Category: Police

City Council, Elections, homelessness, King County, Police

This Week on PubliCola: Council Opponents Bash Mayor’s Balanced Budget, Controversial Cop Gets Slap on Wrist, $17 Million Deficit at KCRHA, and More

By Erica C. Barnett

First things first: We’re hosting a City Council debate! Come to the National Nordic Museum (2655 NW Market St.) to hear from the candidates for City Council in North Seattle’s District 5, Julie Kang and Nilu Jenks. (PubliCola will be running interviews with both candidates, conducted last week, before the debate). The outcome of this election will impact the balance of votes on the council, so it matters to the entire city. Hope to see you there!

On to the week’s news:

Monday, October 12

No, King County Didn’t Write a $10 Million “Blank Check” for Youth Homelessness

Danny Westneat’s latest column for the Seattle Times condemned a proposed sales tax increase of of 0.01 percent, claiming the (maximum) $10 million it could bring in annually amounted to a “blank check” for the county to fritter away on… whatever, we guess. In fact, the county will adopt a spending plan for the money as part of its budget process, and has identified half-dozen specific youth and family homelessness programs to receive the money. That’s not the only thing Westneat got wrong in his column, as we learned from doing some basic reporting.

Tuesday, October 13

Greater Seattle: A Supermajority, a Mistake, and a Chance

In this week’s column, Josh Feit considers what it will mean if progressive Nilu Jenks wins the D5 council election, praises SDOT’s decision to (finally) charge for parking in one West Seattle neighborhood, and has praise for Metro’s workhorse Route 7, which King County is planning to eliminate and replace with a RapidRide with far fewer stops.

Wednesday, October 14

Council Critics Accuse Wilson of Creating “the Unfund Budget”

Councilmembers who opposed Katie Wilson’s election as mayor can’t help themselves, it seems: They’re claiming her proposed budget defunds (or as Bob Kettle puts it, “unfunds”) the police department, encampment sweeps team, and graffiti removal efforts. They also seemed caught off guard by budget problems plaguing SDOT, despite their own adoption of a budget last year that included a large and growing deficit at the department.

Thursday, October 15

Regional Homelessness Authority’s Overspending Grows to $17 Million, According to New Report

Turning Point, the consultant hired to reconcile the King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s budget after a forensic audit found widespread irregularities earlier this year, discovered a nearly $17 million net deficit in the agency’s accounts, the result of excessive administrative spending on staff and the implementation of SalesForce to manage homeless services grants. The money (which includes growing interest on the KCRHA’s massive negative bank balance) will have to be paid, somehow, by the city and county, the agency’s primary funders.

Friday, October 16

Council Budget Fizz: Rinck Wants to Fund Survivor Services, Saka Wants to Defund Restrooms, and Strauss Says the Mayor Is Weak on Homelessness

A week of all-day budget meetings included more convoluted Wilson-bashing, as Rob Saka came out against Wilson’s proposal to add more of the same kind of public restrooms Saka added funding for last year, and Dan Strauss accused the mayor of being “uncomfortable” addressing homelessness after she proposed moving the city’s encampment response team back to the Human Services Department, rather than keeping it under her direct control.

And, earlier in the week, Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck proposed adding $8 million to the budget for organizations that help survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and trafficking. HR1, Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” drastically cuts funding for these services.

Complaints Filed Against Pass-Through Campaign Funding Group Created by Former Councilmember Sara Nelson

Former Councilmember Nelson’s new group, Seafor, promises to keep its donors’ identities “private,” funneling money to elections through political action committees that will only show Seafor as the donor. They’re doing a “test run” with Julie Kang, funding a PAC that is spending $30,000 on her behalf. Except—oops—you aren’t actually allowed to conceal the source of campaign funding in this way. A progressive group has filed two complaints against Seafor and its affiliated “news” website, CivicTide.

Cop Who Encouraged Fellow Officers to “F___ People Up” At Pro-LGBTQ Counterprotest Gets Written Reprimand

Seattle police lieutenant Matthew Didier, who was caught on tape encouraging officers to go hard on people protesting a far-right anti-trans rally at Cal Anderson Park, will get a slap-on-the-wrist written reprimand for his actions. Interim police chief Andre Sayles said a critical review of the incident earlier this year “made clear that our department did not understand the depth of concern within the LGBTQ+ community before this event.”

Also this week: I was a guest on CityCast Seattle, where we discussed Rinck’s “Seattle Stands With Survivors” budget proposal, a recent lawsuit filed by a woman who said the University of Washington failed to protect her from the frat member who raped her, Saka’s bizarre 180 on public restroom funding, and our favorite pizza places in Seattle (shout out to Dantini!)

Police

Cop Who Encouraged Fellow Officers to “F___ People Up” At Pro-LGBTQ Counterprotest Gets Written Reprimand

By Erica C. Barnett

Matthew Didier, the Seattle police lieutenant who was caught on body camera footage encouraging his fellow officers to “fuck people up” at a counterprotest during the far-right “Mayday USA” rally in Cal Anderson Park last year, has received a written reprimand for his actions that day. Didier’s statements to his fellow officers, who he said would be “going in with guns blazing” and were “here to fuck people up now,” have made him a symbol of police intolerance to the city’s LGBTQ+ community, which turned out to protest the anti-trans event held, provocatively, in the middle of Seattle’s historic LGBTQ+ neighborhood.

PubliCola broke the story about on the light disciplinary decision, made by interim Police Chief Andre Sayles, on Bluesky Friday afternoon.

The video of Didier’s directives went viral earlier this year.

“We are about to do some fucking work, but we’re going in this time with guns blazing and all our pieces in place. We we we are past talking to people. We’re here to fuck people up now,” Didier can be heard saying in the footage. “We’re done with these guys doing this shit. They’ve pushed the envelope, and now they’re going to get the full fucking deal.”

Officers responded violently to the counterprotests. During the event, police used pepper spray and other “less lethal” weapons against demonstrators, throwing many to the ground and arresting 23 people. SPD officers also used bike rack-style barricades to prevent protesters from entering the rally area and arrested people for pushing against or knocking over barricades that had been linked together and placed at the top of a hill.

On Friday night, Interim police chief Andre Sayles issued a statement saying he followed SPD’s principle of “progressive discipline” in issuing a written reprimand to Didier. Sayles noted that Didier had only “minor prior disciplinary history” and that his decision fell “within the range” of what the Office of Police Accountability recommended.

In Seattle, complaints about police officers, except the police chief, go through OPA, a semi-independent body (it’s housed in the police department) that reviews each complaint. If OPA decides a complaint is warranted, it will sustain the complaint and recommend discipline to the chief, who ultimately makes the call.

According to the closed case summary for thje investigation, OPA found that Didier had acted in an “unprofessional, escalatory, and disrespectful” manner.

Didier’s “statement appeared to reflect an intent to use impermissible force against the counter protesters. Such a viewpoint undermines public trust in [Didier] and SPD because it erodes the legitimacy of SPD’s objective to uphold every individual’s constitutional rights and created an impression that [Didier] viewed the purpose of officers being ‘here’ was to “fuck people up.”

The OPA recommended light discipline for Didier, ranging from an oral reprimand to two days’ suspension.

DivestSPD reported that there had been sustained findings in the case last month.

In a statement to PubliCola, SPD cited mitigating factors for the decision to give Didier a slap on the wrist, noting that he “voluntarily participated in the Sentinel Event Review. The employee was forthcoming and engaged with community panelists. The employee accepted responsibility and willingness to learn from their actions,” an SPD spokesperson said.

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However, the investigation shows that Didier made many excuses for his behavior and statements, including short staffing at SPD, the fact that officers were called to police the counterprotest on short notice, and a supposed incident from 2020 when, according to OPA’s summary of Didier’s explanation for his actions, “officers had to stand in line, observe crimes, and take no action.”

In his statement, Sayles said the sentinel review “made clear that our department did not understand the depth of concern within the LGBTQ+ community before this event, and that our actions that day damaged trust. I accept that finding.”

“We have already begun this work, and we will continue it. That includes acting on the OIG’s recommendations, strengthening our crowd management practices, expanding the work of our LGBTQ+ liaison and advisory council, and engaging directly with community organizations before — not after — events that affect them.”

Last December, Sayles filed a sweeping OPA complaint against a longtime officer who spoke, with SPD’s permission, at a rally against two anti-LGBTQ initiatives. In the complaint, Sayles said he believed the officer was spreading “inaccurate and untrue things” about the initiatives. (The first initiative would ban trans girls from playing children’s sports; the second would give parents access to all notes about conversations their kids had with trusted adults at school.) The source of Sayles’ information, it would turn out, was right-wing podcaster Brandi Kruse, who ran an online campaign to get the officer fired. Kruse volunteers and raises money for the campaign behind the two initiatives.

The OPA dismissed two other complaints against Didier—one alleging he and other officers failed to use de-escalation tactics, and one saying he targeted a protester because of their political views or perceived LGBTQ+ status. “SPD officers, including [Didier], were on site to support everyone’s rights to free speech and peaceably assemble, enforce the law, preserve order, protect people, and preserve property,” the OPA report says.

A “Sentinel Review” of SPD’s response to the counterprotest, conducted by the city’s independent Office of the Inspector General, concluded that SPD officers demonstrated a bias against counter-protesters who showed up to demonstrate against the right-wing event, referring to protesters as “transtifa” and assuming “that the rally organizers represented no real threat, while assuming that “‘black bloc’ and ‘antifa’ are established, hierarchical organizations intent on inciting disorder and criminal activity.”

Mayor Katie Wilson said in a statement: “Like many people in Seattle, I was disturbed to see what occurred at the protests at Cal Anderson in 2025. I’ve spoken with Interim Chief Sayles to understand the disciplinary measures taken in this incident. It is the role of the Seattle Police Department to serve and protect the people of Seattle, and to do so with respect, dignity, care, and consideration— especially for our most vulnerable community members. I will continue to work with the leadership of SPD to ensure that the culture of the department fully reflects and upholds my expectations and this commitment.”

homelessness, Mayor Wilson, Police, Taxes, Transportation

This Week On PubliCola: Police Hiring Bonuses Don’t Work, Scooter Usage is Up, Community Court is Back, and More

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, October 5

Greater Seattle: Bike and Scooter Share Could Soon Lap 2025’s Record-Setting Numbers

Josh is hyped about the latest stats on Lime scooter and electric bike rentals in Seattle, which show more people are using micromobility options than ever before, even when you discount the spike in usage around the World Cup. In less encouraging news, the number of people in downtown Seattle hasn’t bounced back from the pandemic as fast as other cities—something he says alley activations, and loosening the city’s puritanical rules against drinkign al fresco, could help.

Tuesday, October 6

As Council Considers Reinstating Police Hiring Bonuses, an Unreleased Draft Report Finding They Don’t Work Is Timely Again

When a council-mandated report found that hiring bonuses don’t have a meaningful impact on whether people apply for jobs at the Seattle Police Department (and recommended ditching them), then-mayor Bruce Harrell’s team just changed the report, whittling it down to a few bullet points and recommending that the city keep them. The City Council is currently talking about reinstating the bonuses, which SPD ended in September.

Wednesday, October 7

Former SPD Chief Lands on His Feet

Former Seattle police chief Shon Barnes, who received a departure package worth well over $700,000 when he resigned under pressure earlier this year, has landed a new job at a company that sells surveillance and other technology to law enforcement agencies. No word on whether Barnes, who spent much of his time as police chief out of town at networking conferences or at his family home in Chicago, will be working remotely.

Sound Transit Removes Candidate’s Photo from Station

For two days, riders who passed through Sound Transit’s new Pinehurst station in North Seattle saw a giant photo of District 5 City Council candidate Julie Kang and emitcomplained, Sound Transit took the image down—a move Kang calls unfair.

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More Moves at Wilson’s Office

After months without a press secretary,, Mayor Katie Wilson has hired former Stranger writer and longtime progressive comms person Ansel Herz for the role (a fact I teased on Bluesky a couple months ago, before it was official) Alex Gallo-Brown, who’s been Wilson’s director of community engagement, is moving into a senior advisor role where he will no longer be managing a staff, but will be advising on external relations and digital strategy; Wilson fired her digital strategist in August.

Thursday, October 8

Revived Community Court Will be Paired With Punitive New “High-Priority” Track for Repeat Offenders

City Attorney Erika Evans is reviving the old community court her predecessor, Ann Davison, shut down in 2023, but with new “accountability” requirements and stricter eligibility—for instance, anyone who commits additional misdemeanors within 90 days will get bounced back to mainstream court for prosecution. Services will now be mandatory and failing to comply with service commitments will also be disqualifying.

At the same, Evans announced a new “high-priority offenses” program, in which she’ll seek longer jail sentences for people who commit more than a threshold number of misdemeanors over a certain period—three in 90 days, for example, or two if the second offense is stealing from a store that has issued a trespass order. Public defenders called the punitive elements of Evans’ plan counterproductive because, they argue, they’ll exclude people who would most benefit from services like treatment.

Also this week: On Seattle Nice, we spoke with Transportation Choices Coalition Director Kirk Hovenkotter about Proposition 1, which would double a sales tax that pays for extra bus service in Seattle. If you live in Seattle, it’s on your ballot this month.

On the same show, we talked briefly about a column by Danny Westneat in the Seattle Times, in which he complained about the King County Council writing what he called a “blank check” to. pay for vaguely defined youth and family services. I had only read the column that morning, and said it would be better if there was some kind of spending plan attached to the proposal. Silly me, responding to a Westneat column without doing my own reporting! After a morning of phone calls (including with sponsor Jorge Barón, who said I was the only reporter who called him about his proposal) have a very different take, which I’ll share on a future episode. TL;DR, though: Westneat broadly misrepresented both the tax proposal and the audit of the county’s Best Starts for Kids program his criticisms were based on, while unfairly maligning an unrelated county program that has successfully kept people housed as a failure.

I also went on KUOW’s Week in Review this week, where host Bill Radke, commentator Joni Balter, KUOW’s Scott Greenstone and I talked about the shelter sales tax, whether Democrats plan to broaden the “millionaires’ tax” to apply to slightly less-rich people, whether Mayor Wilson is betraying her socialist roots, and much more.

Save the date: Seattle Nice is hosting a live debate for Seattle City Council District 5 between Julie Kang and Nilu Jenks. Join us at the National Nordic Museum on October 21 at 6 p.m. See you there!

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Elections, Mayor Wilson, Police

Former SPD Chief Lands on His Feet, Sound Transit Removes Candidate’s Photo from Station, More Moves at Wilson’s Office

1. As we reported on Bluesky Tuesday afternoon, former police chief Shon Barnes got a soft landing after Mayor Wilson asked him to resign, a belabored process that ended in Barnes getting a going-away gift worth almost $750,000. In his new gig will be heading up “public safety programs and strategy” for Mission Ready Technologies (or Mission RT), a Scottsdale, AZ-based company that appears to sell surveillance technology, computer-aided dispatch systems, AI-based 911 response software, and other tech tools to state and local police agencies.

In a long LinkedIn statement that three different LLM detectors assured me was 100% AI, Barnes said he’ll “focus on helping state and local public-safety agencies connect their operational needs with technology, strategy, and organizational readiness” in his new position. The details of the former chief’s new job—like what he’ll actually be doing on a daily basis—are pretty vague, but it sounds like they could involve a lot of travel to cities whose police departments are implementing new technology. Neither Barnes nor Mission RT’s press release said whether Barnes will be renting in Arizona or working remotely from his home outside Chicago.

2. Julie Kang, a candidate for Seattle City Council Position 5, got prominent placement at the grand opening of Sound Transit’s new Pinehurst station on September 30, courtesy of a large photo featuring Kang, her husband, and their daughter placed prominently at the station, The photo was one of a series featuring community groups that had supported the station just east of I-5 at NE 130th Street, and it identified Kang’s family as representatives of the Haller Lake Community Club. Kang posted it on her Instagram page.

 

Sound Transit did the photo shoot on June 30; Kang entered the race late last year.

According to Sound Transit spokeswoman Rachelle Cunningham, Kang was “nominated, selected and photographed as a representative of the Haller Lake Community Club” and her photo was “randomly selected as one of the photographs to be featured at the station.”

At least one community member had a problem with the transit agency giving a candidate such prominent billing just weeks before the election, and complained to Sound Transit shortly after the station opened. The agency acted fast. By Friday night, two days after it went up, the photo of Kang and her family was gone.

Asked about the swift removal of the image, Cunningham said, “we heard concerns from community members about the photos and the perception of agency funds being used to support a campaign. Sound Transit does not endorse political candidates, and the photos were removed Friday.”

Sound Transit emailed Kang late Friday afternoon to let her know the photo was coming down . In response, Kang wrote, “When our family agreed to participate in the community photo shoot, we did so because representation matters to us. As an Asian American family, we wanted our community to be visible in the public spaces and transportation system that belong to all of us. At the time, I had no expectation that I would someday be a candidate for Seattle City Council.”

“I respect Sound Transit’s responsibility to remain neutral in elections. At the same time, I hope you will reconsider whether removing a longstanding community image simply because one of the people pictured later became a candidate is the appropriate way to maintain that neutrality.”

Kang told PubliCola she was referring to her general support for the light rail station, not the photo shoot in June.

3. Ansel Herz, the former Stranger reporter who’s spent the last decade or so doing comms for progressive candidates and causes, will take over Mayor Katie Wilson’s press office as press secretary and digital strategy director next Wednesday. Wilson has had a string of temporary press secretaries since Sage Wilson left in June, including, most recently, Alex Hudson, the former Transportation Choices Coalition director, who’ll return to her previous role as a transportation policy advisor.

Alex Gallo-Brown, a longtime who was glued to her side on the campaign, will no longer be Wilson’s director of community relations; instead, he’ll step into the newly created position of  “senior advisor on public engagement.” Matt McIntosh, another Wilson campaign staffer who’s currently a community relations manager, will be Wilson’s interim community relations director. The change means that Gallo-Brown will no longer be directly managing staff, but will have more direct control, along with Herz, over Wilson’s online communications.

As we reported, Wilson fired her digital communications manager Amy Piñon earlier this year, hiring a temporary contractor to do social media in her stead.

Wilson’s communications office has had extremely high turnover since she took office, the result of both firings (Wilson axed her original comms director, Seferiana Day, in June) and voluntary departures, like former press secretary Wilson’s. The turmoil reflects, among other issues, an ongoing tension between campaign loyalists who came into office wanting to blow up the old, institutional ways of doing things and government veterans with experience working in those institutions.

Wilson recently hired Tara Lee, a longtime comms professional who’s worked for former Gov. Jay Inslee as well as the Washington Budget and Policy Center, the nerdy left-wing think tank, as communications director.

City Council, Mayor Harrell, Mayor Wilson, Police

As Council Considers Reinstating Police Hiring Bonuses, an Unreleased Draft Report Finding They Don’t Work Is Timely Again
Seattle interim Police Chief Shon Barnes at a recent City Council committee meeting.

A city report showed one-time bonuses have no effect on police hiring. The Harrell Administration rewrote it to say the opposite.

By Erica C. Barnett

As the city council begins the process of dissecting and amending Mayor Katie Wilson’s budget, council members are already pushing back on the mayor’s police hiring plan, which funds a net increase of 66 new officers through 2028. The budget includes around $56 million in raises for existing SPD officers; it also incorporates SPD’s decision, which went into effect September 1, to eliminate hiring bonuses for new and transferring officers, saving the city a couple million dollars a year.

The bonuses, which officers receive in two payments (one when they’re hired, the second about a year later) range from $7,500 for first-time recruits to $50,000 for officers with prior police training and experience. Between July 2022 and May 2026, they’ve cost the city around $3 million, with another $1.4 million in second payments outstanding, according to SPD’s most recent data.

Council members, including public safety committee chair Bob Kettle, have pushed back on the decision to end hiring bonuses, which was a cost-saving move by SPD. At a budget committee meeting late last month, Kettle called the payments an effective tool for maintaining the hirng “momentum” SPD has achieved since last year.

Addressing interim Police Chief Andre Sayles, Sayles asked: “If we get lateral transfers, isn’t [paying the bonuses] a net positive for us?”

“Yes, I believe looking at a way to provide the incentive for lateral hires, specifically here in the state of Washington, will be ideal,” Sayles agreed. “Removing those incentives, particularly for lateral officers, has the potential to put us behind” neighboring jurisdictions, he added.

Since the city adopted the incentives as a way to boost hiring during a post-pandemic slump (and boosted the lateral bonuses to $50,000 in 2023), the efficacy of offering the one-time payments has gone (mostly) unquestioned,

But an unpublished 2024 analysis by the city’s Office of Performance and Innovation, based on a survey of newly hired officers and click-through rates on ads advertising various benefits of joining SPD, found that hiring bonuses weren’t a significant factor in new officers’ decision to apply for jobs at SPD. Instead, the analysis found that recruits were drawn by SPD’s competitive salary and benefits—which, at the time, were lower than the six-figure starting salaries SPD offers today.

PubliCola obtained several early drafts of the report, including comments and suggested edits, through a records request made last year.

“This evaluation found that incentive pay did not significantly impact police hiring numbers compared to other recruitment factors within the timeframe of the analysis,” one draft read. “The incentive alone is not enough to motivate people to join the Seattle Police Department,” another version concluded.

“The City should not continue the use of the hiring incentive as currently designed as an ongoing recruitment strategy,” one draft recommended..

Former mayor Harrell’s office, including then-deputy mayor Tim Burgess, public safety advisor Sarah Smith, and communications staffers, raised objections about almost every substantive element of report, from its tone, which they found too negative, to its conclusions, which they said the data didn’t support. “I don’t believe the evaluation is persuasive since the key findings are speculative,” Burgess wrote in January 2024. Every version of the report we reviewed was littered with comments from the mayor’s staff, highlighting the Harrell administration’s direct intervention in what was supposed to be an independent analysis by OPI.

By the time the mayor’s office was done with the report, it recommended keeping the hiring bonuses, rather than eliminating them.

Information that was unflattering to the program—like the fact that “100% of the employees who were hired and left since August 2022 were people of color,” as yet another draft put it—as was the fact that officers overwhelmingly mentioned salary as the main reason they applied. (Indirectly verifying this fairly intuitive survey result, SPD hiring spiked immediately after a new contract gave first-time officers a starting salary of $126,000 after a six-month training period.)

The report no longer mentioned that not one officer had mentioned hiring incentives in their self-reported reasons for working at SPD, nor that incentives ranked in the middle (above “in-person recruiting” and “personal referral” but under “salary” and “benefits”) on a five-item list that was included in the survey.

The final, public version of the report, now whittled down to just over four pages plus a chart of local police salaries, concluded, contrary to previous drafts, that it was “impossible to pinpoint the hiring incentive’s specific effect with the available data, It is clear from the survey and A/B testing that the hiring incentive is compelling to some applicants yet does not have as strong an effect as salary and benefits.”

“Given SPD’s staffing challenges, the relatively low cost, and the fact that other competing jurisdictions continue to provide the incentive, we recommend the continued use of hiring incentives,” the report now said (bold in original).

The new report also put a positive spin on the dismal finding that hiring incentives only beat out referrals and in-person recruitment in a multiple-choice question about people’s motivation for applying. “All but two hires selected incentive pay as having some level of importance in their decision to become a police officer,”  the rewritten report concluded. “Of these respondents, 23% ranked incentive pay first or second in importance, 41% ranked it as third, and 36% ranked it as fourth or fifth.”

Speaking to PubliCola last year, staff who were involved in the creation of the report expressed intense frustration at being asked to turn their office into one called a “propaganda arm of the city” by the Harrell Administration. “We tried to soften the language to appease them,” that staffer said, but the report ended up making claims that just weren’t supported by the data. “I’m not going to spend my waking outs doing that,” the staffer said; that staffer, and another staffer who worked on the report, quit their jobs and left the city over what they saw as interference in their work that compromised its integrity.

The report that found hiring incentives have no effect is based on the only available data, which is old. The city council only required a single report on hiring incentives, eliminating the reporting requirement when they increased the lateral bonus to $50,000 in 2024. But given that new recruits now earn six-figure salaries on Day 1, and pay for lateral officers has increased commensurately, it seems likely that salary is more of a motivating factor now, not less. Ending the bonuses now will help show whether Kettle and the police chief are right. If hiring craters, even at the newly inflated salaries, the council could look for money in next year’s  budget to reinstate them. That would be a “data-driven” approach—the kind this council routinely says they support.

 

 

City Council, homelessness, LGBTQ+, Mayor Wilson, Police

This Week on PubliCola: Wilson’s Budget Lands with Thud at Council, KCRHA Finds “Missing” $8 Million, RV Ban Advances, and More
Still from a promotional reel for Rokid glasses created by an SPD officer who used the glasses to film himself on the job, including while driving his car.

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, September 28

On Wilson’s Budget, the Council Parts Ways With Reality

The council has started picking apart Mayor Katie Wilson’s budget, which they’ll amend before sending it back to her later this year. Some of their criticisms, however, went beyond differences in spending priorities; Wilson’s council adversaries accused her of trying to defund police surveillance, accused her of slowing down encampment sweeps (sadly, no), and even invented a 2020 council meeting at which Wilson supposedly shrieked “abolish the police!” at the council (which wasn’t even meeting in person at the time).

Greater Seattle: Inclusionary Zoning, Part 2; Amazon as a Percentage of the Budget; Permitted, but Struggling

In this week’s column, Josh takes a second look at inclusionary zoning (our version is called Mandatory Housing Affordability) via a study that found developers passed the cost of affordable housing on to other renters. Also this week, a cautionary consideration of how much the Seattle budget’s backstop depends on a handful of companies, and the necessity of thriving third places.

Tuesday, September 29

KCRHA Consultant Finds the “Missing” $8 Million

As I reported briefly on Bluesky last week, a consultant combing through the regional homelessness authority’s disheveled finances “found” $8 million the KCRHA had previously said the city and county “owed” the KCRHA but had failed to pay. In fact, according to the consultant, the money never went anywhere; it only appeared to vanish because of an accounting error.

Strauss’ RV Ban Moves Forward (But Won’t Ban Sprinters, to Saka’s Dismay)

After a flurry of mostly minor amendments, a City Council committee passed Councilmember’ Dan Strauss’ proposal to prohibit RVs without a special, one-time-only city license from parking for more than two hours anywhere in the city. Rob Saka tried to prohibit Mercedes Sprinters and similar vans from parking overnight as well, but his colleagues said that kind of sweeping ban would have unintended consequences on housed people who own this type of luxury van.

Seattle Cop Used Chinese AI Smart Glasses to Film Inside SPD Facilities, Creating Video for Company

An SPD officer is on administrative leave after using AI smart glasses to film first-person video inside a police precinct, at a crime scene, and in his car while driving. The video was used as a promotional reel by the company that makes the glasses, Rokid.

Wednesday, September 30

Council Learns What “One-Time Funding” Means

City councilmembers, including many who are up for reelection next year, expressed frustration that Mayor Wilson’s budget didn’t find ongoing funds for some $78 million in new programs they paid for with one-time funds last year. Budget director Aly Pennucci repeatedly explained that if they want to find money for things they added last year with one-time dollars, they’ll have to make cuts elsewhere in the budget.

Podcaster’s Advocacy for Anti-Trans Campaign Didn’t Violate Election Law

A statewide campaign to prevent trans girls from playing sports didn’t violate election law when it failed to report campaign speeches and fundraising by right-wing podcaster Brandi Kruse as in-kind donations, the state Public Disclosure Commission found last week.

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Thursday, October 1

Interim Police Chief Based Complaint Against Detective on Right-Wing Characterization of Anti-Trans Initiative

Interim police chief Andre Sayles based his complaint against a detective who spoke at a pro-LGBTQ rally on Kruse’s characterization of the anti-trans initiative, telling an investigator the detective was being dishonest when she described the potential consequences of forcing some students to submit to genital inspections. Sayles told the investigator he had not read the initiative.

SPD Overpaid Officers By $13 Million. Now the City Wants It Back.

The city discovered in July that police officers were mistakenly paid $13 million as part of their retroactive pay increases under the most recent police union contract; the payments, which ran as high as $32,000 more than officers should have been expecting, went through in June. The city can only recover its money if the police union agrees that officers should have to pay it back.

Saturday, October 3

Two Seattle Nice Interviews This Week: Mayor Katie Wilson and Budget Director Aly Pennucci, and Councilmember Dionne Foster

On Friday, we sat down with Mayor Katie Wilson and her budget director, Aly Pennucci, to talk about Wilson’s deficit-busting budget proposal.

And in case you missed it, we talked to City Councilmember Dionne Foster earlier this week about her proposal to cut MHA fees for some housing projects, including a resolution that calls for subjecting new development in neighborhood residential areas to some kind of MHA fee.

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