Category: Mayor Wilson

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!

Mayor Wilson, Transit

Fulfilling a Campaign Promise, Wilson Announces Denny Way Bus Lanes Coming This Year
Advocates and city and Metro staff surround Mayor Katie Wilson at Wednesday’s Denny Way bus lane announcement.

By Erica C. Barnett

It took electing a mayor who knows what it’s like to be on a bus that’s crawling through gridlock traffic to finally address a choke point on Metro’s Route 8 between downtown and Capitol Hill. The bus, which runs from Seattle Center to Mount Baker via Capitol Hill and Judkins Park, gets stuck in traffic as it heads east from Seattle Center toward I-5, where cars stack up for blocks waiting to enter the freeway.

On Wednesday, Mayor Katie Wilson announced a two-phase plan to add a dedicated bus lane along the most congested part of Denny Way and create a new pathway to the South I-5 on-ramp that will divert cars off Denny at Boren, closing down the perpetually clogged pathway at Yale. The first phase, which will conclude later this month, will include a new south- and eastbound bus lane starting on Queen Anne Ave. and ending at 2nd Avenue, where the Seattle Department of Transportation will also add a bus “queue jump” lane to give buses priority.

Work will shut down for the World Cup in June and July and resume in August, when crews will paint nine new blocks of eastbound bus lanes on Dennybetween 5th Ave. downtown and Fairview Ave. N just before the freeway, where they’ll join up with an existing bus lane that will be shifted from its current location in the middle of the street over to the south curb. Yale Street, a notorious choke point, will no longer provide access to I-5; instead, southbound I-5 traffic will be funneled along Boren Ave.

The new bus lanes will be funded with $4 million from the Seattle Transportation Levy. The Seattle Transit Measure, which funds additional Metro service (and will be up for renewal this year), will fund additional service hours on the 8.

Source: SDOT

About 8,000 people ride the 8 every day, and about 26,000 ride the routes that travel along Queen Anne Ave. and Denny way just north of downtown, which include the 1, 2, 8, 13, 24, 33, and the RapidRide D Line.

On Wednesday, Wilson was surrounded by members of the Transit Riders Union, which she co-founded and directed before becoming mayor, and the Fix the L8 coalition, which held a “race the L8” event last year in which people—including then-candidate Wilson— easily outpaced the snail-like bus while walking, dancing, unicycling, and hopscotching along the route.

Speaking at Wednesday’s announcement, Fix the L8 organizer Jason Li said he grew tired of hearing people say that Seattle can’t convert general-purpose lanes to bus lanes because we aren’t a big city with a thriving transit network like New York. “The thing is, the city has done this before, and it was a wild success,” Li Said. Just a couple of miles away, Madison Street used to be just like Denny—an arterial with two lanes in each direction that was chronically clogged with both local and I-5 traffic, and it had a slow and unreliable bus, just like route eight.” Think about what happens when you replace 5,000 cars with a fleet of 13 buses.”

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Wilson, the first mayor in recent memory who does not own a car, recalled joining up with other transit advocacy groups to form the Move All Seattle Sustainably (MASS) Coalition to advocate for better mass transit in 2018. “I have to say, being stood up by your bus is honestly one of the most dispiriting experiences that you can have,” Wilson said.

“And I know every transit rider out there, here today and around the city, knows exactly what I mean. There’s just nothing that makes you feel [more] like you’re not valuable, like your time is not valuable. And it’s serious, right? You can lose a job because you’re half an hour late because your bus didn’t come. … This is our opportunity to start fixing this problem.”

As part of the Denny Way improvement exercise, SDOT came up with a list of nine additional congested corridors “where transit investment can deliver high impact benefits for riders and the city overall.” These routes, detailed in an SDOT memo, could be priorities for future investments in transit.

Courts, homelessness, King County, Mayor Wilson, Transportation

This Week on PubliCola: April 18, 2026

Homelessness Authority Undergoes Forensic Audit, County Assessor Won’t Have to Wear Ankle Monitor in Stalking Case, and More News from this Week

Monday, April 13

Seattle Nice: Mayor Wilson’s Shelter Plan, King County Assessor’s Stalking Charges, an Ambitious Library Levy, and More

On the podcast this week, we talked about Mayor Wilson’s plan to build 500 new tiny house village-style shelter units by this summer; stalking charges against King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson; and the latest library levy, which will dwarf the most recent such levy at nearly half a billion dollars.

Tuesday, April 14

King County Assessor Says He Can’t Wear Ankle Monitor In Stalking Case

County assessor Wilson, whose term ends this year, failed to show up to a court hearing where he planned to argue that he couldn’t wear a court-ordered ankle monitor because of a medical condition. His lawyer cited scheduling confusion as the reason for his absence from the virtual hearing.

Burien Puts City Manager on Leave

The Burien City Council, which has a new progressive majority, placed controversial city manager Adolfo Bailon on administrative leave this week. Bailon recently fired Burien’s city attorney, who was reportedly helping the city council figure out the process for ushering Bailon out the door.

Bicycle Weekends Will Be (Almost) Every Weekend This Year

Mayor Wilson announced the dates for Seattle’s annual “Bicycle Weekends” event, in which the city opens up Lake Washington Boulevard in Seward Park to cyclists and pedestrians during summer weekends. Unlike her predecessor, who killed longstanding plans to install stop signs and speed humps on the dangerous lakefront boulevard, Wilson is expanding the safe-street program to include every summer weekend (except Seafair) and three holidays.

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Wednesday, April 15

King County Assessor Won’t Have to Wear Ankle Monitor in Stalking Case

King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson, who was arrested and charged with stalking after he showed up repeatedly at his former fiancée’s house in violation of a no-contact order, will not have to wear an ankle monitor, a Seattle Municipal Court judge ruled, due to a medical condition that Wilson said requires him to soak his legs nightly. The monitor would have alerted Keller if Wilson violated the order by coming within 1,000 feet of her.

Thursday, April 16

Mayor Wilson’s “Shelter Acceleration” Plan Moves Forward, With Some Questions Unanswered

The City Council approved two pieces of legislation to advance Mayor Wilson’s proposed shelter expansion this week and moved a third bill forward, clearing a legal path for the city to build larger tiny house villages on a shorter timeline and providing $5 million to help pay for the first of 1,000 new shelter units Wilson has said her administration will add this year. But the council had questions about how the mayor plans to make her shelter plans sustainable, given ongoing budget deficits.

Friday, April 17

As Seattle Goes It Alone on Shelter, Homelessness Authority Faces Forensic Financial Audit

The King County Regional Homelessness Authority will not oversee any of the new shelter contracts, the Wilson administration confirmed to PubliCola. KCRHA is currently undergoing a forensic audit into its accounting and budgeting practices, a sign of strong concern from both the city and King County, its two primary funders.

City Council, homelessness, Mayor Wilson

As Seattle Goes It Alone on Shelter, Homelessness Authority Faces Forensic Financial Audit

By Erica C. Barnett

One group that was notably missing from a public discussion of Mayor Katie Wilson’s shelter expansion plan was the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, which is supposed to manage every publicly funded homeless shelter contract in the region. Instead, the city is going it alone in Wilson’s top campaign priority—building 1,000 new units of shelter, such as tiny house villages, in 2026, and a total of 4,000 by the end of her term.

Wilson’s team has said they can move faster if the city does the work. But they’re also waiting on the outcome of a major forensic audit that could shed unfavorable light on the KCRHA’s finance and budgeting practices. That audit, which the city is paying an outside consultant more than $600,000 to conduct, has been going on since August and is supposed to wrap up this month. (King County is also helping to pay for the audit.)

So far, Wilson’s team has not suggested that they’re concerned about KCRHA’s ability to administer homelessness contracts; instead, they’ve said it’s just easier and more logical for the city to do it.

Near the end of a city council committee meeting on Wednesday, for instance, Council President Joy Hollingsworth asked whether the KCRHA would “have a role” in the city’s big shelter expansion plans. Or, Hollingsworth asked, “are we transitioning that a little bit now to what we’re doing at the city, because those outcomes have not been—I’ll just be frank—what the public has anticipated for the money that we have been spending or giving to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority?”

Jon Grant, Wilson’s homelessness advisor, hemmed and hawed. “You know, we have, I think, a very important partnership and relationship with the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. …. And I think that collaboration will continue.” But, Grant said, it just makes more sense for the city itself to oversee the new shelters and administer contracts through the city’s Human Services Department—”in parallel to the work that we are also still doing with KCRHA and the work that they’re doing to operate the existing base of shelters,” of course.

Former mayor Bruce Harrell also worked to bring some of the work KCRHA was overseeing back in direct city control—focusing specifically on outreach and homelessness prevention, two areas the Harrell Administration said KCRHA “did not have the capacity” to oversee, given that they busy trying to implement Partnership for Zero—a plan, later abandoned, to end unsheltered homelessness in downtown Seattle.

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The forensic audit is taking a close look at the KCRHA’s finances—including the agency’s ongoing negative budget balance, which I wrote about last year. (KCRHA essentially starts every year with a fund balance of zero and borrows money, with interest to pay contractors throughout the year, paying back the loans when they receive money from funders.)

According to the city’s contract with consultant Clark Nuber, issued last July, the audit will “assess and document King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s (“KCRHA”) use and allocation of contributed funds; analyze the underlying drivers of its recurring negative cash position; assess the adequacy of the accounting infrastructure, information flow, and reporting; evaluate and reconcile cash advance activity to understand and identify issues related to reporting and reimbursement; and provide best practice recommendations to improve systems and processes.”

The audit was supposed to wrap up in December but the city extended the contract until the end of April late last year.

The homelessness agency has been audited before, by the state auditor and the King County Department of Human and Community Services, which raised serious concerns about the KCRHA’s accounting and monitoring practices—finding, for instance, that the agency had spent grant funding on ineligible projects, failed to executive projects on time, and had accounting errors that led to a negative balance at the end of the year.

The audit covers the period between 2021, when KCRHA started operations and July 2025. According to the contract, “If issues or suspected malfeasance are identified, the Consultant will propose additional targeted procedures to further investigate, which may include considerations such as expansion of the time range under scope, performing data analytics, staff and management interviews, and other related procedures.”

It’s unclear whether this audit, like the earlier ones, will find concerning issues with KCRHA’s internal accounting and budget practices, although early reports from people familiar with the process say it’s unlikely to be flattering. What is clear is that the city and county, which provide nearly 80 percent of the KCRHA’s budget, are following the outcome closely.

A spokesperson for Wilson told PubliCola the mayor’s office is “certainly aware of the audit, which was jointly commissioned by the previous administrations at the County and City. The mayor is concerned about KCRHA’s stewardship of public funds and will be asking hard questions about their financial controls & effectiveness.”

A spokesperson for DCHS said the department “supports the audit to gain a more clear and accurate understanding of KCHRA’s cashflow and to confirm that the organization has strong internal controls in place to sustain long-term cash management, including invoicing processes.

And a spokesperson for King County Executive Girmay Zahilay said, “Strong financial stewardship, transparency and accountability, and achieving tangible progress in addressing the homelessness crisis that impacts every part of our region are top priorities for Executive Zahilay. Once the full audit report is received, the County will work with the City and other partners to determine next steps.”

City Council, homelessness, Mayor Wilson

Mayor Wilson’s “Shelter Acceleration” Plan Moves Forward, With Some Questions Unanswered

By Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle City Council approved two pieces of legislation to advance Mayor Katie Wilson’s proposed shelter expansion this week and moved a third bill forward, clearing a legal path for the city to build larger tiny house villages on a shorter timeline and providing $5 million to help pay for the first of 1,000 new shelter units Wilson has said her administration will add this year. (Earlier this month, Wilson announced the first new shelter that will open as part of her “shelter acceleration” plan—a 75-unit Pallet shelter on 15th Ave. W in Interbay).

But council members raised questions about the timeline and long-term funding for the new shelters, which are supposed to serve people with various needs, ranging from people priced out of market-rate housing to those with profound substance use disorder and other behavioral health needs. The legislation allocated existing funds for the shelters, but they’ll need ongoing funding through the city budget, which is facing a deficit of more than $140 million.

“I will say that in these few months of a new mayor, we have yet to understand exactly what the plan is for the rest of the year, and in most circumstances, the council would not pass a budget bill without an exact plan nailed down,” Councilmember and budget committee chair Dan Strauss said. ” [A] higher level of care means that there’s a higher financial cost, and I think that we have to just really reckon with that, because without spending those additional dollars, we’re not going to see the outcomes that we are setting out to achieve today.”

The first bill adopted Tuesday gives the city’s Department of Finance and Administrative Services the authority to sign leases and make property improvements on behalf of nonprofit agencies that operate tiny house villages or other types of “transitional encampments,” a change aimed at reducing the time it takes to open new shelters. The legislation also allows the city to negotiate leases at “market rate,” rather than capping the price for land.

The second bill allocates $8.2 million to new shelters by using up the balance of two city funds—a revolving loan fund for affordable housing that was “underutilized,” according to a council staff analysis, and a human services fund that’s restricted to projects in downtown Seattle.

Councilmember Eddie Lin’s land use committee took up the third and final bill for the first time on Wednesday. It would increase the maximum size of tiny house villages from 100 occupants to 15o and allow one “pilot” village with up to 250 residents—a reduction from Wilson’s original proposal, which would have allowed one such village in every council district.

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The council attached several amendments to the funding and leasing legislation before passing the two bills on Tuesday, including:

  • A requirement that each new shelter sign a “good neighbor agreement” committing to “address community concerns” as they arise, along with a written plan “to keep the area surrounding the shelter safe, clean, and free of unsanctioned encampments” (Rob Saka);
  • A list of reporting requirements, including monthly reports on “public safety indicators” around each new shelter (Debora Juarez) and a detailed report, due in September, showing how the mayor’s office plans to add 4,000 shelter units by the end of 2029 (Bob Kettle);
  • A new work group that will set the “acuity level” for future shelters (low, medium, or high—terms that are not currently defined or used in limiting clientele at Seattle’s existing shelters) and lay out the exact service types each level of shelter will provide (Strauss); and
  • A requirement that at least one of the new shelters established this year be an abstinence-only “recovery” shelter (Maritza Rivera).

Staffers with Wilson’s office repeatedly emphasized that they plan to work closely with both the Seattle Police Department and the city’s encampment-removing Unified Care Team to enforce public safety requirements around new tiny house villages, including the provision that makes shelter operators responsible for whether people pitch tents anywhere in the vicinity of the new shelters.

“The Seattle Police Department already enjoys a strong collaborative relationship with the Human Services Department via the Unified Care Team, which visits many of the existing encampments on a regular basis, and through the Find it Fix It app and criteria for resolving encampments that become dangerous or obstructions to public access to public spaces,” Wilson’s public safety advisor Alison Holcomb told the council on Wednesday.

The UCT’s criteria for encampment sweeps were established under the previous two mayors and codified by the Harrell administration in a matrix that focuses on where a tent is located rather than the individual circumstances of the people being swept.

During her campaign, Wilson opposed indiscriminate encampment sweeps, but has since told PubliCola that she doesn’t plan to make “earth-shattering changes” to the way the Unified Care Team operates. The 116-member team, which has exclusive access to hundreds of shelter beds, managed to get someone into a shelter bed for at least one night just 903 times in 2024.

Jon Grant, Wilson’s chief advisor on homelessness, said the mayor’s office hasn’t identified a site for the initial 250-person tiny house village because it would be premature to announce a location before the council adopts legislation allowing it.

Grant said the first 500 tiny homes will be aimed at “high-acuity,” chronically homeless people who need more intensive case management and wraparound services. (The cost of these services has been a bit of a question mark, as the mayor’s office has only announced an average cost, $28,000, for the first 1,000 shelter units she has said the city will open this year.) However, he said, there is “nuance” in that designation

“Within that range, folks can be chronically homeless for lots of different reasons,” including a disability that prevents them from having a full-time job who just needs “somebody to help them get their their ID and get connected to a rental subsidy program to move them into housing,” Grant said.

 

 

Courts, Mayor Wilson, Parks

King County Assessor Says He Can’t Wear Ankle Monitor In Stalking Case Due to Medical Condition, Burien Puts City Manager on Leave, and More

1. King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson failed to appear at his court hearing in Seattle Municipal Court on Tuesday, where he was scheduled to explain why “medical issues” prevent him from wearing an ankle monitor while he awaits trial on charges of stalking his ex-fiancée, Lee Keller. Wilson’s attorney said his client was confused about the date. The court will hold another hearing tomorrow so that Wilson can attend.

According to a court filing, Wilson told a staffer for the company that provides GPS monitors, Sentinel, that he can’t wear a monitor because he “must regularly soak both legs in water to help reduce swelling” from a medical condition. “Sentinel policy states that the GPS device must not be submerged in water,” the “failure to enroll” filing says. Wilson also said he has to wear compression socks and “reported the device felt tight and indicated that additional space would be necessary to allow him to properly remove and put on his compression socks. Due to these factors Sentinel did not enroll Mr. Wilson on the GPS with exclusion zones obligation.”

Wilson was arrested earlier this year after showing up repeatedly outside Keller’s home in violation of an existing no-contact order. In court filings last year, Keller detailed Wilson’s history of stalking and harassing her over a period of several years. Seattle Municipal Court magistrate Noah Weil issued a five-year no-contact order against Wilson last week  and ordered him to wear a GPS monitor that would alert Keller if Wilson comes within 1,000 feet of her. During that hearing, Wilson said he would have “no problem” complying; the ankle monitor was meant as an assurance that he would not violate this protection order as he has with previous orders to stay away from Keller.

2. The Burien City Council decided, in a closed-door executive session, to place city manager Adolfo Bailon on administrative leave last night, voting 4-3 to remove him and direct the city’s contract interim city attorney, Ann Marie Soto, to find an interim replacement.

The reason the city has a contract city attorney is that Bailon summarily fired former City Attorney Garmon Newsom III earlier this month, PubliCola has learned. (Newsom would have been the person providing legal advice to the council as they discussed whether and how to remove Bailon). This could be among the reasons the council’s four progressive members voted to place Bailon on leave after a lengthy executive session with Soto Tuesday night.

Officially, the council has not given a reason for removing Bailon from his position, and PubliCola was unable to get any councilmember to comment on the record about what led them to consider removing him in the first place. (Executive sessions are closed to the public and considered attorney-client privileged.) Administrative leave is paid and is not considered punitive in itself.

However, it’s not hard to imagine any number of possible reasons beyond Bailon’s decision to fire the city attorney. Back in 2023, the city council (then dominated by more conservative members) stood by Bailon as he shot down efforts to stand up a homeless shelter on land owned by the city, threatened legal action against a church that hosted an encampment, turned away $1 million in shelter funding from King County, and more.

Bailon also berated council members who disagreed with his political views on homelessness, filed a complaint against Councilmember Hugo Garcia over  tweets, demanded the removal of the King County sheriff’s deputy who served as Burien’s police chief, and apparently spent much of his time calling 911 on unsheltered people in the park outside his office, among many other actions that arguably stretched the limits of his authority as a city employee.

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Under Burien’s city manager-council form of governance, every city employee technically works for the city manager, and he works for the seven-member city council. Three years ago, an outside firm resigned over what they described as the council’s refusal to take critical evaluation of Bailon’s performance seriously. With a council less sympathetic to Bailon’s actions and political opinions, he could be on his way out after four years in the role, for which he is paid around $240,000.

3. Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson announced the dates for Seattle’s annual “Bicycle Weekends” event, in which the city opens up Lake Washington Boulevard in Seward Park to cyclists and pedestrians during summer weekends. And unlike her predecessor, who killed longstanding plans to install stop signs and speed humps on the dangerous lakefront boulevard, Wilson is expanding the safe-street program to include nearly every summer weekend, except during Seafair, and three holidays.

That means that cyclists and pedestrians, including wheelchair users, will have access to the roadway more summer Sundays than any year in the past. Under Harrell, who lives nearby, the car-free celebration happened only on alternate weekends, for a total of 20 days. Wilson is expanding that to 15 summer weekends and a total of 33 days, including three holidays. Details (including where drivers can park outside the car-free zone) on the city’s website.