A wide-ranging interview with the mayor, a proposal to replace universal free meals at school with means-tested vouchers, serious questions about public disclosure at the homelessness author, and more.
The regional light-rail agency has made significant changes to its wayfinding signage over the past few years, in what the agency calls an effort to make the signs easier to understand. But many of the new features, such as the removal of location information from station exits, are more confusing than clarifying.
Mayor Katie Wilson kept her word on surveillance cameras in the stadium district, cutting power to the cameras immediately after the World Cup games ended. But the future of police camera surveillance in Seattle still hangs in the balance as the city waits for a security audit by the NYU Policing Project to wrap up later this year.
After the city and county announced they were taking control of the region’s homeless service contracts, a process that will lead to layoffs at the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, KCRHA’s director Kelly Kinnison sent an all-staff email telling her employees not to believe what they read in the media, “especially outlets with low journalistic standards with a history of one-sided, agenda-driven, or incorrect reporting.”
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In part one of my interview with Mayor Wilson, she discussed the accomplishments she’s proudest of in her first six months; why the city is still sweeping encampments without providing shelter or services; the prognosis for her plan to add 1,000 new shelter beds in her first year, and much more.
A proposal from City Council President Joy Hollingsworth would undo one of the items Wilson ticked off on her list of signature achievements, by replacing a plan to use the city’s families and education levy to fund universal school meals with one that would provide vouchers for meals on weekends and holidays to low-income kids. Hollingsworth said her proposal was more fair because it would largely benefit low-income Black kids in places with more food insecurity, as opposed to helping all kids, including some whose parents could afford to pay for school lunches.
In part 2 of our interview, Mayor Wilson talked about some of the pushback she’s gotten on her affordability agenda. We also discussed the $175 million budget deficit the city is facing next year, and whether the police department will face cuts or if other city departments, as usual, will have to take bigger cuts to keep SPD’s budget growing.
Emails between KCRHA CEO Kinnison and agency staff suggest that Kinnison sought to exempt many of her emails from public disclosure through a number of methods, including “sensitivity labels” designed to ensure some emails wouldn’t show up in records request searches. Kinnison also appears to have put an IT manager, rather than a certified public disclosure officer, in charge of doing initial searches for records. Kinnison’s decisions raise questions about whether the agency has withheld records from disclosure that it is legally required to produce.
Screenshots from emails between KCRHA CEO Kelly Kinnison and an IT manager, edited for emphasis.
By Erica C. Barnett
King County Regional Homelessness Authority CEO Kelly Kinnison sought to exempt many of her emails from public disclosure last year, emails obtained through a Seattle records request and provided to PubliCola suggest.
In emails last October, Kinnison asked an IT staffer to change her email settings so that only he had “unfettered access” to her emails, directed the same staffer to establish “sensitivity labels” that would ensure they didn’t show up in records requests, and used “protected messages,” accessible only with a password, to communicate with board members and Seattle and King County staff.
The emails indicate that the IT manager gave Kinnison the ability to use labels like “deliberative” in Microsoft Purview in order to exempt emails from public disclosure requests, and that he was asked if it he could change internal search settings so that Kinnison’s email could not be searched at all.
“As I mentioned before, we aren’t able to restrict access in Purview so that only one email address cannot be searched,” the IT manager told the KCRHA’s HR director, Irwin Batara, in an October 2025 email that Batara forwarded to Kinnison.
“I can, however, set up Sensitivity Labels within Microsoft so that labeled emails and/or documents with a ‘deliberative’ label can be excluded from public record searches (removing the ‘deliberative’ label would subject that file to public records requests as normal). This would allow searches to continue while still remaining compliant with the Public Records Act.”
“Please do have Derke [sic] set up the sensitivity label he proposes,” Kinnison told the HR director. “That seems like a great idea. It won’t address incoming messages though.”
The state Public Records Act requires public agencies, such as the KCRHA, to make almost all records available upon request, with narrow exemptions that include information an agency provides an attorney for the purpose of securing legal assistance and drafts of legislation and internal discussions about policy development. (Such “deliberative” records automatically become public as soon as the deliberation is over.) Beyond the narrow exemptions in the PRA, all public employee emails are public records, and anyone can request any or all of them.
Simply labeling a record “deliberative,” “personnel-related,” or “attorney-client privileged” does not exempt it from public disclosure.
Kinnison’s emails suggest that she attempted to obtain—and may have received—internal exemptions that go far beyond what is allowed under state law. If so, this calls into question the KCRHA’s compliance with the PRA for records requests filed at KCRHA after last October, including several filed by PubliCola.
The KCRHA did not substantively respond to most of the two dozen questions PubliCola sent earlier this week. A spokesperson did say, however, that the agency “complies with the Public Records Act when processing and responding to records requests. We support the public’s right to access records and transparency, while also applying any exemptions required or permitted under the law. We do not automatically or otherwise limit disclosure of responsive records.”
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On October 16, Kinnison sent an urgent email to the personnel committee of the KCRHA’s governing board, along with a KCRHA attorney, Batara, and IT manager Derek Montes titled “Possible System Breach.” In it, she suggested that the agency’s public disclosure officer went beyond the bounds of the public disclosure act when reviewing an anonymous public records request (PRR) for emails about layoffs that were then forthcoming.
In processing the request, Kinnison wrote, the public disclosure officer—who was not included on any of the emails we reviewed— “pulled a very large export file of my emails.” (Emphasis in original). The search also “included key words that were not part of the PRR, such as ‘budget cuts’ and ‘leadership structures.'”
For these reasons, Kinnison wrote, “I have concerns that the PRR search request was used to explore my email beyond the public request and to download my emails, and also that the public request was limited to my inbox.” Public records requesters are not required to provide keywords and public disclosure officers are supposed to fulfill requests as liberally as possible, using their expertise and training to determine how to respond to each request.
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The emails PubliCola reviewed provided no evidence that the public disclosure officer downloaded emails unrelated to the records request in order to “explore” them. The KCRHA spokesperson declined to explain further, calling the exchange a “personnel matter” that “does not have an impact on the specifics of PRA responses which are fully compliant with the statute.”
In the same email, Kinnison referred to a “directive” from the KCRHA governing board’s personnel committee “to limit unfettered access to my email to Taj Wallace (Chief of Staff to the CEO) and Derek Montes (IT Manager),” a decision that appears to have locked the KCRHA’s public disclosure officer out of the CEO’s email account. The KCRHA did not respond to questions about the to limit access to Kinnison’s emails, but denied that the public disclosure officer has been completely cut out of the public records response process.
In the same thread later that evening, Kinnison wrote, “I have taken the step of securing our data by limiting system access to the IT Manager. We will continue to gather information on what may have occurred.”
If an IT manager or Kinnison’s chief of staff was (or is) in charge of doing initial searches to determine which emails are subject to, or exempt from, disclosure, it would raise questions about how records were excluded and why. Any restriction that limits a public disclosure officer’s access to a public agency’s emails would raise similar questions. IT managers may have the technical ability to search through emails using keywords, but they do not have the specialized expertise of public disclosure officers, who must be certified (and routinely recertified) to serve in that position.
The Washington Association of Public Records Officers includes a guide on its website for conducting a thorough public records search.
In a followup email to Batara on October 22, Montes responded to several questions, which appear to have originated with Kinnison, about the records search that initiated the seeming scramble to restrict access to Kinnison’s emails.
The IT manager, apparently serving as a go-between for the KCRHA’s public disclosure officer, confirmed that the Public Records Act requires public disclosure officers to interpret requests liberally, rather than limiting themselves to specific staffers or keywords provided by a requester. He also said the public disclosure officer’s search returned such a large number of emails because she had to come up with search terms that might produce emails about layoffs. “Once records were reviewed, they were deleted from her computer,” Montes wrote.
The emails PubliCola reviewed also included a “protected message” from Kinnison to personnel committee members on October 23 titled “PREDECISIONAL DRAFT RE: Budget and Organizational recommendations.” If this “protected” email was deliberative, it would likely no longer be so, since KCRHA adopted its 2026 budget in February. The KCRHA spokesperson did not respond to questions about why Kinnison used password protection or how widespread the practice has been at the agency, saying only that the KCRHA did not believe such emails are exempt from disclosure.
A final email from Kinnison, about the resignation of staffer Xochitl Maykovich last August, was labeled “CONFIDENTIAL-ATTORNEY CLIENT COMMUNICATION.” The August 25 email is directed at the governing board and a handful of staffers. It includes Maykovich’s resignation email and Kinnison’s description of the email, which warns that Maykovich “has gone on the record with journalist Erica Barnett and we are expecting a story to be published today.” (And so it was.) The email does not request or contain legal advice or assistance—the standard for attorney-client privilege—but it is cc’d to two attorneys. Maykovich has not taken any legal action related to her resignation, though she did sue the agency in June—for alleged violations of the Public Disclosure Act.
SPD says the communications director only used AI tools a handful of times, and only “to evaluate their utility”
By Erica C. Barnett
The Seattle Police Department communications director, Barbara DeLollis, used AI chatbots that are not approved for city use to compose a sample script for a woman preparing for her first media interviews, to produce a list of “Interesting best practice on-camera ideas for big police Department,” to produce a “Comprehensive Communications Toolkit for a Police Department Exiting a Consent Decree,” and to to rewrite a published blog post about a nuisance motel on Aurora.
That prompt reads, in full, “hi make this a better story for the public of a city that doenst liek crime or disorder” (sic).
DeLollis used ChatGPT to produce the sample blog post, and Perplexity to produce the other documents, according to records PubliCola obtained through a public disclosure request. The city’s information technology department confirmed that neither program is approved for use by city employees.
Last September, after noticing that a number of the department’s public communications had many of the hallmarks of AI, PubliCola requested “documents detailing all uses of generative AI” for the first nine months of the year by communications staff as well as Police Chief Shon Barnes and his staff.
The Seattle Police Department provided seven documents, all produced by DeLollis, and closed our request. We asked SPD to confirm that they are asserting that Barnes has never used generative AI, and that the seven documents represent every single use of AI by DeLollis and SPD’s entire communications team. They said yes.
However, the records themselves include two AI-generated documents for which SPD did not produce the written prompts that preceded them—an obvious omission of records responsive to our request that raises concerns about whether the documents really represent every use of AI by DeLollis or other staffers.
Last year, an anonymous person filed two complaints ahout SPD’s use of AI with the Office of Police Accountability, citing the apparent use of AI in a bio of Barnes’ chief of staff, Alan Ricketts, a bullet-pointed statement from Barnes about a violence prevention and enforcement effort, and other documents. The evidence in those complaints included a blog post full of passive-voice, AI slop-style sentences such as “On Thursday, we were confronted with a targeted homicide occurring in front of a place of worship.” That complaint resulted in a supervisor action (essentially, a reprimand).
An SPD spokesperson responded to PubliCola’s nine detailed questions with a statement that read in part: “Last year, a department employee tested various AI tools to evaluate their utility in communication functions like editing, interview preparation, and blog strategy to see if they could offer fresh perspectives.”
The Office of Police Accountability “determined that using AI tools in this way without appropriate acknowledgement was a violation of city policy at that time,” the spokesperson said. “The department does not condone using generative AI to write narratives or communications.”
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A spokesperson for Mayor Katie Wilson told PubliCola, “Unapproved AI software is now blocked on city devices to ensure compliance with critical privacy, transparency, and records protections. The Mayor expects employees to use these tools in compliance with city policy.”
DeLollis’ prompts are riddled with typos that make them challenging to credit as official SPD work product and sometimes hard to interpret.
For example, in one Perplexity prompt—”Lost thengoala for a daily police blog where uoupost both police actions and responses to 911 callbut also show in compelling ways the other impactand resorts of work that a cutting edge evidencebased department does”—DeLollis appears to be asking the AI to define the goals for SPD’s Blotter blog. (The response, which includes generic advice like “Combining transparency with compelling storytelling and data will build trust while showcasing the full scope and positive impact of a modern police force,” seems less than useful.)
In two other conversations with the Perplexity chatbot, DeLollis appears to be seeking advice for a female employee doing her first media interviews and who, as a woman, tends to overprepare for things. SPD did not respond to our questions about the purpose of these prompts or whether they were on behalf of a specific woman.
“So we know why woken over prepare for media interviews but for our client we want to frame this advice on a positive way to prevent them from feeling negative. Help,” one of these prompts reads. “Frame this in positive way for client who is going to need prep for her first media interviews. Women typically over prepare for research drive reasons. It is t helpful though,” another begins.
The records SPD provided for the latter Perplexity query include an ongoing conversation between DeLollis and the chatbot, including a request for a sample script and two requests for academic research.
Because it’s AI (and AI sucks), Perplexity responded to the prompt about helping a woman avoid over-preparing with a list of reasons why it’s important to prepare. In the second conversation, the chatbot added 23 “sources” that included 10 duplicative links and several posts that were unrelated to the question, including guides for interviewers about talking to women who are researchers or subject-matter experts.
Perplexity also produced two guides for communicating about the end of the federal consent decree. (These are the two documents for which SPD did not include the AI prompts). The first is a series of bullet-pointed lists; the second, mentioned earlier, is more of a media “kit,” with sample op/ed language and social media posts, like this suggestion for a post on X: “We’ve made big changes in how we train, respond, and build trust. Now that we’ve met the federal standards for reform, our work continues—with you.”
In the final prompt, DeLollis asks Perplexity to come up with “Interesting best practice on-camera ideas for big police Department.”
It’s unclear whether DeLollis created the chat prompts from a city of Seattle computer or personal device. Washington’s public disclosure law requires city employees to produce all records that are responsive to a request, including those produced on personal devices or using personal emails or cell phone numbers.
An investigation last year found that a “preponderance of the evidence” supports the conclusion that King County Regional Homelessness Authority director retaliated against two former stffers, Edmund Witter and Xochitl Maykovich, after the two voiced concerns about Kinnison’s leadership at a contentious staff meeting last year.
As PubliCola reported in August, staff questioned Kinnison’s decision to hire two white male executives, at salaries of $200,000 each, at the same time that she was proposing to eliminate 22 positions and lay off 13 people, including lower-paid staffers of color, to cut costs. The KCRHA board resolved the complaints against Kinnison last October by hiring an executive coach.
Simon Foster, then the deputy executive, accused Kinnison of hiring white male executives because she believed it would help the agency politically. He accused Kinnison of retaliating against him by reducing his duties. James Rouse, the agency’s former chief financial officer, said Kinnison retaliated against him by directing him not to present a preliminary 2026 budget after he said he didn’t support the proposal.
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The investigation, by the law firm Haggard & Ganson, did not find that Kinnison retaliated against Foster or Rouse. Foster’s and Rouse’s positions were eliminated last October. The KCRHA never hired another CFO—a decision that has come up recently as the KCRHA’s funders discuss whether to shut the agency down in light of a recent forensic audit that identified major gaps in financil reporting and accountability.
Maykocich, then the KCRHA’s interim chief program officer, accused Kinnison of retaliating against her by working to undermine her application for the permanent CPO position by, among other actions, sending an email to then-deputy director Simon Foster criticizing her job performance just 20 minutes after the meeting took place.
Witter, then the KCRHA’s general counsel, accused Kinnison of retaliating against him by removing him from all employment-related legal work.
Maykovich left the agency in September. Witter’s position was eliminated in the October purge, leaving KCRHA without full-time legal counsel. Kinnison hired one of the two white men at the center of the complaints, former Lake City Partners director William Towey, immediately after the layoffs.
A KCRHA spokesperson declined to comment on the findings.
On Thursday, Maykovich sued her former employer for alleged violations of the state Public Records Act, alleging that the agency illegally withheld records related to the investigation into staff complaints about Kinnison. Maykovich requested “All complaints against Kelly Kinnison” as well as “All emails, notes, and other materials relating to the investigation into Kelly Kinnison.” According to the court filing, the KCRHA produced 22 pages of redacted records and closed the request, which the lawsuit calls “obviously an incomplete response.”
The future of the KCRHA remains up in the air after a forensic audit found widespread financial failures at the agency, including a growing negative balance, widespread accounting errors, and erroneous invoices, among other serious issues. At a meeting of the City Council’s human services committee on Friday, Kinnison and Towey minimized the audit findings, suggesting that they were almost entirely the result of “historical” problems stemming from the agency’s founding.
Kinnison said the agency will seek funding to hire someone into a a “CFO-type role” from the temp staffing agency Robert Half, which charges significant fees on top of their temp workers’ salaries. Kinnison and Towey estimated that the cost of a temporary CFO would be around $500,000—more than twice the salary of the CFO Kinnison laid off last October.
With the second phase of the city’s comprehensive plan well underway (and the next two planned), the city is starting to implement the zoning that makes the new comp plan, designed under former mayor Harrell, a reality. And there’s still time for Harrell’s urbanist replacement, Katie Wilson, to put a pro-housing stamp on the city’s main planning document.
The Seattle Police Department complied with a court ruling by giving people with more than one open public disclosure request an actual (if moveable) date when they plan to provide records for each request. Previously, SPD discouraged people from filing more than one records requests by placing every request but one in “inactive” status.
After okaying Mayor Wilson’s decision to hire Purpose Dignity Action director Lisa Daugaard as a temporary advisor on homelessness, the city’s ethics director reversed course, advising Daugaard that the hire represented a potential conflict of interest. As a result, Daugaard—an influential member of Wilson’s transition team—left her new position just 10 days into her planned six months at the mayor’s office.
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Police Chief Shon Barnes was out of town over the weekend, when a spate of shootings left three dead and three injured. SPD wouldn’t say where he was (we asked), but his family lives in Chicago and he visits them at home regularly on weekends while renting an apartment in Seattle.
In his latest Maybe Metropolis column, Josh Feit reports on a Washington state proposal that would make accessible housing more affordable by reforming elevator standards that too often result in no elevators in new buildings at all.
Late last month, a King County Superior Court judge ruled that the Seattle Police Department’s policy of considering no more than one public disclosure request from the same person at a time, leaving subsequent requests in an indefinite “inactive” status, violates the state Public Disclosure Act.
The policy, called “grouping,” has been allowed in Seattle since 2017, when then-mayor Ed Murray and the City Council passed legislation aimed at preventing people from using bots to file dozens or hundreds of requests at a time.
In practice, SPD has been the only city department to deploy grouping on a mass scale, allowing the police to delay or deny disclosure for years by responding to every request by the same requester, in full, before even starting on subsequent requests. The Seattle Times sued to stop the practice, secured an agreement from SPD that they wouldn’t group requests from any requester that were more than eight weeks apart, and sued again when SPD failed to abide by their agreement. (PubliCola filed a declaration in support of the Times’ position).
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This week, SPD finally took action to comply with Superior Court Judge Sandra Widian’s ruling, sending notices with actual dates when the first (or next) installments of records will be available. PubliCola has nine outstanding requests with SPD, including some that SPD had been working on before they stopped responding to all our requests but one in November 2024; on Tuesday, SPD sent us new dates for all of our stalled requests. Each response said that SPD was providing these estimates “pursuant to a court order.”
SPD, of course, can push back these dates individually in the future, delaying disclosure in a way that appears more transparent than its previous practice of providing end-of-year “placeholder” dates for every request that move forward at the end of every year.
And in PubliCola’s case at least, SPD’s responses will still be far from timely: SPD now says they’ll provide new records for our oldest outstanding request, from June 2023, by July 2026, and we won’t see a single document from our most recent request, from December 2024, until June at the earliest. (That request, appropriately enough, is for correspondence between the public disclosure office and other records requesters about “grouping” in 2024). But perhaps it’s a sign of progress that SPD appears to be complying with this court order, so far. We’ll let you know in June.
