Category: labor

Courts, Density, homelessness, labor, Mayor Wilson, Police, Transportation

This Week on PubliCola: April 25, 2026
KCRHA CEO Kelly Kinnison

A forensic audit finds widespread problems at the homelessness agency, county workers rally against in-office mandates, and a ton of other stories you may have missed this week.

Monday, April 20

SPD Gives Medal to Officer Who Chased Man Into Traffic, Leaving Carful of Kids Behind

The Seattle Police Department put out a video congratulating officer Albert Khandzhayan for apprehending a man who had kidnapped his wife’s three children by breaking the window of her car, dragging her out, and driving off with the kids inside. The video includes disturbing audio from the woman’s panicked 911 call; when we contacted SPD, they expressed “regret” for posting the audio without asking the victim’s permission.

Update: After we posted about the video, SPD removed it from Youtube and their website, replacing it with a note said in part: “Recognizing the potential harm this post may have caused, we have removed the video originally posted here.”

County Assessor, Charged With Stalking, Posts Taunting Pics as Council Again Demands His Resignation

King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson posted multiple photos of himself in a tub, shirtless, on Instagram and Facebook Stories, with captions flaunting the fact that a judge ruled he did not have to wear a previously ordered ankle monitor because of a medical condition he claimed requires him to soak both legs every day. His next hearing is May 5, when PubliCola hears he may be asked to address the flippant posts.

Tuesday, April 21

Will Dialing Back Fees on Housing Fix Seattle’s Construction Crash?

On our first of two Seattle Nice episodes this week, we interviewed land use and housing consultant Natalie Quick and the city’s former chief operating officer Marco Lowe about why developers are asking holiday from Mandatory Housing Affordability fees, which pay for affordable housing but are bringing in less money as housing development slows.

Union Members, King County Employees Protest Three-Day Office Mandate

Members of the PROTEC17 union, including King County employees, protested King County Executive Girmay Zahilay’s three-day-a-week return to office (RTO) mandate, which county employees have called punitive, expensive, and counterproductive. Many of the county’s far-flung workers have never been to physical offices, so “return to office” is a misnomer.

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Wednesday, April 22

Seattle Times Fails to Credit PubliCola for Reporting on County Assessor’s Social Media Posts

The Seattle Times failed to credit PubliCola’s original reporting on County Assessor Wilson’s disappearing social media posts, instead representing the find as their original reporting. This is not in keeping with bare-minimum standards for crediting other news sources when doing followup coverage of a story another media outlet broke.

Forensic Audit Finds Homelessness Agency Lacked Basic Accounting Standards, Lost at Least $13 Million

A devastating forensic audit found multiple serious issues with the way the regional homelessness authority ran its finances, including casual accounting practices, commingling of restricted funds, consistent negative balances, and millions of dollars in overspending and money that the agency was unable to account for. The audit led local officials to issue statements calling for accountability and, in some cases, the immediate dissolution of the agency.

Thursday, April 23

Fulfilling a Campaign Promise, Wilson Announces Denny Way Bus Lanes Coming This Year

Mayor Katie Wilson announced a two-phase plan to add a dedicated bus lane along the most congested part of Denny Way, between Lower Queen Anne and Capitol Hill, and create a new pathway to the South I-5 on-ramp. The two-phase plan will fulfill a campaign promise to address chronic delays on the bus route known derisively as the “L8.”

Alarming Audit, Missing Millions: Is the End Nigh for KCRHA?

In our second podcast this week, we discussed the implications of the KCRHA audit for the future of the long-embattled agency. The audit, I argued, is most concerning for what it reveals about the agency’s lax financial controls and casual accounting practices, which included allowing the same person to oversee expenditures from approval to validation that the expense was appropriate and calculated and logged correctly.

Friday, April 24

KCRHA Board Will Meet Today to Discuss Disastrous Forensic Audit

I previewed the KCRHA board meeting to discuss the audit, including the agency’s own preemptive efforts to suggest things were well under control.

Also this week: On Friday, I covered the KCRHA board meeting in detail, including CEO Kelly Kinnison’s insistence that the audit didn’t find fraud and that no money went “missing.” In a presentation, the auditor corrected those claims and added texture to some of the dry details in the audit, including the KCRHA’s extensive use of a private temp staffing agency that charged large commissions and the widespread use of credit cards without clear authorization or line-item receipts.

Coming up: On Monday, I’ll be on City Cast Seattle discussing the audit findings and what they mean for the future of the agency. Tune in!

King County, labor

Union Members, King County Employees Protest Three-Day Office Mandate

By Erica C. Barnett

Members of the PROTEC17 union, including King County employees, held a demonstration in the lobby of King County’s Chinook building on Tuesday to protest King County Executive Girmay Zahilay’s three-day-a-week return to office (RTO) mandate, which county employees have called punitive, expensive, and counterproductive.

Carrying signs with slogans such as “Communities not cubicles,” “King County is Bigger than Seattle,” and—memorably—”I don’t have a desk,” the staffers showed up with a giant “blank check representing the expense King County will incur to rent private office space so that employees, including many who were hired as fully remote workers, will have a place to sit downtown.

A staffer for Zahilay showed up in the lobby to accept the check and said she would make sure he gets it.

The county gave up much of its office space during the pandemic and agreed to allow many employees to work from home indefinitely under an agreement called “Green Where You Work.” Now, many county employees don’t have desks to “return” to as part of the “return to office” plan—a misnomer for county employees who were hired over the past six years and have never had a physical office downtown.

David Dahl, a capital projects manager for the Department of Natural Resources and Parks, was hired as a remote worker for a job that takes him to sites across King County. Living in Seattle, he said, might make it relatively easy for him to come downtown to meet the three-day mandate, but for many of his coworkers, the extra trip would add hours of unnecessary commute time to jobs they could previously do from the part of the county where they lived.

“We have a lot of people who have projects in the south end and live in Auburn or Kent or Tacoma, and they can easily get to those projects in a very short amount of time,” Dahl said, “whereas if they have to come into an office and then go back to a park site, that’s a ton of driving to do something that should be pretty simple.”

King County is much larger than the city of Seattle, where many workers also chafed at return-to-office mandates. The county covers more than 2,100 square miles, and many staffers live far away from Seattle, in areas where housing is more affordable.

Moving more than 1,000 employees into “a space with maybe 80 desks” would be impossible, Dahl said, and the new spaces the county has come up with at the King Street Center aren’t up to ergonomic standards. “It frankly should be the bare minimum that if you’re asking someone to work in an office, you should provide them an ergonomic place to sit and to do their work,” Dahl said.

Another DNRP employee, Brad Moore, said requiring county employees to travel to downtown Seattle for work would lead an “extremely high and unknown cost” for office space “that we feel could go towards much better things—for example, the public service that we’re all supposed to be providing.”

Moore, who lives in Shoreline with his extended family and was hired as a fully remote staffer, said the mandate will add a one-way transit commute of between 45 minutes and an hour to every work day. That will make it harder for Moore to help take care of kids in the family and help his wife, who has mobility issues, get to work.

But Moore added that the situation is much worse for some of his coworkers, who live in places like Everett and “are being told that they have to come into the office two or three days a week. I mean, in the morning, it could take two hours,” Moore said.

City Council, labor, Police

City Council’s Legislative Aides Vote to Unionize, Police Chief Says “We Don’t Take Sides” in Protests
Image via City of Seattle

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.

Previous efforts to organize legislative assistants, or LAs, have failed, but this effort received well over 50 percent support. This is reportedly for two reasons: Poor working conditions in some council offices that have contributed to extremely high staff turnover, and low pay for legislative assistants compared to people who do similar jobs in other departments, including the mayor’s office.

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.

housing, labor, Mayor Wilson, Police

This Week on PubliCola: March 1, 2026

Staff call for civil rights office shakeup, CARE chief says police contract hobbles her team’s ability to respond to crises, state elevator reform bill advances, and much more.

Monday, February 23

Staff Call for Removal of Civil Rights Office Director, Citing “Discrimination, Harassment, Retaliation, and Mismanagement”

Through their union, PROTEC17, staff at the city’s civil rights office have asked Mayor Katie Wilson to remove and replace their boss, Derrick Wheeler-Smith, saying he sent misogynistic texts to staffers, ignored LGBTQ+ rights inside and outside the office, and dismissed their efforts to focus on non-Black racial minorities, including Asian Americans facing xenophobia during COVID and Latino residents under threat of ICE detention.

Tuesday, February 24

Police Contract Has Prevented Unarmed Crisis Responders From Doing their Jobs, CARE Chief Says

Amy Barden, head of the city’s Community Assisted Response and Engagement Team, talked candidly at a council meeting this week about how a police union contract has made it impossible for the team of social workers to respond to most behavioral health crisis calls. Police Chief Shon Barnes, sitting next to Barden, jumped in several times to defend police, saying he didn’t want them “relegated” to responding to just some kinds of calls. The CARE Team was created specifically to respond to crises that don’t require, and may be exacerbated by, the presence of armed officers.

Wednesday, February 25

After PubliCola Story Details Discrimination Claims, Civil Rights Office Director Accuses Deputy Mayor of Threats and “Defamation”

In response to our story on Monday, Seattle Office for Civil Rights Director Derrick Wheeler-Smith sent an email to city leaders and reporters (though not PubliCola) accusing Deputy Mayor Brian Surratt of sending “a few disgruntled staff” our way in order to defame him. Surratt was not a source, much less “the source,” for our story.

Friday, February 27

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SPD’s National Recruitment Push Includes Police Chief’s Alma Mater

Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes sent recruitment teams to several small HBCUs in the South, including his alma mater, Elizabeth City State University, and spent $25,000 of the city’s money to sponsor a basketball tournament for the conference of schools. Most of the colleges in the conference have around 2,000 students or fewer; SPD said the value of the sponsorship can’t be measured in the number of direct recruits.

Chief Attended Tiny Desk Concert with Security In Tow

Late last year, while in town on SPD business, Barnes attended a concert at NPR’s studios, bringing his two security guards with him to the show. SPD has not told us how much it cost to provide Barnes with security at the event.

Elevator Followup: Reform Bill Watered Down

Josh Feit reported that a state bill to allow developers to build apartment buildings with smaller elevators is moving forward, but no longer includes a provision that would have directed the state to support harmonizing national and international elevator size standards. The rest of the world allows smaller elevators, making it more affordable to build accessible apartments.

Former City Department Director Broke Election Law

The state Public Disclosure Commission ruled that the former director of the Seattle Office of Economic Development violated election law when he used the city’s Teams system to solicit the personal email addresses of department heads on behalf of Bruce Harrell’s campaign, but declined to fine the ex-OED director.

City IT Director Resigns

In another department-level shakeup, city IT Department director Rob Lloyd announced his resignation; his last day will be March 27.

LGBTQ Advocates Call for Removal of Civil Rights Director

The Friends of Denny Blaine, a group of LGBTQ+ advocates who organized after learning that Harrell was working with a wealthy homeowner to shut down the longstanding nude beach on Lake Washington, called for Wheeler-Smith’s resignation this week in response to PubliCola’s reporting on what the group called the “repeated dismissal and minimization of LGBTQ+ civil rights issues within the department.”

In Rare Tragedy, Man Dies Inside Rainier Beach Library Branch

A 41-year-old man died from chronic alcohol use inside the Rainier Beach branch of the Seattle Public Library last week after staff and paramedics tried to resuscitate him. It’s extremely rare for a person to die inside a library branch, and staff who were present have access to counseling and can transfer to other branches if necessary.

Seattle Nice: Are These Three Local Controversies All About Union Power?

On the podcast this week, we discussed three local stories that all have links to local unions: The organized backlash to Mayor Wilson’s decision to replace the head of Seattle City Light; CARE Team Chief Barden’s frustration over the police guild’s contract; and the efforts by SOCR staff to get Wilson to remove Wheeler-Smith, which, according to employees, came together after a survey by their union made staffers realize they weren’t alone.

City Council, homelessness, labor, Mayor Wilson, Police

This Week on PubliCola: December 13, 2025

A 14-point plan for incoming Mayor Wilson, a new police contract that raises cops’ pay another 42 percent, a parking enforcement labor slowdown, and more.

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, December 8

A 14-Point Plan for Mayor Wilson

Josh and I laid out a 14-point PubliCola manifesto for incoming mayor Katie Wilson, including everything from revamping the city’s comprehensive plan to allow more housing across the city, to building Park- and School-Oriented Transit. Also: Get rid of special rules that have enabled SPD to evade public disclosure and empowered mayor after mayor to sweep people living unsheltered without notice or assistance.

Tuesday, December 9

Feds Yank Homeless Funding Process for “Revisions,” Adding More Confusion to Changes that Could Impact Thousands in Seattle

After announcing new rules for federal homelessness funding designed to defund permanent housing and housing-first programs, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development abruptly yanked its call for funding applications without specifying why—or when the application process will open again. The upshot is that programs serving thousands of people could face funding gaps starting early next year.

Wednesday, December 10

Divided Council Passes New Police Contract That Raises Officer Pay 42 Percent, With Few Accountability Concessions

In a split vote (with Rinck, Lin, and Saka voting “no”), the city council approved yet another round of generous pay increases for cops, without the accountability measures that were promised when the city approved 23 percent retroactive pay hikes for police last year. While the new contract allows the CARE Team of unarmed first responders to expand and respond to some 911 calls without police in tow, it also imposes many new restrictions; for instance, CARE can’t respond to crisis calls if drug paraphernalia (like foil) is present or if it appears any “crime has occurred.”

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Mayor-Elect Wilson Will Retain Police Chief Shon Barnes

On the heels of the contract adoption, Mayor-Elect Katie Wilson announced that she’ll be keeping Police Chief Shon Barnes, along with the heads of Seattle’s other public safety departments, saying she expected him “to make SPD a place where professionalism, integrity, compassion, and community partnership are at the center of every action.”

Friday, December 12

Parking Enforcement Officers On Work Slowdown After Contract Negotiations Stall

After two years of negotiations with the city, the Seattle Parking Enforcement Officers Guild authorized a “realignment of enforcement priorities”—essentially, a work slowdown—to signal to city negotiators that they need a better contract. The issues at play include pay—parking officers’ pay is capped at $37 an hour, which the union argues is too low—and working conditions, like having to respond to calls on unpaid lunch breaks.

Seattle Nice: New Police Contract, Wilson Keeps Police Chief, and We Celebrate our Four-Year Anniversary!

On the fourth anniversary of the Seattle Nice podcast, we discussed some of the big stories of the week, including the new police contract, Wilson’s decision to retain SPD chief Barnes, and what HUD’s decision to yank its annual homeless program funding application might mean for people experiencing homelessness in Seattle (and the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.)

labor, Mayor Harrell

Parking Enforcement Officers On Work Slowdown After Contract Negotiations Stall
Image by Kyah117, via Wikimedia Commons. CC-by-4.0 license

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle’s parking enforcement officers have been engaged in a work slowdown since mid-November, after failing to reach an agreement on a contract that would raise their pay and allow them to take paid lunch breaks, among other union demands.

Jake Sisley, the head of the Seattle Parking Enforcement Officers Guild (SPEOG), said that on November 18, the parking enforcement officers started a “realignment of enforcement priorities” that will result in fewer tickets and more warnings for people who violate on-street parking rules.

“The city makes money off PEOs going out and doing their job, and while I maintain that’s not the primary purpose, I think the city sees it as the primary purpose,” Sisley said. “We don’t want to diminish the level of service we provide the public—like, if someone calls and says there’s a car blocking their driveway, we’ll still cite that person and tow them. But for everything else that’s kind of benign, like pay to park or if there’s a no parking zone, maybe that’s not a problem. Maybe you don’t give them a ticket, but just give them a warning.”

SPEOG represents the city’s 85 or so parking enforcement officers, who are part of the Seattle Police Department but operate under a separate contract. (Mayor Bruce Harrell just signed a new police contract giving rookie officers a starting salary of $118,000, rising to $126,000 after six months, plus bonuses for having a two- or four-year degree).

Currently, PEO salaries max out at just over $37 an hour—an amount SPEOG President Jake Sisley says is far too low, especially compared to civilian Community Service Officers and License and Standards Inspectors, who make up to $52 an hour. “Parking enforcement officers do a lot,” Sisley said—from ticketing and towing cars that are blocking driveways and roads to directing traffic at special events to knocking on the doors of RVs where people are living as part of the abandoned vehicles team.

The PEOs have been working without a contract since the end of 2023, the same year that six new people joined the city council, shaking up the Labor Relations Policy Committee, which votes on labor contracts. (A five-member council majority serves on the LRPC.)  SPEOG agreed to put the contract, which would go through the end of this year, off until the fall of 2024, Sisley said, when the union asked for a “robust” 32 percent pay increase that would to put parking enforcement officers’ pay in line with CSOs and licensing inspectors. The city countered with an offer of 2 percent.

“Our response was essentially, ‘Get real,’ because there were so many other things that were on the table,” Sisley said. “The fact that they came back with essentially [just] 2 percent— it was like, you aren’t even trying. You’re trying to delay.”

Since then, Sisley said “they’ve slowly clawed back up to a real proposal”—one that would increase PEO pay by at least 11.5 percent—but a number of issues are still outstanding and the contract is currently in mediation, with no clear path to consensus.

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The PEOs are asking for a half-hour paid lunch, rather than their current unpaid lunch breaks, because they often get calls during lunch and have to leave. Sisley said the city’s labor negotiators said they could just turn their radios and phones off during their breaks, but SPEOG argued that would create a safety issue.

They’re also opposing the city’s effort to make service on specialty teams, like the abandoned vehicles squad, a mandatory part of the routine “bid” for shifts, instead of something people sign up for on a voluntary basis; they argue that if not enough people are signing up to work these shifts, the city should pay a premium to those who volunteer. SPEOG has filed a grievance over this issue, Sisley said.

For years, the parking enforcement division has had high turnover and about 20 vacant positions. Moving the PEOs back to SPD from SDOT, where they were moved in 2021 (the only sense in which SPD was meaningfully “defunded”) was supposed to improve hiring and reduce turnover, but it didn’t, leaving about 18 perennially vacant positions.

This year, Mayor Bruce Harrell tried to defund these positions and move their funding, almost $3 million, to pay for his other priorities. After learning that PEOs actually bring in more money than they cost, in the form of fines, the council rejected that proposal. SPEOG argues the hiring and turnover issues will persist, however, as long as parking enforcement officer wages and working conditions remain worse than similar jobs, like CSOs.

“It’s not so much about the money—it’s about the principles,” Sisley said. “But the money does matter.”

The city’s lead negotiator on the contract and Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office declined to comment for this story, citing the ongoing negotiations.