City Council, Elections, Mayor Harrell, Police, Trump

Ex-SPD Chief Drops Lawsuit Against Harrell, City Files Pre-Election Trump Lawsuit, Councilmembers Oppose Progressive Colleague’s Reelection

1. City Attorney Ann Davison and Mayor Bruce Harrell announced on Thursday—a date also known as Six Days Before the Primary Election—that they are suing the Trump Administration over two January 2025 executive orders threatening to withhold federal funding from jurisdictions that support diversity, equity, and inclusion or acknowledge the existence of trans and nonbinary people, a policy the Trump order refers to as “gender ideology.” (Harrell said there was nothing political about the timing. OK.)

The lawsuit isn’t the first in the nation to challenge the two executive orders, which seek to dismantle policies adopted by local jurisdictions by threatening the loss of critical federal funds. But it is the first such lawsuit initiated by the city of Seattle, which has also joined two other anti-Trump lawsuits filed by other jurisdictions.

The lawsuit argues that the Trump Administration has overstepped its authority by unilaterally imposing illegal conditions on federal contracts. By requiring the city to certify that it doesn’t have any programs that promote diversity or acknowledge genders other than “biological male and female,” the city argues the Trump Administration is subjecting it to “impossible choice when it accepts and spends federal grant money—either submit to the Administration’s policies through unlawful means or forgo vital funding for major infrastructure and safety initiatives.”

In a press conference Thursday, Davison avoided talking explicitly about gender diversity and DEI, limiting her comments to the legal aspects of the lawsuit. (Harrell, in contrast, talked about his own history of advocating for gender-affirming care to be included in the city’s health care plans and for the city’s Race and Social Justice Initiative.) “We should not have to forego our own local policies in order to obtain that money that has already been provided to us,” Davison said.

This year, Seattle has the authority to spend around $370 million in federal grant funds, much of that for transportation projects. According to the lawsuit, Trump’s executive orders put all that funding at risk.

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3. Late last month, former police chief Adrian Diaz quietly agreed to dismiss all claims against Mayor Bruce Harrell in his defamation lawsuit against the city of Seattle—a surprising turn for a legal claim that puts Harrell at the center of most of its allegations, claiming he helped spread false rumors that Diaz had an inappropriate affair with a subordinate, Jamie Tompkins, and that Diaz and Tompkins lied to investigators looking into the allegations.

Diaz’ complaint rehashes a number of his longstanding grievances, including his claim that a love letter, written in what an expert identified as Tompkins’ handwriting, was a “forgery.” (Four days after Diaz filed the lawsuit, the city released records and recordings from the investigation, which PubliCola covered at length.) But it also included many specific allegations against Harrell.

After Harrell “wrongfully” fired Diaz, the complaint says, he “escalated the injustice by making knowingly false and defamatory statements to the media and public, accusing Chief Diaz of dishonesty, lying, failing to disclose conflicts of interest, acting unprofessionally, and engaging in an improper personal relationship.”

Then, the complaint alleges, “in an effort to score political points in an upcoming election year, Mayor Harrell then engaged in a self-aggrandizing media tour during which he repeatedly and falsely proclaimed Chief Diaz had lied to him, statements that wrongfully labeled Chief Diaz as a dishonest cop who could not be trusted.”

Diaz is still suing the city—the other named defendant in his lawsuit. Asked about his removal from the lawsuit on Thursday, Harrell said tersely, “No reaction. No comment.”

3. Talk about performative: Two of Seattle Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck’s colleagues—Sara Nelson and Maritza Rivera—along with the council appointee Rinck handily defeated, Tanya Woo, recently endorsed Rinck’s opponent Ray Rogers, who’s one of four people running against the popular incumbent.

Rogers, a self-identified former gang member who supports community policing and opposes a “return to the radical council of the past,” has raised just $4,000 and is polling at about 2 percent. Like her other nominal opponents, he isn’t a threat to Rinck. By endorsing him, her colleagues (and Woo) are sending Rinck a message that they’d rather endorse a nonviable candidate than accept the fact that voters overwhelmingly support her.

Elections

Who Is Common Purple Collective, Ann Davison’s Campaign Consultant?
Photo by Sanders Lauture, via Bluesky

By Erica C. Barnett

Recent campaign finance reports for City Attorney Ann Davison’s reelection campaign served up a mystery: Who, exactly, is the Common Purple Collective, Davison’s campaign consultant? The firm, which Davison’s campaign paid more than $65,000—all in July—to produce mailers, videos, and online content, isn’t a familiar name in Seattle; in fact, Davison is its only client.

A quick search on several search engines yielded just one result for the name: A Delaware LLC set up in April 2025 by Incorp, a national firm that serves as a registered agent for companies whose owners want to prevent their personal information from becoming public. Delaware is a popular state for business registration because of its pro-business tax structure and privacy laws that make it hard for the public to get detailed information about companies and their corporate structure; the state provides companies’ annual reports, by mail, for a fee, but because Davison’s consultant has only existed since April, its annual report won’t be due until April 31 of next year.

Common Purple Collective does list a Seattle address on its campaign filings—600 1st Ave, a building in Pioneer Square—but the full address corresponds to a private mailbox, an alternative to a US Post Office box that provides a “real” street address without revealing the physical address of the person or company who registered it. The company does not have a business license in the state of Washington or the city of Seattle, which are both subject to Washington’s robust disclosure laws. Nor are they listed in the American Association of Political Consultants database.

Flummoxed, I asked a number of local political consultants about who Davison’s mystery campaign consultant might actually be. Although every consultant I spoke to said they were not, nor did they know anything about, Common Purple Collective, several said that whoever it was, their efforts to conceal their identity indicated that they were willing to go to great lengths to avoid being associated publicly with Davison.

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There’s reason to believe local consultants might shy away from associating with a candidate who joined the Republican Party in 2020. When she ran for city attorney in 2021, after losing earlier races for Seattle City Council and lieutenant governor, Davison used the local firm C4N partners, run by consultant Dean Nielsen, who received a fair amount of blowback for working for a Republican. (Nielsen said he has nothing to do with the Davison campaign this year.)

Not every local consultant I contacted got back to me—and it’s entirely possible that whoever Common Purple Collective is, they’re located out of state. (If that’s the case, though, they’d presumably have less reason to conceal their identity.) Davison’s campaign did not respond to my questions, nor did deputy city attorney Scott Lindsay, one of her most prominent supporters.

So, the mystery continues. One thing we do know is that Common Purple Collective, whoever they are, has delivered a pile of mail to local Seattle voters, most of it giving Davison credit for making Seattle’s streets safer by cracking down on drug users and eliminating a backlog of misdemeanor cases (mostly by dismissing them). The Common Purple Collective-produced mail touts endorsements from most of the Seattle City Council and controversial former city attorney Mark Sidran. It also credits Davison with closing down an “open-air drug market” in the Chinatown International District that is very much still a going concern.

City Council, Mayor Harrell, Police, Privacy

Police Roll Out Expansion Plans for Surveillance Cameras

By Erica C. Barnett

Just weeks after rolling out live camera surveillance in the Chinatown/International District, downtown, and along Aurora Ave. N, the Seattle City Council took up legislation this week that would expand the surveillance zones to include Garfield High School in the Central District and a section of Capitol Hill that includes the Pike-Pine corridor and Cal Anderson Park, a residential area that police have dubbed the “Capitol Hill Nightlife District.”

The purpose of the cameras, according to SPD, is to reduce and help solve major crimes in places where “gun violence, human trafficking, and persistent felony crime is concentrated.”

SPD Captain Jim Britt, who heads up the Real-Time Crime Center, the division of SPD that’s overseeing the implementation of the cameras, said the department hopes to incorporate camera footage from other city and regional departments, such as the Parks Department, the Seattle Public Library, King County Metro,, Sound Transit, and “anybody that has a camera in the Seattle area.” (SPL confirmed it does not have surveillance cameras, and SDOT director Adiam Emery said the department already shares its camera footage with SPD).

Attached to the legislation, almost as an afterthought, is a mandatory Surveillance Impact Report analyzing the potential impact of widespread camera surveillance, which was not yet finished when the city deployed the first cameras earlier this month. The report includes more than 110 pages of comments submitted by Seattle residents over a two-week feedback period, most of them opposing increased police surveillance of their neighborhoods. Many of the commenters argued that police cameras foster an environment of fear and control and violate civil liberties, particularly for marginalized groups.

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During Thursday’s meeting, council members attempted to dismiss these concerns by suggesting that people who support the cameras, such as homeowners and business groups, are underrepresented in public comment. District 3 Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth said most of the people she has talked to on Capitol Hill and around Garfield High School support the cameras, but are afraid to speak out for fear of retaliation from opponents, including the media.

“Many people don’t feel safe to come down to City Hall to tell us they don’t feel safe [in their neighborhoods] because of the backlash that they get from online media, from reporters, from people … because they’ll be a target,” Hollingsworth said. “They’re scared to come down to say that because of what they feel the backlash is going to be at their business.”

Defending their push to expand camera surveillance so soon after the initial pilot began, officials from SPD and Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office said the cameras have already demonstrated their usefulness.

However, a video SPD produced to show that the new cameras are already achieving their goals didn’t include any examples of gun violence, human trafficking, or major felony crimes.

In the first video, a man in a car chased down a driver who had stolen his truck, allegedly shooting out the window of the car he was driving without hitting or injuring anyone. According to Britt, SPD used the footage to track down the vehicle and return the car to the driver, making one arrest.

The second video shows a man with a visible knife that a 911 caller said he was using to “threaten” people in the area; the man wasn’t arrested because the 911 caller declined to cooperate, according to Britt. The third video showed a driver hitting a pedestrian; however, Britt said, the video was too blurry to register the license plate, so “the investigation is ongoing.”

Council members who support the cameras assured their constituents that they’re already common in other cities, and won’t be used to violate anyone’s privacy. “This is not the People’s Republic of China,” Councilmember Rob Saka said,  “where we have social scores that have facial recognition technology built in, on top of the CCTVs on every block, and they’ll track if you don’t do something for the party or the state, and they’ll monitor you and assign you a score. This is not that.”

SPD has said it will not provide camera footage to federal authorities seeking, for example, to track down women seeking abortions, trans people seeking gender-affirming care, or immigrants.

Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, who was sitting in on the committee, asked what would happen if a court ordered Axon, SPD’s out-of-state camera contractor, to hand over footage to the federal government. SPD Chief Operating Officer Brian Maxey said the city, not Axon, owns its camera footage, and that “under federal law, any request falls to us,” not the company. Citing a case in which Axon defended another city’s right to control its own footage, Maxey said it was unlikely (though not impossible) that the company would violate its commitment.

Beyond cracking down on so-called crime hot spots, the surveillance impact report includes another, more generalized justification for the cameras: As of January 2024, according to the report, the city only had 913 deployable officers, hindering the department’s “effectiveness in solving cases and holding violent criminals accountable,” according to the report. But January 2024 was more than a year and a half ago, making it an odd date to include in a July 2025 report; since then, city officials, including Police Chief Shon Barnes and Mayor Harrell, have repeatedly taken credit for what Harrell called “record-breaking” police hiring numbers.

If hiring remains on pace and SPD brings on 250 new officers this year, it will be well on its way to addressing the “staffing crisis” used to justify the cameras in the first place. Undoubtedly, if that happens, the city will come up with another reason to add more cameras to more neighborhoods. But it’s certainly worth asking why the city is celebrating its success at hiring more police, while simultaneously claiming that anemic police hiring means Seattle residents must  submit to indefinite police surveillance.

Addiction, Elections, homelessness, King County

UPDATED: Initiative Would Criminalize Sleeping Outdoors in King County
From the website of the King County Quality of Life Coalition

By Erica C. Barnett

Editor’s note: This post has been updated with comments from initiative backer Saul Spady and reposted.

Saul Spady—Dick’s Burgers scion, anti-tax election activist (twice over), and KIRO radio fill-in host—has filed an initiative that would criminalize “unauthorized camping and storage of personal property” in unincorporated King County. The proposal, which Spady has dubbed “the Compassionate Public Safety Act,” would make sleeping outdoors or “storing” property in public a misdemeanor; similar to the total sleeping ban in Burien, the initiative would give police power to arrest people who fall asleep in public.

The ballot language, approved by the King County Prosecutor’s Office, says the measure “would not be enforced when overnight shelter is unavailable,” then lists exceptions to that rule that would allow police to make arrests if they determine the person sleeping “poses a substantial danger to any person, an immediate threat and/or risk of harm to public health or safety, or a disruption to vital government services.”

“I think camping bans are part of promoting better policy, which is a commitment to saying, in our community, we would much rather you go to shelter or rehab or housing,” Spady told PubliCola on Wednesday. “This is supposed to put the fire underneath [elected officials] to open those shelter beds and partner with [groups like] LEAD or The More We Love or Mary’s Place to create a more direct solution.”

The carveouts in the proposed ballot measure are similar to the exemptions included in Seattle’s official policy on encampments, which guarantees unsheltered people 72 hours’ notice before a sweep unless they or their belongings constitute an “immediate hazard or obstruction.”

For years, the city has interpreted that exemption very broadly to allow sweeps of tents in public spaces, including parks, sidewalks, and planting strips—basically, anywhere housed people might complain about the presence of homeless people.

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In a press release announcing the initiative and the creation of a new group called the Quality of Life Coalition earlier this month, initiative supporter and Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic said, “As an avowed independent and music fan, I know the world is coming to Seattle looking for the soul of our music scene and quite often they find graffiti, addiction and in-action [sic]. … [This is the first step toward making King County safe, livable, and worthy of our incredible cultural legacy I’m proud to be a part of.”

The Quality of Life Coalition also plans to propose an initiative that would force anyone who “commits three crimes linked to addiction, such as OD’ing, theft, or public drug use” (note: overdosing is not a crime) into mandatory six-month rehab, and one that would impose mandatory five-year jail sentences for any drug dealer who “is not an addict.”

Although Spady said service providers have told him there are more than enough available shelter beds for everyone experiencing homelessness in unincorporated King County, he added that the coalition’s long-term plans include “adding 2,500 short-term beds across the region.”

Spady acknowledged that it’s hard to discern which people selling drugs are addicts, versus “somebody who’s sober doing something that kills people,” but noted that a mandatory five-year minimum sentence for dealing drugs is less than the 10-year minimum proposed by the Trump administration.

Asked about the probably astronomical cost of funding mandatory long-term residential treatment for every person who overdoses or commits addiction-related misdemeanors three time, Spady argued that addiction, crime, and the cost to send firefighters to reverse overdoses create “costs to society that are spiraling. If you want the [reason] why I’m doing this, my fear is that Seattle is a lot closer to Detroit in the 80s and 90s than we think, and our  magic economic spaceship that never runs out of money could break.”

The ideas Spady is proposing—three-strikes laws for overdoses, punishing public drug use through what amounts to involuntary commitment—may seem out of step with King County values. But they aren’t much different from the policy City Attorney Ann Davison endorsed toward drug users last year, saying that anyone who overdoses three times should be arrested and thrown in jail.

Spady’s group is collecting signatures now. They’ll need around 6,800 valid signatures to get the measure on a future ballot.

City Council, Elections, human services, Taxes

Business Tax Plan Moves Forward, Larded With New Exemptions and Spending Categories

By Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle City Council moved a heavily amended proposal to raise business and occupation taxes on larger companies one step closer to the ballot on Wednesday, approving the measure in the budget committee while leaving open the possibility that it could be amended further next week, when it goes to a full council vote.

The proposal would exempt all gross business revenue up to $2 million from local B&O tax, raising taxes on the highest-grossing businesses to offset the small-business tax relief and pay for programs that might otherwise be cut due to a projected $241 million budget deficit.

The potential ballot measure, proposed by City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Mayor Bruce Harrell late last month, was originally supposed to raise about $90 million a year to fund programs that support food access, gender-based violence services, small business supports, emergency shelter, homelessness prevention, workers’ rights and protections, and housing stability.

Rinck has been calling the proposal the “Seattle Shield” bill, because it’s meant to shield Seattle from the worst impacts of federal cuts to critical, life-saving services.

Thanks to amendments piled on Wednesday afternoon by Rinck’s colleagues Maritza Rivera, Joy Hollingsworth, and Rob Saka (plus a potential future amendment from Dan Strauss), the proposal is on track to bring in about $11 million a year less than originally estimated. The council’s amendments also broadened the measure so it can fund programs far outside its original scope.

Introducing two amendments that will exempt Seattle Children’s Hospital and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Care from the tax, at an estimated annual revenue reduction (or cost) of more than $9 million, Rivera argued that funding for cancer treatment and pediatric care represented “the very problem this bill is claiming to address—that is, impacts to our residents, including our kids, based on federal cuts and policy changes attacking those who need these critical services.”

Rivera added that when Rinck and Harrell first proposed the tax, “it was not clear that that nonprofits pay B&O tax.” In Washington State and in Seattle, most nonprofits are taxed exactly the same as for-profits, except that some of their fundraising activities are tax exempt. “These are nonprofits, these are not businesses,” Rivera said of the two hospitals she singled out for exemptions.

Strauss plans to propose an additional tax exemption for stevedoring—companies that load and unload cargo from ships—on the grounds that maritime trade is critical to Seattle. That exemption, which Strauss said he’d introduce on Monday, would reduce the proceeds from the new tax by another $1.5 million a year. In all, the new exemptions could reduce annual revenues from the tax by almost $11 million, or around 12 percent.

The city doesn’t have precise revenue estimates because businesses—including hospitals structured as nonprofits—don’t have to report their revenues publicly.

After voting for the two exemptions, Rivera and Nelson blanched at the idea of increasing the size of the tax to make up for lost revenue, saying they hadn’t had a chance to thoroughly study the impact of such a rate increase. “It’s unfortunate that this was sort of—that this landed in our laps at the sort of the last minute,” Nelson said. “It just feels rushed to me. … It’s unfortunate that this didn’t come to us earlier in the year.”

Rinck countered that the only reason she brought up the idea of increasing the tax rate was the last-minute amendments from Rivera and Strauss; had they not introduced new tax exemptions in the last week, she wouldn’t have proposed increasing the tax to offset the losses their exemptions would cause.

“If we had known about any tax credits coming sooner than on Monday, I think we would have worked quickly to try and understand what an adjusted rate would look like,” Rinck said.

In addition to the exemptions, the council also adopted several amendments expanding how the new tax, if it passes, can be used. The changes will allow this council, and future councils, to spend the so-called Seattle Shield dollars not just on human services and homelessness programs but on “transportation projects” of all kinds, arts and culture programs, anything related to public health, business workforce development, storefront repairs, and substance use treatment, among other new spending categories.

Rinck, and others who opposed expanding the proposal so far beyond its original purpose, noted that the city already has dedicated funds that pay for arts (the admissions tax), workforce development (the Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise levy), and transportation (the recently renewed transportation levy, which is the biggest in the city’s history). Saka justified including transportation on the potential spending list because Trump has threatened to pull transportation funds from cities, like Seattle, that have low marriage and birth rates.

The impact of adding so many new spending categories to the legislation is unknown. Public commenters, including advocates for people at risk of going hungry in Seattle, expressed concern about spreading the “peanut butter” of limited funding too thin by using the tax proceeds as a slush fund for individual council members’ priorities.

The committee also approved an amendment from Councilmember Bob Kettle, who was absent, that will require the mayor’s office to come up with high-level balanced budget proposals for two years beyond the scope of the biennial budget. Last year, Harrell proposed a budget that was balanced through 2026 but fell out of balance in 2027, with a total projected deficit of $158 million between 2027 and 2028. Another Kettle amendment passed that would remove a sunset date of 2033 (with the possibility of a four-year extension) and lower the tax rate beginning that year.

The full council will take up the proposal next Monday, just before the August 5 primary election that marks the deadline to get it the measure on the November ballot. On Monday morning, the city’s Office of Economic and Revenue Forecasts will present its latest revenue projections, which will reveal whether this year’s budget deficit is smaller or larger than the $241 million shortfall projected in April.

City Council

Council Finally Seats Renters Commission, New Council Rules Allow Longer Public Comments

1. After an overload of drama last week, the Seattle City Council quietly approved all 14 nominees to the Seattle Renter’s Commission—an advisory body that has had just five members (all of whose terms are now expired) for the past 18 months. The appointments were part of the council’s consent agenda, and all seven council members who were present (Maritza Rivera was excused) voted to approve them, along with several other nominees to unrelated commissions.

As we reported last Wednesday, Councilmembers Sara Nelson and Rob Saka skipped out on the housing and human services committee meeting at the last minute, depriving the committee of a quorum and wasting the time of the nominees who showed up in person and online expecting to finally receive their long-delayed confirmations. Solomon and Alexis Mercedes Rinck held a “community discussion” of the appointments and other business on the committee agenda in lieu of the scheduled committee meeting.

Nelson told Solomon she wouldn’t attend the meeting on Tuesday, after receiving an email from former councilmember Moore urging her to not let the appointments move forward.

Saka, who was cc’d on a late-night email from Moore touting her proposed alternative to the renters’ commission, which would have added seven landlords to the mix, told Solomon he wouldn’t be attending the meeting just minutes before it started, citing unspecified personal matters for his unexcused absence.

During a council briefing meeting on Monday, Saka told his colleagues that “right before that meeting, on the bus to City Hall, I got some uncomfortable calls and and that really impacted my ability to to show up in a public meeting … and so in any event, I make no apologies for the decision.” Saka dismissed suggestions that he sat out the vote in order to deprive the committee of a quorum as a “grand conspiracy” with no factual basis.

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2. Also Tuesday, the council passed a new rule that will effectively prevent the council president and committee chairs from cutting public comment short just because they feel like it.

Currently, the person who’s chairing a meeting can decide, based entirely on their own feelings in the moment, to restrict comments to one minute instead of the standard two and to limit the amount of time allowed for public comments, depriving people of the opportunity to speak to their representatives.

This broad discretionary power has caused major problems in the recent past, as Council President Nelson has repeatedly shut down public comment and closed down the council chambers after would-be commenters have loudly protested being cut off. (Moore, who often took umbrage at critical public comments, once suggested that a group of people who had been locked out of council chambers planned to rush the dais and assault the council because they were pounding on the walls.)

The new public comment rule, proposed by frequent Nelson antagonist Dan Strauss (who will, if Nelson isn’t reelected this year, be the council’s most senior member and a contender for council president), increases the minimum time allotted for public comment from 20 minutes to an hour and stipulates that if there are fewer than 30 commenters, they will each get two minutes to speak. If the number of commenters is between 30 and 60, they’ll get a minute, and if there are more than 60, they’ll still get a minute unless the council president or committee chair sets a lower time.