Category: Elections

Elections, Mayor Harrell, Mayor Wilson, Police, public disclosure

This Week on PubliCola: January 4, 2026
Brian Maxey and Rebecca Boatright, two long-serving civilian employees fired by Police Chief Shon Barnes last month

Fired SPD employees allege retaliation by police chief, Harrell pre-election request sent Seattle Channel staffers scrambling, and more news to close out 2025.

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, December 29

Police Chief Takes the Holidays Off

Police Chief Shon Barnes took a nearly two-week vacation over the holidays, leaving various deputies in charge while he was off duty. Barnes, whose family lives in Chicago, has previously come under scrutiny for spending many of his weekends out of town.

SPD Won’t Answer Questions About Two Anti-Prostitution Stings They Announced

The Seattle Police Department claims two recent operations targeting a strip club and men who pay for sex successfully targeted human trafficking and sexual exploitation. But they wouldn’t answer questions seeking more detailed information about the two announcements, such as whether the strip club sting led to any actual charges and a request for police reports.

Tuesday, December 30

Harrell’s “Last-Minute Request” for Pre-Election Budget Video Sent Seattle Channel Scrambling

Former Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office said his 2025 budget video was nothing unusual and didn’t cost the city any extra money. But records reveal that the multi-location video was a last-minute request that required Seattle Channel staffers to drop what they were doing and work overtime on a weekend to film and produce a 15-minute film with virtually no notice, just a few weeks before ballots dropped for the 2025 mayoral election.

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Wednesday, December 31

Mayor Wilson: Audit SPD’s Public Disclosure Office!

In recent years, the police department’s policy toward public disclosure requests has ossified into a kind of tacit refusal via delay. “Grouping,” SPD’s practice of refusing to respond to more than one request from the same person or outlet at a time, is the subject of at least one lawsuit, but SPD also now forces the media and public to file records requests for information that used to be easy to obtain, exacerbating the problem. Mayor Wilson should seek an audit to get to the bottom of SPD’s intrasigence, and make them follow the public records act in practice, not just in theory.

Tort Claim by Two Fired SPD Employees Alleges Gender, Anti-LGBTQ Discrimination Under Police Chief Shon Barnes

Two top civilian SPD employees who were fired by Police Chief Shon Barnes, Rebecca Boatright and Brian Maxey, have filed tort claims seeking $11 million for what they describe as retaliation. The tort says they advised Barnes against decisions that were widely perceived as anti-woman and anti-LGBTQ, and Boatright also says she was discriminated against because of her gender.

Elections, Mayor Harrell

Harrell’s “Last-Minute Request” for Pre-Election Budget Video Sent Seattle Channel Scrambling
Mayor Bruce Harrell stands in front of an affordable-housing building in his 2025 budget video

By Erica C. Barnett

Back in September, outgoing Mayor Bruce Harrell announced his annual budget not with an in-person speech, in keeping with longstanding custom, but in a slickly produced video, filmed at multiple locations around Seattle. The timing, as well as the content—an upbeat preview that emphasized new spending while failing to mention the looming budget cliff—looked more like a campaign video  than an informational announcement. It has been viewed on YouTube around 1,400 times.

Asked about the timing and expense of the video earlier this year, a spokesperson for the city’s Department of Information Technology said, “The Seattle Channel supports the Mayor’s office for various requests, including producing the recent budget video,” the spokesperson said, adding, “This work was completed in-house using staff time.”

While this was technically true, records PubliCola obtained through a public disclosure request show that Seattle Channel staff had to work overtime to comply with Harrell’s last-minute pre-election request, postponing work on regular Seattle Channel shows and working over the weekend to complete the project.

According to an email, 11 staffers were involved in producing Harrell’s budget video.

A review of the emails that flew back and forth before and during production of Harrell’s video suggest a frantic rush to fulfill a last-minute demand from Harrell, who had just lost the primary election to Katie Wilson.

On Monday, September 15, Seattle Channel production manager Ed Escalona sent out an email to staff letting them know about a “last-minute request” from Harrell’s office for a budget video, with multiple takes at three to five locations, filmed “on the mayor’s schedule” and due in a week. “The details are sketchy,” the email noted; another exchange said the mayor planned to “ad lib” without a teleprompter.

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The timeline sent producers scrambling to reschedule other projects and find people who could take on extra work on very short notice. But Harrell’s office took their time coming up with a plan. That Thursday, a staffer described the lack of information from the mayor’s office as “inefficient and not best practices,” and the filming didn’t happen until Friday, with producers still asking Harrell’s office for a script at 2:00 that afternoon.

Work on other Seattle Channel shows appears to have been upended by the last-minute production, and staffers worked through the weekend to finish filming and editing—a situation that prompted grousing from some staff. “Looks great… all except for the part of having to work the whole weekend!” one staffer wrote.

Emails show that Seattle Channel staff tried to limit the number of shooting locations, but Harrell’s team insisted on four—the Green Lake Community Center, a low-income housing complex in the Central District, and the downtown waterfront, plus City Hall.

Harrell’s office also requested a long list of B-roll, including new drone shots, to serve as segues between locations. On the day before the video was due, a Sunday, Seattle Channel general manager Shannon Gee described the work in an email as “very rough going. I don’t know if I’ve been of any help at all trying to hunt down footage that doesn’t exist. … There are sections where there is no way to illustrate what is being said and there are still a lot of edits that need to be covered.”

As we noted at the time, it’s unusual for a Seattle mayor to introduce the annual budget with a video rather than a live speech; the only mayor who has done so in recent memory was Jenny Durkan, who was halfway out the door when she announced her final budget with a perfunctory six-minute video taped at a North Seattle College classroom in 2021.

Courts, Density, Drugs, Elections, Police

This Week on PubliCola: December 20, 2025
Like this, but bigger: The city council just approved eight-unit apartment buildings everywhere.

SPD Invites Cops to Evangelical Event, City Attorney Quadruples Drug Prosecutions, and More

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, December 15

SPD Invites Officers in “Officer Involved Shootings” to Attend Billy Graham Evangelical Ministry Retreat

In a department-wide email, the Seattle Police Department wellness team invited officers and their spouses to sign up for a retreat hosted by the Billy Graham Law Enforcement Ministry. The evangelist group, which espouses fundamental Christian views, is controversial: In 2021, then-chief Adrian Diaz rescinded an invite to a dinner hosted by the ministry. An SPD spokesperson said there was nothing unusual about the invitation—a sign, perhaps, of how much things have changed under Mayor Bruce Harrell and Chief Shon Barnes.

Tuesday, December 16

SPD Paid for New Executive to Stay at Four-Star Hotel for a Month

Lee Hunt, part of the cohort of new executive staff Police Chief Barnes brought in when he was hired last year, spent a month staying at the four-star Arctic Hotel last year on the city-s dime—a $6,300 expense SPD said was a normal part of a “relocation package” provided to all the new hires.

Unclear Whether New Contract Would Have Let Police Handle Auderer Case Internally

Besides boosting rookie officers’ pay to $126,000 after their first six months, the new Seattle Police Officers Guild contract allows sergeants to investigate minor misconduct, which has previously gone to the Office of Police Accountability, freeing OPA to spend more time on serious allegations. While the change was generally noncontroversial, the definition of “serious misconduct” appears to exclude professionalism—meaning that situations like ex-SPOG vice president Daniel Auderer’s “jokes” about the killing of pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula by a speeding police officer might not see the light of day in the future.

Thursday, December 18

Drug Prosecutions Quadrupled In Final Months of City Attorney Ann Davison’s Term

City Attorney Ann Davison, a Republican who lost to Erika Evans by 34 points this year, accelerated filings of misdemeanor drug possession cases during the last few months of her term, more than quadrupling prosecutions against people caught possessing drugs in public, generally homeless people with addiction. Private use and possession of illegal drugs has not been a policy priority for the police or Davison.

Friday, December 19

Seattle Council Approves Eight-Unit Apartment Buildings Everywhere

The latest 10-year update to the Seattle comprehensive plan—still a work in progress thanks to delays by outgoing Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office—actually allows eight-unit, three-story apartment buildings on every residential lot in Seattle, thanks to density rules that encourage “stacked flats” instead of townhouses. If developers save trees or add eco-friendly landscaping, that number goes up to 10 units and four stories.

Council Passes Watered-Down Consultant Ethics Bill

Outgoing City Council president Sara Nelson’s proposal to bar political consultants from working for the city itself while also running election campaigns was ultimately reduced to a mere disclosure bill—meaning consultants like Christian Sinderman can still work for city candidates while working for elected officials (and even having dedicated offices) at City Hall.

Wilson Appoints SDOT Director Who Headed Waterfront, Mercer Projects

Mayor-Elect Katie Wilson appointed Angela Brady, currently head of the city’s waterfront office, to replace Harrell appointee Adiam Emery as head of the Seattle Department of Transportation. In addition to overseeing the transformation of the downtown waterfront, Brady was in charge of the Mercer reconstruction project, which was supposed to fix the “Mercer Mess” in South Lake Union.

City Council, Elections, Mayor Wilson

Council Passes Watered-Down Consultant Ethics Bill, Wilson Appoints SDOT Director Who Headed Waterfront, Mercer Projects

1. In one of her final acts as council president, Councilmember Sara Nelson passed a watered-down version of a plan she introduced earlier this year, which in its original form would have prohibited political consultants from working for the city while also working on campaigns.

The legislation targeted consultants like Christian Sinderman, who—under an unusual arrangement—worked as a kind of de facto city staffer for Mayor Bruce Harrell, complete with his own office at City Hall, while also working as a campaign consultant to both Harrell and Foster, who defeated Nelson roundly in November.

The bill would originally have also required political consultants who contract with the city to wait one year before working on political campaigns.

In its final form, the bill only requires political consultants to register with the city, similar to existing requirements for lobbyists. Council members raised concerns about whether the bill—proposed in November—was rushed, with Maritza Rivera saying all the late amendments were so “confusing” that she would just “vote no all the way across the board.”

Even though her colleagues effectively neutered her bill, Nelson said it was a step in the right direction. “Will this fix all forms of undue influence on policy at City Hall? No, but it is a meaningful start,” she said. “It shed lights on an area where the lines between politics and policy are blurred in ways that erode public trust.”

2. In the first major shakeup of her transition period, Mayor-Elect Katie Wilson announced on Wednesday that she’s picked Angela Brady, the current head of the city’s Office of the Waterfront, Civic Projects, and Sound Transit as interim Seattle Department of Transportation director. She’ll replace Adiam Emery, a former deputy mayor for Mayor Bruce Harrell whom he appointed as interim SDOT director earlier this year.

The decision to replace Emery was widely expected: New Seattle mayors almost always pick their own transportation directors to reflect their own priorities, and this may be even more true than usual for Wilson, the longtime director of the Transit Riders Union. We’ve asked Wilson’s team whether she plans to do a national search for an SDOT director.

For those with long memories, Brady is a somewhat surprising pick. Although the pedestrian-friendly section of the waterfront development near Pike Place Marker has been widely lauded, the rest of the downtown waterfront is dominated by a wide surface highway that’s up to nine lanes wide (in Pioneer Square, the city’s most historic neighborhood). The decision to build a surface highway and waterfront tunnel was made before Brady was at the office of the waterfront, but her 12-year tenure does put her on the hook for choices the city made after transportation planners decided to design waterfront road for cars instead of people.

Brady was in charge when the city decided to massively expand Mercer Street, another wide expanse of asphalt that got several lanes wider in each direction during her time as SDOT’s Mercer Corridor Program manager. Expanding the roadway didn’t fix traffic, as boosters promised, but it did make the corridor more dangerous for bikes and more frustrating for everyone who uses it—a reflection of the mid-2000s logic (incorrect, as we knew even then) that widening roads makes traffic go faster.

Elections, King County, Mayor Harrell, Mayor Wilson, Police

This Week on PubliCola: December 6, 2025

Overtime cuts and media training at SPD, layoffs at King County, a big grant to private club closely linked to Harrell, and more.

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, December 1

After Overspending, SPD Scrambles to “Drastically Reduce” Overtime

The Seattle Police Department’s use of overtime has continued to increase year after year, rising to around 500,000 hours last year. Despite multiple midyear budget increases, SPD has run out of overtime funding, and will deprioritize property crimes and other types of investigations in an effort to get a handle on its budget for 2025.

Tuesday, December 2

“Bureaucrats” Losing Jobs in King County Shakeup Say They Were Blindsided by Zahilay’s Emailed Layoff Announcement

King County Executive Girmay Zahilay has portrayed his decision to lay off the majority of people who fall under his direct purview as a standard part of any transition process. But many employees who will lose their jobs in January told us their positions aren’t political; they’re bureaucrats who the county running, like regional planners, contract managers, and economists.

Mayor-Elect Wilson Appoints Deputy Mayor Brian Surratt, Other Top Staff

Regional economic growth leader and city of Seattle veteran Brian Surratt will be Mayor-Elect Katie Wilson’s sole deputy mayor, a pick that seems likely to assuage at least some concerns from business leaders who worried Wilson’s team would consist of socialist radicals. Former council central staffer Aly Pennucci, former Puget Sound Sage director Nicole Soper, and ex-Futurewise policy director Kate Kreuzer are also at the top of Wilson’s org chart.

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Thursday, December 4

Incoming Mayor Wilson Mulls Police Chief’s Future

Sources confirmed this week that incoming Mayor Katie Wilson is still waffling over whether to keep Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes, a Bruce Harrell appointee who has come under scrutiny for some of his external and internal decisions.

SPD Pays Consultants for Media Training, Executive Assessment

At Barnes’ direction, the department will pay a consultant from North Carolina to do a media training for SPD command staff and executive-level employees. Although command staff and executives just got media training from a different consultant last year, an SPD spokesperson said the new training is needed to make these officials more comfortable talking to the press.

The department will also pay another consultant, this one from California, to do an assessment of how the police chief’s office is organized. Barnes just hired several new high-level staffers and reorganized the office this year. The consultant is the same one who did two previous national searches that resulted in the selection of internal candidates for top roles at SPD, including former police chief Adrian Diaz.

Private Club With Deep Ties to Harrell Gets $183,000 City Grant

Three weeks before leaving office, Mayor Harrell announced the latest round of Equitable Development initiative grants. For the second time in his administration, the Royal Esquire Club, a private Black men’s club to which Harrell has longstanding ties, will receive money to pay for a renovation. Although Harrell’s office says the EDI committee funded the club based purely on its value as a cultural institution, the mayor’s work on behalf of the group—including alleged attempts to quash a wage-theft investigation and the use of city staff time to do administrative tasks for the club—calls that claim into question.

Harrell Campaign Paid Consultant $46,000 for Last-Minute “Outreach”

Newly filed election finance reports for November show that the Harrell campaign paid Eastside for Hire taxi company founder Abdisalam (Abdul) Yusuf more than $46,000, the equivalent of $5,000 a week (based on reports that connect payments to specific weeks of work) to do unspecified “outreach” in the final days of the campaign. Yusuf’s consulting firm has never reported any previous paid work on any campaign.

Friday, December 5

Seattle Nice: Shakeups at the County and City as Zahilay and Wilson Take Over

This week on the Seattle Nice podcast, we discussed the changes that are taking shape at King County and the city of Seattle, as County Executive Girmay Zahilay and Mayor-Elect Katie Wilson start filling out their staff, including Zahilay’s layoffs and internal discussions on Team Wilson about whether to retain SPD Chief Barnes.

Elections, Mayor Harrell

Private Club With Deep Ties to Harrell Gets $183,000 City Grant; Harrell Campaign Paid Consultant $46,000 for Last-Minute “Outreach”
Mayor Bruce Harrell on election night at the Royal Esquire Club

1. On Thursday, Mayor Bruce Harrell announced $27.8 million in new grants through the city’s Equitable Development Initiative—the city’s largest anti-displacement program. On the list, for the second time in Harrell’s term: The Royal Esquire Club, a 78-year-old private social club on Rainier Avenue South where Harrell served as board president (and where he held his election-night party this year).

This year’s $184,000 grant serves as a kind of bookend to the Harrell Administration. In 2022, shortly after Harrell became mayor, the city granted the club $800,000 for renovations to its building—one of the largest grants that year. This year’s grant will also go toward that renovation.

Back in 2022, Harrell’s office said the EDI program chose all grants based on objective, merit- and equity-based criteria and that the mayor had no influence over the process. When we asked about this year’s award, Harrell’s office referred us to the same statement they sent three years ago when the club got its first EDI grant: “Decisions on which organizations received funding were determined by the EDI Advisory Board and community panel through a competitive community-based process. The mayor had no role in deciding which organizations would receive the awards and did not receive or score the applications.”

Harrell’s longstanding connection to the Royal Esquire Club has been the source of controversy, and the subject of a formal ethics complaint, in the past. In 2018, when he was city council president, Harrell intervened in an investigation into wage theft allegations by five women who worked as servers at the club.

When the city’s Office of Labor Standards began looking into the allegations, Harrell contacted the city employee who was investigating the case to remind him that the council and mayor had the power to cut OLS’ budget. At various council meetings, Harrell called OLS’ investigators “extremely unprofessional” and their treatment of the Royal Esquire Club “horrible.” (The women eventually reached a financial settlement).

This year, KUOW reported that Harrell had directed his city council staff to do administrative work for the Royal Esquire Club, which lacked secretarial support at the time, including tasks like filling out insurance paperwork, collecting membership dues, and sending out invitations to fundraising events. (Harrell characterized this work as “constituent services.”)

The EDI program funds organizations “working on anti-displacement efforts in high displacement risk neighborhoods.” According to a spokeswoman for Harrell, the club “is a historically significant gathering space for Seattle’s Black community, which has experienced well-reported displacement from the city and the loss of culturally significant spaces.”

Other projects that received EDI funding this year included an immigrant and refugee public market (African Community Housing & Development) the Khmer Community Center (Khmer Community Seattle King County, a birth and parenting center for Indigenous parents (Hummingbird Indigenous Family Services,) and a health care center for seniors on Beacon Hill (International Community Health Services).

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2. On Sunday, Mayor Bruce Harrell’s reelection campaign filed its campaign finance reports for the week leading up to the November 4 election. The reports show that Harrell reported paid the one-person consulting firm owned by Eastside for Hire founder Abdisalam (Abdul) Yusuf more than $21,000 on election day.

Combined with the payments PubliCola reported last month, the Harrell campaign has paid Yusuf more than $46,000 for unspecified outreach work. Yusuf’s firm, FF and J Consulting, has never reported any previous paid work on any campaign.

Yusuf is a prominent member of the Seattle-area Somali community who has frequently advocated on behalf of rideshare drivers. During the final weeks of the campaign, Harrell was reportedly eager to drum up votes from Seattle’s tight-knit East African communities. The nature of Yusuf’s outreach and engagement is unclear—neither he nor the Harrell campaign responded to our questions just before the election‚‚but whatever it was, Harrell considered it extremely high-value. His consultant, Christian Sinderman, received the same amount in a month that Yusuf got from the campaign every week, and his campaign manager made around $1,200 a week, according to campaign finance reports.

Harrell lost the election to Katie Wilson by a margin of 2,011 votes.