Category: Poverty

City Council, education, Mayor Wilson, Police, Poverty

Seattle Police Chief Out of Town During Mass Shooting

 

 

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By Erica C. Barnett

Editor’s note: This post, originally part of today’s Morning Fizz, has been updated and expanded to include new information.

Yesterday’s mass shooting at Seattle Center, in which a gunman killed three people and injured five more, was the type of violent incident that, historically, has prompted Seattle police chiefs to rush to the scene to demonstrate the seriousness of the situation and answer questions from members of the press.

But the city’s current police chief, Shon Barnes, was nowhere to be seen on Sunday. As he has been for many weekends since he took the $373,000 job in December 2024, Barnes was out of town. According to multiple sources, Barnes planned to be out of town until mid-August, taking several weeks away from Seattle during the period when shootings and other violent incidents are most likely to occur. Barnes also took two weeks off during the most recent winter holidays, including New Year’s Eve.

As we’ve reported, Barnes rents an apartment in Seattle and makes frequent trips to his family residence in Chicago, where his wife and kids live full-time. Last year at this time, PubliCola reported that Barnes’ schedule showed he spent most weekends, beginning on Friday afternoons, out of town, attending conferences, going to events related to his college fraternity, giving keynote speeches, or spending time with his family in Chicago.

PubliCola sent detailed questions about the police chief’s whereabouts to SPD on Sunday night and Monday morning and had received no response or acknowledgement by late morning. However, Barnes’ Facebook page, where he has chronicled many of his trips, indicates he was at a conference for the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives in Dallas. He was back in Seattle this morning for a press conference on the shooting at City Hall.

(After this post went up, a city spokesperson contacted us to ask for a correction, saying we had inaccurately claimed Barnes was in Chicago, which we did not; our article this morning included the paragraph above about Barnes’ attendance at the NOBLE event. Despite the apparent urgency of this call, SPD still has not responded to any of our questions sent over the past two days.)

Barnes, who received a $50,000 recruitment bonus to leave his previous job as police chief of Madison, WI, was also out of town during a major SPD incident last May, in which police pepper-sprayed and arrested dozens of counter-protesters at a rally and concert held by anti-trans right-wing activists at Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill, Seattle’s historic LGBTQ+ neighborhood. Barnes’ family also lived in Chicago while he was Madison’s police chief, although those two cities are only about a three hours’ drive apart.

During a press conference late Monday morning, a reporter asked Barnes if he was out of town this weekend, as I reported on Sunday. His response: “I wish I had a crystal ball and we could schedule gun violence but we can’t.”

At the end of the press conference, Barnes snapped at South Seattle Emerald reporter Connor Nash, who asked him about my reporting that he is out of town a lot. FOX 13 anchor Hana Kim posted video (above) that showed Barnes becoming “confrontational,” as Kim put it, snapping, “I have been here working as hard as I can for this city from the day I got here. Do you got that?”

As Nash continued to ask his question, Barnes cut him off. “No, no, you listen to me.”

“The reports are that you are not in town—often,” Nash persisted. “Their reports are wrong. You understand that?” Barnes said, as his chief of staff Alex Ricketts pushed himself physically between Barnes and Nash, saying, “Let’s go, man. Let’s go. Let’s go” and escorting Barnes back inside the mayor’s office.

We’ve reached out to the mayor’s office about Barnes’ outsize response to the question about his schedule and will update this post if we hear back.

City Council, Mayor Wilson, Poverty

Universal School Meals Delayed In Favor of Grocery Vouchers for Low-Income Families

By Erica C. Barnett

After weeks of debate that revealed widespread public opposition to a plan to delay funding for universal school meals, a city council committee approved the change today. The proposal, part of the spending plan for the Families, Education, Preschool and Promise levy,  delays funding for a new universal free school breakfast and lunch program for at least a year to fund a grocery voucher for low-income families to buy meals during school breaks and weeds, using $3 million from the first year of the school meal plan to fund $3 million in food vouchers over six years.

According to a memo on the amendment, which was sponsored by Council President Joy Hollingsworth and Councilmember Dionne Foster, the $500,000 annual program will serve “up to 5,000 families annually.” At that level, the program would be able to provide $100 a year to each family.

The idea behind the substitution, according to its sponsors, was twofold. First, the city doesn’t know yet if voters will uphold the millionaires’ tax in November; that tax is supposed to fund universal school meals statewide starting in 2029, in November. Because the money for universal meals may not materialize, it’s risky to fund it locally on a short-term basis.

The second argument, and the subject of the greatest public outcry, was that the poorest students should get priority over those whose parents can afford to pay for meals at school—that is, those who qualify through an annual income verification and application process. Universal school meals might provide food for all children, but the poorest kids are going hungry at home, too, proponents argued, so that need should take priority—at least until we know whether state funding for universal school meals is secure.

“Equity does not mean providing the exact same investment for every student regardless of need,” Hollingsworth, said. “It means directing resources where barriers remain the greatest, and that was my goal with this amendment.”

Both Hollingsworth and Foster complained from the dais about the way their proposal has been portrayed by opponents and members of the media, zeroing in on the term “means testing.”

“‘Means testing—I don’t know where that came from,” Hollingsworth said. “That was not something we ever put out.”

Foster echoed Hollingsworth’s criticism, saying, “It has been very difficult to have these conversations and to listen to some of the narrative out there.” Fresh Bucks, an unrelated voucher program that helps low-income people buy produce at farmers’ markets, is also targeted at low-income people, but no one describes that program as means-tested, Foster said. “And I wonder why that is.”

Means-testing is a term that means, simply, requiring people to prove their income is lower than a specified threshold in order to qualify for benefits. Put another way, it is what happens when the government sets income thresholds that define “need,” and makes people prove that they lack the means, or income, to fulfill that need themselves.

To qualify for reduced-price or free school meals in Seattle, a single parent with one kid has to make less than $39,000 in gross (not take-home) income a year, or $757 a week—approximately Seattle’s minimum wage. For a two-parent family with two kids, that goes up to $59,000, or a total gross income of $1,114 a week. About 50 Seattle schools offer free lunches to all kids because more than 40 percent of parents have qualified for the program. But anyone who makes more than the cutoff is ineligible for help—and to as many public commenters pointed out, there are plenty of people who make more than the bare minimum who struggle to pay their monthly bills in Seattle.

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Although Hollingsworth suggested there would be little to no administrative burden for low-income parents to apply for and get accepted into the new low-income food voucher program, Rob Saka disagreed. Saka spent years in and out of foster care and was raised by a single dad who worked hourly warehouse jobs. From age 9 to 18, Saka said, he only went to the doctor a handful of times and never went to the dentist, because his dad’s hourly warehouse jobs didn’t provide health insurance.

“We qualified for free and reduced lunch, which means we would have also likely qualified for Medicaid,” Saka said. “But I never went to the dentist, and only went to the doctor a handful of times in nine years, because of the severe, significant, nontrivial, and substantial administrative paperwork burden imposed on people that need these valuable resources.”

In a statement, Wilson said, “While I am disappointed with the decision to delay universal meals for a full school year, I respect the Council’s process and know we share a commitment to addressing food insecurity. I am proud that the amendment passed by Council commits the City to universal school meals in 2027. That means up to 6,800 students who currently fall through the cracks will have access to free breakfast and lunch, families will save roughly $1,200 a year, and there is a path to end the stigma around food insecurity in our schools.”

The Hollingsworth-Foster amendment pushes universal school lunches off until 2027. But it also, importantly, still assumes that the millionaires’ tax will be implemented in the future and will start paying for the program in 2029. If voters reject the millionaires’ tax, or a court overturns it, it’s unclear what will happen next year, which would have been Year 2 of Wilson’s universal school lunch program. If the statewide tax tax fails, the current plan would fund universal school meals for just one year, unless the city decided to make universal meals a local funding priority in the future.

Had the universal meals program passed, kids would have been able to get breakfast and lunch at school every day without having to demonstrate that they truly “need” it, at a cost of a few million dollars a year. That’s real money, but it also pales in comparison to what the city spends on other priorities, including $80 million in salary increases for police this year alone.

 

City Council, Density, Mayor Wilson, Poverty, Transit

This Week on PubliCola: July 18, 2026

A marathon debate over transit funding, Katie Wilson’s flight patterns, a bill that would limit endless land-use appeals, and more news from the past week.

Monday, July 13

Seattle Nice Discusses Mayor Katie Wilson’s Track Record at Six Months

On the first of two podcast episodes this week, we discussed how the mayor is doing at six months, focusing on her approach to encampment sweeps (she’s doing them), her progress toward her shelter goals (falling short, but better than her predecessor Bruce Harrell), and the likelihood of budget cuts this year (thanks in large part to spending commitments Harrell made, without regard for future budget impacts, right before the 2025 election.)

Tuesday, July 14

Voting “Yes” On Prop. 1 Will Fund the Library System We Deserve

Guest columnist Brittney Moraski, who’s the advocacy chair for the Seattle Public Library Foundation Board, makes the case for the August library levy measure, which will expand collections, spiff up the aging downtown library, and fund programs like No Late Fines and Peak Picks—not to mentiona quarter of the library’s staff.

Seattle May Actually Limit Anti-Housing Land Use Appeals

Legislation from Councilmember Eddie Lin would get rid of land-use appeals to the city’s hearing examiner, which currently give people who oppose density the ability to stop zoning legislation and comprehensive plan updates in their tracks. The bill would still leave two other post-legislative appeal options open.

More People Will be Eligible for Utility Discounts

City Councilmember Dan Strauss’ legislation expanding eligibility for the city’s Utility Discount Program, which provides deep discounts to ratepayers who qualify, passed easily this week.

Wednesday, July 15

As Mayor, Katie Wilson Doesn’t Travel Much. When She Does, You’ll Find Her in 23F.

Unlike her predecessor Bruce Harrell, who spent large chunks of his term traveling, along with his wife, to conferences and junkets around the nation and world, Mayor Wilson has only left Seattle on city business two times in her first six months, and only once on the city dime. Also unlike her predecessor, Wilson travels in coach—Harrell used his personal wealth to pay for first-class upgrades, including five-figure plane tickets and five-star hotels.

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Thursday, July 16

Land Use Appeal Reform Moves Forward

The land use appeal reform bill we covered earlier in the week passed out of the land use committee, and heads to an uncertain vote at the full council.

Council Splits on Funding for School Meals

The city council appears to be split on a Families and Education Levy spending proposal from Joy Hollingsworth and Dionne Foster that would delay funding for universal school meals, which Wilson previously identified as one of her key accomplishments, and use the money instead to pay for take-home food vouchers for low-income kids. Eddie Lin told us it would take a lot to convince him to vote against universal school meals.

Friday, July 17

After Marathon Meeting, Council Committee Passes Wilson’s Transit Measure Mostly Intact

It took almost three and a half hours of speeches (and one called question—someone on the council’s reading Robert’s Rules!) but a committee of all nine council members ended up approving Mayor Wilson’s proposed transit sales measure mostly intact. Proposals to cut the size and duration of the tax failed, and there are lots of directives to report on this and that, but chalk this one up as a victory for the mayor. Once it passes full council, the proposal will head to voters in November.

Seattle Nice: Taxing for Transit, Nude Beach Ruling, and Mayor Wilson’s Frugal Flights

On the second episode of Seattle Nice this week, we talked about that marathon transit discussion, along with my story on Wilson’s travel and a court ruling this week that will allow the nude beach at Denny Blaine Park to remain nude, but not “lewd.”

Also this week:

I was a guest on Rachel Horgan’s The Weekly podcast, where I talked about what it takes to sustain a podcast long-term, the story of how Josh and I founded this independent news site in 2009 and how my business model works now, and what’s been going on in Seattle politics lately. Rachel covers local business news and a lot more every week.

If you’d like to read an entertaining blow-by-blow of Thursday’s big transit tax debate, I covered it live, in way more detail, on Bluesky.

 

City Council, Development, education, Mayor Wilson, Poverty, Taxes

Land Use Appeal Reform Moves Forward, Council Splits on Funding for School Meals

1. A city council committee voted to move legislation forward on Wednesday that will—if it passes full council next week—shut down one avenue of appeal commonly used to slow down zoning changes that allow more housing in Seattle. The bill, sponsored by land use chair Eddie Lin, would eliminate appeals to the city’s hearing examiner over zoning legislation and changes to the city’s comprehensive plan, which is currently delayed by environmental appeals that began at the hearing examiner’s office.

Hearing-examiner appeals can delay legislation by months or years even if they are unsuccessful, as the vast majority are; the council spends most of the fall focusing on the city budget, so a delay of a few months can mean legislation won’t be heard until the following year.

Lin’s bill wouldn’t eliminate the right to appeal specific projects, and it would still leave two (arguably more relevant) avenues for appeal: Once legislation is finalized and adopted, people can appeal to the state Growth Management Hearings Board or sue in King County Superior Court. Those two avenues don’t stop legislation in its tracks the way “pre-legislative” appeals to the hearing examiner do.

Dan Strauss and Joy Hollingsworth abstained from voting, saying they still had questions about the proposal, leaving Lin, Dionne Foster, and Alexis Mercedes Rinck to vote it through.

Before the vote, opponents raised familiar objections, along with a novel one. The familiar: By eliminating land use appeals to the hearing examiner, the council was “muzzling the voices of the citizens who elected you to serve us” and ignoring the plight of salmon, orcas and birds. The novel: If the council passes the legislation, no one will have the right to appeal the siting of any data center in Seattle in the future.

Councilmember Dionne Foster addressed both objections. “From my perspective, cities are an incredibly important element to how we combat climate change—growing in a way that is responsible, growing in a way where we take into account that so much of our pollution comes from transportation-related emissions,” Foster said. “If we fail to do our job and build substantial and affordable housing… you also have environmental impacts.”

Foster also confirmed with a staffer that because data centers are “projects,” people will still have a right to appeal any data center proposal to the hearing examiner, if and when the council lifts the current moratorium on data centers. “I I think that’s an incredibly important distinction to make,” she said.

2. Foster and Lin are on different sides of another issue—a proposal, co-sponsored by Foster and Council President Joy Hollingsworth, to delay funding for universal school meals from the spending plan for the Families, Education Preschool, and Promise levy and replace it with vouchers for qualifying low-income families to buy food on weekends and holidays during the school year.

Mayor Katie Wilson’s spending proposal would pay for free breakfast and lunch for every Seattle school student for the first two years of the levy, with the assumption that voters will uphold the statewide “millionaires tax” (a proposed tax on annual income above a million dollars) in a referendum challenge this November. If this happens, and there are no additional legal hiccups, the statewide tax would start paying for universal school meals in 2029.

Foster and Hollingsworth’s proposal would address uncertainty around the millionaires tax by taking universal free school meals off the table for the first year of the levy; if the high-earners’ income tax holds, it can pay for universal school lunches starting in 2029, and if it doesn’t, the city won’t be on the hook. Meanwhile, Foster said the alternative plan will provide groceries to low-income kids who need food the most.

“I genuinely think it’s a balanced amendment,” Foster told PubliCola earlier this week, noting that dozens of Seattle schools already have universal free lunches through the state Community Eligibility Provision, because more than 40 percent of their students qualify for free or reduced-cost lunches.

Opponents of the amendment have argued that means-testing programs for basic needs like food stigmatizes lower-income kids and may leave some students hungry, including those whose parents don’t sign up for income-based programs or who struggle to pay for food but aren’t poor enough to qualify.

Foster said she’s aware of those critiques. “The intent is not, ‘Here’s a hoop that we want you to jump through.’ The intent is to get more resources to the kids who are low-income or who have those financial gaps,” she said.

Lin said he doesn’t doubt Foster and Hollingsworth’s commitment to food access, but says he’s leaning strongly toward supporting universal school meals over income-based vouchers. “I know they have very valid concerns, and there’s concerns about what’s going to happen with the millionaires tax, but at this point I have a hard time imagining not supporting” Wilson’s proposal, Lin said. “I think there’s widespread support for universal free lunch, not just here but across the state.”

human services, legislature, Poverty

State Will Continue Requiring Low-Income People to Pay Back Disability Benefits Through 2025
State Sen. Claire Wilson (TVW screenshot)

By Andrew Engelson

In 2023, the Washington legislature passed a bill ending the requirement that recipients of the state’s Aged, Blind, and Disabled (ABD) cash assistance program pay back their benefits once they qualify for federal disability payments. ABD benefits go to some of the state’s poorest  residents, and the new law attempted to remedy the payback requirement.

But a PubliCola reader recently let us know that the state Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) is still requiring recipients to pay back ABD benefits. Sen. Claire Wilson (D-30, Auburn), chair of the senate Human Services committee, amended the bill near the end of the legislative session to change its effective date from October 2023 to October 2025. 

ABD recipients are some of the most vulnerable people in the state. According to the latest data, nearly 30 percent of the 31,000 people currently receiving ABD are homeless, and 55 percent have a mental health-related disability. 

According to Aaron Wasser, a spokesman for the Senate Democrats, Wilson and the Democratic caucus agreed to the change, in part, “to reduce fiscal impact to the budget without compromising the underlying policy.”

ABD is aimed at two groups: People who are temporarily disabled and those who need a “bridge” while they’re waiting to be approved for federal SSI disability payments—a process that takes, on average, seven months. 

Sarah Payne, who lives in Everett and reached out to PubliCola, was helping a friend apply for ABD and noticed the payback requirement in a letter her friend received from DSHS, called an “interim assistance reimbursement authorization form.” 

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“It’s just the most complicated Kafkaesque bureaucracy-worded letter you could possibly read,” Payne said. “I had to read it three times to get what it was saying.”

Payne’s friend, who declined to be interviewed because of privacy concerns, has heart disease. Payne says he has been waiting more than a year and a half to get federal benefits. Payne herself recently became disabled—she also has heart disease—but is rethinking applying for ABD because of the repayment requirement.

Brice Montgomery, interim director of the Community Services Division of DSHS, which manages ABD benefits, said his office welcomes the new legislation but the agency doesn’t have the funds toeliminate repayment requirements until October 2025. “We think that the law as written will be a help and is a commitment to reducing poverty in meaningful ways,” Montgomery said. 

The reason DSHS historically required people to pay back their ABD benefits is that the federal government reimburses SSI recipients for the time they spent waiting to qualify for benefits. But people who receive these lump-sum payments often need the money to pay off debts or unpaid rent from when they were receiving ABD benefits, which are typically much lower than SSI. 

The maximum monthly benefit for a single person in the ABD program is $450 per month, less than half of the maximum SSI benefit of $943 per individual (and a fraction of the $1,900 it costs to rent an average apartment in the Puget Sound region).

The ABD program has been historically underfunded, with benefits slashed to $197 per month in 2011. DSHS bumped up the benefit to its current level in 2022. “It was a very meager benefit for quite some time, and was remedied a bit,” Montgomery said, “but it’s still not as high as the typical SSI grant.”

Payne said she’s disappointed that the legislature kept the payback requirement in place for an additional two years. “It’s a small program, but it matters a lot to the people who are on it,” she said. “It feels like they’re picking at your carcass. That lump sum is what some people are counting on. After you wait so long, you’re in debt to a lot of people.”

The state estimated that eliminating the payback requirement will cost $51 million between 2025 and 2027 and $61 million between 2027 and 2029. “Pushing this out to the next biennium gave the state time to plan and budget for that fiscal impact and it also gives DSHS time to plan a successful implementation,” Wasser, from the state Democrats, said.

Payne said that requirement is placing a burden on people like her and her friend, whose finances are already precarious because of their disabilities. 

“I just don’t understand this mindset of taking from the neediest,” she said.

Drugs, housing, legislature, Poverty

Cash Benefits, Drug Possession Bills Move Forward
Michele Thomas of the Washington Low-Income Housing Alliance testifies about benefits for low-income people at a senate committee last week.

By Andy Engelson

Two bills that would have a significant impact on poor and vulnerable people moved forward in the legislature this week. 

The first —a bill sponsored by Rep. Emily Alvarado (D-34, Seattle) that would end the requirement that people who receive the state’s Aged, Blind, and Disabled (ABD) cash assistance program pay back these benefits once they qualify for federal disability aid—passed out of the senate’s human services committee last week. ABD recipients are generally some of the lowest-income people in the state: 57 percent struggle with mental illness and 33 percent are homeless. The reform bill is scheduled for a hearing in the Senate Ways and Means Committee on Thursday, the final hurdle before a floor vote.

In testimony before the human services committee, Michele Thomas of the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance said ending the pay-back requirement is long overdue. 

“It changes an unfair, decades-long practice of forcing people to forgo their SSI payments that [impoverished people] desperately need,” Thomas said. “Please understand that at the same time folks are required to make these back payments, they also lose their eligibility for the Housing & Essential Needs [HEN] rental assistance program, which is already furthering their instability.” HEN is a federal program that provides emergency rent and utility assistance and access to basic household supplies to people with disabilities.

A bill that would have better aligned HEN and ABD benefits and guaranteed at least 12 months of HEN support to recipients failed to pass out of a senate committee earlier this session. 

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The second bill that’s moving forward is Sen June Robinson’s (D-38, Everett) bill revising the state’s drug possession policy in response to the 2021 Blake state Supreme Court ruling that found the previous law unconstitutional. The bill, which makes possessing small amounts of drugs, such as fentanyl and meth, a gross misdemeanor and requires prosecutors to divert people into coercive treatment, received a hearing in the House Community Safety, Justice, and Reentry committee on Monday.

In testimony to the committee, Sen. Robinson gave her bill mixed reviews. Centrist Senate Democrats modified the bill substantially with amendments, including a provision that forces those who drop out of court-mandated treatment to serve jail time. “My goal is to find a balance, and that is very hard to do,” Robinson told the committee. “A balance between compassion and lots of options for treatment, and—some people call them off-ramps. But, options for diversion, treatment, and services for folks who are found to be in possession of illegal substances. And also to give our communities the tools that they are asking for in these situations.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s perfect or exactly the right balance, but you will grapple with that,” Robinson told her colleagues in the House.