israeli military, the safe release of all hostages, the restoration of humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, and an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.”
After hours of public comment from Sawant’s supporters that included chants of “from the river to the sea,” the resolution failed for lack of a second, prompting a chorus of denunciations from the crowd and a brief recess to clear council chambers.
By the time the council returned about 10 minutes later, it was past 4 pm and tensions were high. Lisa Herbold, who sponsored the comprehensive plan proposal along with Alex Pedersen, teed up a presentation on the amendment by accusing her council colleagues of misrepresenting her legislation and confusing the public by raising questions about the fees themselves.
“I’m really frustrated that … when I ask questions, I’m being treated as if it is unreasonable. These questions are coming from community.”—Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda
Transportation impact fees are based on the number of units in a building, based on the premise the denser the development, the more of a negative “impact” it has on the city’s infrastructure, like roads and bridges—a assumption that conflicts the urbanist view that density is greener and more efficient than sprawl. The legislation Herbold and Pedersen are sponsoring would allow the council to adopt impact fees in the future, “identify deficiencies in the transportation system associated with new development,” and adopt a list of projects that could be funded through such fees.
“I can’t tell you how many emails we’ve received commenting on whether or not people want a transportation impact fee or oppose a transportation impact fee,” Herbold said. “There is no transportation impact the proposal before the council today. People have pointed to the questions about the potential transportation impact fee program as a reason to not support this amendment. … These are not questions for today.”
Councilmembers Dan Strauss and Teresa Mosqueda disputed this characterization, noting that while amending the comprehensive plan to allow impact fees might technically be “procedural,” the only reason to pass such an amendment is to move impact fees forward—a longtime goal for both Herbold and Pedersen, who are leaving at the end of the year and won’t get another chance.
Ordinarily, amendments to the comprehensive plan—the document that guides all planning and land-use decisions in the city—go through the land use committee, which Strauss chairs, but the council voted last month to bypass the normal committee process and push the amendment through before the end of the year—all very much over Strauss’ objections. “This is a big piece of legislation,” he said last month, on par with the tree protection ordinance and changes to the city’s maritime industrial zoning. “I believe it is important that we have the time to understand the policy.
“It really upsets me to hear people say that this impacts the cost of affordable housing. We have not set a fee. … And I just really think that we’re doing a big disservice to the public by continuing to suggest that we’re making those decisions today.”—Councilmember Lisa Herbold
“I’m really frustrated that … when I ask questions, I’m being treated as if it is unreasonable,” said Mosqueda, who submitted 20 questions about the proposal back in September and said she is still waiting on responses to most of them. “These questions are coming from community. These questions are coming from people who are very interested in [ensuring] that there’s no impediment to building housing. These questions and concerns are essential for us to address and should have been addressed in a committee setting, not in the middle of budget” season, a time when the council ordinarily does not consider major legislation.
“It really upsets me to hear people say that this impacts the cost of affordable housing,” Herbold retorted. “We have not set a fee. … And I just really think that we’re doing a big disservice to the public by continuing to suggest that we’re making those decisions today.”
According to a presentation by council staff in September, the fees could add millions of dollars to the cost to build new housing and “generate between $200 million – $760 million over 10 years.” The housing developers and attorneys who stuck around to testify against the legislation (their comments limited to one minute each because it was so late in the day) said impact fees could make some of their recent projects prohibitively expensive.
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“I feel like I’m in an alternate reality when I hear a council member saying that this is not a policy change, when the comprehensive plan is actually the city’s main policy-setting document,” said McCullough Hill attorney Jessica Clawson. “Make no mistake—you’re setting policy, and again, I have never seen the council rush to make such an important policy decision—ever.”
The council will take up the proposal again next week, and is expected to vote on the amendment on November 21. It will then be up to the next city council—including a group of newcomers that does not include a single outspoken proponent for density or renters—to take action on impact fees, and to decide how much to penalize developers for building new apartments in a city with an acute housing shortage.
As is typical in local elections, progressive voters who were losing (or barely winning) on election night pulled ahead significantly in this first large batch of later results, though generally not enough to come back from election-night trouncings.
