Category: Politics

Sound Transit Leaders Call Trains Dirty, Dangerous; San Francisco’s Experience with Sanctioned Camps; New Poll Tests Harrell Priorities

This graph is a metaphor: With no “Y” axis, an incomplete color key, and no definition of the three “issues” that are listed, it’s impossible to know whether these wavy lines represent an alarming increase in incidents or a modest pandemic-era increase.

1. Sound Transit board and staff members, including outgoing CEO Peter Rogoff, used an update on “current operating challenges” as an opportunity to portray the central light-rail system as a dirty and dangerous way to get around, especially during non-“conventional” hours, when fewer riders are on board. Only board member (and King County Councilmember) Claudia Balducci, of Bellevue, pushed back on her colleagues’ “unduly bleak” description of the system, saying, “it doesn’t match my own personal experience as a regular rider of our service.”

Almost since the beginning of the pandemic, Rogoff has argued relentlessly for increasing security and fare enforcement on trains, both to increase revenues and to punish people who fail to pay fare or behave in ways that make other riders feel unwelcome or unsafe. On Thursday, Sound Transit’s executive director of operations, Suraj Shetty, said the agency has had trouble retaining  private security and “fare ambassadors,” vest-clad staffers who check to see if riders have paid but do not issue tickets.

When the agency’s main private security provider, Securitas, failed to provide as many guards as they agreed to, Sound Transit contracted with two additional firms, both non-union—a fact that prompted a number of public commenters to accuse the agency of being anti-union. Sound Transit is also facing a shortage of drivers, cleaning staff, and maintenance crews.

Board member (and Pierce County Executive) Bruce Dammeier, a former Republican state senator, said he considered the system “unsanitary and unsafe,” adding, “I wouldn’t ride it,” and suggested stricter fare enforcement as a solution to problems like drug use and unclean conditions on trains. “We don’t want to stop running the trains at certain hours, but that is one of the solutions” to problems that become worse late at night, he continued. “Or maybe we put security guards on every train.”

Nancy Backus, the mayor of Auburn, chimed in, suggesting that the problems on trains are made worse by “some of the laws surrounding drug use, what police officers can and cannot do with low level property crimes and other issues.”

Responding to those comments, Balducci said that in her own “anecdotal experience” riding the system over the last two years, “this narrative that our system is falling apart just does not ring true to me. And we have to ask the staff and leadership of the staff to help us paint a truly accurate picture of what’s going on that we need to address.”

2. As PubliCola reported exclusively earlier this week, Seattle City Councilmember Andrew Lewis and Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office have been discussing a plan to relocate as many as 600 people living unsheltered in downtown Seattle into up to 10 sanctioned encampment sites. Lewis described the proposal as a humane way to transition people from unsheltered homelessness to housing as more permanent housing units become available this year.

The plan is also explicitly an attempt to make downtown more appealing to companies that want to bring workers back to the office this year—including the companies that funded a separate plan to “dramatically reduce unsheltered homelessness” downtown by navigating people to shelter and services elsewhere.

Seattle would hardly be the first West Coast city to create fenced tent encampments as a response to increased homelessness. San Francisco began opening sanctioned encampments in 2021 in response to an increase in unsanctioned encampments during the pandemic.

Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of San Francisco’s Coalition on Homelessness, said unsheltered people in San Francisco said they preferred encampments to congregate shelter because, among other reasons, they offer more privacy and don’t have strict curfews or other rules common in mass shelters.

The drawbacks, Friedenbach said, are that the encampments are cold, tend to be expensive—around $70,000 per tent, per year—and are, obviously, not housing permanent housing. “Rental assistance with support services runs less than half” the cost of sheltering a person in a sanctioned encampment, she said. “So instead of sheltering you can just have housing for the people at half the cost.”

And, Friedenbach noted, San Francisco’s encampments are “used as a placement option in sweeps.” The Coalition did a report last year on San Francisco’s geographically focused efforts to eradicate (or “resolve”) encampments in specific neighborhoods, which found that most people who are displaced from one location end up unsheltered elsewhere, often after losing their possessions to sweeps. As in Seattle, there are typically only a handful of shelter beds available citywide for thousands of unsheltered people across the city.

3. A poll in the field this week was already taking Seattle voters’ temperature about new Mayor Bruce Harrell, interspersing favorability questions about the mayor with questions about his political priorities. For example, the poll asked recipients to rank priorities such as “expedit[ing] removal of homeless encampments from sidewalks and parks, with those of need of assistance being redirected into housing and services, with a minimum of 2,000 units brought into use this year”—a description of the Compassion Seattle initiative, which Harrell integrated into his campaign platform.

Continue reading “Sound Transit Leaders Call Trains Dirty, Dangerous; San Francisco’s Experience with Sanctioned Camps; New Poll Tests Harrell Priorities”

Police Chief Fires Two Officers Who Trespassed on Capitol Grounds During January 6 Attack

Image by blinkofaneye on Flickr; Creative Commons license.

By Paul Kiefer

Interim Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz announced in a blog post on Friday that he has fired officers Alexander Everett and Caitlin Rochelle for violating department policy and federal law by trespassing on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2020 while insurrectionists stormed the legislative chambers inside.

Using video evidence provided by the FBI, investigators from Seattle’s Office of Police Accountability (OPA) were able to place Everett and Rochelle at the steps of the Capitol as rioters clashed with police nearby. Though Everett and Rochelle told investigators they didn’t know they were trespassing in a restricted area, neither the OPA nor Diaz were convinced; in his letter on Friday, Diaz wrote that “it is beyond absurd to suggest that they did not know they were in an area where they should not be, amidst what was already a violent, criminal riot.”

But Everett and Rochelle—a married couple—were only two of the six Seattle Police Department officers who traveled to Washington, DC to attend former President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol. OPA investigators were able to place three of the officers elsewhere in the city during the attack. Though the fourth officer told investigators that he was not present for the attack, neither the OPA nor the FBI could corroborate his claim; investigators didn’t rule out the possibility that he trespassed on federal property.

Though Diaz chose not to discipline the other four officers who attended the rally, some members of the city council and Seattle’s Community Police Commission argued being present for the rally constituted grounds for firing all six. “I don’t understand how we can derive any other decision other than they were there to spur what those people did to storm the Capitol,” CPC Executive Director Brandy Grant said during a commission meeting in January. Continue reading “Police Chief Fires Two Officers Who Trespassed on Capitol Grounds During January 6 Attack”

Rachel Smith: The Chamber’s Recovery Agenda (And Why We Aren’t Endorsing Candidates This Year)

Seattle Metro Chamber President & CEO Rachel Smith. Photo by Alabastro Photography

By Rachel Smith

Global pandemic. Racial reckoning. Economic recession. Capital insurrection. Massive joblessness. Vaccine shortage. Unprecedented times.

This is the backdrop of the moment when I optimistically started in my new role as President and CEO of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. And yes, I say optimism; optimism that comes from our region’s demonstrated ability to rebound and reimagine itself, as well as optimism about how the Chamber can play a central role in the work ahead. Today, we’re starting to see more signs of hope – and I’m even more excited to help lead one of our region’s civic voices as we begin to slowly emerge from these incredibly challenging times.

In 2021, the Chamber will not make candidate endorsements, nor will we engage in candidate spending through the Chamber PAC. Instead, we will focus on elevating – and pushing for – serious civic dialogue on the most pressing issues in our region.

First and foremost on my to-do list is driving a robust and inclusive regional economic recovery, and that starts with helping struggling small businesses secure federal PPP loans – including pro bono CPA services and connection to lenders; handing out PPE, helping business with Public Health guidance, standing up partnerships to distribute vaccines, and advocating for continued state and federal relief for employers.

Equity and inclusion are also core pillars of that recovery agenda, and we need to focus our economic tools and resources to create a change in outcomes. The Chamber will work to build wealth in historically excluded communities by investing in the retention and expansion of BIPOC-owned businesses, as well as providing all of our members with resources and guidance on becoming more anti-racist institutions.

Emerging from this pandemic in a position of strength also requires partnership with public officials and leaders throughout our region. I believe strongly that we accomplish the biggest things and make the most transformative change for the most people when we work in coalition – government, business, labor, and community. This moment does not call for small-ball victories; it calls for working together in common purpose to ensure that employers survive, people stay employed, the region is prosperous, and everyone has access to that prosperity.

That is the way I intend to lead at the Chamber—working in partnership to accomplish big things. And as with any new leader, you’ll see some changes. One of the first is a new approach to local and regional elections this year. In 2021, the Chamber will not make candidate endorsements, nor will we engage in candidate spending through the Chamber PAC. Instead, we will focus on elevating – and pushing for – serious civic dialogue on the most pressing issues in our region.

These issues include:

  • Specific economic recovery actions to ensure that large employers are able to bring employees back to safe and welcoming business districts, including downtown Seattle, and that small businesses can keep their doors open and attract the volume of customers they need.
  • Working toward racial justice to address longstanding and ongoing inequities
  • Utilizing strategies to address affordability issues so that people of all income levels can afford to live in our region.
  • Making real and sustained progress on homelessness, to bring people inside and provide access to services they need.
  • Implementing police reform and building trust in communities of color, in tandem with a robust plan to keep people and businesses safe.
  • Maintaining our aging infrastructure and a long-range vision for the future of transit and mobility.
  • Delivering on local government basics: light and power, garbage and recycling, potholes and sidewalks, parks and neighborhoods, employees and administration.

Why this switch from endorsements? We believe everyone who gains the trust of the voters and is elected to office has the responsibility to lay out their approach and commit to specific actions to solve our greatest challenges.

Especially in a time of economic crisis, helping all employers and their employees recover and thrive isn’t just a “business” issue.

Especially in a time of economic crisis, helping all employers and their employees recover and thrive isn’t just a “business” issue. Every candidate elected should have a plan to keep and grow jobs – not just candidates looking for the Chamber’s endorsement. Every candidate needs to share their plan for how they will address homelessness – plans measured not just in taxes raised and dollars spent, but in outcomes achieved and how many fewer people are spending their nights outside. Every candidate needs to talk about how they plan to deliver on the things we count on local government to provide – like dependable city services, community safety, and reliable transportation options.

And the Chamber can play a role in informing and educating the business community and the public about the issues, the candidates, and their plans. Continue reading “Rachel Smith: The Chamber’s Recovery Agenda (And Why We Aren’t Endorsing Candidates This Year)”

Evening Fizz: Another Call for Durkan’s Resignation, More Questions About Homelessness Reorganization

Two city commissions have called on Mayor Jenny Durkan to resign, and at least one more is considering it.

1. On Wednesday, the Seattle LGBTQ Commission—one of five volunteer city commissions that deal with the rights of marginalized groups—voted narrowly to demand Mayor Jenny Durkan’s resignation, joining the Human Rights Commission, which made a similar demand earlier this month.

In a letter outlining the reasons for their decision, the commission said the mayor had failed to take meaningful action on police violence and accountability; had continued to remove encampments without providing unsheltered people with adequate places to go; and had “repeatedly undermined the budget proposals supported by Black communities,” by, among other things, using JumpStart payroll tax revenues that were already allocated to COVID relief and housing for vulnerable communities to pay for a new $100 million “equitable investment” fund to be spent based on recommendations from a mayor-appointed task force.

The letter notes that deputy mayor Shefali Ranganathan was dispatched to speak to the commission to make the case for Durkan, as she did earlier this week at the Women’s Commission when it considered a similar move. According to the letter, Ranganathan told the commission that the mayor does not have direct authority over police actions (such as the use of tear gas against protesters) and that she supports a regional payroll tax, just not the local payroll tax the council already passed. (She made similar arguments at the Women’s Commission meeting Monday night).

“Mayor Durkan’s role is to serve as the executive for Seattle and not as a lobbyist in Olympia,” the letter says. “Ultimately, Mayor Durkan’s opposition to the Jumpstart legislation disempowered the process taken to get there, which included months of work from Black communities, Indigenous communities, other communities of color, labor, and many more to find a way to fund affordable housing.”

The mayor appoints nine members of the Human Rights, LGBTQ, and Women’s Commissions. All three commissions have numerous vacancies and expired seats, but there is currently no major imbalance between council-appointed and mayor-appointed board members on any of the three commissions.

Durkan is up for reelection next year.

2. As we’ve reported, the city council, mayor, and homeless advocates have been working toward a tentative agreement on a new approach to unsheltered homelessness—one that could include dismantling the Navigation Team and creating a new process where unsheltered people move quickly through hotel-based shelters and into new permanent supportive housing or market-rate units through rapid rehousing, a kind of short-term rental subsidy.

The mayor’s budget allocates nearly $16 million to lease 300 hotel rooms for 10 months, which works out to about $5,300 per room, per month, and about $9 million for rapid rehousing dollars to serve up to 230 households (which works out to an average per-household cost of about $3,300 a month).

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“I’m guardedly optimistic,”  Alison Eisinger, the head of the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, told PubliCola. “I have some hope that there are folks [at the city] who recognize that requiring people to move, without addressing the state of homelessness, was never effective before COVID and is completely deficient now.” 

One element of the plan that has gotten little attention so far is that it would be extremely short-term. Funding for the hotel would run out after about 10 months—right around the 2021 election, if the city started leasing the hotel rooms at the beginning of next year. The extra funding for rapid rehousing would also come from temporary COVID relief dollars that expire next year. The upshot is that if the city wanted to rent the 300 hotel rooms and continue the rapid rehousing expansion after the one-time runs out, they would have to find a new source of funding for both. Continue reading “Evening Fizz: Another Call for Durkan’s Resignation, More Questions About Homelessness Reorganization”

Durkan Will Veto Council Budget Over Cuts to Police Department; Council President Hopes for Compromise

As I first reported on Twitter this morning, Mayor Jenny Durkan will announce this afternoon that she will veto the city council’s midyear budget rebalancing package, a move that could effectively remove one co-equal branch of government from the city’s budget process by reinstating Durkan’s original budget proposal with no input from the council. The council could overturn the veto, as they did the mayor’s recent veto of a COVID relief package that relies on future revenues from the JumpStart payroll tax. Or—as seems likely—the council try to work with Durkan to come up with a rebalancing package that the mayor will accept.

“The bills I am vetoing today were passed without the level of collaboration that I think we need, and more important, that the city expects of us,” Durkan said at a press conference this afternoon, “but I am optimistic that we can continue to work together to bridge the gaps. I continue to believe that we can [reach] common ground on the vision for SPD that has been laid out by Chief [Carmen] Best and I.”

The objections Durkan raised were familiar to anyone who has been following the debate over police defunding: The mayor said that the council is attempting to change things “overnight,” “without a plan,” and that her budget proposals already contain large cuts to the police department. The vast majority of those cuts, however, come from transferring some current SPD functions, such as the 911 dispatch center, into other parts of the budget—not from transforming the city’s approach to public safety or reducing the number of SPD officers, as protesters have been demanding since May.

City council president Lorena González said in an interview that she is “incredibly disappointed’ in the mayor’s decision to veto yet another council spending proposal. “It is obvious that there is a significant difference of opinion between the City Council and the mayor and the chief on what can and should be achieved in 2020 in order to respond to the calls from community to reduce the Seattle Police Department’s budget this year and begin the process of investing in community safety programs,” González says.

The rebalancing proposal was necessary to deal with a midyear budget shortfall of around $300 million, a number that keeps getting edited upward as new revenue projections come in.

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If you enjoy breaking news, commentary, and deep dives on issues that matter to you, please support this work by donating a few bucks a month to keep this reader-supported site going.

If you don’t wish to become a monthly contributor, you can always make a one-time donation via PayPal, Venmo (Erica-Barnett-7) or by mailing your contribution to P.O. Box 14328, Seattle, WA 98104. I’m truly grateful for your support.

The council’s plan included more significant, but still relatively minor, cuts. The version they adopted cuts SPD’s budget by 7 percent by eliminating the encampment-removing Navigation Team, reducing the salaries of SPD command staff (including Best, whose 2020 pay was reduced by $6,000) and cutting 100 positions at SPD through a combination of layoffs and attrition. The council’s proposal also provided $3 million to start a participatory process to reallocate SPD to community-based public health and safety programs, plus $14 million to a combination of city and community programs, funded through an interfund loan that Durkan said was the main reason for her objection to that particular spending proposal.

“Look, it’s a loan that I’m not sure we can repay, and we know with the coming budget that we will have to do some interfund loans just to keep the city services that we have,” Durkan said.

Durkan mentioned the Navigation Team specifically at several points during her press conference, suggesting that the council wanted to cut the team “without a plan” to deal with dangerous encampments. “I’ve had open houses with a number of community and neighborhood groups in the last weeks, and the impact that some of these encampments are having are real— and they are also real for the people living in those encampments,” she said. “We have to have a way to bring people inside and address the public safety [issues], and the cuts did not allow us an opportunity to do that.” Since the pandemic began, the city has provided only about 100 new shelter spaces for the thousands of people living unsheltered in Seattle.

Under the city charter, the council must take a vote to overturn or sustain the veto within 30 days. Council president Lorena González says her hope is that, rather than simply overturning another mayoral veto, the council will be able to “come to some agreement  with the mayor around a rebalanced package, and that’s going to be a two-way street. We need her to make a good-faith effort to engage in order to meaningfully move this forward.”

Otherwise, González says, the council and mayor will likely stay stuck in “this constant back and forth” of vetoes and votes to overturn. “This mayor has made a historical number of vetoes. I’m not aware of any other mayor in the history of the city of Seattle who’s used veto power at this level, and I think that she is sending us a clear message that she will continue to do so,” González says.

It’s clear that there are still significant gaps between what the council wants and what the mayor will accept. In particular, it’s unclear what, exactly, the mayor would consider “on the table” when brokering a future “compromise” with the council. The Navigation Team, community spending, participatory budgeting research, command staff salaries, and SPD personnel cuts seem to be off the table.

But there is also now precedent for compromise between the mayor and the council. This afternoon, Durkan also announced an agreement on the COVID relief package that is much smaller than the council’s original proposal but that will, in the words of JumpStart sponsor Teresa Mosqueda, enable the city to “mov[e] forward jointly as we cannot wait another day” for relief to residents and small businesses impacted by the pandemic.

Council May Take Cops Off Navigation Team; Durkan Distances Herself from Police Response to Protests

Outside Seattle’s East Police Precinct.

Before the murder of George Floyd sparked nationwide protests and calls to defund police departments, homeless advocates were calling on the city of Seattle to depolice the Navigation Team, the controversial group of police and civilian city staffers that removes encampments from public spaces. During a recent encampment removal in the International District, protesters lined up on both ends of a block guarded by dozens of police, live-streaming from just outside the barricades as homeless encampment residents shuffled slowly through.

Now, those advocates may get their wish, as city council member Tammy Morales cues up legislation that would remove cops from the team and refocus its efforts on outreach and services, not law enforcement. The legislation, which is still in draft form, would remove funding for any police presence on the Navigation Team. This would be a major policy and financial shift, since the city currently spends $2.6 million a year providing full-time police officers for the team, but it no longer seems as radical as it did even two weeks ago, when Police Chief Carmen Best insisted that encampments were so inherently dangerous that they required an armed response.

The Navigation Team, formed in 2017 under former mayor Ed Murray, was originally supposed to navigate people living in encampments to safer shelter, housing, and other services. To reflect this, the city adopted rules requiring the team to provide advance notice and offers of appropriate shelter to every person living in an encampment before removing it.  Under Durkan, however, the team has shifted its focus, using a loophole  in the rules that allows the immediate removal of any encampment that constitutes an “obstruction” to public use of a space. Because the term “obstruction” is ill-defined, Durkan’s Navigation Team has interpreted it to include any encampment in any part of a public park or other public space, a definition that encompasses most encampments.

Every year she has been in office, Durkan has expanded the number of police officers on the team. The council is currently doing an “inquest” of the police department’s budget in light of calls to defund the police and an estimated 2020 revenue shortfall of more than $300 million.

Via @MayorJenny

Durkan has paid lip service to the idea that police are not appropriate in every circumstance, but has not expanded those thoughts to apply specifically to her own police department. Similarly, her comments about the protests happening in her own city, against her own police department and administration, have mostly been vague and nationally focused, a strategy that has enabled her to grab nationwide headlines for anti-Trump sound bites while refusing to respond directly to protesters’ detailed demands at home.

On Friday, the mayor finally joined a protest for Black lives, nearly two weeks after other mayors across the country began doing so. The massive march, tens of thousands of people strong, was completely silent, which means that it was also the only march so far in which Durkan would not hear protesters shouting demands—chief among them that she defund the police department and invest in communities that have been victims of disinvestment and police violence.

The public knows about the mayor’s presence at at least some portion of the march because her social-media team posted photos of Durkan and police chief Carmen Best walking through the rain on Twitter. The text read: “Today at the @BLMSeattleKC silent march, community walks to abolish the school to prison pipeline, end biased policing, and undo centuries of systemic racism in our country. The march may be silent, but the message is loud and clear: #blacklivesmatter.” 

Durkan has consistently attempted to reframe protesters’ demands as primarily national or statewide, not local. But the movement to defund the police—which received a staggering $409 million in last year’s city budget—is moving forward anyway. Last week, the city council held the first meeting in a month-long “inquest” into the police budget, and Durkan held off on sending down her midyear budget revisions in order to make changes that may or may not be responsive to protesters’ demands.

The massive march, tens of thousands of people strong, was completely silent, which means that it was also the only march so far in which Durkan would not hear protesters shouting demands—chief among them that she defund the police department and invest in communities that have been victims of disinvestment and police violence.

Earlier this week, Seattle police made their way back into the East Precinct, which has been unoccupied since Durkan apparently ordered the police to open up the street to protesters and remove all “sensitive items” from the building. Since then an area of a few square blocks around the precinct—known as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone—has been the site of a 24/7 protest/block party, featuring free food and water stands, community gardens, and a campground in Cal Anderson Park.

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Durkan has tried to make the best of the situation, which came about because police set up barricades around the precinct in early June and defended them with force, targeting protesters night after night with tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and other weapons. Publicly, she has said the protesters have a right to protest, and joked (rather dismissively) that the area around the precinct could turn into the site of a new “summer of love.”

In contrast, Best has said she was “angry” at the decision to take down the barricades and stop guarding the precinct, telling officers in a “leaked” video (which was posted publicly on the department’s Youtube page half an hour before the first reports about it appeared on local news) that in their absence, “armed guards” had posted up outside the precinct and were demanding money and identification from anyone who wanted to enter.

Best later walked these comments back, admitting that she had heard about them “anecdotally” and from social media—quite a turnaround for a chief who, just one week earlier, had asserted, “Social media is social media. It’s not news.”

At a press conference last week, there was an awkward moment when a reporter asked Best and Durkan whether they had confidence in each other. Best paused for a moment before responding, “Yes, I do. I’m standing here right next to her.” Durkan said that neither she nor the chief planned to resign and made a joke about having a “Thelma and Louise moment” with the chief—an odd reference, given that the two characters drove off a cliff because they were being chased by cops.

Despite this demurral, the fault lines between the chief and the mayor—who is up for reelection next year—have continued to grow. It’s worth remembering that Durkan did not want to hire Best in the first place, and did so only after community outcry over her decision to eliminate the only local candidate, and the only black woman on the list of contenders, from consideration. Whether the reason for the schism between the mayor and her police chief is based on real policy disagreements or political considerations, it’s increasingly obvious to anyone paying attention. And whether Durkan is angling for reelection or a federal appointment under Biden, it’s increasingly clear that she wants to distance herself from a police chief who continues to insist that her police force has nothing to examine or apologize for.

“All Good” or “Backroom Deal”? New Regional Homelessness Plan Goes Under the Microscope

King County Council member Rod Dembowski, King County Executive Dow Constantine, and King County Council member Jeanne Kohl-Welles

UPDATE: I’ve posted a brief update to this morning’s post on Twitter, including details of more changes that grant additional power to suburban cities.

A new regional homelessness plan that would give elected officials, including representatives of suburban cities, more direct control over the new authority has been moving forward rapidly over the past week—so fast, in fact, that several Seattle City Council members indicated they wouldn’t mind (gently) tapping the brakes. On Monday, as council member Sally Bagshaw laid out a two-week timeline for the council to approve a plan that many of them hadn’t even seen, several of her colleagues protested that they felt pressured to rush the proposal through without thoroughly considering what’s in it.

“While I appreciate the desire to try to avoid avoidable delay, I also don’t want us to … unnecessarily rush our decision-making process and our review of whatever it is the King County Council is considering this week,” council member Lorena Gonzalez said. Debora Juarez added that the plan “has changed at least four times in the last week, and so I’m a little bit concerned as well.”

While that discussion was going on, the union that represents staffers for the city’s Homelessness Investment and Strategy division, PROTEC17, was also getting up to speed. On Monday, PROTEC17 union rep Shaun van Eyk sent an email urging HSI staffers to flag concerns about the new proposal at upcoming meetings of the county’s Regional Policy Committee, the King County Council, and the Seattle City Council. “Each one of these hearings are opportunities to comment and/or attempt to delay this move,” van Eyk wrote.

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The C Is for Crank is supported entirely by generous contributions from readers like you. If you enjoy the breaking news, commentary, and deep dives on issues that matter to you, please support this work by donating a few bucks a month to keep this reader-supported, ad-free site going. Your $5, $10, and $20 monthly donations allow me to do this work as my full-time job, so please become a sustaining supporter now. If you don’t wish to become a monthly contributor, you can always make a one-time donation via PayPal, Venmo (Erica-Barnett-7) or by mailing your contribution to P.O. Box 14328, Seattle, WA 98104. Thank you for keeping The C Is for Crank going and growing. I’m truly grateful for your support.

“There has been months and months and months of work—constituency-building, engaging with community, engaging with service providers, and all of that engagement was filtered into the proposal, and now, at the 11th hour, the city’s going to cut a backroom deal with the county to completely upend all that coalition building,” Van Eyk told me Monday. “And for what? It’s a political move.”

As I reported last week, the latest proposal to create a consolidated regional homelessness authority differs significantly from the plan King County Executive Dow Constantine and Mayor Jenny Durkan rolled out in September. Under the original plan, all major budget, policy, and hiring decisions would have been made by an 11-member “governing board” of experts with no connections to elected officials or organizations that receive government funding. A 7-or-8-member “steering committee” would oversee the governing board, but their duties would be limited to appointing the initial members of the board (which would become self-perpetuating after five years) and approving or rejecting budgets and policy plans without amendment. Continue reading ““All Good” or “Backroom Deal”? New Regional Homelessness Plan Goes Under the Microscope”

Campaign Crank: Complaints and Accusations Fly in Final Week Before Election

Image via Phil Tavel PDC complaint

1. Egan Orion, the former Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce director who’s challenging District 3 City Council incumbent Kshama Sawant, has filed amended reports indicating that the campaign retroactively paid Uncle Ike’s pot shop owner Ian Eisenberg $500 a month for the use of a former Shell station owned by Eisenberg as its headquarters.

Under state and Seattle law, expenses like rent have to be reported in the same month in which they’re incurred, and the campaign treasurer has to update the campaign’s books to reflect expenditures within five days. After I broke the news that the campaign had not reported its use of the space as an expenditure, the campaign filed several amendments to its expenditure report, including two changes filed late last night.

The first amendment filed yesterday retroactively reported debts of $500 in rent for September and October—an amount that appears to be significantly below the average market rent for the area where the office is located, at 21st and Union in the Central District. (Olga Laskin, Orion’s campaign manager, said the office includes 350 square feet of “usable” space and was in poor condition when the campaign arrived. It has since been upgraded and painted with a large street-facing sign for the campaign.) The second change, filed as part of a report covering a longer time period 18 seconds later, reports the same $1000 as having been paid on October 28, along with another $500, presumably for November’s rent. One person has already filed a complaint at the state Public Disclosure Commission about the initial lack of reporting, which the campaign has called an oversight.

Eisenberg, who initially refused to comment on whether or how much he was charging the Orion campaign to use the space, has since gone on a Facebook rampage aimed at me and this website, calling me “fake news” for reporting factually (via Twitter) on the campaign’s use of the space he owns. (In his initial refusal to comment, Eisenberg politely told me that the rent he charges on the space was none of my business.) Failing to report an expenditure in a timely fashion, or undervaluing the office space, would amount to a campaign finance violation and could result in a fine. The Orion campaign has already paid one fine of $1,000 after the Public Disclosure Commission determined that the campaign had failed to report who paid for an ad it ran on the cover of the biweekly Stranger newspaper, as required under state campaign finance law.

The Orion campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Support The C Is for Crank
Sorry to interrupt your reading, but THIS IS IMPORTANT. The C Is for Crank is a one-person operation, supported entirely—and I mean entirely— by generous contributions from readers like you. If you enjoy the breaking news, commentary, and deep dives on issues that matter to you, please support this work by donating a few bucks a month to keep this reader-supported site going. I can’t do this work without support from readers like you. Your $5, $10, and $20 monthly subscriptions allow me to do this work as my full-time job, so please become a sustaining supporter now. If you don’t wish to become a monthly contributor, you can always make a one-time donation via PayPal, Venmo (Erica-Barnett-7) or by mailing your contribution to P.O. Box 14328, Seattle, WA 98104. Thank you for keeping The C Is for Crank going and growing. I’m truly grateful for your support.

2. Speaking of Eisenberg, the Central District and Capitol Hill business owner is one of the top five funders of a group called “District 1 Neighbors for Small Business,” which recently sent out a mailer that featured a list of “neighborhood mom & pop small local businesses” (including Uncle Ike’s) who are supporting Phil Tavel over incumbent council member Lisa Herbold. Eisenberg’s name appears on that list, with about 20 other people who either are not small business owners or who do not own businesses in the district. Eisenberg has an outlet called Ike’s Place in White Center, just outside Seattle city limits.

Also on Tavel’s list of small local businesses: Roger Valdez, a lobbyist for developers who does not live in the district; one of the owners of Smarty Pants and Hudson, two restaurants in council District 2; several partners at downtown Seattle law firms; Ryan Reese, one of the employee-owners of Pike Place Fish Market in downtown Seattle; and seven people who list their occupation as “retired.”

Besides Eisenberg, the top contributors to the District 1 Neighbors PAC are developer Dan Duffus; NUCOR PAC (the political arm of the local steel company); Seattle Hospitality for Progress (the political arm of the Seattle Hotel Association and the Seattle Restaurant Alliance); and Donna and Ken Olsen, who are retired). The top three contributors to the PAC contributors are Vulcan, the Washington Hospitality Association, and Hyatt hotels. Continue reading “Campaign Crank: Complaints and Accusations Fly in Final Week Before Election”

The 2019 Seattle City Council Candidates: Debora Juarez

Image via Wikipedia.

This year’s council races include an unusually high number of open seats, an unprecedented amount of outside spending, and eight first-time candidates. To help voters keep track, I’m sitting down with this year’s city council contenders to talk about their records, their priorities, and what they hope to accomplish on the council.

Today: District 5 incumbent Debora Juarez. Juarez, a former public defender and pro tem Seattle Municipal Court judge, has served on the council since 2015, and has developed a reputation as a blunt-spoken, fierce advocate for her district. We sat down the same week that a conversation about criminal-justice funding devolved into a debate about why women become sex workers, and we started our conversation talking about that.

The C Is for Crank (ECB): A recent conversation about whether to expand the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program went off the rails when the deputy police chief, Mark Garth Green, said some women who engage in sex work aren’t good candidates for LEAD because “aren’t necessarily substance abusers” and do sex work for fun. Unlike your colleagues Teresa Mosqueda and Lorena Gonzalez, you didn’t make any comments during that discussion, so I wanted to ask you what your reaction was.

Debora Juarez (DJ): My reaction was the same as council member Mosqueda and council member [Sally] Bagshaw. We still have this misunderstanding about what sex workers and trafficking, and that it isn’t a victimless crime. They are victims. I’m not outraged. I’m more afraid that if that is what frontline officers think, that affects their ability and their discretion in how they do their jobs. So it could’ve been any officer sitting there saying that. And I’ve heard that [sort of talk] when I was a public defender and a judge.

ECB: It seemed like the larger context that got lost in that discussion was the discussion about whether offering sex workers access to LEAD would be a more effective approach than SPD’s new policy of arresting women on Aurora Ave. And what SPD and the mayor’s office seemed to be saying that there are some people for whom LEAD just doesn’t work. What do you think of that?

“LEAD is just an example of a lot of do-no-harm philosophies that this city has embraced, [though] not in the beginning. I remember when I was a public defender and we started doing needle exchanges and everyone was mad. We had the same arguments then. ‘You’re enabling;’ ‘Drug addicts are going to come from everyone.’ Well, that didn’t happen and now it’s [considered] a public health issue.”

DJ: There is some truth that LEAD doesn’t work for everybody, but I would say overall, it does work if you have a bed ready. If you have somewhere safe for them to go, it does work. And I hate to get into this whole patriarchy thing, but you really need some women in leadership that understand it from a DNA level that sometimes [sex work] is [women’s] last way to take care of themselves. And I would say the majority of women are amenable to LEAD.

ECB: So you think that LEAD needs to be expanded?

DJ: There’s no doubt. I think everyone agrees that it works, that it should be expanded, and that LEAD is just an example of a lot of do-no-harm philosophies that this city has embraced, [though] not in the beginning. I remember when I was a public defender and we started doing needle exchanges and everyone was mad. Now it’s normal stuff, right? We had the same arguments then. “You’re enabling.” “Drug addicts are going to come from everyone.” Well, that didn’t happen and now it’s [considered] a public health issue.

ECB: So do you think LEAD should be funded at the level they’re requesting, which would require an additional $4.8 million?

DJ: I think we just have to land on a number and I err on the side of more than less.

ECB: You’ve supported expanding the Navigation Team, even though a lot of what they do now is just removing encampments and telling people to move along. Do you think that the problem has gotten so bad that just clearing encampments is a worthwhile thing to be spending money on?

DJ: Yes, I do, because I think you have to do something. And I know people don’t want to hear this, but what I’ve seen, particularly in our district, [is that] you have 27 tents and not one person wants to accept services or housing. Or we have these tents and we know that they’re doing sex trafficking and selling drugs. My philosophy has been this: If somebody in Pinehurst is selling drugs out of their house, they should be arrested. If they’re selling drugs out of their tent, they should be arrested. That’s really what I think. We have to do something. Looking away from that issue isn’t good enough.

Support The C Is for Crank
Sorry to interrupt your reading, but THIS IS IMPORTANT. The C Is for Crank is a one-person operation, supported entirely—and I mean entirely— by generous contributions from readers like you. If you enjoy the breaking news, commentary, and deep dives on issues that matter to you, please support this work by donating a few bucks a month to keep this reader-supported site going. I can’t do this work without support from readers like you. Your $5, $10, and $20 monthly subscriptions allow me to do this work as my full-time job, so please become a sustaining supporter now. If you don’t wish to become a monthly contributor, you can always make a one-time donation via PayPal, Venmo (Erica-Barnett-7) or by mailing your contribution to P.O. Box 14328, Seattle, WA 98104. Thank you for keeping The C Is for Crank going and growing. I’m truly grateful for your support.

ECB: When you say, ‘We’ve offered them all the services,’ I think that the counterargument would be that there aren’t enough treatment beds or even enhanced shelter beds available.

DJ: I’m physically out there [talking to people who refuse services]. I know what I saw. On the flip side, I have also seen where we have offered services and we’ve had success, mainly when we’ve people into enhanced shelters. That is more palatable [to people living in encampments], and that’s what we need more of. That’s been my big push.

ECB: Do you think the region needs more revenue to address homelessness, in addition to the new regional homelessness authority?

DJ: Yes, in a general sense. Absolutely. And in fact, my original thought six months ago was, I wanted them to also have a part in building housing, not just [providing] services. I wanted them to be able to assume debt and issue debt and actually build housing stock, along with the social service piece and the enhanced services piece. Maybe we can get to that point, because I think there’s a lot of for-profit and nonprofit developers that would feel more comfortable writing a check to a [Public Development Authority] than to the city of Seattle or the King County. That’s what I’m hearing from the private sector.

ECB: Would you be open to revisiting any of the recommendations that came out of the city’s Progressive Revenue Task Force, besides the head tax?

DJ: I wouldn’t;. I’m going to be candid with you on that. That was seven months of not our finest hour. You know, I wrote this memo deconstructing the progressive revenue task force’s report. My position had always been from the beginning that that should be a voter initiative and I wanted it on the ballot. I worked with Mayor Ed Murray when we were looking at imposing a tax, and then you saw what happened—he and the county executive [Dow Constantine] said the people are tax-weary [and dropped it]. It was ready to go, raising $52 million a year for five years.

I would have liked that kind of structure to have that kind of discussion with the head tax. Continue reading “The 2019 Seattle City Council Candidates: Debora Juarez”

KIRO RV Reporter Out, Big Money Swamps Seattle Mailboxes, and Where Is the 2019 Parking Study?

1. KIRO Radio program director Bryan Buckalew confirms that Carolyn Ossorio—the reporter who posted a video of herself entering and walking through a trailer that was parked in front of city council member Lisa Herbold’s house without the owner’s permission—is no longer with the station. A source close to the station told The C Is for Crank that Ossorio was fired for the stunt, which Ossorio performed at the behest of conservative KIRO personality Dori Monson.

Monson, who praised listeners who showed up at Herbold’s house, “protested” outside the RV, and covered it with spray-painted slogans including “DORI FOR PRESIDENT,” has not apologized for encouraging his listeners to vandalize and break into the vehicle and is still on the air.

The day before the RV appeared, Monson had unsuccessful District 2 city council candidate Ari Hoffman on his show. In that conversation, the two men endorsed the idea of parking locked, garbage-filled RVs in front of council members’ homes to drive the point home that “drug RVs” were destroying Seattle. When the RV showed up at Herbold’s house, Monson assumed it was in response to his radio show, calling it a welcome sign that people were “fed up with Seattle leadership.” “I had nothing to do with this,” Monson insisted. “But am I enjoying it immensely? Yes, I am. I can’t hide that.”

Monson, who praised “protesters” who showed up at Herbold’s house and covered the RV with spray-painted slogans including “DORI FOR PRESIDENT,” has not apologized for encouraging his listeners to vandalize and break into the vehicle and is still on the air.

KIRO Radio sent Ossario to the scene, where she talked to “protesters” and neighbors who, she said, supported the “protest.” This is when she filmed herself walking through the RV, which had been locked, and making disparaging contents about its contents. “The council has trashed the beautiful city I grew up in, and reduced it to being a haven for heroin addicts and meth-heads,” Monson said. “Now at least one person has said that enough is enough.”

There was just one problem with Monson’s narrative: The trailer, it turned out, was owned not by a “protester” but by a pregnant woman and her partner, who had parked it temporarily near a relative’s house and were planning to move it to a campground outside the city. When the woman, Briar Rose Williams, showed up at the trailer, someone threw a bottle at her and threatened her with a knife, the Seattle Times reported.

Monson never apologized for the stunt. Instead, he invited Williams and her family onto his show, where he peeled a hundred-dollar bill from his money clip (saying, “here’s a hunski”) and told her to split it with her partner and godfather. “You seem to understand the irony and the exquisite, delicious, unbelievable odds of parking it in front of a Seattle city council member’s house!” Monson declared, adding, “That hundred dollars is for baby food!”

2. In the final few weeks before election day, mailboxes around the city are filling up with mailers from independent groups backed by big money from business, labor, and other interest groups. Here’s how those groups are spending the millions they’ve collectively amassed to influence Seattle’s local elections:

• Civic Alliance for a Sound Economy, the Seattle Metro Chamber of Commerce PAC, has raised well over $2 million ($1.45 million of it from Amazon). In the last two weeks, it has turned that money into nearly $900,000 worth of canvassing, TV ads, direct mail, and phone banking calls on behalf of Heidi Wills (D6), Jim Pugel (D7), Phil Tavel (D1), Egan Orion (D3), Mark Solomon (D2) and Debora Juarez (D5). Those numbers are listed in descending order based on how much CASE has spent on each candidate.

• Civic Alliance for a Progressive Economy, a labor-backed group that presents itself as an antidote to CASE, has spent a much smaller amount—less than $125,000 so far—supporting (again in descending order) Dan Strauss (D6), Lisa Herbold (D1), Tammy Morales (D2), Shaun Scott (D4) and Kshama Sawant (D3).

People for Seattle, the PAC formed by former city council member Tim Burgess, just spent more than $350,000 on direct mail and TV ads supporting Heidi Wills, Egan Orion, Alex Pedersen, Jim Pugel, Mark Solomon, Phil Tavel, and Debora Juarez.

Moms for Seattle, which bombarded voters with Photoshopped mailers of playgrounds filled with tents and trash during the primary election, has made just a couple of major spends in the general—$15,000 each to support Jim Pugel and Heidi Wills. The group had only about $25,000 in the bank as of mid-October, and has raised around $30,000 since then.

• Neighborhoods for Smart Streets, the PAC formed by activists who opposed (and ultimately killed) a long-planned protected bike lane on 35th Ave. NE in Wedgwood, spent $7,000 on mail backing Debora Juarez and $20,000 on mail supporting Alex Pedersen in District 4.

• Pedersen also got $11,000 in support from the Seattle Displacement Coalition-backed People for Affordable Livable Seattle, whose members have opposed development and upzoning in the University District. Continue reading “KIRO RV Reporter Out, Big Money Swamps Seattle Mailboxes, and Where Is the 2019 Parking Study?”