Tag: Colleen Echohawk

Elections, Uncategorized

PubliCola Questions: Colleen Echohawk

As PubliCola prepares to endorse candidates in the August 3 mayoral and council primary elections, we reached out to the leading candidates for mayor and City Council Position 9 with questions about homelessness, housing, police accountability, and economic recovery.

Their answers to these questions, which we’ll be sharing over the next several days, will help inform our endorsements, coming out next week. Endorsements will be based on each candidate’s record of action, public statements, interviews with PubliCola and other media outlets, and responses at the many candidate forums that have taken place over the summer.

Colleen Echohawk has said she decided to run for mayor to address the “humanitarian crisis” of homelessness. As director of the Chief Seattle Club, a nonprofit organization that works to address and prevent homelessness among Seattle’s Native community, she has tried to navigate between advocating for Native people living outdoors while working within systems that often fail people experiencing homelessness. After Mayor Jenny Durkan’s election in 2017, for example, Echohawk served on Durkan’s transition team and received a mayoral appointment to the Community Police Commission, one of the city’s three police-accountability bodies; she also served for many years as a board member for the Downtown Seattle Association, which has proposed a charter amendment that would require the city to redirect existing funds to pay for 2,000 new shelter beds. After initially supporting the amendment, Echohawk came out against it, saying it isn’t “grounded in the lived experience of people who’ve been experiencing homelessness.”

The centerpiece of Echohawk’s agenda is a 22-point plan to reduce homelessness by, among other actions, hiring 100 outreach workers with lived experience of homelessness and ending the 72-hour parking rule that allows the city to impound vehicles, including cars and RVs where people are living, if they stay in one place for more than three days.

Here’s what Echohawk had to say in response to the eight questions PubliCola posed to every mayoral candidate.

Assuming Charter Amendment 29 becomes law in Seattle, what city programs would you cut or deprioritize in order to dedicate 12 percent of the city’s general-fund budget to human services, and how would you go about adding 2,000 new shelter or housing spots by the end of next year?

First, I would not cut programs. We would prioritize funding from the JumpStart tax to fund additional shelter as well as a capital campaign I will initiate as soon as the election results are certified. I just want to also emphasize that bringing people living outside inside is not just a matter of finding shelter or housing spots. I will also immediately begin hiring 100 outreach workers needed to do the outreach work necessary to work with our homeless relatives while securing additional housing, which will require an “all of the above approach” meaning: tiny homes, hoteling, pallet homes, safe lots for RV camping, modular housing, etc.

“Activation is also critically important in our neighborhood business districts for recovery and revitalization which is why as mayor I will invest in artists and cultural activity, and in particular in BIPOC artists and previously underinvested and marginalized cultural communities, to lay the foundation for a more equitable and inclusive creative recovery.”

I have years of experience of working with the homeless provider network, the Office of Housing, builders of low-income housing as well as the leaders in the Regional Homelessness Authority. I will work with these leaders to identify the real estate that is necessary to get emergency housing up and running in 14 months. Here is my plan to bring the roughly 5,000 people living outside inside in the first 15 months.

Local elected officials and candidates have often emphasized the need to revitalize downtown Seattle as the primary focus of post-COVID recovery. What is one specific action you would take in Seattle’s non-downtown neighborhoods to promote economic recovery and neighborhood vitality?

Every neighborhood in Seattle is unique, including downtown Seattle. The City of Seattle can play a key role in supporting the recovery of our diverse neighborhoods, but needs to look to the expertise already in place to help lead neighborhood appropriate efforts. Just as I am committed to listening to community and lifting up the expertise of those closest to our biggest problems and challenges, I am committed to the leadership of those organizations charged with the care and trajectory of our most valuable assets.

As Mayor I will encourage investments in programs that are led by the neighborhoods they serve with the city providing for events and programs. I will also seek to significantly expand the impact of Small Business support efforts currently housed in the Office of Economic Development. This will include increasing capacity for Small Business Advocates and empowering lead staff in the areas of business development and construction impacts to take action to address issues quickly and respond with the agility Seattle’s dynamic economy demands.

Multiple neighborhoods in Seattle don’t currently benefit from the strong, dedicated organizations like the DSA. With Downtown Seattle as a standard bearer, I will seek to forge partnerships between downtown and our most underrepresented neighborhoods to build strength in organizational and neighborhood governance. This could take the form of new [business improvement districts], new neighborhood associations or new Public/Private stewardship of vital assets like the Pike Place Market [public development authority] and [Community Roots] Housing.

Activation is also critically important in our neighborhood business districts for recovery and revitalization which is why as mayor I will invest in artists and cultural activity, and in particular in BIPOC artists and previously underinvested and marginalized cultural communities, to lay the foundation for a more equitable and inclusive creative recovery. In Seattle I have seen our arts and cultural communities taking this year’s existential issues head-on. The centering of BIPOC creatives in the programming and leadership of many Seattle arts organizations this year has been a welcome, if long overdue, shift.

“Much like how the Great Seattle Fire of 1889 demonstrated why a public water supply should not be left up to private industries who exist to make a profit, internet access and online connectivity should be no different.”

The degree to which arts and cultural organizations have invested in the economic survival of their staff and artists this year has been inspiring. Brand-new modes of distanced, safe arts presentation were invented almost immediately and refined into a new form overnight. In the arts, as in all things, we need to take with us the best of what we’ve built in this past year, these tools we’ve used to transcend the solitude and distance, as we reimagine our new Seattle.

And finally, I will work with the City Council to create a new utility on municipal broadband. An estimated 250 public employees will be needed to run and manage this utility, creating positive jobs for the City. Much like how the Great Seattle Fire of 1889 demonstrated why a public water supply should not be left up to private industries who exist to make a profit, internet access and online connectivity should be no different. Just like how electric power, water, drainage & wastewater, and garbage utilities are created, run, and used by the residents of Seattle, broadband can and should be a basic public utility.

More than 750 cities across the country have already invested in municipal broadband services. It is time Seattle does too. Stable and reliable broadband offered and significantly lower prices than current for profit providers will be a significant help to small businesses across the city.

There is general consensus around the need to replace some functions of the police department with non-policing alternatives, such as civilian crisis responders. What gaps in Seattle’s non-police public safety network can be filled on the shortest timeline, and which are the most pressing priorities?

We must devote resources that actually address the need for public safety across our City. Innovative programs like the Fire Department’s Mobile Integrated Mental Health response unit Health One pilot program and the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) [now known as Let Everyone Advance with Dignity] take public health approaches to violence prevention by strengthening evidence-based strategies at the local level.

An armed response is almost never required for mental health crises. I want to go one step further than the City’s current crisis response team by creating a 24/7 mobile team of community paramedics and trained crisis workers. The gaps in Seattle’s non-police public safety network will be addressed by our plan for a crisis response team. Mental health response has been inadequate for years in Seattle but post-pandemic it is reaching a breaking point. An Echohawk administration will prioritize funding for mental health and work with our local experts and community leaders to find real solutions that meet the needs of the community. Continue reading “PubliCola Questions: Colleen Echohawk” →

City Council, Elections, homelessness, labor, legislature, Morning Fizz, Taxes

Weekend Fizz: Capital Gains Tax Moves Forward, Council Staffers Unionize, and Echohawk Challenged on Initiative Support

1. The Senate Democrats weren’t ready to sign off on the version of the historic capital gains tax legislation (SB 5096) that House Democrats passed earlier this week. So the bill’s prime sponsor, Sen. June Robinson (D-38, Everett) and Sen. Jamie Pedersen (D-43, Seattle) met with House Finance Committee Chair Rep. Noel Frame (D-36, Seattle) and House Majority Leader Pat Sullivan (D-47, Covington) to hammer out a compromise version.

On Friday evening, Democrats sent the revised version to the Senate. Both of the House’s referendum protections remain intact in this new version: The Democrats preserved language that says the tax is “necessary” for the government to function and dedicated the first $500 million in revenues from the tax to fund the Education Legacy Trust Account, which locks in the “necessity” clause (under the state constitution, education is the “paramount duty” of the state). Any excess revenue from the tax will be dedicated to an account that funds public school construction.

The new tax is expected to bring in about $445 million during the 2021-23 biennium, $981 million in the 2023-25 biennium, and $1.06 billion between 2025 and 2027.

The bill now includes a new tax deduction for people who donate to charity—a GOP idea that had not made it into any version of the bill until now.

After the meeting, Pedersen told PubliCola his Democratic colleagues added the deduction to get enough votes to pass the bill, saying, “Now it looks like we will be able to get it through both chambers.”

2. After more than a year of negotiations, the Seattle City Council’s central staff—a group of about 30 legal, economic, and policy wonks who draft and analyze legislation for the council—have joined the city’s PROTEC17 union.

Among other guarantees, their new contract increases their pay retroactively for 2019, 2020, and 2021 by 4 percent, 3.6 percent, and 2.9 percent, respectively, and bumps up the minimum maximum pay for their positions by the same percentage. Going forward, the minimum pay for a central staffer will be $42.20 an hour, or $87,776, and salaries will max out at $157,060.

3. Last week, mayoral candidate Andrew Grant Houston subtly tweaked one of his competitors, Chief Seattle Club director Colleen Echohawk, for supporting a proposed charter amendment on homelessness sponsored by a group started by former council member Tim Burgess, Compassion Seattle.

“A few people have asked, so we wanted to clarify that, no, Ace has never been formally or informally involved with the organization Compassion Seattle. We cannot speak for other candidates,” Houston tweeted. In response, a Houston supporter pointed out that the Echohawk campaign had apparently taken down a blog post supporting the initiative.

Asked why they took down the blog post, an Echohawk campaign spokesperson responded that the statement featured in the blog post is “all over social media and we’re hosting it on our Adobe Document cloud.” (True.) “So yes, the answer is we had it up on the blog, but took it down because we decided as a campaign to focus communications on social media as it is much more accessible and more people engage with the campaigns social accounts.”

The Chief Seattle Club works to shelter and house homeless Native people in Seattle. Echohawk’s campaign tweeted and did a Facebook post linking the full statement on April 3.

City Hall, Elections, homelessness, labor, Mayor Durkan, Morning Fizz

Morning Fizz: Echohawk Campaign Says “Paperwork” Delayed Consultant Payment, Durkan Lowballs COVID Stipends, Echohawk Distances Herself from Durkan, and a COVID Outbreak In Jail
Maleng Regional Justice Center; photo via kingcounty.gov

1. Last week, a Black political consultant, Crystal Fincher, tweeted about an unnamed mayoral campaign “trying to stiff a BIPOC firm for services provided.” She didn’t name the campaign, but the firm was obviously Upper Left Strategies, a Black-owned local campaign consulting business. The campaign, it turns out, was that of mayoral candidate Colleen Echohawk.

Echohawk had been working with Upper Left until she replaced them with the Mercury Group, led by former Mike McGinn strategists Bill Broadhead and Julie McCoy, who are white.

Another Echohawk consultant, John Wyble, said the payment to Upper Left—according to campaign disclosure documents, about $15,000—was held up by “paperwork” that the departing consultants needed to sign; although neither Echohawk nor Wyble would elaborate on the kind of paperwork the campaign wanted its former consultants to sign (and Upper Left principal Michael Charles did not respond to calls).

Echohawk confirmed that her campaign did require the consultants to sign a nondisclosure agreement, which she characterized as “standard.”

Other consultants PubliCola asked in general terms about NDAs said they had never had to sign an NDA for a political candidate, although they are fairly common with corporate clients.

2. On Tuesday, Echohawk called on Mayor Jenny Durkan to use FEMA emergency dollars or other sources to move dozens of people living in and around Miller Park, on Capitol Hill, into shelter or housing instead of removing them. Capitol Hill Seattle reported that Durkan’s office said they would not rule removing the encampment if people “refuse” to accept the services on offer, which is basically the administration’s pre-pandemic approach to park encampments.

What’s interesting about Echohawk’s statement, which was prompted by what Echohawk called “the rumbling of a sweep,” was that it represents a clear attempt to distance herself from Durkan, with whom Echohawk and the homeless service organization she runs, Chief Seattle Club, has been a frequent ally, going back to Durkan’s first days in office.

Echohawk didn’t disagree with the idea that the park, which includes playfields and is near Meany Middle School, needs to be accessible to people who want to use the field or play in the park. But she is trying to draw a line between herself (as someone who wants to “get someone—a human services agency—to agree to do the case management”) and the mayor (who, according to Echohawk, still thinks sweeps are an effective response to homelessness.)

Echohawk isn’t, to be clear, offering a specific solution, and her proposal (to link people in Miller Park up with case management and hotel-based shelters) would quickly run into the gears of city contracting bureaucracy and the limitations of existing human service provider staffing. But her efforts to distance herself from Durkan are sure to continue in a race that includes one frontrunner who has declared herself an outsider and another who is currently the president of the City Council, Durkan’s perennial bête noire.

3. More than a year into the pandemic, city of Seattle employees who’ve been working from home will get a retroactive stipend for the additional costs associated with setting up home offices, including higher utility costs, Internet service, and other expenses. The maximum per month is $48. Shaun Van Eyk, the union representative for PROTEC17, which represents many city employees, told Fizz the Durkan Administration’s opening offer was $24 a month.

4. Inmates and staff at King County detention facilities are experiencing a new wave of COVID-19 cases, according to new data from the county’s Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention.

Since March 9, 46 inmates have tested positive for the virus, as well as seven staff members. The outbreak has worsened since last weekend, with 19 inmates testing positive on March 22 alone. Continue reading “Morning Fizz: Echohawk Campaign Says “Paperwork” Delayed Consultant Payment, Durkan Lowballs COVID Stipends, Echohawk Distances Herself from Durkan, and a COVID Outbreak In Jail” →

City Council, City Hall, Elections

With González in Mayoral Race, Seattle’s Campaign Season Is Shaping Up

 

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle City Council member Lorena González, who became the city’s first Latina council member in 2015, will run for mayor of Seattle, she announced this morning. The announcement, though hardly a surprise—González has been viewed as a likely candidate ever since current Mayor Jenny Durkan announced she would not seek reelection last December—creates a race with two clear frontrunners so far, both women of color; Colleen Echohawk, the head of the Chief Seattle Club and a frequent ally of Durkan’s, announced she was running late last month.

In an interview, González said she decided to run for mayor, which will require her to relinquish her at-large council seat, because she wants to “ensure that things are actually being implemented” after the council passes legislation. During the Durkan yerars, the council has frequently passed policy or budget legislation, only to see it vetoed or ignored by the mayor and departments. “I am acutely aware of the importance of the legislative branch in this city, and I am also aware of how important it is to have a mayor that understands that,” González said.

Durkan will likely leave office with a significant amount of unfinished business, including the selection of a new permanent police chief to replace Carmen Best, who resigned last August, and the adoption of a new contract with Seattle’s main police union, which expired last year. González said the next chief of police should be someone who can immediately “identify what things we need to move out of the police department because they’re better addressed by other systems, and … who is going to be dedicated to rooting out racism, white supremacy, and bad officers from the rank and file—to demilitarize not just the ammunition locker but to demilitarize officers’ minds and make sure that officers understand that they are here to serve the people of Seattle, not to deploy weapons of war against its citizens.”

González drafted the 2017 police accountability ordinance, which included a number of reforms that could have significantly changed the way police interact with the people they are sworn to serve. She also voted for the 2018 police union contract that effectively nullified the 2017 reforms. She told PubliCola that if she was voting on the same contract today, “I would vote very different, because the police department has unfortunately not advanced as much in reform as we thought they had.”

González said the next chief of police should be someone who can “demilitarize not just the ammunition locker but demilitarize officers’ minds and make sure that officers understand that they are here to serve the people of Seattle, not to deploy weapons of war against its citizens.”

Specifically, she said she would keep interest arbitration—a process in which a state-appointed arbitrator listens to both sides and decides the terms of a contract—on the table during contract negotiations so that the police union knows “that we are willing to go all the way to the end of the line to force the police guild to be serious about these negotiations and accept these accountability reforms. That has never been done in the city. There has never been a mayor who has been willing to go to interest arbitration and to hold the line.”

González also told PubliCola she would support purchasing hotels or other buildings with private rooms to serve as long-term non-congregate shelter; seek additional direct cash assistance and mortgage and debt forgiveness from the Biden Administration and state legislature, respectively, to address the looming eviction cliff; and “advance an actual work plan and strategy for implementation of universal access to internet service” in Seattle—a longtime goal of advocates for broadband equity.

Support PubliCola

If you’re reading this, we know you’re someone who appreciates deeply sourced breaking news, features, and analysis—along with guest columns from local opinion leaders, ongoing coverage of the kind of stories that get short shrift in mainstream media, and informed, incisive opinion writing about issues that matter.

We know there are a lot of publications competing for your dollars and attention, but PubliCola truly is different. We cover Seattle and King County on a budget that is funded entirely by reader contributions—no ads, no paywalls, ever.

Being fully independent means that we cover the stories we consider most interesting and newsworthy, based on our own news judgment and feedback from readers about what matters to them, not what advertisers or corporate funders want us to write about. It also means that we need your support. So if you get something out of this site, consider giving something back by kicking in a few dollars a month, or making a one-time contribution, to help us keep doing this work. If you prefer to Venmo or write a check, our Support page includes information about those options. Thank you for your ongoing readership and support.

The mayoral field could begin filling up soon. Jessyn Farrell, a 2017 mayoral candidate who was on the fence last month, was reportedly testing the waters with labor groups over the past week. Farrell did not return texts or a call for comment on Tuesday. Nor did former city council member (and, very briefly, mayor) Bruce Harrell, who multiple sources said is leaning toward getting in the race).

In other mayoral election news, Echohawk’s original consulting team, the Black-led firm Upper Left, left the campaign and has been replaced by the Mercury Group, led by former mayor Mike McGinn’s chief consultants, Bill Broadhead and Julie McCoy. (McCoy went on to be McGinn’s chief of staff.) Asked about the change, Echohawk said, “Like all new campaigns, we are putting our team in place. We appreciate all the work everyone has done in various roles to ensure we had such a strong start to the campaign.”

Lower down the ballot, Brianna Thomas, a legislative aide in González’s council office who ran for Council District 1 in 2015 (Lisa Herbold won), will reportedly announce she is running for the seat soon, after a bit of background drama: At-large Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, who’s up for reelection this year, had asked King County Labor Council leader Nicole Grant, who is white, to consider running for González’s seat as part of a slate.

Grant, whose union expelled the Seattle Police Officers Guild over their use of force and tear gas against Black Lives Matter demonstrators last summer, decided against it after finding out that Thomas was planning to run, and getting feedback that it would be inappropriate for her (as a progressive labor leader with a built-in left-leaning base) to run for the same seat as a progressive Black woman.

On Tuesday, Mosqueda told PubliCola, “Nicole would have been a great candidate and council member, and I deeply respect her decision not to run as the conversation continues about Black community representation in City Hall.”

Meanwhile, another former council candidate, Fremont Brewing Company co-owner Sara Nelson—who ran for the seat Mosqueda won in 2017—filed to run for Position 9 on Monday. Former Red Door bar owner Pete Hanning (whose bar was located just down the street from Fremont Brewing) said he is still deciding whether he wants in, and Seattle Port Commissioner Ryan Calkins, another name that has been circulating in local-politics circles, said he’s currently focusing on his campaign to keep his Port seat, also on the ballot this year..

Elections, homelessness, human services, Mayor Durkan, Morning Fizz, Police

Chief Seattle Club Director Joins Mayor’s Race, Durkan Deflects Dunn Denunciation

1. Colleen Echohawk, the executive director of the Chief Seattle Club—a human service provider and day center that focuses on American Indian and Alaska Native people experiencing homelessness—will announce she’s running for mayor on Monday.

Echohawk, an enrolled member of the Kithehaki Band of the Pawnee Nation, told PubliCola Sunday that she probably wouldn’t have gotten into the race if it wasn’t for COVID-19, which she said has created “opportunities”—like the city and county’s newfound willingness to move people out of overcrowded shelters and into hotels. “If you had told me last year that we would have roughly 1,000 people in hotel rooms right now, I would be shocked,” she said. With the end of the statewide eviction moratorium “looming,” she added, “we can’t have more people falling into homelessness. It’s just immoral.”

Native Americans make up a vastly disproportionate percentage of people experiencing homelessness in Seattle and elsewhere. Over the past several years, advocates from groups like CSC have made Native American homelessness a priority for city spending, and successfully advocated for culturally competent assessments to get more Native people in line for homeless services and housing.

“I don’t think that anyone who’s been in a leadership position of an organization thinks you can, all of a sudden, just demand that everything is going to change. We are hitting the right tone and now we need to figure out ways to find common ground.”—Colleen Echohawk

“When we’ve had a lot of success has been when we’ve been at the table,” Echohawk said. “If we miss one meeting, decisions get made without us that affect us down the road.” Echohawk said she has been “disappointed in recent months” to see how long it has taken to stand up the regional homelessness authority, which she supported. “It honestly breaks my heart, because we have people who are hurting and because we’ve committed to the regional [approach.]” 

In 2018, Echohawk led the team that helped Mayor Jenny Durkan, who is not running for reelection, select former police chief Carmen Best. Two years later, Best quit under a cloud of criticism over her handling of protests against police brutality.

Asked whether she supports the movement to defund the Seattle police and reinvest their budget in community-led public safety alternatives, Echohawk, who serves on the Community Police Commission, said, “I don’t think that anyone who’s been in a leadership position of an organization thinks you can, all of a sudden, just demand that everything is going to change. We are hitting the right tone and now we need to figure out ways to find common ground.”

Durkan has declined to begin the process of looking for a permanent police chief, and will likely leave it up to her successor to replace interim police chief Adrian Diaz. If that happens, Echohawk said she will look for someone “who has vision, a strong history of being anti-racist … and who understands the dynamics of the power of a police officer and how to work with community and work with the [Seattle Police Officers] Guild to find ways to change the system.”

Echohawk is widely viewed as an ally of the mayor’s, and reportedly turned down a job in Durkan’s office early in her term. But, she said, they differ in a number of important ways. “I come from a very different background” than Durkan, the native of Delta Junction, Alaska, said. “I grew up in a home where my dad would literally pick people up off the side of the road and bring them home. … We don’t have a legacy of privilege. We have a legacy of serving the community.”

Support PubliCola

If you’re reading this, we know you’re someone who appreciates deeply sourced breaking news, features, and analysis—along with guest columns from local opinion leaders, ongoing coverage of the kind of stories that get short shrift in mainstream media, and informed, incisive opinion writing about issues that matter.

We know there are a lot of publications competing for your dollars and attention, but PubliCola truly is different. We cover Seattle and King County on a budget that is funded entirely by reader contributions—no ads, no paywalls, ever.

Being fully independent means that we cover the stories we consider most interesting and newsworthy, based on our own news judgment and feedback from readers about what matters to them, not what advertisers or corporate funders want us to write about. It also means that we need your support. So if you get something out of this site, consider giving something back by kicking in a few dollars a month, or making a one-time contribution, to help us keep doing this work. If you prefer to Venmo or write a check, our Support page includes information about those options. Thank you for your ongoing readership and support.

2 .The regional homelessness authority, already off to a slow and rocky start, will succeed or fail based largely on whether more conservative suburban cities and liberal Seattle can agree on what kind of homeless programs to fund and how to fund them. Already, there have been schisms and delays: Several suburban cities opted out of a sales tax that will fund housing and homeless programs across the region, and the hiring of a director for the agency is months behind schedule.

Last Thursday, another schism revealed itself, when members of the Lived Experience Coalition—a group of people with direct experience of homelessness—challenged King County Councilmember Reagan Dunn, of Bellevue, over his voting record and public statements about homelessness. The exchange came during a meeting of the authority’s governing board, which includes nine elected officials and three Lived Experience Coalition members. Dunn cast the lone “no” vote on the county council against a 0.1 sales tax to fund hotel-based shelters and housing for people experiencing homelessness in King County, and proposed spending $1 million to bus homeless people out of the area.

Zaneta Reid, a member of the governing committee, addressed Dunn directly at the end of the meeting: “We’re at this table for one reason, and that’s really to solve this problem of getting people off the stress and ending homelessness. Why are there some who are working against this?”

She continued: “Mr. Dunn—Reagan—I have not seen one article that you have been compassionate or even cared about what we’re sitting at this table doing.  … How can I trust that you have the best interests of those that we are serving at forefront?”

Before Dunn could respond, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, who chaired the meeting, jumped in.

Continue reading “Chief Seattle Club Director Joins Mayor’s Race, Durkan Deflects Dunn Denunciation” →