Tag: Burien

Courts, criminal justice, homelessness

Ex-Burien City Manager’s Excessive Complaints, KCHRA Elaborates on Money Troubles (and Lays off Key Staff) and More

Despite what my Bluesky would have you believe, there is more stuff going on in and around Seattle than just the budget!

1. Three months after we requested a report on the investigation into former Burien city manager Adolfo Bailon’s performance, the city of Burien finally provided a heavily redacted copy of the 24-page document. Although the redactions (of phrases like “city manager” and “city attorney” as well as the names of, Bailon, and former Burien city attorney Garmon Newsom III) make the report a somewhat challenging read, what’s clear is that Bailon was fired not just for poor performance, but for spending much of his time filing frivolous harassment and discrimination complaints about elected officials, city staff, public commenters, and at least one person who wrote a letter to the editor of a local news site.

Bailon’s complaints included one accusing  councilmember Hugo Garcia of making a “verbal threat”  when, as Bailon told it, Garcia said they would have a problem if encampment sweeps started up in Burien. Bailon also complained that Garcia implied the city manager was racist at a council meeting at which Garcia said a council proposal to site a new tiny house village in a low-income, mostly Latino area “reeks of white supremacy.”

To back up his claim that Garcia was targeting him, Bailon complained about an email Garcia sent to Councilmember Rocco Devito (the topic was the Seahawks flag) in which Garcia misspelled Bailon’s first name as “Adolph.” This, Bailon said, “suggests a deliberate attempt to associate me and my legal work with white supremacy and with Adolf Hitler.” Bailon also filed complaints against Garcia over comments he posted on social media and threatened, in comments on a letter to the editor of the B-Town Blog, to request Garcia’s employment file and post it publicly.

On and on the complaints went. Bailon wanted the council to publicly condemn someone who criticized him on social media, then threatened to get HR involved when two councilmembers didn’t respond right away. He demanded a formal investigation into a Burien resident, claiming she made a racist comment about how he should “go back where you came from”; in fact, she had said his lack of compassion for homeless people showed he didn’t understand Burien, but he might “have better luck” in his previous home state of California. He filed a complaint against a constituent who said he had burned bridges with progressives, calling this part of a pattern of harassment. While he was filing all these complaints, Bailon also had plenty of time to call 911 on homeless people, then complain to the police chief when he got put on hold.

As we reported, the city council put Bailon on administrative leave in April, shortly after he fired Newsom, who immediately had his attorney send a letter accusing Bailon of racial discrimination. (Bailon is Mexican American and Newsom is Black). When city staff tried to put Bailon on leave to investigate the allegations, Bailon claimed they were harassing and discriminating against him; the council voted to put him on leave about a week later, prompting more complaints. The council eventually fired Bailon “without cause,” which gave him access to a severance payment of around $120,000. He still lives in Burien.

 

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2. The leader of another dysfunctional government entity, King County Regional Homelessness Authority director Kelly Kinnison, was absent during much of a King County Council committee meeting last week where she and her chief operating officer, William Towey, were scheduled to answer questions about the discovery that the agency overspent its budget by nearly $17 million, with interest on its ongoing debt to King County continuing to accrue.

Kinnison joined the meeting remotely about halfway through Towey’s in-person presentation, in which Towey revealed that the agency brought in about $250 million less, over its five-year lifespan, than it assumed it would. “Classic overspend,” as Towey described it, accounted for about $3.4 million.

Most of that overspending came from three sources: An “unplanned and unbudgeted” decision to use Salesforce to administer grants to homeless service providers; “excessive … fees” to the Robert Half temp agency, which provided financial staffers to do work that would more typically be done by employees, at a cost of $150 an hour plus fees; and interest the agency has consistently owed King County, its lender, because its bank balance has typically been negative (rather than balancing out over the course of the year as funding comes in).

The bulk of the $16.7 million gap, as we’ve reported, resulted from false assumptions about how much administrative funding the KCRHA would receive through its contracts with homeless service providers. Although some, including a certain Seattle Times columnist, have portrayed underspending as a shocking scandal, it’s typical for providers (including nonprofits that contract with the city of Seattle) to be unable to spend all of the money they’re allocated every year; the KCRHA just decided, at some point, that they wouldn’t, and kept using this assumption year after year.

One way or another, the city and county are going to have to split up the cost of the KCRHA’s poor financial decisions. How they will divvy up that expense (and when) remains an open question. Asked about the debt last week, Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson would only say that the city is “in active discussion with the county” about how to fix the KCRHA’s fiscal mess.

3. Although the city and county are taking over almost all the KCRHA’s contracts with homeless service providers, the KCRHA will continue (for now) to oversee a number of federally required functions, including the biennial Point In Time Count of the region’s homeless population (a process that now involves a lot of statistical extrapolation and data analysis rather than a direct count), the annual federal funding process, and the job overseeing the region’s Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) database.

Given these new limitations, many at KCRHA were taken aback earlier this month when Kinnison laid off the agency’s lead HMIS analyst, a person who had been with KCRHA since the beginning and was chiefly responsible for overseeing (and understanding) HMIS. This core function will now go to other staffers who have been doing other work and are less familiar with the complex system. Kinnison also let one of the two remaining HR staffers go, meaning that there will only be one HR staffer left to oversee every aspect of human resources at the agency, which has about 50 employees.

The layoffs were not announced; in fact, according to sources familiar with the discussion, Kinnison told a group of elected officials and others working on KCRHA’s transition that she was not planning additional layoffs as of that morning.

4. Don’t miss our conversation with Seattle City Attorney Erika Evans and Criminal Division Chief Jenna Robert this week. We talked about Evans’ new Connection Court, a diversionary misdemeanor court that pairs access to services with strict requirements for people who opt in. People who accumulate additional criminal charges or fail to participate in services will get kicked out to mainstream court, where they’ll face penalties including potential jail time.

Evans also announced a new program for repeat offenders that will both prohibit them from participating in any diversion program and seek harsher penalties, including “aggravated jail sentences,” for people who meet certain criteria, such as amassing more than three misdemeanor charges in three months or shoplifting at the same place twice.

A quick correction on this episode: Sandeep described San Francisco’s Reset Center, a sobering center where police remove people from the streets involuntarily for eight hours or so until they can receive a certificate of sobriety, incorrectly.

It is not true that the Reset Center offers medication-assisted treatment, such as shots of long-acting buprenorphine. The center gives referrals to outside providers but does not offer treatment.

It is also not really true that people can just get up and walk out of the Reset Center. In fact, according to the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department, which runs the site, only “[once an individual able to care for themselves, they receive a certificate of release (849 (b) PC) and are free to leave.”

City Council, education

Burien Council Fires Controversial City Manager; Mayor and Council Say They’ve Found Money for Universal School Meals After All
Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon

1. Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon was fired by the Burien City Council earlier this week on a 4-1 vote, with Councilmember Kevin Schilling absent. His last day will be August 27.

The firing followed a council vote more than three months ago to put Bailon on paid leave while an outside consultant, Kathleen Haggard (of the Haggard-Ganson law firm) conducted an investigation into his conduct as city manager. The council has discussed this investigation in executive session, but has not made any of the details public; PubliCola has requested a copy of the investigation report.

A short list of issues that have come up during Bailon’s tenure as city manager would take up many paragraphs, but they include: Shooting down efforts to stand up a homeless shelter on land owned by the city, threatening to sue a church that hosted an encampment; turning down $1 million in shelter funding from King County; berating council members over their views on homelessness, filing a complaint against one of those councilmembers over his tweets, demanding the removal of Burien’s police chief, and spending much of his time calling 911 on unsheltered people in the park outside his office.

Although the resolution passed this week cites the investigation findings, Bailon was officially fired without cause, allowing him to collect six months’ pay as severance, in addition to receiving his full salary during his nearly four-month leave. During this time, the city of Burien has also been paying interim city manager Bob Larson to serve in Bailon’s stead.

We’ve asked the city for Bailon’s exact salary. According to the Washington Citizens’ Commission on Salaries for Elected Officials, Bailon made $224,664 in 2024, up from $215,000 when he was hired in 2022. Extrapolating from that two-year cost of living adjustment, Bailon’s. current salary is a little under $235,000, meaning he’ll receive around $117,000 in severance pay.

During the meeting, Schilling went on a brief tirade after Mayor Sarah Moore opened up public comment on Bailon’s firing, which the council had just officially announced (although Schilling telegraphed that it was happening earlier, before the council went into executive session.) Opening public comment at 10pm, when “no one’s here,” was a “charade” and “ludicrous,” Schilling said. “This is pretty crazy, Mayor,” Schilling said.

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Then, referring to the one person who remained in council chambers and wanted to speak, Schilling said, “The only member of the public who’s here is Quinten [Thompson], and Quinton’s here because he gets driven home after the council meeting.” Thompson, who frequently attends Burien council meetings, uses a wheelchair and gets around via Access van.

Schilling complained that all the comments would be in favor of removing Bailon, then left. Alex Andrade, the one vote in Bailon’s favor, called a point of order to tell a speaker that it was “improper” for him call the behavior that got Bailon fired “abusive.”

Former city councilmember Cydney Moore, speaking during public comment, said it was “incredibly disrespectful and dismssive the way that the current, present audience member was referenced by somebody on council as though their presence is not absolutely intentional and not just passive because they are waiting for a ride. That’s a member of our community who is very active and should be treated with … respect.”

2. After a public outcry, the Seattle City Council has backed down on a proposal to trade universal school meals for low-income grocery vouchers during the upcoming school year, announcing earlier this week that they have reached a deal with Mayor Katie Wilson to provide both immediate universal meals and the vouchers by using “underspend” from an unspecified city department.

The council faced backlash from supporters of universal school meals when they voted 6-3 for an amendment to the spending plan for the Families, Education, Preschool and Promise Levy, sponsored by Councilmembers Joy Hollingsworth and Dionne Foster, that delayed funding for universal meals until the 2027-2028 school year. The amendment took $3 million that would have funded universal school meals starting this year and redistributed it across all six years of the levy to provide $500,000 for food subsidies for up to 5,000 low-income families, or about $100 per family per year.

The new spending plan keeps the food vouchers, which supporters say will provide meals for low-income kids on weekends and over holidays during the school year. Funding for school meals would come from the levy beginning in the 2027-2028 school year under the plan announced this week. The proposal doesn’t address what the city will do if a state tax on income above $1 million is overturned by voters in November or subsequently by a court challenge; instead, it assumes the tax will begin funding school meals statewide in 2029.

 

Courts, Mayor Wilson, Parks

King County Assessor Says He Can’t Wear Ankle Monitor In Stalking Case Due to Medical Condition, Burien Puts City Manager on Leave, and More

1. King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson failed to appear at his court hearing in Seattle Municipal Court on Tuesday, where he was scheduled to explain why “medical issues” prevent him from wearing an ankle monitor while he awaits trial on charges of stalking his ex-fiancée, Lee Keller. Wilson’s attorney said his client was confused about the date. The court will hold another hearing tomorrow so that Wilson can attend.

According to a court filing, Wilson told a staffer for the company that provides GPS monitors, Sentinel, that he can’t wear a monitor because he “must regularly soak both legs in water to help reduce swelling” from a medical condition. “Sentinel policy states that the GPS device must not be submerged in water,” the “failure to enroll” filing says. Wilson also said he has to wear compression socks and “reported the device felt tight and indicated that additional space would be necessary to allow him to properly remove and put on his compression socks. Due to these factors Sentinel did not enroll Mr. Wilson on the GPS with exclusion zones obligation.”

Wilson was arrested earlier this year after showing up repeatedly outside Keller’s home in violation of an existing no-contact order. In court filings last year, Keller detailed Wilson’s history of stalking and harassing her over a period of several years. Seattle Municipal Court magistrate Noah Weil issued a five-year no-contact order against Wilson last week  and ordered him to wear a GPS monitor that would alert Keller if Wilson comes within 1,000 feet of her. During that hearing, Wilson said he would have “no problem” complying; the ankle monitor was meant as an assurance that he would not violate this protection order as he has with previous orders to stay away from Keller.

2. The Burien City Council decided, in a closed-door executive session, to place city manager Adolfo Bailon on administrative leave last night, voting 4-3 to remove him and direct the city’s contract interim city attorney, Ann Marie Soto, to find an interim replacement.

The reason the city has a contract city attorney is that Bailon summarily fired former City Attorney Garmon Newsom III earlier this month, PubliCola has learned. (Newsom would have been the person providing legal advice to the council as they discussed whether and how to remove Bailon). This could be among the reasons the council’s four progressive members voted to place Bailon on leave after a lengthy executive session with Soto Tuesday night.

Officially, the council has not given a reason for removing Bailon from his position, and PubliCola was unable to get any councilmember to comment on the record about what led them to consider removing him in the first place. (Executive sessions are closed to the public and considered attorney-client privileged.) Administrative leave is paid and is not considered punitive in itself.

However, it’s not hard to imagine any number of possible reasons beyond Bailon’s decision to fire the city attorney. Back in 2023, the city council (then dominated by more conservative members) stood by Bailon as he shot down efforts to stand up a homeless shelter on land owned by the city, threatened legal action against a church that hosted an encampment, turned away $1 million in shelter funding from King County, and more.

Bailon also berated council members who disagreed with his political views on homelessness, filed a complaint against Councilmember Hugo Garcia over  tweets, demanded the removal of the King County sheriff’s deputy who served as Burien’s police chief, and apparently spent much of his time calling 911 on unsheltered people in the park outside his office, among many other actions that arguably stretched the limits of his authority as a city employee.

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Under Burien’s city manager-council form of governance, every city employee technically works for the city manager, and he works for the seven-member city council. Three years ago, an outside firm resigned over what they described as the council’s refusal to take critical evaluation of Bailon’s performance seriously. With a council less sympathetic to Bailon’s actions and political opinions, he could be on his way out after four years in the role, for which he is paid around $240,000.

3. Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson announced the dates for Seattle’s annual “Bicycle Weekends” event, in which the city opens up Lake Washington Boulevard in Seward Park to cyclists and pedestrians during summer weekends. And unlike her predecessor, who killed longstanding plans to install stop signs and speed humps on the dangerous lakefront boulevard, Wilson is expanding the safe-street program to include nearly every summer weekend, except during Seafair, and three holidays.

That means that cyclists and pedestrians, including wheelchair users, will have access to the roadway more summer Sundays than any year in the past. Under Harrell, who lives nearby, the car-free celebration happened only on alternate weekends, for a total of 20 days. Wilson is expanding that to 15 summer weekends and a total of 33 days, including three holidays. Details (including where drivers can park outside the car-free zone) on the city’s website.

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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.