For more than a year, records have been trickling into my inbox documenting the astronomical amounts former mayor Bruce Harrell spent to travel in luxury (along with his wife Joanne) while representing the city around the world. One example that I haven’t previously reported: The Harrells bought two business class tickets to Tokyo, at a cost of $10,000 each, for a sister-city meeting in Kobe, Japan in 2023, bringing a large entourage of city staffers with them. (The staffers sat in coach).
The Harrells took another trip to Japan the following year, spending a comparably thrifty $13,000, as I reported late last year. The Harrells even flew in style for short domestic hops—on the high end, they spent $3,500 for two first-class seats to attend two-day event in Columbus, Ohio, while tickets to Washington, D.C. for a three-day event were more than $5,200.
The Harrells paid for the difference between economy and luxury travel, which also included five-star hotels, out of their own deep pockets. Reading over the their travel records in another batch of documents that arrived earlier this year made me wonder: Does Harrell’s successor, Katie Wilson, also travel first-class?
I requested Wilson’s travel records in April, which, her staff confirmed this week, represent all the trips she’s taken so far this year. The records show two trips—a four-day trip to Washington, D.C. for the US Conference of Mayors in January ($600 for one round-trip coach seat on Alaska, plus $332 a night for a standard room at the Marriott), and a three-day trip to Stanford in April ($463 for a round-trip ticket on Alaska, which Wilson’s staff said was reimbursed by the university.)
PubliCola doesn’t have travel records for Harrell’s first year, but during a comparable period—January to mid-July—in 2023, Harrell took at least 10 trips, including international trips to Japan and Norway, totaling at least 51 days out of Seattle over a period of 28 weeks.
When I asked Wilson why she hasn’t taken advantage of her status as mayor to travel in first class, or even comfort economy (Wilson’s seats were all well behind the exit rows economy), she paused, looked at me like I was nuts, and said, “I don’t think I’ve ever flown first class in my life.” I prodded, asking her if she had a miles program or anything. “Honestly, a lot of the time I’ve lived in Seattle—like, we’d go back and visit my parents or something, but we didn’t do a lot of traveling because we didn’t have money.”
So, would the longtime labor organizer just feel weird traveling in first class, as previous mayors have done? Wilson paused again. “I mean…. Why? I don’t—like, why?.” After I awkwardly tried to change the subject, Wilson interjected, “It’s not something I’ve ever considered.”
Wilson does enjoy a window seat and, like me, doesn’t understand why people put the shade down. “I mean—you’re 40,000 feet in the air. Look around!”
1. The Seattle City Council’s land use committee will vote tomorrow on a proposal, from Councilmember Eddie Lin, to eliminate an appeals process that allows activists to halt pro-density legislation before it becomes law. Currently, anyone can stop or delay city land use decisions by filing an appeal with the city hearing examiner under the State Environmental Policy Act, arguing that the city hasn’t done enough environmental review before proposing legislation that would change city land use law.
Speaking to PubliCola on Tuesday, Lin said the vast majority of appeals are filed by a relatively small group of activists and attorneys with long experience appealing complicated land use laws.
“The fact that we often see the same people appeal again and again shows that 99 percent of Seattleites, if not 99.9 percent, do not find [hearing examiner appeals] a way to engage” on land use issues, Lin said. “This is a small number of people engagnig who have the resources” to file complex legal appeals.
Lin’s legislation would remove the right to appeal land use decisions to a hearing examiner, requiring opponents of land use legislation to appeal directly to the state Growth Management Hearings Board or King County Superior Court. Eliminating the local appeals process allows legislation to go into effect while the activists and lawyers appeal through the other two available avenues. Had the legislation been in place when the council took up the remaining parts of the long-overdue Comprehensive Plan update, the council would have spent the last few months meeting to discuss important amendments to the plan; instead, it’s stalled until next year at the earliest.
“I’ve never been a big fan of our SEPA appeals process,” Lin said. “I’ve seen the decades-long delays [it caused] to Fort Lawton housing and the Burke-Gilman Trail,” two projects that have been stalled for years by a seemingly endless series of environmental appeals. (Opponents argue that it’s better for the environment to move cyclists next to a busy arterial roadway rather than the current path where, it just so happens, a lot of industrial businesses like to drive their trucks.)
Activists lined up earlier this month to denounce the legislation as a reckless giveaway to developers that would allow them to “clearcut” Seattle, sacrificing trees, orcas and birds to apartments in Seattle’s suburban-style single-family neighborhoods. The land use committee will discuss Lin’s proposal tomorrow at 9:30; so far, there’s just one amendment, from Council President Joy Hollingsworth. It would add a 30-day public comment period to every land use decision that would be exempted from hearing examiner appeals by Lin’s legislation.
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2. On Tuesday, the council approved legislation PubliCola covered last month that aims to increase participation in the city’s Utility Discount Program by increasing the threshold for eligibility from 70 percent of the state median income to 60 percent of Seattle’s muchhigher median income next year, with two more bumps—to 70 percent of Seattle median in 2027 and 80 percent in 2028. Both those increases will require separate legislation.
The bill’s sponsor, Dan Strauss, initially seemed surprised at the lack of controversy surrounding the proposal, which would result in slight utility rate increases and would make UDP one of the easiest income-based programs to apply for. A press availability to discuss the bill (and other topics) enticed just one reporter (me), and the vote on Tuesday was unanimous—and even followed by a rare burst of applause for every council member.
One challenge the program has faced is getting more eligible people to sign up; at the end of last year, only about 36 percent of eligible Seattle residents were participating in the program. To apply, visit the city’s Utility Discount Program page.
As Advocacy Chair for the Seattle Public Library Foundation’s board, I want all Seattleites to know that the quality of our library system is within our control. This summer, we have the opportunity to vote in favor of one-third of the Seattle Public Library’s budget and invest in its future.
On the August 4 primary ballot, Seattle voters will be asked to replace the expiring 2019 Library Levy with a $479 million package. This is funding that cannot be met by philanthropic or other governmental sources. To sustain the system we know, love, and use, please vote yes.
Whether you’re checking out an e-book or e-audiobook through the Libby app, reserving a meeting room, picking up a book after-hours at a holds locker, watching movies on DVD or through Hoopla, finding respite from the heat, practicing music, attending programs like Story Time, or participating in Summer Book Bingo, there are endless ways to “visit” the library. The Seattle Public Library is one of the only places in our city that Seattle residents can enjoy without having to spend additional money, as a record number of people are discovering: In 2025, there were 430,000 active Library users.
The replacement levy further expands the Library’s reach and impact on Seattle. It would add staff to enhance literacy and learning programming, like book readings by authors, and make that programming more accessible by broadcasting it on the Seattle Channel. The new levy also invests more in physical and digital materials, which will reduce wait times for in-demand books. It would also upgrade technology hardware and software needed to connect library users to the digital world.
I know some voters may question the price tag of this year’s proposed levy, which is larger than the levy passed in 2019. But the new investments are necessary additions that reflect growing library use. More than 70 percent of the new $479 million levy will go toward continuing operating hours, collections, and programs provided in the 2019 levy, including popular programs like No Late Fines and Peak Picks. Furthermore, these voter-approved dollars will fund a quarter of Library staff over the next seven years.
In addition to supporting collections and programs, the 2026 Library Levy is essential to maintaining the physical spaces of the library. Despite its futuristic appearance, the Central Library is now more than 20 years old, and this well-loved place is showing its age. The levy will fund improvements at Central, ensuring that the space remains welcoming to the thousands who visit it each day. Additionally, the levy will fund seismic retrofits of the Columbia and West Seattle branches and maintain elevators and escalators at locations throughout the city. These investments are critical to keeping our libraries safe and accessible to everyone.
All of this comes at good value for Seattle residents: The average homeowner will pay an additional $9 a month, less than the cost of a paperback book. Levy spending is overseen by an independent Board of Trustees, with quarterly and annual reports from the Library available to the public. And while concerns over the city’s state-mandated levy cap are legitimate, this issue is larger than the scope of this levy, which makes up just 7 percent of overall city property taxes.
At a time of layoffs and high prices in an already expensive city, I take it seriously to ask my fellow residents, homeowners and renters alike, to voluntarily tax themselves to fund our libraries. However, the books and services the Library provides are all the more important during times of economic hardship. From early learning programs for families to skill-building for job seekers to retirement preparation for seniors, the Library provides resources for people at every stage of life. Failure to pass this Levy would remove a third of the Library’s funding—jeopardizing an institution that serves as a lifeline and a catalyst for so many Seattle residents.
A thriving library system is the foundation of an affordable city, a bulwark against disinformation, and a place where those who will create the world we yearn for—entrepreneurs, free thinkers, and activists—find their voice and way. Seattle voters get to decide the kind of library system we have. Together, let’s ensure it remains an outstanding one.
Brittney Moraski is a Seattle Public Library Foundation Board Member and Advocacy Chair.
On Seattle Nice this week, Sandeep, David, and I discussed the mayor’s track record at six months in, starting with her approach to encampment sweeps, which have continued at a steady clip through the new mayor’s tenure.
Some Wilson never promised to “stop the sweeps”—before she ran for mayor, we had her on the podcast to talk about a piece she wrote for the Stranger titled “Where the Left Went Wrong on Homelessness”—but she did say she would moderate the aggressive sweeps of the Harrell administration. Wilson also set an aspirational goal for new shelters (specifically, tiny house village units): 500 by the World Cup, 1,000 by the end of this year.
So far, the Wilson administration has fallen far short of that goal, and sweeps have continued apace. (Wilson has also embraced Purpose Dignity Action’s approach to encampment resolution, which involves longer-term outreach and shelter or housing options that are actually tailored to people’s needs, but that sort of solution is limited by funding and political will).
In an interview published in twoparts on PubliCola last week, Wilson said it was important to keep “high-priority” areas like parks and sidewalks clear. Discussing her comments on the podcast, I said sounded an awful lot like the way her predecessor Bruce Harrell justified accelerating sweeps, saying it was important to keep parks and sidewalks open for their intended use.
Sandeep argued that Wilson is “charting a new path for the left” by reversing the “stop the sweeps” attitude that led the city to stop removing encampments during the pandemic. As I repeatedly interjected, the business-backed mayor at the time, Jenny Durkan, actually stopped sweeping encampments in response to guidance from the CDC during Trump’s first term, and the sweeps were quickly resumed once the immediate emergency was over. At no time was “the left” in control of the city’s sweeps team during those years.
Wilson has also faced headwinds that Harrell didn’t, including conflicts with the council—some self-inflicted, others a matter of ideological differences.
As we discussed, one of the items Wilson ticked off in her list of achievements—securing funding in the Families, Education, Preschool and Promise (FEPP) levy plan for universal school meals—was undermined the very day of our interview, when Council President Joy Hollingsworth and Councilmember proposed using the school-meal money to pay for vouchers for weekend and holiday lunches for low-income kids. The debate over whether children’s access to food at school should be means-tested or universal is still ongoing.
The upcoming budget will also be a test of both mayor-council relations and Wilson’s ability to get her priorities through the legislative process. We discussed the challenges the mayor will face while navigating likely spending cuts (Harrell, who was running for reelection when he drafted his final head-in-the-sand budget, knowingly left Wilson with a starting deficit of $140 million, which has risen to around $175 million), including council members who oppose any slowdown in SPD hiring.
During our interview, Wilson said she’s retaining Police Chief Shon Barnes. But I heard an unspoken “for now.” Sandeep, citing unnamed sources “in her orbit,” says I’m wrong. Who’s right? I’m sure we’ll talk about that more on a future episode!
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.
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My computer is the single most important piece of equipment I own, and for much of the last five years, I’ve relied on my trusty 2015 MacBook Pro to write and edit posts, tweet up a storm from public meetings, file public records requests, edit transcripts and photos, and generally keep The C Is for Crank in operation. Now it’s time to retire my old machine and trade it in for a newer model.
I’d really appreciate any help my readers are willing to provide to help me defray the cost of this critical piece of office equipment. A new, faster machine (not to mention one without—ahem—an ever-so-slightly cracked screen) will make it easier to bring The C Is for Crank to you every day. My back will also be grateful as I rush from candidate debate to city council meeting to coffee shop back to City Hall. I accept contributions via Venmo (Erica-Barnett-7), Paypal, and by check at the address on my Support page. Thank you so much for your support!
