City Council, Mayor Harrell, Media

What Seattle Will Lose If It Loses the Seattle Channel
City Council candidates Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Tanya Woo on a recent episode of “City Inside/Out.”

By Erica C. Barnett

In planning for a potential $260 million budget shortfall this year, Mayor Bruce Harrell asked most city departments to come up with potential cuts of 8 percent—a worst-case scenario the mayor’s office avoided by using about half the funds from the JumpStart payroll tax to pay for staff and services that are usually funded through the city’s general fund.

One department that did get gutted—not cut by 8 or 10 percent, but slashed in half—is the Seattle Channel, the city’s award-winning source for arts coverage, interviews with elected officials, campaign debates, and other original programming.

Harrell’s budget proposal would eliminate the jobs of three videographers who film, produce and edit programs and meetings, two half-time web positions, a senior producer, and the channel’s  operations manager. The cuts would mean the end of all original Seattle Channel programming, leaving only city council meetings and mayoral events.

During a recent presentation to the City Council, City Budget Office director Dan Eder that with the decline in cable subscriptions, the cable fees that help fund Seattle Channel are no longer enough to keep it going. “At this point, we just didn’t have enough money available to us… to continue that program,” Eder said.

In an email, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office, Callie Craighead, made a distinction between “primary programming of government affairs” and “supplementary” or “additional” programming like the original work that has been the Seattle Channel’s mainstay for the past two decades. “Should the revenue forecast improve or if the City can arrange for other funding solutions, we would be supportive of restoring this additional programming,” Craighead said.

The cuts would save about $1.6 million—about 0.085 percent (0.008) of a $1.9 billion general-fund budget that includes tens of millions of dollars in new spending on police overtime, planning for the 2026 FIFA World Cup (which will include six matches in Seattle), and downtown beautification projects such as removing the fountain in Westlake Park.

The city has known about the decline in cable revenues for many years; last year, Harrell’s budget suggested using new tax revenues, based on the recommendations of the city’s Revenue Stabilization Work Group, to sustain the Seattle Channel and other programs with dwindling or unstable revenues. After voters elected a new, anti-tax city council last. year, Harrell changed his tune, issuing what amounted to a no-new-taxes pledge.

Shows that Harrell’s budget would eliminate immediately include “City Inside/Out,” a public affairs hosted by broadcasting veteran Brian Callanan; Art Zone, a “weekly love letter” to local arts and culture hosted by Nancy Guppy; and BookLust, a popular interview show hosted by Nancy Pearl, along with 20 other shows. Callanan, along with longtime producer Susan Han, has a year-to-year contract with the channel; both will lose their jobs if the cuts go through.

Gary Gibson, who managed the Seattle Channel from 2002 to 2007, recalled that the city set up a commission in 2001 to help revitalize the city’s cable-access channel, then called TV SEA, which only aired city council meetings and mayoral press conferences.

“It was a vehicle for putting out council meetings and the mayor’s press conferences—that’s all they did. There was no original programming and there was no enterprise reporting or any kind of content creation.” The commission said the channel should create engaging shows that would have an audience beyond meeting watchers, and put those shows online so people could watch them any time. “They had this idea to create a democracy portal—a two-way communication between government and the citizens,” Gibson said.

Now retired from broadcasting, Gibson led the channel through its transition in the early 2000s, from a standard public-access cable channel (called TV-SEA) that aired mayoral press conferences and council meetings, into a unique online resource offering original shows like “City Inside/Out,” “Ask the Mayor,” and election debates.

Under Harrell’s plan, the Seattle Channel would once again be little more than a portal for council meetings and press events.

Han, who has been with Seattle Channel for 17 years, said she “did expect some belt-tightening” this year, but was surprised that Harrell proposed eliminating all of the channel’s award-winning programs. “We’re just going to have to really fight to try and save the show,” she said, referring to “City Inside/Out.” “I don’t know if we have the ability to save the station.”

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Harrell’s cuts would eliminate coverage that no one else in the city is providing—coverage that’s made possible, in part, because Seattle Channel is part of the city itself and has spent decades building trust with city leaders. The tone of its coverage is genuinely fair and balanced, and producers go out of their way to give both sides of an issue or campaign an opportunity to make their best case.

For example, during the heated debate over a proposal to recall then-council member Kshama Sawant in 2021, Han was able to convince Sawant to appear on a panel, moderated by Callanan, with representatives from the “Recall Sawant” campaign. It was the only time Sawant and her opponents sat down for a debate.

“I tried to get her own the show from April until November, and she finally said yes,” Han recalled. “That’s the thing with producing our show—you make a lot of phone calls before you hone into the right balance. And it’s not like we’re being paid hourly. We just really care that we have the best version of that show.”

Later this week, Callanan said, the Seattle Channel will hold another debate between proponents and opponents of the $1.55 billion transportation levy—a measure that has received little recent coverage from the shrinking local press corps or campaign reporters, who are largely focused on  national and state races.

“It’s going to be half hour, we’re going to have opposing sides, and we’re going to present some pretty comprehensive coverage on an issues that’s huge” to the city, Callanan said. “Here are the pros,  here are the cons, here is what both sides say. It’s that type of reporting” that will be lost if Harrell’s cuts go through, he said.

“Art Zone with Nancy Guppy” is another longtime staple of the Seattle Channel’s coverage.

Beyond election debates, the Seattle Channel provides ongoing coverage about the details of what the city council, mayor, and city departments are up to—everything from profiles of department leaders to half-hour sit-down interviews with council members. “I think this is something city should be really proud of,” Callanan said. “For me, it’s the idea of the city standing behind this ethic of preserving quality journalism that provides transparency into what they’re doing.”

While the Seattle Channel serves as a forum for elected officials, it isn’t a mouthpiece—which is one reason many mayors and council members have complained about the channel’s coverage over the years. Common complaints include charges that the channel gives too much time to opposing views; that its reporters should be producing promo pieces for elected officials, not journalism; and that it’s unreasonable to expect officials to sit down and answer questions.

Callanan said his goal has always been “talking to local officials in the best way possible. I want to make sure we’re doing everything we can to provide those avenues for local officials to be in front of people, have people ask questions, and have the officials respond.” However, he added, “It has been more and more challenging to get public officials to commit to interviews.”

Sometimes, this pushback has led to involuntary programming changes; for example, former mayor Ed Murray ended “Ask the Mayor,” a show where the mayor responded to viewer questions, by refusing to appear on it, and no subsequent mayor has revived the show.

Harrell has also reportedly groused about the channel’s coverage, along with the fact that its camera operators can’t always drop what they’re doing to cover his events; however, he’s the first mayor to propose eliminating 100 percent of its original programming and its two-person web team.

The mayor’s office insists that its decision to eliminate the Seattle Channel’s programming is a matter of simple budget math, not a response to its coverage. “We looked at other comparable cities with an active government-access television channel and the proposed 2025 Seattle Channel budget of $1.7 M is more in line with those cities.” Craighead said.

Harrell’s budget assumes that council meetings and his own press events will go up online without the two people who currently make that happen, which Han calls unrealistic. “Our web team is fantastic, and they’re also the ones that do the live stream and put the show on all these different platforms,” Han said. “When the mayor says we’re still going to be able to put all this stuff out and do livestreams and all that, I think he’s mistaken.”

Gibson, the former Seattle Channel general manager, said he doesn’t “really get the calculus” that led Harrell to propose eliminating everything that makes Seattle Channel unique among municipal TV stations. “It just doesn’t seem like that much to pay for that kind of transparency into government activities.”

City council members Sara Nelson and Dan Strauss have both publicly expressed their support for Seattle Channel since the mayor released his budget, and Nelson told a constituent she plans to introduce a budget amendment that would restore at least some funding this week. Neither Nelson nor council spokesperson Brad Harwood responded to PubliCola’s questions about the Seattle Channel or Nelson’s amendment.

Editor’s note: After we posted this story, Nelson put out a press release saying she was “working to preserve funding for the city’s Seattle Channel.” The announcement did not include any other details.

City Council, housing, Mayor Harrell, Taxes

Why Does the Mayor’s Budget Use Outdated, Inaccurate Estimates for JumpStart Spending?

By Erica C. Barnett

Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed 2025-2026 budget uses the majority of revenues from the JumpStart payroll tax—about $287 million out of $563 million total—for purposes that have nothing to do with the adopted spending plan for the tax, which is codified in local law.

The council and mayor approved the tax on the city’s biggest companies as a way to fund affordable housing, green jobs, and small business assistance for communities most affected by the rising cost of housing in Seattle. Harrell’s plan leaves just $233 million for the original JumpStart spending categories; another $43 million would go into a reserve fund.

The budget uses a lowball 2020 estimate as the baseline for JumpStart spending for both past and future budgets, then inflates it by an annual 2.5 percent—far lower than the actual rate of inflation, much less the increase in construction and labor costs, which have risen faster than consumer prices. As a result, JumpStart spending into the future isn’t just based on out-of-date projections that the city knew were far too low after the first year the tax was collected, it increases much more slowly than the price of the things it was earmarked to fund, eroding in value every year.

Put another way: Under Harrell’s plan, as long as JumpStart revenues continue to increase, more and more of its revenues will be siphoned off for stuff like police, fire, and transportation, even as the value of the money set aside for the tax’s original spending categories declines.

PubliCola asked the mayor’s office why they used old, inaccurate projections as the baseline for JumpStart spending, given that the city generally updates its budget projections regularly based on real numbers, not fictitious ones.

A spokesperson for Harrell said that using the numbers from the “initial forecasts demonstrates that we are maintaining funding levels for key priorities near the rate that they were expected at the time the tax was passed. The more than doubling of revenues in the last five years makes clear revenues are higher than expected, with additional dollars that can support the general fund as the tax has been used every year since it was passed.”

Although it’s true that the tax has been used this way every year, the law effectively requires the city to adopt new legislation allowing a transfer in any year they want to make such a transfer. For the 2023 and 2024 budgets, the council capped this transfer at $71 and $84 million, respectively—a fraction of the transfer Harrell is proposing this year.

Harrell’s spokesperson said the city needed to have access to the JumpStart funds, also known as the Payroll Expense Tax (PET), because the city’s long-term revenue forecast remains unclear.

“We don’t know what the future of PET or General Fund will look like, which is why it is important that we have this flexibility as well as the reserve created in the Mayor’s proposal to address any future volatility in the funding source,” the spokesperson said.  “That flexibility is important to best match our resources with the current needs of the city as the economy continues to recover from the historically adverse effects of the worldwide pandemic and as our revenue sources adjust to these changing conditions.”

This is different than the way the city approaches other parts of its budget; in fact, Harrell’s budget plan notes right up front that the budget “relies upon solid forecasts incorporating items which are constantly changing,” and every departmental budget includes “Citywide Adjustments for Standard Cost Changes” to reflect the true cost of inflation.

Tapping payroll tax revenues for the indefinite future is also a different approach than what Harrell proposed in his 2023-2024 budget, when he endorsed exploring revenue stabilization options, such as new taxes, to address the city’s structural budget gap.

“The way our state and local governments finance services to support community needs is often structured in a manner that puts a disproportionate financial burden on those least able to afford it,” the mayor’s 2023-2024 budget said. “In the wake of rising inflation and dwindling proceeds from local funding sources like cable television and commercial parking taxes, there is an opportunity to re-envision the way the City funds its service delivery and operations.”

Acting in accordance with Harrell’s previous budget, the city set up a revenue stabilization work group to come up with new sources of revenue to address the problems that budget identified; in mid-2023, the group recommended three options: Increasing the size or scope of the payroll tax; a local capital gains tax; and tax on tax on businesses whose CEOs make significantly more than the average worker.

Business groups immediately trashed all three options, and six months later, Harrell issued what amounted to a no-new-taxes pledge in his state of the city speech.

City Council, Elections

Seattle Nice Debate Night!

Cringe through the VP debate, then watch your Seattle Nice hosts grill the city council candidates live at Town Hall Seattle

By Erica C. Barnett

Join the hosts of Seattle Nice—that’s me, Sandeep Kaushik, and David Hyde, for a debate watch party at Town Hall Seattle at 6 pm on Tuesday, October 1!

We’ll livestream the vice presidential debate on stage (with beer and wine available for all your J.D. Vance “childless women” drinking games), followed by an in-person debate between the candidates for Seattle City Council Position 8, Tanya Woo and Alexis Mercedes Rinck.

Woo, a Chinatown-International advocate who led the fight against the expansion of a Salvation Army shelter near the neighborhood, was appointed by the Seattle City Council to a citywide position after she narrowly lost her race against District 2 incumbent Tammy Morales. Rinck, who works as a fiscal policy analyst at the University of Washington, led subregional planning for the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, an agency Woo recently said had “failed” in its mission.

We’ll talk about the candidates’ records, along with issues like police funding, homeless encampment sweeps, and the council’s recent crackdowns on drug users and sex workers, at this lively debate next week. We hope to see you there!

Seattle City Council Debate and VP Debate Livestream

The Great Hall, Town Hall Seattle
1119 Eighth Avenue (enter on Eighth Avenue)
Tuesday, October 1, 6:00 pm

 

Uncategorized

This Week On PubliCola: September 29, 2024
Image via Wikimedia Commons; CC by-SA 3.0 license.
The latest on Mayor Bruce Harrell’s budget, the regional homelessness authority, and police surveillance of Seattle residents… Plus, WE’RE HOSTING A CITY COUNCIL DEBATE (AND VICE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE LIVESTREAM) ON TUESDAY! 

Monday, September 23

As Budget Cuts Loom, Mayor’s Staff Ballooned, Thanks to Workers On “Loan” From Other Departments

Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office has grown steadily despite the budget shortfall, thanks primarily to his practice of borrowing staff from other departments. These staff work in the mayor’s office, but are funded through other departments’ budgets, disguising the growth of Harrell’s office.

Seattle Nice: Social Housing vs. “Social Housing”

On this week’s Seattle Nice podcast, we debated the City Council’s decision to put a second measure on the February ballot to compete with the social housing initiative, which would provide around $50 million a year permanently affordable housing for people at a wide range of incomes. Sandeep says the alternative council’s proposal to allocate $10 million a year of existing money to traditional affordable housing is fiscally responsible, while I argue that it’s designed to kill social housing while keeping the amount Seattle spends on housing flat.

Tuesday, September 24

Council Committee Approves 24/7 Police Surveillance of Neighborhoods Across the City

Live police surveillance is on its way to neighborhoods across the city; this week, the council approved cameras in “hot spots” that overlap with the new “stay out” areas for drug users and sex workers, along with a “real time crime center” where police will monitor these cameras day and night. More than 40 years of studies have shown that CCTV cameras have no impact on violent crime, and are only marginally effective in solving car thefts when they are trained on parking lots.

Wednesday, September 25

Harrell’s Budget Plan Uses Affordable-Housing Tax to Fund Police, Jails, Sweeps—and Downtown Beautification

Mayor Harrell released his budget plan this week, and—predictably—it avoids new taxes and tough decisions (like reducing the number of vacant but still funded police positions) by scooping up higher-than-anticipated JumpStart revenues and using them as an all-purpose funding source. I took a deep dive into the details of Harrell’s initial budget proposal, which now goes before a council that’s politically simpatico with the mayor.

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Thursday, September 26

New Agreement Redefines Power and Purpose of Regional Homelessness Authority

City officials have said it’s critical to change the King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s governance structure so elected officials have most of the power. But the changes the city and county adopted this week to an agreement that lays out the structure and purpose of the agency go far beyond governance, turning the KCRHA into a largely administrative entity that the city and county can leave or defund unilaterally.

Judge Dismisses Sheriff’s Lawsuit Over Burien’s Homelessness Policy

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by the King County Sheriff’s Office challenging the city of Burien’s ban on sleeping outdoors, finding that the office—which provides police services to Burien through a contract—can’t prove they’ve been harmed by having to enforce a law they view as unconstitutional because they haven’t enforced the law.

Friday, September 27

PubliCola on News, Views, and Brews With Brian Callanan

I sat down with Brian Callanan—an Emmy Award-winning journalist whose job Harrell’s budget would eliminate, along with half the Seattle Channel’s staff—on his “News, Views, and Brews” podcast to discuss Harrell’s budget proposal.

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PubliCola on News, Views, and Brews With Brian Callanan

By Erica C. Barnett

I filled in as a guest host on this week’s “News, Views, and Brews” podcast hosted by Brian Callanan, and I highly recommend it if you’re looking for a high-level look at Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed budget for the next couple of years.

The budget proposal represents a wholesale change in how the JumpStart employer payroll tax—which taxes large tech and other businesses to pay for affordable housing and programs to boost equity in Seattle—is used by the city. Instead of primarily funding programs that offset the increased cost of living in a booming tech hub, Harrell and the council plan to use JumpStart as an all-purpose money spigot, repurposing the majority of its revenues for police, fire, transportation, and anything else that needs funding.

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Brian and I discussed the risks and impact of repurposing JumpStart to pay for anything and everything, getting into the (important!) weeds about the city’s dubious numbers. (In short, by using a conservative early estimate as the baseline for spending on affordable housing, green jobs, and other programming areas for which JumpStart was earmarked, and increasing it by a fictitious 2.5 percent inflation rate every year, the city is ensuring that funding for these programs erodes steadily year after year.)

We also got into the details of what the mayor’s budget plunders JumpStart, and cuts programs like the Seattle Channel, to fund—two new jail contracts, police emphasis patrols at perennial Seattle “hot spots,” and 24/7 remote camera surveillance of neighborhoods across the city.

Listen to the end to hear me talk about “panic canning”!

Courts, homelessness, King County

Judge Dismisses Sheriff’s Lawsuit Over Burien’s Homelessness Policy
Burien’s Town Square Park, as seen from City Hall

By Erica C. Barnett

US District Court Judge Richard A. Jones dismissed a lawsuit by the King County Sheriff’s Office against the city of Burien over the city’s recently adopted ban on sleeping in public spaces, finding that the county, along with Sheriff Patti Cole-Tindall herself, lacked standing to bring the case to federal court.

The sheriff’s office sued the city of Burien back in March, arguing that the office, which provides police services to Burien under a contract, should not have to enforce an unconstitutional law. Their constitutional argument rested largely on a ruling in a case called Martin v. Boise, in which a panel of 9th Circuit District Court judges ruled that it’s cruel and unusual punishment to sweep unhoused people from a location if no appropriate shelter is available. The US Supreme Court overturned that ruling in June.

Burien quickly countersued, claiming the county had broken its contract with the city by refusing to enforce the camping ban. That case got elevated to Jones’ court along with King County’s case, but, in a separate order, Jones sent it back to its original venue, Snohomish County Superior Court.

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King County, according to Judge Jones, failed to demonstrate that it faced “injury in fact” from the ordinance, since the county filed its challenge “prior to the enforcement” of the law. Jones ruled that Cole-Tindall herself lacked standing because she failed to demonstrate any direct exposure to civil lawsuits or discipline from a law that her office had not enforced. The county, in other words, can only prove they’ve been harmed after they enforce the law—and since their policy has been not to enforce the law, they can’t sue over its enforcement.

A spokesman for the sheriff’s office said the decision “leaves unresolved important constitutional concerns that motivated the Sheriff to pause enforcement of Burien’s ordinance.”

The county, the spokesman said, has given feedback to about “what fixes would be necessary to allow enforcement of the ordinance and, before the court’s decision, the City of Burien indicated they may now be interested in addressing the issues. The Executive and Sheriff continue to be willing to partner with the city to enact an ordinance that can be enforced without violating the constitutional rights of Burien’s residents and we hope to see a resolution.”

On Wednesday, Cole-Tindall sent a letter to Burien Mayor Kevin Schilling (a city councilmember) saying the county “remains willing to meet and discuss public camping regulations.”