labor, Mayor Harrell, Police, Uncategorized

New Police Chief Shon Barnes Accepted $50,000 Hiring Bonus Created for Rank and File Officers

SPD says the city offered Barnes the bonus, first approved in 2022 to boost police officer hiring, “as part of his compensation.” 

By Erica C. Barnett

Editor’s note: This post is an update to yesterday’s story revealing that the Seattle Police Department paid $50,000 bonuses intended for new rank and-file-officers to new Deputy Police Chief Andre Sayles and new Assistant Chief Nicole Powell. Sayles and Powell’s positions, along with other positions added by Barnes, are new, and add ongoing costs to the Seattle Police Department’s budget.

The Seattle Police Department confirmed that Police Chief Shon Barnes, appointed by Mayor Bruce Harrell in December and confirmed by the Seattle City Council last month, received a $50,000 recruitment bonus under legislation first passed in 2022 to promote the “recruitment of new police officers” during what proponents called a crisis-level officer shortage. (In 2024, the council increased the bonus from $30,000 to $50,000).

“While recruiting Shon Barnes, a respected law enforcement leader, the City of Seattle offered as part of his compensation a ‘hiring incentive’ of $50,000 under the City’s 2024 legislation, which is related to the recruitment and retention of police officers at the understaffed Seattle Police Department,” an SPD spokesperson told PubliCola.

As we reported yesterday, the legislation that created lateral hiring bonuses was explicitly about police officers, not executives. According to the 2022 legislation, the bonuses are meant to entice trained officers who “require minimal training and can immediately bolster the department’s 9-1-1 response ability or provision of investigative services.”

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Lisa Herbold, the former councilmember who sponsored the 2022 legislation, confirmed that the bonuses were intended for police officers, not command staff. Council President Sara Nelson, who sponsored a 2024 bill  that increased the lateral hiring bonus from $30,000 to $50,000, said her intent was to provide an extra incentive to help SPD recruit more “lower-level officers.”

SPD’s statement suggests that Mayor Bruce Harrell proactively offered Barnes the $50,000 bonus on top of an annual salary of more than $360,000 a year. We’ve reached out to Harrell’s office to find out whether and, if so, why he initiated this offer.

SPD said they’re splitting Barnes’ payment into two parts in accordance with the hiring-bonus legislation. “To date, $25,000 has been paid to Barnes according to the City’s agreed-upon compensation structure,” the SPD spokesperson said.

The section of the about splitting the hiring bonuses actually highlights the fact that the bonuses were never intended for the top SPD brass. According to the legislation, “Half of the hiring incentive will be paid in the first paycheck and the second half upon completion of any probationary period required by the Public Safety Civil Service Rules.” The probationary period isn’t there just to require cops to prove they can do the job—once they’re off probation, they get job protections as part of the civil service.

Chiefs (including deputy and assistant chiefs) aren’t part of the civil service—they can be fired at will. As such, they don’t have any probationary period. Put another way, Barnes’ position falls outside the parameters of the legislation, so he isn’t subject to the two-payment structure mandated in that law.

We’ve asked SPD to clarify this explanation.

LGBTQ+

Christian Nationalist Rally, Planned for Cal Anderson Park, Will Move to Gas Works Park
Aerial view of Gas Works Park.

By Erica C. Barnett

On Tuesday, PubliCola exclusively reported (via Bluesky) that the anti-LGBTQ organizers of the August 30 “Revive in ’25” event planned for Cal Anderson Park, in the heart of Seattle’s historic LGBTQ neighborhood, agreed to move the event to Gas Works Park. The city’s Parks Department issued a permit on Tuesday afternoon that will allow Sean Feucht’s “Let Us Worship” group to use Gas Works from 9 am to 9 pm.

The group’s voluntary relocation to a less provocative (and transit-accessible) location came after the city effectively threw up its hands, determining that Parks did not have the legal authority, under the First Amendment, to deny the permit or move the event to another location that Feucht hadn’t requested.

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The city has denied a permit to a similar group in the past—telling Pursuit NW Pastor Russell Johnson’s Mayday USA group they couldn’t rally at a site near Pike Place Market earlier this year—but the reasons were logistical, not content-based: According to emails discussing the event, the city’s special events office rejected the permit because of overcrowding and complaints about access and notification from residents and businesses.

As we reported last week (original story here), the city, on the advice of City Attorney Ann Davison, decided it couldn’t legally justify denying the permit to Feucht’s group, or did not want to take on the risk of a potentially precedent-setting First Amendment lawsuit.

PubliCola has requested a copy of the permit.

Update: About two hours after PubliCola reported on the new permit, the city announced the relocation of Feucht’s event.

Mayor Bruce Harrell and Joy Hollingsworth, who represents the council district (3) that includes Capitol Hill and negotiated with its organizers to move it away from Cal Anderson, said in a joint statement, “Recognizing that Cal Anderson Park is an important gathering space for our LGBTQ+ residents and receiving their feedback on the event location, we worked with the organizers to suggest alternative park locations. After that conversation, the organizers have agreed to move their event to Gas Works Park. We are grateful that they were receptive to our recommendation.”

Feucht’s group posted on Facebook that they still plan to hold a “Jesus March” on Capitol Hill starting at 3:30 pm before the event officially kicks off at Gas Works at 5pm. It’s unclear whether the group needs, or has sought, a permit to hold its march.

Update August 20: The Seattle Department of Transportation said Feucht’s group had not sought a street use permit from them for the Jesus March, and directed us to the city’s Special Events Office. Asked if the group had applied for a special events permit, the office referred us to the mayor’s office. A spokesperson for the mayor’s office said, “We are not aware of a planned ‘Jesus March,’ and the organizers have not submitted an application to hold a march in or around Cal Anderson Park.”

Editor’s note: In a concession to the many Fremont residents who wrote to complain that Gas Works Park is not in Fremont but in Wallingford, I took “Fremont” out of the headline and story. Although this debate is tangential to the subject at hand, I remember this debate springing up a while back—is it “East Fremont” or “South Wallingford”?—and I don’t consider it settled law. But in the interest of peace, I’ve removed all references to the park’s location.

Police

SPD Chiefs Received $50,000 Bonuses Meant to Address Police Hiring Shortage
Image by Kyah117, via Wikimedia Commons. CC-by-4.0 license.

By Erica C. Barnett

PubliCola has exclusively confirmed that two of the top-level staff hired by new Police Chief Shon Barnes, Deputy Chief Andre Sayles and Assistant Chief Nicole Powell, received lateral hiring bonuses of $50,000 each. A source familiar with the payments tells PubliCola that Barnes himself also received a $50,000 bonus for coming to Seattle from Madison, Wisconsin, where he was police chief.

Sayles transferred to SPD from Beloit, Wisconsin; Powell transferred from New Orleans.

As we’ve reported, the positions Barnes added include a second deputy chief, a new assistant chief, a new chief of staff, a new executive director of crime and community harm reduction, and a new chief communications officer, all making more than $200,000. The new positions add ongoing annual costs to SPD’s budget, including $1.34 million in salaries alone.

PubliCola reported last week that Barnes and Deputy chief Yvonne Underwood each received bonuses for recruiting Powell and Sayles. Barnes and Underwood received $1,000 each for recruiting Sayles, and Barnes received a separate $1,000 bonus for Powell.

In an email confirming the bonuses that Sayles and Powell received for joining SPD’s command staff, an SPD spokesman said, “They’re eligible. The $50,000 bonus is part of their compensation package.”

Neither SPD nor Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office responded our repeated inquiries about the bonus Barnes reportedly received. Harrell’s office did respond to our questions about Sayles and Powell, by saying they had asked SPD to respond to our questions.

This week, Barnes reportedly launched an internal investigation to find out who at SPD is “leaking” information about the department to members of the media. SPD did not immediately respond to questions about this purported investigation on Tuesday; we’ll update this post if we hear back.

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City employee compensation is a matter of public record that all city departments, including SPD, are required to provide to any member of the public through a public disclosure process outlined in the state Public Records Act.

The hiring bonuses, which Harrell proposed as a way to quickly recruit trained officers to address high attrition and lackluster hiring in the wake of mass protests against police violence in 2020, were intended to increase the number of deployable officers, not chief-level executive staff.

City Council president Sara Nelson, a fierce proponent of the bonus legislation, told PubliCola her understanding was that the two chiefs “are eligible for those bonuses,” but added, “I’d always thought of them going to lower level officers.” Nelson noted that she wasn’t involved in the hiring negotiations for Sayles or Powell.

It’s unclear under what authority the police chiefs are eligible for lateral hiring bonuses created to recruit rank and file police officers.

The initial legislation, which authorized $30,000 bonuses for trained “lateral” hires from other police departments, was meant to address the “declining number of police officers fully trained and ready for deployment,” according to the text of the bill. At the time, Nelson said, “We need to use every tool in our toolbox to accelerate the hiring of officers. If we don’t do this, what else are we going to do?”

The city increased the lateral bonuses to $50,000 in 2024 and made the entire hiring bonus program, which also includes $7,500 bonuses for new recruits, permanent. The update required new SPD officers, including lateral hires, to make a five-year commitment and to pay back the bonus on a pro-rated basis if they leave before the five years is up.

Sayles’ and Powell’s positions are both categorized as Executive 4, the highest executive-level position at the city and the one held by the directors of almost every city department.  (Community Assisted Response and Engagement Department Chief Amy Barden, who oversees 911 and a team of Community Crisis Responders, is an Executive 3, a lower-ranking position than the other public-safety chiefs.)

Under city law, police chiefs, deputy chiefs, and assistant chiefs are exempt from civil service rules, meaning they aren’t required to go through the regular police hiring process, or take the police hiring test, that would appear to be prerequisites for receiving a lateral hiring bonus. Instead, the police chief is directly appointed by the mayor and deputy and assistant chiefs are directly appointed by the police chief.

Additionally, the law authorizing the hiring bonuses says repeatedly that it applies to “police officers” a rank that excludes police chiefs and other high-ranking officials—referencing “new police officer hires,” “police officer candidates,” “police officer positions,” and “police officer training.” Nothing in the text of the law suggests it was intended to help recruit command staff or suggests that there is a shortage of chief-level executives at SPD.

SPD’s hiring page says that to be eligible for the lateral hiring bonus, officers must pass a lateral hiring test and “currently be working full-time as a Police Officer, Deputy Sheriff, Tribal Officer or State Trooper with two (2) or more years of experience with full police powers and duties.” SPD did not immediately respond to questions about whether Barnes, Sayles, and Powell went through the lateral hiring process. We’ve requested these records.

City Council, housing, Taxes

City Plans Major Overhaul of Affordable Housing Tax-Break Program
An MFTE building, Mad Flats, on Capitol Hill

By Erica C. Barnett

The city is getting ready to overhaul a program that provides tax breaks to developers who agree to keep 25 percent of their apartments affordable for 12 years (or 20 percent if 8 percent of the units are two-bedroom), known as the Multifamily Tax Exemption program (MFTE). It’s the city’s main program for providing housing affordable to moderate-income people; as of November 2024, according to a University of Washington evaluation of the program, there were nearly 7,000 income-restricted units in Seattle as a direct result of MFTE tax breaks

The MFTE program has been overhauled several times in its 27-year existence; the current program, known as “Program 6,” has been in place since 2019. In that update, the City Council imposed a cap on rent increases of 4.5 percent a year and reduced the maximum income for eligibility, opening up the program for lower-income renters.

While those changes made more people eligible for MFTE units, they also made developers less likely to participate in the voluntary program. As construction costs ballooned starting in 2019, market rents in Seattle softened, making MFTE units less competitive with the market–and the program less appealing to developers who might otherwise participate in it.

According to the UW study, “The City of Seattle has a difficult responsibility to calibrate the relationship between the costs of the program (benefit to developers) and the public benefits it delivers (more affordable housing). As the City pushes for greater public benefits, the program becomes less attractive to developers. This is the central tension.”

The proposed update, known as “Revised Program 7” to distinguish it from an earlier proposal that came out of the city’s Office of Housing, would set new (generally higher) rent and income limits for most of the affordable units created under the MFTE program, adjusting eligibility standards so that the program would be geared toward people earning between 40 percent of Seattle’s median income for the smallest units to 90 percent—about $113,000 for a two-person household—for two-bedrooms.

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Updating the tax-break program has been fairly uncontroversial so far—somewhat surprisingly so, given some council members’ recent opposition to other proposals that would encourage new housing, such as density increases in the comprehensive plan, on the grounds that they aren’t tailored to very low-income people.

It may help that the council’s most vocal opponent of such measures, Cathy Moore, is off the council and no longer chairs the Housing and Human Services Committee, which discussed the legislation last week. During public comment at last week’s housing and human services committee, just one speaker vociferously opposed the proposed changes to the program: Longtime Phinney Ridge neighborhood activist Irene Wall, who argued that MFTE was “a failed program” that served too few people for the amount it costs homeowners like herself in additional taxes.

“The Office of Housing spent months trying to figure out what to do with this program,” Wall said. “They asked tenants if they like their rent reductions in their new buildings, but there was no outreach to any of the taxpayers who are funding this graft. Why are the taxpayers not considered equal stakeholders in this scheme?”

Overall, a median homeowner in Seattle spends $145 a year in property taxes to offset the taxes developers who participate in the program don’t pay in exchange for providing affordable housing.

Council President Sara Nelson, who has frequently beat the drum for more “workforce” housing, called MFTE “a program that’s extremely important because it it makes it easier to build housing across the board.”

The proposal would also replace a 4.5 percent annual cap on rent increases with the statewide rent cap (which doesn’t currently apply to MFTE buildings) of 7 percent plus inflation or 10 percent, whichever is smaller. Separate from the legislation, Office of Housing director Maiko Winkler-Chin told the council that OH is simplifying the income verification process for renters, which can require prospective tenants to fill out a lengthy, complex application for each MFTE unit they apply to rent.

“The city doesn’t have any program that supports workforce housing besides MFTE, really, for rental units,” Nelson said. “And that, I would say, is the greatest need because of the sheer numbers of people that fall within the category.”

The council, which is currently on its annual two-week summer recess, has until September 3 to propose amendments—for example, adjusting the maximum income levels so that higher-income renters are ineligible for the program—in advance of the next meeting to discuss the program on September 10.

Elections, Mayor Harrell

Harrell Fared Worst In Southeast Seattle District He Once Represented on City Council
Mayor Bruce Harrell on primary election night

By Erica C. Barnett

An analysis of primary election results shows that Mayor Bruce Harrell lost badly in the primary on his own home turf—Southeast Seattle’s 37th District, where he won just 36 percent of the vote to challenger Katie Wilson’s 56 percent. Overall, Harrell didn’t win a majority in any Seattle legislative district except the sliver of the 32nd that dips down into Seattle from Shoreline, but his 47-42 victory in that area represented a majority of less than 5,000 votes.

Although the 37th LD, which roughly overlaps with the council district Harrell represented between 2015 and 2019 (the boundaries were redrawn in 2022) also went for Harrell’s opponent, then-councilmember Lorena González, in 2021, the gap was much smaller—González had 36 percent to Harrell’s 33 percent, with the remainder going to other candidates.

That’s a major comedown from Harrell’s 2015 election to represent City Council District 2, when he got nearly 62 percent of the primary vote and went on to narrowly defeat Tammy Morales, who won election to the same seat four years later. Harrell was an incumbent, but ran for the Southeast Seattle seat after the city switched to district elections.

González was the more progressive candidate in the 2021 race, so her supporters serve as a rough proxy for Wilson’s voter base.

In other legislative districts that are fully or mostly located in Seattle, voters flipped from supporting Harrell in the 2021 primary to supporting Wilson this year. These include the 34th District (West Seattle), the 36th District (Queen Anne, Magnolia, Ballard), and the 46th District (North Seattle). Harrell also lost to González in the 11th District, which included some of South Seattle, in 2021, but that area was also redistricted and the part that was in Seattle is now in the 37th. In the 43rd District, which includes Capitol Hill and the University District, Harrell trailed Wilson by 14 points, 40 to 54.

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Harrell will have to close a nearly 10-point gap with challenger Wilson if he wants to win reelection in November—a feat that, as we documented last week, no sitting mayor has accomplished in at least the last 28 years.

Of course, the electorate itself changes between the August primary and the November general election, when turnout is generally higher—about 40 percent of Seattle’s registered voters, or around 200,000 people, voted in the primary, a number that will likely spike well above 50 percent in the general). And people can change their minds and vote for a different candidate in the general, including voters who chose one of the six candidates who didn’t make it through.

But there are reasons to expect that that last group of voters won’t move the needle much in Harrell’s direction: Unlike in the 2021 election that made Harrell mayor, when nearly 34 percent of voters went for candidates other than Harrell or González, the other candidates split just 8 percent of the vote this year, which doesn’t “free up” many voters to choose Harrell or Wilson.

When we asked Joe Mallahan, a candidate to the right of Wilson whose votes would theoretically go to Harrell, if asked if he was voting for Harrell, he responded “fuck no” and said he’s supporting Wilson.

Crime, Elections, LGBTQ+, Mayor Harrell, Police

This Week on PubliCola: August 16, 2025

A closer look at Ann Davison’s record, police chief gets recruitment bonus, new details in Adrian Diaz investigation, and more.

By Erica C. Barnett

Monday, August 11

Ann Davison Promised to Resolve Cases Faster and Punish the Most Serious Violators. Did She Deliver?

Reporter Andrew Engelson did a deep dive into the data on embattled City Attorney Ann Davison’s 2021 campaign promises, finding that while Davison did speed up filing on some misdemeanor cases, more cases have ended up dismissed or with no conviction than under her predecessor, and she has filed domestic violence cases much more slowly.

Tuesday, December 12

Police Chief and Deputy Chief Received Recruitment Bonuses For Bringing on New Staff

New Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes and Deputy Chief Yvonne Underwood received recruitment bonuses of $1,000 each for bringing on two executive-level staff (the two each got a bonus for recruiting the same new deputy chief and Barnes got a separate bonus for hiring an assistant chief). The bonuses were created with the intent of hiring more officers who can respond to calls, not executive staff.

Thursday, December 13

Christian Nationalist Rally by Anti-LGBTQ Group Will Take Place at Cal Anderson Park

As of Thursday, the city had exhausted all legal options for preventing an anti-LGBTQ Christian nationalist group from holding a concert and rally in Cal Anderson Park, and queer organizers were planning counter-programming with cooperation from city officials. On Friday, when the permit was to be announced, PubliCola learned that the city was working on a last-minute solution in which the group would voluntarily hold its “Revive in ‘25” event elsewhere.

Mayoral Challenger Katie Wilson Closes In on 51 Percent; Council Moves to Expand Police Camera Surveillance

In Thursday’s Afternoon Fizz, we took a look at historical election numbers to consider the likelihood that Harrell will be able to come back from a 10-point primary election loss to challenger Katie Wilson. And the council moved closer to expanding the city’s brand-new 24/7 police camera surveillance to new neighborhoods, including the Central District, Capitol Hill, and the stadium district.

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Harrell’s Chief of Staff Leaves Mayor’s Office

Mayor Bruce Harrell’s longtime aide, chief of staff and general counsel Jeremy Racca, is leaving the mayor’s office to move to New York after a month-long leave of absence. Racca is the first high-level staffer to leave Harrell’s office after the election. The departure led to a shuffling of personnel in Harrell’s office, elevating deputy mayor Tiffany Washington, who has played a top role on homelessness policy, to a new position of chief deputy mayor.

Friday, August 15

Witnesses In Diaz Investigation Say Former Chief “Obsessed” Over Affair Rumors, Asked Employees to Use WhatsApp to Evade Disclosure

Newly release interviews with former police chief Adrian Diaz’ staff include new details about incidents that led the people surrounding Diaz to believe he was covering up an affair with the woman he hired as his chief of staff, including a late-night visit to an abandoned park in North Bend and an alleged directive to use encrypted messaging to communicate as a way of avoiding public disclosure.