Category: Libraries

campaign finance, Elections, LGBTQ+, Libraries

Candidate Says Bagel Giveaway Is Strictly Business; Big Business PACs Back Harrell-Allied Candidates; “Books Unbanned” Still Open to Minors In Library Book Ban States

1. Stephen Brown, the president of Eltana Bagels and a candidate for City Council in District 1 (West Seattle), said a mailer emblazoned “Seattle Deserves Better… – Stephen Brown” that included an offer for free bagels was just a routine promotional pitch for his local wood-fired bagel chain, not a campaign expenditure.

The flyer (which opens to the word “Bagels!”) offers a half-dozen free bagels and a “spread of your choice”—a “more than $25 value!” to anyone who comes in to either of Eltana’s two locations, which are both located outside District 1. In small print below the offer, the mailer says the offer expires at the end of August and has “no cash value.”

Contacted by email, Brown said the flyers were part of Eltana’s routine direct-marketing strategy and went out “to various addresses in the city that are close to retail grocery stores selling Eltana bagels. … As part of its promotions, Eltana regularly gives bagels away in an effort to garner trial and acquire customers.”

“The intention was to use a banal, stereotypical message as a parody—to use humor to sell bagels,” Brown added.

“This effort is not a campaign expense—it is not electoral in nature.” —District 1 city council candidate Stephen Brown

Eltana has also purchased four billboards, including at least one in West Seattle, prominently featuring Brown’s name.

“Eltana has never bought billboards in the past but the incredibly low price for billboards this summer ($1000 a month) made this promotional offer too attractive for Eltana to pass up,” Brown said. “We have used me, as the founder, in the past to promote Eltana[.] …. This effort is not a campaign expense—it is not electoral in nature.”

If the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission determines that the mailers, giveaway, or billboards do promote Brown’s candidacy, the campaign would be in violation of Seattle election law, which bars candidates who participate in the democracy voucher program (as Brown is) from accepting more than $300 in cash or in-kind contributions from any campaign donor. The commission declined to comment.

Brown said “the campaign will not be reporting on the performance of the Eltana trial promotion,” as “the offer is made and distributed by Eltana, is city wide, and doesn’t promote any candidate for public office nor does it mention any elections or geography.”

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2. A developer-funded independent expenditure campaign poured more than $27,000 into the effort to elect Maritza Rivera—whose campaign focuses on hiring more police—to City Council District 4, where urbanist Ron Davis is the other top contender.

“University Neighbors Committee” received its largest donations from developers John Goodman and George Petrie—two frequent Republican donors who bankrolled the failed Compassion Seattle campaign and poured $150,000 into the political committee that helped elect Bruce Harrell in 2021. The other donors backing the pro-Rivera PAC include developer Jordan Selig, developer Martin Smith, developer Matt Griffin, and Amazon bigwig David Zapolsky.

The PAC’s first pro-Rivera mailer says that as a parent of a child at Ingraham High School, where a 17-year-old was shot last year, she “decided to run for city council because our current council isn’t doing enough to keep us safe. “If voters elect Rivera, the mailer promises, they’ll get “More cops. Better training. Faster response times”—Rivera has said wants to reduce Priority 1 911 response times to five minutes, which would require hiring hundreds more officers—a goal SPD has acknowledged isn’t realistic—and making Seattle the exception to a nationwide trend.

The exact same group of donors has contributed more than $32,000 to the “Elliott Bay Neighbors” PAC supporting Rob Saka—another Harrell-allied candidate—in District 1 (West Seattle).

If you’ve seen any mailers and want to send them our way, email erica@publicola.com. 

3. Earlier this month, the state of Mississippi effectively banned people under 18 from accessing e-books or audiobooks through any of its public libraries—part of the growing trend of book bans and other restrictions aimed at preventing young people from accessing information about gender, sexuality, race, and anything else Republican lawmakers consider objectionable.

The law requires vendors of digital materials like Libby and Hoopla to ensure that no minors can access anything the state deems “sexually explicit,” which includes everything from textbooks that include human anatomy sketches to “descriptions [of] homosexuality or lesbianism.”

Seattle Public Library spokeswoman Laura Gentry said the library will continue to offer Seattle library cards to people with Internet access living in Mississippi, whose ban on online materials for minors only extends to public and school libraries in that state, through its Books Unbanned program. Currently, she said, the program has 17 participants from Mississippi, including a 23-year-old teacher who submitted this comment: 

“Living in Mississippi, a lot of books with vital information/stories/perspectives are banned or being banned. Being a Black woman in the city with the highest population of Black people, I know how important it is for us to protect our history. Also, being a teacher, I see how certain books being banned has already affected the younger generation. There is a lot that they don’t know and may never know so it’s extremely helpful to have access to this catalog.”

LGBTQ+, Libraries

Seattle Public Library Kicked Out of Trans Pride After Hosting Anti-LGBTQ+ Activist Kirk Cameron
Image from Kirk Cameron's latest anti-"woke" children's book, "Pride Comes Before the Fall," issued to coincide with the first day of Pride Month.
Image from Kirk Cameron’s latest anti-“woke” children’s book, “Pride Comes Before the Fall,” issued to coincide with the first day of Pride Month.

By Erica C. Barnett

The Gender Justice League has barred the Seattle Public Library from participating in the Trans Pride event on Friday, June 23, after the library decided to rent a large auditorium at the downtown library to former child star Kirk Cameron, a conservative activist who is touring to promote his latest “traditional family values” picture book.

PubliCola broke the story about Cameron’s appearance in April.

Responding to PubliCola’s questions about the cancellation, Gender Justice League Executive Director Danni Askini said the decision wasn’t just about Cameron’s appearance, but a response to a longstanding pattern of “deeply problematic behavior by the Library toward Two-Spirit, Trans, and Gender Diverse People,” such as denying a trans man access to a restroom in 2017 and renting the auditorium to a group that advocates against trans women’s rights two years later.

“We know there are situations where intellectual freedom, equity, and inclusiveness are in conflict at the Library—we have seen it and lived it, and we should discuss it.”—Chief Librarian Tom Fay

“We look forward to the City Librarian, the Library, and the City of Seattle taking this opportunity to reflect on the harm that platforming hate groups have on our community, at a time when there have been 450+ anti-trans laws, including calls to remove trans youth from their families, banning constitutionally protected healthcare, creating felonies for using restrooms with minors, and outlawing all forms of gender affirming care,” Askini said.  “We absolutely refuse to allow government entities that platform hate mongers into our sacred, holy, and inviolable space,” she added.

The library has maintained that it has the legal obligation to rent its rooms to anyone who applies, regardless of their views, and that to make judgment calls about who uses their facilities would amount to government censorship and a violation of the First Amendment,” as well as “intellectual freedom.”

Cameron has said that public schools are “sexualizing” and “grooming” kids, that being gay is “unnatural” and “destructive to so many of the foundations of civilization, that women who have abortions are “murderers,” and that his book tour offers a “wholesome alternative to the Drag Queen Story Hours promoted by woke Marxist librarians.”

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Cameron released his latest children’s book, “Pride Comes Before the Fall,” to coincide with the first day of Pride Month because, as he told the Washington Times, “When you have an entire nation setting aside a month to celebrate something as dangerous as pride, I feel it’s my responsibility to hold up the truth of humility so kids can have a chance.”

In a letter to library staff, SPL Chief Librarian Tom Fay said he understood and shared the Gender Justice League’s “concerns” about the anti-trans laws that are proliferating around the country in response to the efforts of prominent right-wing activists like Cameron.

“Library leadership will continue to discuss and investigate options for handling meeting room requests from groups outside of our community that strain the community relationships we have worked hard to build and that strain our limited publicly-funded resources,” Fay wrote. “We know there are situations where intellectual freedom, equity, and inclusiveness are in conflict at the Library—we have seen it and lived it, and we should discuss it.” However, his proposal boiled down to a “facilitated discussion” with trans and queer library staffers, rather than a change in policy.

In a public interview for the chief librarian position last year, Fay said the library had the “legalistic” obligation to rent its rooms to any person or group, and suggested in order to “at least state where we’re at on an issue without being so neutral,” the library could say that it “in no way endorses this particular group.”

A library spokesperson was unable to respond to a request for comment on Thursday; we will update this post when we hear back.

City Council, Elections, LGBTQ+, Libraries

Council Candidate Backed Republican Smiley for Congress, Kirk Cameron’s Anti-“Woke” Event Spurred Successful Protest Fundraiser

1. Seattle City Council candidate Kenneth Wilson, running to replace one-term council member Alex Pedersen in District 4, supported Republican Tiffany Smiley over US Senator Patty Murray in the 2022 election, according to campaign finance records as well as Wilson’s response to a lightning-round question at a recent forum sponsored by the 36th District Democrats. At the forum, held on May 23, Wilson indicated “no” in response to the question “Did you vote for Patty Murray”; as the senator’s GOP opponent, Smiley flirted with election denialism and ran as an anti-abortion candidate.

Wilson also donated $500 to Smiley’s campaign last October, according to federal records. During his first run for council in 2021 against incumbent Position 9 Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, Wilson said he was motivated to run by crime and the presence of “ghetto-type paintings” all over the city.

His opponents include Maritza Rivera and Ron Davis. Rivera, a deputy director of the city’s Office of Arts and Culture whose husband, political consultant Dan Kully, worked on former mayor Jenny Durkan’s campaign, is aligned with Harrell; Davis, who contributed to Harrell’s opponent, Lorena González, is running as a progressive urbanist. Durkan contributed $300 (the legal maximum) to Rivera, her first campaign contribution since 2015, when she gave $125 to the short-lived council campaign of Mian Rice, the son of former Seattle mayor Norm Rice.

Wilson has raised more than any of his opponents so far—about $65,000.

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2. About 200 people showed up to see former TV star Kirk Cameron speak at the downtown Seattle Public Library last week, after the library rented a meeting room (subsequently upgraded to the main downstairs auditorium) to the former teen star. As PubliCola reported exclusively earlier this month, Cameron is promoting his appearances, in which he reads from his children’s book, as “a wholesome alternative to the Drag Queen Story Hours promoted by woke Marxist librarians.”

Cameron has said homosexuality is “unnatural,” believes women who have abortions are “murderers,” and has said public schools are “sexualizing” and “grooming” kids, a common trope among right-wing fringe groups. The library told PubliCola it would amount to “government censorship and a violation of the First Amendment” to refuse to rent a meeting room to Cameron’s group.

In a silver lining, the fundraiser raised more than $5,000 in pledges for Drag Queen Story Hour, the American Library Association’s LeRoy C. Merritt Humanitarian Fund (which provides financial assistance for library staffers who lose their jobs for defending intellectual freedom; and Libraries for the People, an anti-censorship group.

According to one attendee—who helped organize a fundraiser to raise money for pro-library organizations—Cameron started his children’s book reading by delivering a “15 minute lecture on America’s tallest granite monument.” (Cameron is so obsessed with this obscure monument, known as the Forefathers Monument, that he made a documentary about it (!) and even sells “high-density resin” replicas of it (!!) for $200 (!!!) on his website. It’s so weird it would almost be charming, if the message of the monument wasn’t that the US is meant to be an explicitly Christian nation).

After that, he brought out the Bremerton coach who won a $2 million settlement after he was fired for holding prayers on the field during football games and led the crowd in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and singing “God Bless America” before reading two of his children’s books promoting “traditional family values.”

At one point, according to the attendee, “Cameron pointed to the sky and asked the audience, ‘who loves you the most?’ and a kid in the audience yelled ‘Obama!'”

The library had security on hand, along with Seattle Police Department officers, to respond to potential protests. On Tuesday, library director Tom Fay issued a bland statement calling the event “a learning experience for all” and thanking library staff for their work to “minimize disruption and reduce the use of Library resources needed.”

In a silver lining, the fundraiser raised more than $5,000 in pledges for Drag Queen Story Hour, the American Library Association’s LeRoy C. Merritt Humanitarian Fund (which provides financial assistance for library staffers who lose their jobs for defending intellectual freedom; and Libraries for the People, an anti-censorship group.

City Council, homelessness, human services, legislature, Libraries, Morning Fizz

DSHS Reopens In-Person Services; New Library Director Says Day Centers at Libraries Would Confuse Patrons

1. Proponents of a bill (HB 2075) that would force the state Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) to offer services in person scored a victory this week, as the agency agreed to reopen almost all its community services offices—key access points, prior to the pandemic, for people seeking services ranging from food stamps to cash assistance.

Since 2020, DSHS has required people seeking services to use an online portal or call a telephone hotline, where waits can be as long as several hours. The department opened the community service office lobbies late last year so that people seeking services could call the department on a land line or use a computer to access its online portal, but only agreed to offer services in person again after months of pressure from advocates for low-income and homeless people.

In a letter to stakeholders last week, DSHS Community Services Division director Babs Roberts wrote, “we have heard clearly from many of you and agree that some elements of our plans will not sufficiently meet the needs of all the people we serve, particularly those experiencing the deepest impacts of poverty and homelessness. Thus, we are making changes.”

However, Roberts added, short-staffing and social distancing requirements may result in “limited waiting space and possibly long wait times in our lobbies. This moment (like so many before) will require flexibility and patience.”

As PubliCola reported in January, the closure of in-person services made it essentially impossible for many of the state’s most vulnerable residents, including unsheltered people, to access critical services to which they are entitled, including food stamps, cash assistance, and housing subsidies.

Advocates are still pushing for the bill, which would direct DSHS to “strive to ensure” telephone wait times of no more than 30 minutes and would bar DSHS from restricting the kind of services clients can access in person. Friday is the cutoff date for the bill, which is currently in the senate rules committee, to pass out of the senate.

2. After a surprisingly contentious process, the Seattle Public Library Board unanimously appointed interim library director Tom Fay as the city’s Chief Librarian yesterday, rejecting another candidate, former Hennepin County (Minnesota) Library director Chad Helton, who resigned from his previous job amid criticism over his decision to work remotely from Los Angeles.

The vote, coming after a process that was mostly invisible to the public, shed little light on why the board chose Fay over Helton. (The two men were the only candidates that made it to the public stage of the vetting process.) During his one public interview, Helton defended his decision to run the Minnesota library system from California, saying he was just one of many people who started working from home during the pandemic. “The staff wasn’t really aware” that he lived elsewhere, Helton told the board, adding, “I didn’t think it was something that was necessary.” Fay lives in Pierce County.

As the (Minneapolis) Star-Tribune reported last week, Helton resigned from his position on February 1, after the Hennepin County Board of Supervisors passed a law, effective January 1, requiring the heads of public-facing departments like the library to live inside the state. Helton received $60,000 for “emotional damages,” plus $15,000 in attorneys’ fees, as part of a settlement.

Even if the city decided that library buildings would only open as day centers, without offering library services, Fay said, “if people were going in and out, that would be problematic for us, [because patrons] would have expectations of library services that would not be able to be offered.”

3. Hours after the vote, Fay gave a presentation on library operations to the Seattle City Council’s public assets and homelessness committee. Although the presentation was mostly a high-level look at how the library spends its money, Councilmember Lisa Herbold used the opportunity to ask Fay whether the library would consider allowing social-service providers to open and operate library branches as day centers during rare weather emergencies like last year’s Christmas snowstorm, when most library branches were closed.

“Does your plan [for emergency weather operations] consider the possibility of opening as a [day] shelter only, not using your staff, but using staff who are able to serve folks staying in a shelter, like we do [when] we open up City Hall as a shelter?” Herbold asked. Continue reading “DSHS Reopens In-Person Services; New Library Director Says Day Centers at Libraries Would Confuse Patrons” →

LGBT, Libraries

Library Finalists Discuss Security, Vaccine Requirements, TERFs, and More
Library director finalists Chad Helton (l) and Tom Fay (r)
Library director finalists Chad Helton (l) and Tom Fay (r).

By Erica C. Barnett

In public interviews last week, the two candidates for Seattle’s Chief Librarian position outlined their priorities for the library system, described how they would manage controversies over intellectual freedom, and responded to questions about what it means to serve the local community—and whether it’s possible to do so from thousands of miles away.

The first finalist, Tom Fay, has been interim chief librarian since the last permanent library director, Marcellus Turner, left the city in March 2021. The second, Chad Helton, is currently on leave from his job as director of the Hennepin (MN) County Library system. Last year, Helton came under fire for moving from Minnesota to Los Angeles, where he lived before taking the job, and running the library system remotely from his home there. Outcry over Helton’s move eventually prompted the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners to pass a law requiring directors of all departments that directly interact with the public to live in the state.

“As a public good, we have the responsibility for unfettered access, whether we agree with the people that are coming in or we don’t.”—Chief Librarian candidate Chad Helton, referring to SPL’s decision to host a group that advocates against the civil rights of transgender people

Asked about his decision to run the Minnesota library system via video conference, Helton said he was hardly the only county employee who chose to work from home. “It wasn’t this thing that I just woke up one day and decided to move to California,” he told the SPL board. “People just found out about it [after the fact]. The staff wasn’t really aware. That wasn’t communicated greatly. But … I didn’t think it was something that was necessary. And I worked off site the entire time that I was there, so it wasn’t really much of an issue for me.”

Asked why he was drawn to Seattle, in particular, Helton returned to a theme he cited several times in his 90-minute interview: Intellectual freedom, particularly when it comes to allowing unpopular voices to speak. “One of the big things that happened here was [when] there was a feminist group that booked the study room, and, you know, they booked it within their rights,” Helton said, referring to the library’s controversial decision to rent its main auditorium to an group that advocates against the civil rights of transgender people in 2019.

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As we reported at the time, the group’s legal work included efforts to ban trans women from restrooms on the grounds that they would sexually assault “real” women.

“The way that the library handled that really made the want to be a part of this organization. Yes, the group that came in, I’m sure it hurt,” he continued. “But understanding that as a public good, we have the responsibility for unfettered access, whether we agree with the people that are coming in or we don’t.”

“If a hate comes through that particularly hates African-Americans, and they follow the process, it is my responsibility to support that group with their First Amendment rights. And that’s what I’ve always wanted to do in this work. That’s the vision that I had for [Hennepin] County, and that’s the vision that I have for SPL.” Continue reading “Library Finalists Discuss Security, Vaccine Requirements, TERFs, and More” →

Environment, homelessness, Libraries, Police, Transportation

Parking Officer Falsified Tickets, Canceled Homeless Count Un-Canceled, City Pays to Clean Up Mess at Police Firing Range, and More

1. Seattle’s Office of Police Accountability (OPA) released its first investigation into misconduct by a parking enforcement officer since the city’s parking enforcement unit moved from the Seattle Police Department to the Seattle Department of Transportation last year. OPA investigators found that the officer had falsified more than 100 parking citations and warnings to appear more productive.

The officer’s supervisor complained to the OPA after a review of the officer’s work turned up more than a dozen warnings and citations issued to the same car in a short time span—supervisors later learned that the car belonged to the mother of the officer’s children. Looking deeper into the officer’s work log, supervisors discovered that his GPS location often didn’t match the location of cars he cited. The officer later confessed to the OPA that he pretended to be productive by creating warnings or citations for nearby vehicles and listing an inaccurate location for the non-existent parking violation. The OPA determined that the officer had committed perjury and fraud, leaving SDOT leadership to decide how to discipline him.

The OPA’s investigation began while the parking enforcement unit was still housed within SPD, but it concluded after the unit moved to SDOT in the summer of 2021. The OPA is still technically a part of SPD, but the city’s ongoing efforts to move some law enforcement functions out of the police department has expanded the OPA’s footprint; the parking enforcement officer’s case, the first OPA has referred to SDOT for discipline, is a prime example. The OPA also has jurisdiction over the city’s 911 dispatchers, who moved out of SPD last year into the newly created Community Safety and Communications Center.

2. In a reversal of a decision announced late last year, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority will perform an in-person manual count of the region’s homeless population in March. According to agency spokeswoman Anne Martens, the March count will serve as the official Point In Time (PIT) Count for King County. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requires homelessness agencies, including the KCRHA, to physically count the unsheltered homeless population in the area they oversee every two years, although King County has historically done an annual count.

The last scheduled count, in 2021, was scuttled by COVID. In announcing their initial decision to skip this year’s count, the agency argued that because the count is only required in odd-numbered years, “2022 is not a required year.” HUD disagreed and said that KCRHA could be penalized in future requests for federal funding, but Martens told PubliCola in December that HUD had agreed to waive the requirement after the agency announced a new tally based on data obtained from homeless service providers, among other sources.

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At a meeting of the Seattle City Council’s homelessness committee earlier this month, authority CEO Marc Dones characterized the March head count as “a rough count” and noted that the authority is basing its planning on the data-based estimate of 45,000 people experiencing homelessness in King County in 2019. That number dropped to around 40,000 in 2020, largely because fewer people were accessing the homeless services on which that estimate is based.

Martens said the March head count “will be deemed a PIT Count for HUD purposes.” The agency will also be doing qualitative research to determine “the ‘why’ and the context around homelessness… to help us build our system in a way that centers people with lived experience,” Martens said.

3. The city of Seattle has paid more than $140,000 to clean up a wetland in Tukwila after the Seattle Police Athletic Association (SPAA), a 70-year-old nonprofit that runs a clubhouse and firing range for Seattle police officers, dumped truckloads of dirt, tires, concrete and other debris onto the marshy banks of the Duwamish River last year.

SPAA is currently not paying for any part of the restoration effort; instead, that burden falls to Seattle’s Department of Finance and Administrative Services (FAS), which owns part of property occupied by the gun range. FAS spokesperson Melissa Mixon told PubliCola that her department can’t comment on whether SPAA will contribute to the restoration costs because of pending litigation.

As PubliCola reported last year, the association used the dirt and debris, which came from an unknown construction site in the Seattle area, to build a backstop for the association’s firing range. Tukwila’s code enforcement office issued a stop-work order in May. According to Mixon, the city is still working to restore the site and is “staying on target with deadlines discussed with Tukwila.”

4. Seattle Public Library employees who staffed library branches during the recent winter weather emergency will receive retroactive payments of $150 for every shift they worked between December 24 and January 3. Former mayor Jenny Durkan issued an executive order providing incentive pay to all “frontline” executive-branch employees on December 24, but because the library is not an executive department, the offer did not extend to library staffers. According to an SPL spokeswoman, the payments will go out to all eligible employees, including library associates, librarians, security officers, and custodial workers, once it’s approved by the library union.

—Paul Kiefer, Erica C. Barnett

 

Libraries

Seattle Library Finalist at Center of Remote-Work Controversy
Seattle Public Library finalist Chad Helton. Image via Hennapin County
Seattle Public Library finalist Chad Helton. Image via Hennapin County

By Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle Public Library announced two finalists for its chief librarian position on Wednesday: Current interim chief librarian Tom Fay, and Hennepin County, MN library director Chad Helton. Fay has headed up the library on an interim basis since former chief librarian Marcellus Turner left to head up the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library system last March.

The Hennepin County library hired Helton in May 2020, apparently believing he would relocate to Minnesota. Helton did live in the state for about a year, but last summer, according to the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune, he informed employees via email that from then on, he would do his $183,855-a-year job remotely from his home in Los Angeles, where he has lived ever since.

Helton’s decision to run the 42-branch system from 2,000 miles away made national news, prompted at least one scathing editorial, and prompted a new county policy last month requiring county supervisors whose employees interact with the public, including the library director, to live in the state unless they receive special dispensation from the county administrator.

Last summer, Helton informed employees via email that he would do his $183,855-a-year job remotely from his home in Los Angeles, where he has lived ever since.

Seattle library board chair Carmen Bendixen told PubliCola that while she couldn’t “share anything that Mr. Helton shared with us in his first-round interview… it is important to me that a successful candidate shows a commitment to the Library’s community focus in the final round of interviews with the Board.”

The job description the library used during its national search, Bendixen added, was “intentionally community-focused, making it important that the successful candidate be able to conduct community-centered work, including staying connected to our physical facilities and interacting in-person with Library patrons, partners, staff and other stakeholders.” When Helton was first hired in Hennepin County, he said he had an “inexplicable love for Minnesota,” according to the Star Tribune.

Helton told PubliCola, “I am in compliance with the directive of Hennepin County Administration in regards to its Future Ready Hennepin plan,” which outlined standards for county employees to work remotely or on hybrid in person/remote schedules. “Should I be hired as the next Chief Librarian, I will be in compliance with all directives set forth by the SPL Board,” Helton added.

The library board will hold one public forum on each of the finalists in February; information about the forums is available on the library’s website.