Tag: Burien

Business, Elections, LGBTQ+, Mayor Harrell, Police

Chamber CEO Leaves, Mayor’s Office Contradicts SPD Explanation for Police Chief’s Bonus, Progressives Prevail in Burien, and More

1. Rachel Smith, the longtime CEO of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, is moving on to become director of the Washington Roundtable, a statewide group that represents large employers.

According to a press release, Smith will leave the Chamber as of October 1; Gabriella Buono, the Chamber’s Chief Impact Officer, will be interim president and CEO until the Chamber’s board picks a permanent replacement.

Smith became head of the Chamber in January 2020, just as the group was reeling from a 2019 election in which the Chamber’s political action committee, Civic Alliance for a Sound Economy, spent unprecedented millions to defeat City Council incumbents. That flood of money appeared to spark a backlash against big-business spending, and the Chamber’s candidates mostly flopped. In 2021, the Chamber decided not to endorse any candidates—and, in that election, the more conservative candidates prevailed.

Under Smith’s nearly five years as its leader, the Chamber  has thrown its weight behind internal and public-facing campaigns to defeat social housing (the Chamber urged the council to delay the election and backed a ballot alternative that would have directed the city to spend existing funds on traditional affordable housing), as well as a number of efforts to squelch progressive tax proposals.

They’ve opposed the business and occupation tax reform proposal, which—if voters approve it—will pay for critical programs at risk for budget cuts; supported Mayor Bruce Harrell’s efforts to sweep homeless encampments, particularly downtown; and backed a proposed city charter amendment, “Compassion Seattle,” that would have required the city to keep all public spaces clear of encampments while imposing an unfunded mandate for homeless services on the city.

Under Smith, the Chamber also backed the Seattle Transportation Levy and connected the dots between the housing crisis and Seattle’s need to upzone, supporting efforts to build “middle housing” across the city.

2. As we reported earlier this week, Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes received a $50,000 hiring bonus when he was hired, as did a new deputy chief and assistant chief he hired from Beloit, Wisconsin, and New Orleans, respectively. According to SPD, all three chiefs were eligible for the bonuses under legislation, passed in 2022 and amended two years later, that authorized $50,000 “lateral” hiring bonuses for police officers with existing job experience.

As we also reported, the sponsors of the legislation never intended for the bonuses to go to command staff, and the legislation itself says it applies only to police officers in the civil service, not management or executive-level staff.

SPD told us the city “offered as part of [Barnes’] 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. Asked about this, Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office gave a somewhat contradictory response.

“Chief Barnes is a nationally recognized leader in the field and the inclusion of the $50,000 was negotiated as part of his offer letter,” a spokesperson said, adding that the mayor was “not involved” in the other two $50,000 bonuses. This suggests that Barnes’ bonus was not actually a standard “lateral” incentive—as SPD has said—but was something the mayor’s office offered him on top of his $360,000 salary and other perks. The two contradictory explanations for Barnes’ hiring bonus leave the true origin of this unusual hiring bonus unclear.

Harrell’s office said Barnes’ “negotiated compensation makes his package consistent with the West Coast Seven (Long Beach, Portland, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose, and Seattle), where in 2023 the median salary for police chiefs was $476,454 and the average salary was $424,712.” the spokesperson said.

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

3. The Burien City Council, which in recent years has adopted a series of increasingly onerous laws targeting homeless people, could soon take a more progressive turn. Progressives (including incumbents Sarah Moore and Hugo Garcia, plus Sam Méndez, a progressive running to replace Jimmy Matta, who’s leaving the council) hold commanding leads in all three council races on the August primary ballot.

That bodes poorly for Stephanie Mora, the council’s most conservative member, who’s being challenged by progressive Rocco DeVito; their race wasn’t on the August ballot because they were the only two candidates. Mora, a staunch opponent of allowing homeless shelters or authorized encampments anywhere in Burien, has argued that the government has no role to play in addressing homelessness.

Kevin Schilling, the council member who currently serves as mayor of Burien, isn’t doing so well in his own race to defeat 33rd District state Rep. Edwin Obras, either. With the election certified, Obras has 48.2 percent of the vote to Schilling’s 34.6 percent. Schilling lost by the highest margin in the city where he’s mayor, trailing Obras by 15 points in Burien.

4. PubliCola obtained a copy of the permit for a controversial “Revive in ’25” rally in Gas Works Park. As PubliCola was first to report, the contentious event was relocated from Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill after negotiations between its anti-LGBTQ organizers and city officials, including City Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth and Mayor Harrell.

The permit reveals few details about the event, except that the group, led by Christian nationalist minister Sean Feucht, expects 350 people to attend—less than a similar “Mayday USA” rally at Cal Anderson earlier this year.

Although the permit goes from 9 am to 9 pm, the rally and concert is scheduled for 5 pm—leaving organizers plenty of time to hold a planned “Jesus March” in the streets around Cal Anderson before heading over to Fremont for the main event. Organizers have removed references to this march from their Facebook page, but have not publicly said they won’t be marching. According to city officials, Feucht’s group did not apply for a street use or special event permit for a march.

homelessness, King County, Women

Reagan Dunn Joins Chorus Calling for Resignation of Assessor Accused of Stalking; Advocates Appeal Ruling Upholding Burien’s Sleeping Ban

1.  King County Councilmember Reagan Dunn, who was the only council member absent from last week’s 8-0 vote demanding the resignation of King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson, took a “point of personal privilege” at Tuesday’s council meeting to say that he, too, believed that Wilson should resign over allegations that he stalked and harassed his ex-fiancée, Lee Keller.

The no-confidence motion notes that the claims against Wilson include allegations that he “improperly used county resources to engage in the stalking,” potentially including the use of private information he’s able to access through his job as the county’s tax assessor.

“Assessor Wilson has been accused of extremely serious allegations in a domestic dispute, including stalking, harassment and improper use of county resources for the purposes of stalking,” Dunn said. “While all of this is disturbing, the real linchpin for me is the allegation of improper use of county resources. … I find that all of these allegations are extremely disturbing, and Mr. Wilson’s public behavior to be inconsistent with the professionalism expected of an elected official. Had I been able to vote for Resolution 16829, I would have voted yes.”

In text messages to Keller, Wilson repeatedly claimed to have Dunn’s support.

Keller has obtained multiple restraining orders and filed several petitions for dissolution of her partnership with Wilson over the past two years, providing documentation of Wilson’s actions, which include calling and texting her incessantly, tracking her movements and the location of her car, and calling the workplace of a man she dated to falsely accuse him of sexual assault in an attempt to get him fired. Last Friday, a judge denied Wilson’s request to have the latest restraining order lifted.

Wilson has not denied Keller’s allegations, many of which are documented in text messages that are part of the public court record. However, he has claimed that his behavior “never posed a threat to” Keller, and has weaponized a photo the two of them took during a brief reconciliation in May to claim that Keller is being irrational and blackmailing him for rent money. (A text message in the court record shows that she asked if he could help with rent on one occasion during the period when they were speaking to each other; previously, they had lived together).

In the post, Wilson noted when and where the photo was purportedly taken—”after I bought her lunch,” he adds—and says an unnamed local reporter agreed with him that Keller looks happy and unafraid of Wilson in the image.

“I have never posed a stalking threat or harassed Ms. Lee Keller, my former fiancé. I have posed no danger to her whatsoever,” Wilson wrote, adding later, “Ms. Keller was never at any danger from me.” Wilson is still trying to get a judge to lift Keller’s protection order against him “[b]ecause of the looming August primary,” he wrote. Wilson is running for county executive.

Wilson also thanked the Seattle Times for its editorial opposing the county council’s unanimous vote of no-confidence in him, which grudgingly allowed that, “to be sure, such accusations are disturbing” before arguing that “due process” should require independently elected officials to keep quiet about his behavior.

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

 

2. The Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness has appealed a King County Superior Court ruling that upheld the city of Burien’s total ban on sleeping in public, a law that effectively banishes unsheltered people from the city. As PubliCola reported, the Coalition and three plaintiffs who’ve lived unsheltered in Burien argued that the total ban on sleeping in public constituted cruel punishment under the Washington State Constitution, among other claims, because it bans people from engaging in a biological necessity—sleep—if they have nowhere to live except outdoors.

Elizabeth Hale, one of the three homeless plaintiffs in the lawsuit, died on May 30, about three weeks after the ruling that she and her co-plaintiffs could be arrested for falling asleep in public.

In a statement, Coalition director Alison Eisinger said, “Beth’s untimely death reminds us that real human beings bear the brutal costs of collective failure to respond to homelessness with urgency and enough resources. The Coalition on Homelessness joined this lawsuit because any law that excludes people from their community must be challenged. Washington state’s constitution must apply to all who live here, regardless of how much money we have in our pockets, or whether we have a place to lay our heads and call home.”

homelessness

Burien Officials Excoriate Councilmembers Who Opposed New Restrictions on Church-Based Encampments
Image via City of Burien

By Erica C. Barnett

Back in May, the Burien City Council voted down legislation that would have imposed new conditions, including time and spatial limitations, on churches that want to host homeless encampments on their property.

The vote itself was a bit of a debacle, with both City Manager Adolfo Bailon and Mayor Kevin Schilling claiming—inaccurately—that the legislation had passed. In fact, it failed on a 3-2-2 vote, with Councilmembers Sarah Moore and Hugo Garcia abstaining and Stephanie Mora and Linda Akey voting no. (Jimmy Matta, Alex Andrade, and Schilling voted yes.)

The bill, with its five pages of pointed “whereas” clauses, was aimed at curtailing encampments like the one former councilmember Cydney Moore helped establish at Oasis Home Church in December 2023, which Bailon and city attorney Garmon Newsom III tried to shut down.

The legislation would have required church-based encampments to be open no more than six months in any calendar year (with a mandatory three-month waiting period before they could host another encampment); required extensive neighborhood outreach and a code of conduct, among other permitting conditions; and mandated large setbacks and view-obscuring fences so that Burien residents would not have to see their homeless neighbors. The proposed ordinance even dictated internal encampment details like mandatory spacing between “tent groups” (a term the bill did not define.)

Fresh off that embarrassing defeat, Bailon wrote an email to council members suggesting that the council members who voted against the bill or abstained from voting had “violated their oath of office to uphold state law” by not voting for the legislation, Moore disclosed at last week’s council meeting.

The email claimed that the ordinance—which imposed conditions on churches beyond those already in effect under state law—was necessary for the city to be “in conformance with an established state law. It is my duty to inform you that votes cast in abstention and opposition to Ordinance 861 (on May 19) are a violation of your oath of office, specifically to the section where you have sworn to uphold the laws of the State of Washington,”

The email, signed by Bailon, concluded, “Please keep in mind your oath of office and duty to Burien and Washington when casting votes in the future.”

Noting that the council has the right to vote however they choose, or abstain from voting, on legislation, Moore said, “for the city manager to claim that I do not have the right to vote as I choose and as I believe serves my constituents, was to question the purpose of me on the council and the council and the ability of any of us to fulfill our duties.”

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

Moore then explained her decision to abstain from voting, saying that while she supports having rules on the books regulating church-based encampments, the letter of the law would have made it harder for religious organizations to host homeless people on their properties. In the absence of a local law, the state law regulating such encampments, which includes many requirements but is not as restrictive as the proposed law in Burien, applies.

A King County judge upheld Burien’s total ban on sleeping outdoors in the city last month.

“When I read through the proposed ordinance and discussed it with people who have studied state law and who have established various types of shelter, I came to believe that the ordinance added restrictions that would likely limit the actual ability of churches to help the city address this crisis,” Moore said.

Responding to Moore, Schilling piled on to Bailon’s criticism of the council, saying “what you were elected to do” is vote yes or no, and abstaining for reasons other than a conflict of interest is essentially “saying, ‘I’m not even here.'”

A review of Burien City Council minutes from 2024 and 2025 shows that most council members have abstained from votes in the past, including Schilling. Moore, Andrade, and Matta abstained from votes about rescheduling council meetings; Garcia and Moore abstained on several votes related to Burien’s disputed minimum wage ordinance; and Matta abstained from legislation about electing a deputy mayor and a proposal to reduce the number of times the council must consider legislation in public before passing it. Schilling himself abstained most recently in December, when he declined to vote on a list of 2025 proclamations.

Courts, homelessness

Judge Upholds Burien’s Total Ban on “Camping,” With Appeal Likely
King County Courthouse
King County Courthouse

By Erica C. Barnett

King County Superior Court Judge Michael Ryan dismissed a lawsuit challenging the city of Burien’s total ban on sleeping in public, in a sweeping ruling that brushed aside the argument that the law criminalizes people for being homeless.

The lawsuit, filed by the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness and three people who lived unsheltered in Burien at various times over the past two years—Carlo Paz and Elizabeth Hale and Alex Hale—challenged Burien’s law prohibiting people from falling asleep in public spaces.

The Burien City Council passed a law effectively banning homeless people from the city after the US Supreme Court overturned a ruling, Martin v. Boise, that made it illegal to criminalize homelessness if people had nowhere else to go. The Burien law bans unsheltered people from “camping” or “storing property,” such as tents or sleeping bags, in any public space, making it one of the region’s harshest anti-homeless laws.

In his ruling, Ryan wrote that Burien’s ban is fair because it applies to everyone equally, prohibiting homeless and housed people alike from falling asleep or “storing” property in public spaces. During oral arguments in February, Ryan asked if he could be arrested if he fell asleep after having a picnic with his family on the beach, and Burien’s attorney said he could, but the final call would be up to a police officer and, potentially, the judicial system.

Apparently drawing on this discussion, Ryan wrote that the law criminalizes sleeping in public, rather than the state of being homeless itself—disagreeing with the plaintiffs’ argument that sleeping in public is an unavoidable activity that defines the status of homelessness. This, he wrote, was in keeping with the ruling that overturned Martin, known as Johnson v. Grants Pass, which said that sleeping in public is a type of conduct, like using illegal drugs, rather than a status, like having an addiction. To rule otherwise, he wrote, would be tantamount to saying that because people need to eat, cities can’t enforce laws against lighting fires for cooking in public parks.

Alison Eisinger, director of the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, said she was “profoundly troubled that the court seems to interpret our state Constitution as unable to offer protections to people who are too poor to have a place to live.”

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

“Threatening people with arrest, fines, or jail time for sleeping in public or otherwise trying to survive is cruel, unjust, and unreasonable,” Eisinger said. “Mr. Paz and Mr. and Mrs. Hale, along with many others, are trying to stay connected in their home community, which has no shelter for them.”

This is an undisputed fact—there is no general-use shelter in Burien, and all “offers” of shelter involve relocating people living unsheltered in Burien to another city, like Seattle. But Ryan seemed convinced by the city’s argument that its total ban on sleeping in public places would lead unsheltered people to accept offers of shelter they had previously “rejected.”

“In its political judgment, Burien determined that banning camping, sleeping, and storing belongings on public property will incentivize individuals to accept various services, which Burien believes is an important first-step in getting someone into permanent housing,” Ryan wrote.

After claiming repeatedly that, as a judge, he was ill-equipped to express policy views on homelessness, Ryan opined that Burien’s law, “with its criminal penalties, serves to deter the proliferation of encampments, which everyone should agree are unsafe for the unhoused and the surrounding community.” The evidence he cited for this claim included a quote from Grants Pass that inaccurately (and misleadingly) claimed more than 40 percent of Seattle shootings in early 2022 were “linked to homeless encampments”; in fact, that figure represents five shootings in 2022 in which the victim, the perpetrator, or both happened to be homeless.

Scott Crain, an attorney with the Northwest Justice Project who argued the case, said the court’s decision “contradicts fundamental constitutional principles and ignores the reality that Burien provides insufficient shelter options for its unhoused residents and none at all for single men. We respect the court’s attempt to thoroughly address each issue presented and explain its analysis to the parties but strongly disagree with this ruling, which forces the homeless out of Burien. We will be consulting with our clients about appealing this decision to ensure Washington’s constitution protects everyone, regardless of housing status.”

Business, labor

David Meinert Joins Burien’s Lawsuit to Kill Voter-Approved Minimum Wage
Steven Pavlov, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Erica C. Barnett

UPDATE: This post has been updated with comments from Meinert.

David Meinert, the onetime Seattle nightlife impresario who sold most of his businesses after KUOW reported that nearly a dozen women had accused him of sexual assault, has mostly retreated from local politics in Seattle. But he’s still active in Burien, where he just joined the city’s lawsuit seeking to strike down a new minimum wage passed by voters in February. The voter-approved minimum, which is pegged to the voter-approved minimum wage and Tukwila, is currently $21.10 an hour.

The city of Burien filed the lawsuit against the minimum wage initiative’s sponsor, the Transit Riders Union, and its general secretary, Katie Wilson. The suit claims that businesses have no way of knowing what Burien’s true minimum wage is, given the existence of a competing minimum wage passed by the Burien City Council last October, while the initiative campaign was going on. The lawsuit also claims that the council’s version pays workers more money anyway.

It doesn’t. In fact, the convoluted law exempts most local businesses (those with 20 or fewer employees) completely, and establishes a “total compensation” of $21.16 an hour, rather than an actual minimum wage—effectively imposing a penalty on employees who receive tips or any kind of benefits. If an employer provides any benefits or if a worker receives tips, those count toward their total hourly “wages,” allowing employers to actually pay much less. With so many carveouts and exemptions, the Burien council’s minimum wage allows most employers to pay the state minimum, currently $16.66 an hour.

Meinert said he joined the lawsuit because he wants clarity on how much he should pay his workers; currently, he said, he’s paying $19.10 an hour, the amount required for medium-sized employers under the initiative.

“It’s a really poorly written initiative, and the biggest problem is that it doesn’t actually set a minimum wage,” Meinert said. As we’ve reported, the Burien initiative sets a minimum wage that’s the same as Tukwila’s, and phases it in over time for smaller employers. Tukwila’s minimum wage, in turn, is set at the same level as the “living wage” established for hospitality and transportation workers in SeaTac, and that number is currently $21.10 an hour with no tip credit or other penalty.

“I literally don’t know which one to follow,” Meinert said. “We just want clarity.”

In his declaration supporting the lawsuit, Meinert wrote that the restaurant’s margins are somewhere between 6 and 10 percent. Last year, Meinert settled a class-action wage theft lawsuit. If the voter-approved minimum ends up prevailing in court, Meinert said he’d have to raise prices to make up the difference, which he said would lead to fewer customers and ultimately layoffs.

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

“Because of this legal confusion, I cannot plan our payroll with any confidence. I don’t know whether we’ll be in compliance under one law while violating another,” Meinert wrote in his declaration supporting the lawsuit. “We are trying to act in good faith, but the lack of clarity puts us at risk of enforcement or legal liability no matter what we do.”

Meinert isn’t the only Burien business owner complaining about the “confusion.”  Others who’ve filed declarations supporting the city of Burien in its lawsuit against the voter-approved minimum wage increase include the owners of a McDonald’s franchise, Skinperfect Aesthetics, Andy’s Handy Mart, and Vince’s Italian.

Transit Riders Union and Wilson countersued the city of Burien earlier this month.

In a new response to Burien’s lawsuit, TRU accuses the city of violating the law by obstructing and refusing to implement the initiative, and failing to pay the new minimum to its own workers; currently, the city is advertising several jobs that pay just above the state minimum.

TRU’s counterclaim describes the actions Burien took before the February 2025 election to undermine the minimum wage initiative, including by passing a weaker minimum wage ordinance “to compete with the Initiative,” creating a ballot title and explanatory statement designed to create “an unfavorable comparison to defeat the Initiative, and sending mailers to voters “that tout the competing ordinance, which were intended to garner opposition to the Initiative.”

Courts, homelessness, labor

Burien Racks Up Big Legal Bills Defending its Homeless Ban; More Glitches in Seattle’s New Workday Payroll System

1. The city of Burien spent more than $200,000 last year paying a Seattle law firm, Keller Rohrbach, to fight a lawsuit filed by a group of unsheltred people who challenged the city’s ban on sleeping outdoors last year. Keller Rohrbach’s billing statements, obtained through a records request, span 11 months of 2024; they do not include any invoices from this year, which would include preparation for an appearance in King County Superior Court Judge Michael Ryan’s courtroom last month.

The plaintiffs, who were forced to leave an encampment on Ambaum Blvd. in Burien in December 2023, sued to stop an earlier version of Burien’s much-amended ban on sleeping outdoors in the city. The older version of the law made it illegal to “exercise nontransitory exclusive control over any portion of nonresidential public property” but allowed an exemption if no shelter was available in nearby cities, including Seattle. (Burien does not have a year-round emergency shelter).

In January, the city completely banned sleeping or “residing” in the city without shelter at any time of the day or night, regardless of whether shelter is actually available.

Keller Rohrbach billed Burien between $325 and hour and $385 an hour for its attorneys, and $185 an hour for paralegal services. Last year, Burien budgeted $150,000 for outside legal services, a number that increased to $200,000 in the 2025 budget.

PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Support PubliCola

2. Workday, the glitchy HR system the city of Seattle put in place to handle payroll for its 14,000 employees last year, recently began offering vacation time to employees, including interns, who are not eligible for vacation, PubliCola has learned. The time started showing up on the employees’ pay slips, and at least six people used the new option to take time off, the city’s Department of Human Resources confirmed.

The vacation time snafu is reminiscent of another Workday glitch last year, when the system began showing people that they had weeks of available military leave, even though they weren’t in the military.

More serious problems with the new system, which is being maintained by pricey consultants from Deloitte, have included inaccurate paychecks, missing paychecks, vanishing deferred compensation deposits, and inaccurate job classifications for people in temporary positions or working out of class in jobs where they were being paid more than in their regular assignments.

In addition to the vacation issues, Workday recently failed to pay about 300 temporary employees who are ineligible for city benefits and receive premium pay in lieu of those benefits.

A spokesman for the city’s human resources department, Antorris Williams, said the vacation issue resulted from a “Workday configuration” and was fixed on March 13. “A calculation issue in Workday’s setup caused” the premium pay issue for temporary employees, Williams said, and a city team is working to make sure those employees receive pay they’re owed.

The city “continues to address key issues related to Workday implementation to ensure accurate payroll processing,” Williams said. “Paying employees on time and accurately remains a top priority to the City. This large-scale transition has been very challenging, and we know these issues have a real impact on people.”