Tag: Debora Juarez

City Council, Density, Development, Environment, Equity, labor, land use, Morning Crank

Morning Crank: “This Is Our Dakota Access Pipeline Moment”

1. Environmental activists and tribal leaders have been waging a quixotic battle against Puget Sound Energy’s proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant at the Port of Tacoma for months, but many Seattle residents just took notice in the past couple of weeks, after socialist council member Kshama Sawant proposed a resolution that would have condemned the plant as “an unacceptable risk” to the region.

Sawant had hoped to move the resolution through the council without sending it through the usual committee process, arguing that it it was urgent to take a position on the plant as quickly as possible. Last week, at the urging of council member Debora Juarez—an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Nation who once lived on the Puyallup Reservation—Sawant agreed to add language noting that numerous Northwest tribal groups, including the Puyallup tribe, have expressed their strong opposition to the LNG plant but have not been included in the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency’s environmental review process. Last week’s amended resolution also noted the need for intergovernmental partnerships between the PSCAA and the tribes, as required, according to the resolution, by “local, state, and federal permitting and other approval processes.”

But several council members, including Juarez, Teresa Mosqueda, Lisa Herbold, and Sally Bagshaw, still felt the resolution needed work, and they spent the weekend, starting last Thursday, drafting a version that eliminated some of Sawant’s more incendiary (pun intended) references, including two “whereas” clauses about the 2016 fire that claimed several businesses in Greenwood and sections urging both the public and Mayor Jenny Durkan to actively oppose the facility. Sawant protested that she had not been included in the process of drafting the latest version of her resolution—”I just want everyone to know that I’m not responsible for those changes,” she said Monday morning—but council members reportedly reached out to her by phone throughout the weekend and never heard back.

The basic question at issue, Juarez argued, isn’t really whether Seattle should meddle in “Tacoma’s business,” or labor versus tribes or labor versus environmentalists. It’s about the fact that climate change has a disproportionate impact on low-income people and people of color, particularly the nine tribes whose land is located in the four-county Puget Sound region, and that those tribes were not consulted in the siting or permitting process. “This is an issue that transcends any political, legal, or jurisdictional lines that people have drawn,” Juarez said. “This is our Dakota Access Pipeline moment, except that we are on the front end of this.”

Whatever the merits of that argument (some members of the labor community, for example, have argued that environmental  protection and tribal sovereignty shouldn’t trump the potential for job creation at the plant), the debate quickly pitted Sawant against other council members who supported, as Sawant put it, “postponing” the resolution. Juarez, in particular, seemed perturbed by the crowd of (largely white) activists who showed up to express their support for Sawant’s amendment and to cheer loudly throughout Sawant’s speeches, which took up nearly 20 minutes of the two-hour meeting. “I mean no disrespect to the advocates, activists, environmentalists, and other groups that align themselves with native people,” Juarez said, but “we’re not a club. We’re not a political base. We’re not a grassroots organization. We are a government. … We will not stay in our lane.” To that, Sawant responded, “This is not about government-to-government relations. This is about the lives of ordinary people, many of whom are native, but others who are not. … I don’t’ think that we should in any way accept this kind of divisive language that native people are the only real speakers and others don’t get to speak. No, all of us have a stake in this.”

Noting that the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency recently ordered further environmental review of the project, council president Bruce Harrell argued yesterday that there was no real risk in delay, telling Juarez, “I think that your advocacy that the native communities have not been consulted properly or even legally is a great point… We haven’t really had any public process on this issue.” Several council members, saying that they hadn’t seen the latest version of the legislation by late yesterday morning, just hours before they were supposed to vote on it, agreed, and the council sent the measure to Juarez’s Civic Development, Public Assets & Native Communities committee for a rewrite.

2. Public comment was mostly muted during the first council meeting on the proposed citywide Mandatory Housing Affordability proposal, which will allow small density increases in six percent of the nearly 26,000 acres zoned exclusively for single-family housing in Seattle. (That number includes parks and open space, but not rights-of-way, such as streets; when green space is excluded, single-family houses and their yards cover nearly 22,000 acres of the city, or nearly two-thirds of the city’s residential land.)  One speaker said that residents of her neighborhood come “unglued” when they find out about new buildings that don’t have parking; another called the Grand Bargain that authorized MHA a “sham bargain,” which probably sounded more clever on paper. And then there was this lady, from a group called Seattle Fair Growth:

Don’t expect density opponents to accept what they’re (misleadingly) calling a “citywide rezone” without a fight. The first public open house on the proposal is at 6:00 tonight at Hamilton Middle School in Wallingford; District 4 rep Rob Johnson, who heads up the council’s land use committee, said he’ll be there at 7.

3. I somehow missed this when it happened, but Elaine Rose, the longtime president of Planned Parenthood Votes Northwest and Hawaii, left the organization at the end of December with little fanfare and, as far as I can tell, no public announcement. Rose’s departure leaves a major agency without a permanent leader going into a short legislative session with several key bills under consideration*; an ad announcing the open position went out on a local employment listserv last week. (Planned Parenthood also listed a fundraising position earlier this month.) I’ve contacted Planned Parenthood and will update this post if I get more information about Rose’s departure.

*Full disclosure: I was communications director for NARAL Pro-Choice Washington, a reproductive rights advocacy group, until April 2017, and I do communications consulting for NARAL for approximately 3.5 hours a week. NARAL often partners with Planned Parenthood on advocacy efforts, but I found out Rose had left PPVNH through the WHOW list, which is not connected to either group.

If you enjoy the work I do here at The C Is for Crank, please consider becoming a sustaining supporter of the site or making a one-time contribution! For just $5, $10, or $20 a month (or whatever you can give), you can help keep this site going, and help me continue to dedicate the many hours it takes to bring you stories like this one every week. This site is funded entirely by contributions from readers, which pay for the time I put into reporting and writing for this blog and on social media, as well as reporting-related and office expenses. Thank you for reading, and I’m truly grateful for your support.

City Council, City Hall, homelessness, housing, human services

After Defeat of Head Tax, Council Scrambles for Plan B

City council budget committee chair Lisa Herbold made a risky gamble this week, and she lost. As a result, the council will pass a budget this coming Monday whose details were thrown together largely at the last minute, after a budget proposal that hinged on the passage of the controversial employee hours tax failed to secure a majority.

The gamble Herbold took was fairly straightforward, First, she proposed a version of the budget that incorporated revenues from the head tax—a $125-per-employee tax on businesses with more than $10 million in gross receipts, known as the HOMES tax. Second, she made sure that city council members’ top-priority projects would be on the chopping block without the tax, so that any council member who voted against the tax would risk losing funding for her favorite projects. Third, instead of coming up with a backup plan in collaboration with head tax opponents, she crafted a “Plan B” that included draconian cuts to council members’ priorities (including the criminal justice diversion program LEAD, housing for homeless Native Americans, and trash removal at homeless encampments), giving them an additional incentive to vote “yes” on the tax.

The problem was with step 4—the one where a majority of council members were supposed to fall in line and support the tax. That didn’t happen, for a number of reasons. First, some council members were simply dead set against passing the tax, or—to hear council members like Lorena Gonzalez tell it—opposed to passing it on a rushed timeline without an opportunity to do deeper analysis and look at other alternative revenue sources. (Council members have had less than three weeks to consider the proposal.) Second, several council members bristled at the way Herbold’s initial balancing package, in council member Debora Juarez’s words, “held hostage” so many important projects by putting them “in the head tax parking lot.” Juarez, in particular, was indignant about this forced tradeoff. And third, potentially persuadable council members may have been put off by the behavior of the head-tax supporters who showed up, many at Sawant’s behest, day after day, screaming invectives (“Shame!” “Their deaths are on your hands!” “Republican!”) at council members who didn’t fall in lockstep behind the proposal.

After the tax failed, it became clear that Herbold didn’t have a backup, and the council ended up canceling a scheduled budget meeting to hammer one out. The result was that the process that led to a final budget package was disorganized and chaotic, with some council members reportedly in the dark about budget amendments until less than an hour before they had to vote them up or down. (Many amendments weren’t available in hard-copy form until minutes before they were voted on.)

A few things stand out about the substance of the budget package that will go before the council on Monday. First, it includes aggressive cuts to incoming mayor Jenny Durkan’s budget. If the budget passes unchanged on Monday, the city’s first female mayor in nearly a century will have to reduce her budget 17 percent, the equivalent of five mayoral staffers. (This was one of the budget amendments that reportedly came through at the last minute). Much of the money that would have gone to the mayor’s office will now fund new contract management positions in the Human Services Department.

Council members who supported cutting the mayor’s budget, including Mike O’Brien, said they were merely bringing it down to the “baseline” level established under former mayor Mike McGinn. However, that characterization is misleading: McGinn had a skeleton staff because he became mayor during the worst economic recession in recent memory, and made the cut at a time when the city faced ongoing annual revenue shortfalls in the tens of millions. As the economy recovered and all city departments expanded back to pre-recession levels, McGinn’s successor, Ed Murray, staffed up too. While budget cuts during recessions are standard, I can recall no recent precedent for slashing the mayor’s budget so dramatically in the middle of an economic boom. Notably, the council did not propose any cuts to its own staff budget, which council members increased by 33 percent just last year.

Outgoing mayor Tim Burgess fired off a sassy response to the council’s cuts, saying that if the council, “in their wisdom[,] believes these funds are needed for other purposes, and remembering that the Legislative Department’s budget is twice the size of the Mayor’s budget, then the funds should come proportionately from the Mayor’s Office and the Legislative Department.” Should Durkan want to respond to the cuts more directly than Burgess did, she could take a hard look at the dozens of statements of legislative intent the council also adopted today, each of which constitutes a request for the mayor’s office to craft legislation or produce reports and analysis. Or the council could decide to dial back the cuts on its own; they still have until Monday to find cuts elsewhere if they don’t want to pick this fight with the new administration. Durkan, it’s worth noting, did quite well in several council members’ districts, including O’Brien’s (Northwest Seattle) and Herbold’s (West Seattle). Both council members are up for reelection in two years.

The cuts to Durkan’s office highlight another unusual aspect of today’s budget proposal: It shifts a significant amount of money into the city’s Human Services Department from other departments, primarily the Department of Finance and Administrative Services. Although intuitively, it makes sense to move funding for things like homeless encampment removals to the department that hands out contracts for homeless services, HSD was not necessarily clamoring for the change, and will need time to hire seven new employees and train them to do the work FAS has been doing. Durkan, meanwhile, presumably has her own ideas about how the department should be run, and who should run it (the current director is Catherine Lester).

Today’s budget debate also solidified the ideological fault lines on the council—and highlighted the need for someone to serve as de facto council leader. As budget chair and a council veteran (before her election in 2015, Herbold was a staffer for former council member Nick Licata for 17 years), Herbold had a chance to be that leader, by counting votes and dealing with both sides to come up with a best-case scenario for the council’s left wing as well as a viable Plan B that could win the support of a council majority. Instead, Herbold went for broke—proposing a budget that was, in essence, an ultimatum, and declining to work with council moderates like Rob Johnson on a backup plan. That gamble didn’t pay off, even with a reliable ally like Kirsten Harris-Talley temporarily on the council. Once the council equation shifts in November (when Teresa Mosqueda, who handily defeated Herbold-endorsed socialist Jon Grant, replaces Harris-Talley), she could find herself increasingly isolated—insufficiently socialist for Sawant (whose supporters yelled “Shame!” and “Republican!” as fervently at Herbold as they did at Johnson), insufficiently “moderate,” (which is to say, conventionally liberal) for the council’s new majority.

I’ll have more to say about the final budget package on Monday.

If you enjoy the work I do here at The C Is for Crank, please consider becoming a sustaining supporter of the site! For just $5, $10, or $20 a month (or whatever you can give), you can help keep this site going, and help me continue to dedicate the many hours it takes to bring you stories like this one every week. This site is funded entirely by contributions from readers, which pay for the substantial time I put into reporting and writing for this blog and on social media, as well as costs like transportation, phone bills, electronics, website maintenance, and other expenses associated with my reporting. Thank you for reading, and I’m truly grateful for your support.

Affordability, City Council, City Hall, Election 2017, Elections, homelessness, housing, Morning Crank, Renters

Morning Crank: How About You Just Rent Them the Apartment?


Image result for no vacancy sign

1. The council’s civil rights, utilities, economic development, and arts committee unanimously passed legislation yesterday morning that will bar landlords from considering potential tenants’ criminal records, unless they were convicted of a sex offense as an adult. Council member Mike O’Brien offered two amendments to the legislation, which I wrote about last week: The first removes an exemption to the new rule for landlords of buildings with four units or fewer who live on site, and the second removes the so-called two-year lookback, which would have allowed landlords to consider a tenant’s criminal history going back two years.

Council member Debora Juarez, a former Superior and Municipal Court judge, said both amendments addressed a fundamental problem with the original bill: It created different classes of landlords and renters. The four-unit exemption, she said, gave extra privileges—essentially, the right to discriminate—to landlords who happened to own smaller buildings and live in one of the units, and the two-year lookback put tenants with more recent criminal histories in the position of begging landlords, on a case-by-case basis, to take them despite their criminal record. “It’s pretty clear that people of color and low-income people are being disproportionately denied and discriminated against … based on the fact that they have criminal records,” Juarez said. “I think you should just eliminate [the lookback period]. How about you don’t consider anything [other than a tenant’s ability to pay]—you just rent them the apartment?”

Herbold, who expressed concern last week that some small landlords might get out of the business if they had to rent to people with recent criminal records, said yesterday that she had decided “to vote according to my values and what I feel is best for renters in this city.” The proposal goes to the full council next Monday.

2. Council member Sally Bagshaw’s health and human services committee will take up the recommendations of the Vehicular Living Workgroup, which has been meeting since March to come up with “solutions that meet the needs of vulnerable populations living in vehicles due to inaccessible housing and address neighborhood impacts of vehicular living,” at 2:00 this afternoon. The meeting will be just for discussion; no legislation will be introduced.

The recommendations include a mitigation fund to help RV residents and other people living in their vehicles pay their parking tickets; additional outreach services; and a citywide “safe parking” program that would allow people living in vehicles to park safely in small groups (no more than five or six vehicles at one place) around the city. The recommendations do not, notably, include banning the estimated 1,000 people who live in their vehicles from parking inside city limits, and that has gotten the attention of the folks at Safe Seattle, a group opposed to allowing people to live outdoors or in their vehicles. Commenters on the group’s Facebook page have called Bagshaw “dangerous,” accused the council of “turning our precious city streets into desolate drug & crime ridden RV parks,” included the hashtag “shitforbrains,” and accused council member O’Brien of intentionally unleashing “blight” throughout the city as part of a conspiracy to drive families to the suburbs so the whole city can be redeveloped into apartments.

The public comment period will be 20 minutes.

3. Every year, lefty candidates in Seattle races try to distinguish themselves by pledging “not to accept any money from corporations or developers,” suggesting by implication that their opponent is financed by (and in the pocket of) big corporations. For example, in this year’s mayoral race, Cary Moon, and Nikkita Oliver both pledged that they would not take direct contributions from corporations or developers, and in the race to fill city council Position 8, both Jon Grant and Teresa Mosqueda made a similar vow Moon and Oliver were trying to distinguish themselves from their business-endorsed opponent Jenny Durkan, and Grant and Mosqueda from their business-endorsed opponent Sara Nelson.

It all sounds very principled: “Even if it costs me the election, I will decline all corporate contributions, because my values aren’t corporate values.” But it’s just about the easiest promise any candidate can make—because corporate contributions are basically nonexistent in Seattle.

Obviously, the Seattle Chamber and other business groups support certain candidates (often, in recent years, by funding independent expenditure campaigns), but corporations don’t typically give to individual candidates, making this perennial pledge little more than an empty applause line. I took a look at the contributor lists for the frontrunners in this year’s mayoral and council races, and found that, after Oliver and Moon (who, indeed, took no direct contributions from business), the candidate who took the smallest percentage of contributions from businesses—just 1 percent—was actually … Jenny Durkan. (Jessyn Farrell tied Durkan’s 1 percent.) Three percent of populist state legislator Bob Hasegawa’s contributions came from businesses, as did 2 percent of Mike McGinn’s. Worth noting: 60 percent of Moon’s money came from her own bank account; as Moon herself has said, she was able to self-finance largely because of family money, which came from the family … business.

In Position 8, the pattern is similar. While neither Mosqueda nor Grant received any money from businesses, “business” candidate Nelson got just 4 percent of her money from businesses.

All candidates, including Oliver, Moon, Mosqueda, and Grant, received contributions from people who work for corporations, including Amazon, Microsoft, Vulcan, and Google.

So the next time a candidate points to “refusing corporate contributions” as a point of pride, you might want to point out that businesses don’t really contribute to Seattle campaigns—even to “business” candidates.

* Of course, businesses do fund independent expenditure campaigns, which cannot be coordinated with candidates.

** Part of the reason business contributions make up such a small percentage of campaign war chests in Seattle is that contributions are limited to $500. The limit is designed to reduce the influence any one contributor can have over a candidate, and it serves its purpose.

If you enjoy the work I do here at The C Is for Crank, please consider becoming a sustaining supporter of the site! For just $5, $10, or $20 a month (or whatever you can give), you can help keep this site going, and help me continue to dedicate the many hours it takes to bring you stories like this one every week. This site is funded entirely by contributions from readers, which pay for the substantial time I put into reporting and writing for this blog and on social media, as well as costs like transportation, phone bills, electronics, website maintenance, and other expenses associated with my reporting. Thank you for reading, and I’m truly grateful for your support.

Elections, housing, human services, King County

“Compromise” Levy for Vets, Seniors Less Generous than County Exec’s Proposal

Advocates will make a last-ditch effort this afternoon to convince the King County Council to more than double the size of the King County Veterans, Seniors, and Human Services Levy, on the ballot this November. But after weeks of debate, and numerous proposals and counter-proposals, the council appeared last week to have settled on a compromise: A levy of ten cents per thousand dollars of property value—double the size of the previous levy—divided evenly between programs for veterans, seniors, and other vulnerable populations.

The argument over the levy has boiled down to two primary issues: How large it should be (County Executive Dow Constantine and advocates have argued for at least 12 cents, and some advocates have pushed for even more), and how it should be divided. The council’s three Republicans, not surprisingly, have advocated for a smaller, 10-cent levy.

Ordinarily, the Republicans would be outnumbered, and the Constantine proposal would prevail. But the Republicans have two Democratic allies in council members Dave Upthegrove and Rod Dembowski, giving them a five-vote majority. Dembowski, unlike Upthegrove, has made it clear that he would be willing to support a 12-cent levy, but only if that 12 cents was divided 50-50 between veterans and other beneficiaries; the other Democrats argued that it should be split evenly between programs for veterans, seniors, and everybody else. (The Dembowski split would be achieved by taking the third of the money that goes to seniors and earmarking half of it for seniors who are also veterans.) After a number of convoluted machinations at the council’s budget and policy committee, the full council, and a regional policy committee that includes representatives from several suburban cities as well as Seattle, the proposal to reserve more of the levy exclusively for veterans failed, and the “compromise” version the council will consider today is ten cents, evenly divided.

Council members who supported a more even distribution of funds argued that it was a matter of demographics and equity. At last week’s regional policy committee meeting, county council member Jeanne Kohl-Welles pointed out that while the number of veterans in King County continues to decrease, the number of seniors is about to skyrocket. “By 2030, we’re looking at a one to ten ratio of veterans to seniors,” Kohl-Welles said, “so my argument is that the best approach to take would be [the three-way split]. Even at that, the veterans are receiving way more, proportionally, than are the demographic of seniors in our population.” At least one local veterans’ group agreed with this analysis. ”

“Excluding seniors from this levy would be doing a disservice to our aging veterans and those that don’t identify as veterans for a number of legitimate reasons,” such as Ryan Mielcarek, co-chair of the King County Veterans Consortium, testified. “This levy is carried on the backs of veterans and we know that. To that I say, ‘Hop on. We will carry you.'” Even at the lower, 10-cent level, the levy would double what the county will spend on services for veterans.

Suburban members of the regional policy committee, including Mercer Island City Council member Dan Grausz, argued that voters outside Seattle might reject a 12-cent levy as too large. “I would hope that what we an do as electeds is always remember that our paramount duty is to get a result, and that sometimes requires compromise,” Grausz said. Seattle council member Kshama Sawant, who also sits on the regional committee, shot back, “The paramount duty of all elected officials, especially today, is to listen tot your constituents and respond to their needs—not to the political calculations of other politicians. Political realities on the King County Councilare no more etched in stone than they are anywhere else. If you call their bluff and send a 12-cent measure to the King County Council, they will have to go on record and say why they oppose it. If they really want to vote against 12 cents, let them do it. I don’t think it’s my job to make it easier for them.”

Arguments that voters might reject the veterans levy over two cents seem implausible in light of the levy’s overwhelming popularity. In August 2011, seven in 10 King County voters supported the levy—a massive margin for a property tax.

Advocates for the larger levy have pointed out that although it would only add $9 to the median property owner’s tax bill—an average of 75 cents a month more than the 10-cent version—it would increase county funding for services by $67 million over the six-year life of the levy ($407 million compared to $340 million for the 10-cent version.) That’s $21 million more for housing stability programs, $15 more in new services for vulnerable groups, $15 million more for veterans, and $15.5 million more for seniors. “We’re leaving $67 million on the table,” Seattle city council member Debora Juarez, who also sits on the regional committee, said last week. “To me, that’s unconscionable.”

King County Council chair Joe McDermott told me Friday that although he would be willing to support a levy of as much as 15 cents, he falls on the site of the political pragmatists. “I see the increased need around the entire county for all of these services, but part of legislating is working with colleagues and compromising,” McDermott said. “What came out of the [regional policy committee] is a compromise, and that’s the compromise I think we should all be looking at” on Monday.

If the council fails to reach a compromise this afternoon, the “drop-dead date” to vote on a measure for the November ballot is August 1, although that would require an emergency declaration from the council.

If you enjoy the work I do here at The C Is for Crank, please considerbecoming a sustaining supporter of the site! For just $5, $10, or $20 a month (or whatever you can give), you can help keep this site going, and help me continue to dedicate the many hours it takes to bring you stories like this one every week. This site is funded entirely by contributions from readers, which pay for the substantial time I put into reporting and writing for this blog and on social media, as well as costs like transportation, phone bills, electronics, website maintenance, and other expenses associated with my reporting. Thank you for reading, and I’m truly grateful for your support.

City Hall, Election 2017, Mayor Murray, Morning Crank, Police

Morning Crank: A Political Motivation

1. Well, god damn.

I’m reserving judgment on the sex abuse allegations against Mayor Ed Murray until all facts are out, because I don’t know a whole lot more than anybody else who’s reading the Times report and watching the statements that come out of the mayor’s office, but I will say this: the victim-blaming strategy Murray’s team has taken so far isn’t a good look. Moreover, it seems sure to backfire. A person’s criminal history (which was related to both addiction and homelessness) has no bearing on whether an accuser is telling the truth. Likewise, the amount of time that has elapsed between an alleged incident and when the alleged victim reports that incident to authorities has no bearing on its veracity, and suggesting a political motivation or saying “why did he wait so long to come forward?” is inexcusable (and, incidentally, also detracts from Murray’s defense). I would like to think that, in the post-Cosby era, we were beyond requiring accusers to be “perfect victims” and questioning their motives when they come forward, but if the statements made by Murray’s attorney Robert Sulkin in his defense yesterday are any indication, apparently we are not.

It’s unclear how Murray plans to proceed (so far, he has said through his attorney that he will vigorously defend himself against the charges) but if he continues to seek reelection, contributions are bound to dry up and candidates who had been holding back because of Murray’s apparent invincibility won’t hold back any more. If Murray resigns before the end of his term, the city charter mandates that the city council president take his place; currently, that’s Bruce Harrell, who ran for mayor (against Murray and incumbent Mike McGinn). If Harrell declined to serve as mayor, the council would elect a mayor to serve out Murray’s term from among its members.

2. James Toomey, a private security guard who worked for a company hired by Magnolia homeowners to protect their property last year, was already on probation when he pepper-sprayed Andrew Harris, a homeless man who had been sleeping in his car. Toomey was put on probation after being charged with assault for pepper-spraying two teenagers and slamming one of the teens’ head on the ground in Tacoma in 2014. In that case, as in the Harris case, Toomey justified his aggressive actions by saying the teens were “doing drugs.” In the Harris case, Toomey also claimed he was “in complete fear for my life” from the homeless Harris, who was attempting to record Toomey with his cell phone when the security guard hit him with pepper spray. “I was scared for my life. I have four kids and a wife,” Toomey said later by way of explanation.

Turns out that wasn’t the only time Toomey had claimed to be afraid for his life from an unarmed pepper-spraying victim. Earlier this month, Pierce County prosecuting attorney Pedro Chou unsuccessfully attempted to convince a judge to revoke Toomey’s parole in the 2014 head-slamming and pepper-spraying incident by introducing a security video from 2011, as a way of demonstrating a pattern of violent behavior by Toomey that would, along with the incident in which he pepper-sprayed Harris, justify revoking his parole and punishing him for the 2014 assaults. (Toomey has convictions on his record for felony forgery and violating a no-contact order in a case related to domestic violence charges by his ex-wife and required to take anger-management and domestic-violence classes.)

In the video, Toomey can be seen gesticulating and yelling at a woman who is trying to enter the Latitude 84 nightclub in Tacoma. The woman is turned away by Toomey (who later reports that she pulled out her ID “in a very threatening way”), and argues with him briefly before walking away and yelling at him from several yards away. A moment later, the woman begins walking toward Toomey again and is restrained by a bouncer, who pushes her woman against the wall and holds her arms; at that point, Toomey can be seen approaching and pepper spraying the restrained woman in the face several times.

toomey-video

In the police report and in his recorded testimony, Toomey struck a familiar refrain: He was afraid the woman planned to hurt or kill him. In the report, Toomey describes the woman, who is black and considerably smaller than Toomey, as almost superhumanly strong and powerful, claiming that she was trying to “smash through” the bouncer who stood between her and Toomey to get at him. In addition, “she kept on making verbal threats, saying stuff like, ‘I’m going to have my homies do this and do that,'” Toomey said. “You see how powerful she was.”

In his statement to police, Toomey writes, “Thank you so much for filling these charges against them, it is hard enough to run a security company as it is, and it makes are job a little less stressful knowing that these type of people are in jail and have to face charges for their criminal actions!” (The prosecuting attorney’s office never pursued charges against the woman, but they did consider charging Toomey, according to Harris’ attorney, Mike Maxwell).

Toomey remains on probation. (The judge in Pierce County was unconvinced that Toomey had demonstrated a pattern of unjustified attacks, and seemed very disturbed by Harris’ use of profanity during his statement.) Harris, meanwhile, continues to pursue his civil case against Toomey and Central Protection, the company that employed him. Harris, who is seeking about $300,000, remains homeless; he says he is working two jobs and hopes to have an apartment soon.

3. Two interesting items from Wednesday night’s meeting of the North Precinct Advisory Council, where the three North End city council members—Debora Juarez, Rob Johnson, and Mike O’Brien—spoke briefly and took questions, mostly about the delayed North Precinct police station replacement, from a roomful of North Seattle residents and business owners. (O’Brien walked in late after racing up to North Seattle College from the Ballard Library, where his monthly “office hours” with constituents were dominated by a group of Green Lake Community Center and Evans Pool users who wanted his assurance that he wouldn’t support “privatizing” the pool and community center.)

First, O’Brien said he expected that the city would begin taking concrete actions to bring the once-controversial, now-wildly-popular Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program, a pre-arrest diversion program for low-level offenders that started in Belltown, citywide.

Second, council member Deborah Juarez announced that she would be introducing an amendment to police accountability legislation that would require that seven members of 15-member Community Police Commission be appointed by districts. At the council’s public safety committee meeting Thursday morning, Juarez announced rather abruptly that she had gotten pushback to her idea of district representation by CPC members, who suggested that district appointments “would limit the available pool of applicants to those living in the districts … when there might be an ideal candidate living elsewhere. The translation for me,” Juarez continued, “is that there is an assumption—an unfair assumption and a bias—that there will be no qualified applicants [in each district.] … That’s a false narrative.”

Enrique Gonzalez, a CPC member who was at the previous night’s meeting in North Seattle, countered that the current system doesn’t prohibit the CPC from having members from all across the city, but that there may be times when it makes sense for some communities with acute public safety and police accountability concerns (say, South Seattle) might need more representation on the police-oversight board than other areas with fewer concerns (say, North Seattle).

 

 

 

City Hall, homelessness

Morning Crank: A Professional Disagreement

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1. Extra Crank: 

2. A large and vocal but mostly civil crowd gathered last night at North Seattle Community College to ask officials from city departments—including the Seattle Police Department, Parks, and the mayor and city council—pointed questions about the city-sanctioned low-barrier encampment scheduled to open in March just off Aurora Ave. N in Licton Springs. Mayor Ed Murray announced that the city would be opening four new sanctioned encampments (including one low-barrier encampment that would not require its residents to be clean and sober) last fall; since then, that number has been reduced to three because the city has had trouble finding suitable sites that neighbors will accept.

Unlike meetings for previous encampments—I’m thinking particularly of Nickelsville in Ballard, where neighbors showed up to scream and berate District 6 city council member Mike O’Brien—last night’s comments were a mixture of the usual concerns about public safety, garbage, and that perennial favorite, “lack of public process”—and supportive remarks from neighbors who said they welcomed the site, including several who encouraged opponents to actually go out and meet some of the homeless people they were vilifying. For those who weren’t following along on Twitter, I’ve Storified my tweets here.

3. District 5 council member Debora Juarez stole Mayor Murray’s thunder last night when she announced, almost offhand, that the mayor’s State of the City speech would be held at the Idriss Mosque near Northgate—a symbolically powerful gesture intended to signify that Seattle is serious about its status as a sanctuary city. (Previously, Murray has said that he is “willing to lose every penny” the city receives from the federal government in order to protect immigrants and refugees here). “I don’t think this is even public yet,” Juarez said. Nope.

4. I grabbed homelessness director George Scarola briefly before the meeting to ask him about a tension I noticed during last week’s panel on homelessness.  Barb Poppe, the city consultant who published a plan called Pathways Home that emphasizes short-term rental vouchers as a solution to homelessness, seemed to push back on Scarola’s insistence that Seattle was experiencing a “perfect storm” that includes an affordable-housing shortage, the opioid addiction epidemic, and a huge number of people who became homeless after growing up in foster care. “There does seem to weirdly be this acceptance that it’s actually okay for people to be on the streets,” Poppe said. “You’ve had very low accountability for results and that low accountability for results, I would find to be a mystery.” The solution, Poppe suggested, was not short-term shelter like tent cities or tiny houses, but housing, and the city’s resources should go toward providing rental vouchers for people to move off the streets instead of those short-term solutions. At the time, Scarola pushed back, noting that with more than 3,000 people living unsheltered in Seattle (and more than 80,000 very low-income people in line for just 32,000 affordable apartments), immediate housing for every homeless person was an unrealistic short-term goal.

Last night, Scarola told me he and Poppe had a “professional disagreement” about the right short-term solutions. “Her overall view is absolutely right—she wants stable housing,” he said. “I just don’t know how you get there without going through steps A, B, C, and D”—where at least the first few of those steps involve getting people out of doorways and into demonstrably better shelter like tent cities.

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Affordability, City Council, City Hall, Renters

Council Bans Preferred Employer Rent Discounts

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This afternoon, with surprisingly little pushback, the city council adopted a bill sponsored by freshman council member Lisa Herbold banning source-of-income discrimination (in brief, barring landlords from discriminating against potential tenants whose income comes from government-funded assistance programs such as Social Security) that also included a provision banning “preferred employer” discounts, like free rent or no-deposit move-in specials, to renters who work at certain companies (typically large tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft).

Is Herbold—former aide to Nick Licata, ex-Tenants Union advocate, go-to encyclopedia of landlord-tenant law—poised to rewrite city rental regulations in a way that her former boss neither did nor could?

Herbold, an iconoclastic city hall veteran (17 years at Licata’s office) who toes the John Fox anti-displacement line on some issues but is far less doctrinaire than her detractors insist, has seen pushback when she’s tried to tinker too much with city dollars (her proposal to set aside a percentage of the city’s general fund for affordable housing bonds ran into skepticism from the council’s fiscal conservatives) or zoning laws (a recent anti-displacement amendment to the mayor’s HALA plan was changed to be less punitive for housing developers). But her proposals to change landlord-tenant law are well-reasoned and hard to challenge (landlords’ main criticism was the one Johnson and Juarez raised), and her early successes suggest that now that she’s actually in charge, instead of behind the scenes as Licata’s right-hand woman, Herbold may be the most effective renters’ advocate on the council since Judy Nicastro.

Is Herbold—former aide to Nick Licata, ex-Tenants Union advocate, go-to encyclopedia of landlord-tenant law—poised to rewrite city rental regulations in a way that her former boss neither did nor could?

Even if that proves optimistic, renters can certainly cheer the legislation the council passed unanimously today, which eliminates several avenues for landlords to discriminate.

The preferred employer discounts were particularly insidious, because they didn’t look like discrimination. But even if they didn’t explicitly say “young, unattached, high-income white men wanted,” the ads were widely viewed as discriminatory because they gave preferential treatment to people who fit that demographic. In essence, preferred employer discounts serve as a dog whistle for a certain type of renter, telling those potential renters that their money is better than others’.

Council members did raise a few alarms today, and the whole program will be subject to an audit in 18 months. In the morning council briefing, council member Debora Juarez expressed concern that the proposal might contradict the city’s efforts to encourage people to live near transit, wondering if it might send a message to landlords not to build “transit-oriented housing.” In the afternoon’s full council meeting, Juarez and her fellow council freshman Rob Johnson raised concerns about another provision of the bill, known as the “first-in-time” amendment, which would require landlords to rent to the first person who qualifies, rather than deciding based on other, potentially discriminatory, criteria; they worried that the provision might have the unintended consequence of privileging people with Internet access and cars, who could get their applications in faster than other potential tenants. (Juarez said that a “lottery” for available apartments might be more fair.)

The bill also requires landlords to accept payment vouchers from community-based organizations instead of evicting tenants who fall a few days behind on their rent, as long as the groups pay the rent in cash within five days.

Last year, when I interviewed her before the general election, Herbold told me eliminating preferred employer provisions was one of her top priorities, because she believed that “preferential practices for some result in discriminatory outcomes for others.” Less than eight months into her term, she can check that one off her list.

City Council, Elections

The C Is for Crank Interviews: Debora Juarez

Now that the primary-election field of 47 has been narrowed to a comparatively manageable 18, I’m sitting down with all the council candidates to talk about what they’ve learned so far, their campaign plans going forward, and their views on the issues that will shape the election, including density, “neighborhood character,” crime, parking, police accountability, and diversity. I’ll be rolling out all 17 of my interviews (Kshama Sawant was the only candidate who declined to sit down with me) over the next few weeks.

If you want to help me continue to do interviews like this one, plus on-the-ground reporting, deep dives on issues like affordability and transportation, breaking news, and incisive analysis, please consider becoming a sustaining supporter by pledging a few bucks at Patreon. This work costs money and (lots of) time, so I really appreciate every bit of support I receive from my readers.

Today’s interview is with Deborah Juarez, a lawyer, member of the Blackfeet tribe, and former King County Superior Court judge who’s running in North Seattle’s District 5.

debora_juarez-1The C Is for Crank [ECB]: You’re not someone I’ve seen around much in local politics before this election. Did the new district elections system make a difference in your decision to run?

Debora Juarez [DJ]: Because we now have a district elections system, two things are happening. People are feeling in the mix because we’re a district. Having a district system is getting people motivated and activated and getting more people involved in the process. And it isn’t just any particular interest group that wants a bike lane or to save the [Lake City] beach. What we’re actually talking about is, what is District Five going to look like in four years? I want to represent and advocate for the district and honor them while also serve the greater Seattle area.

When you run in a district, you live with the people who elected you, which is great. What I like about it is, because I’ve lived here for 25 years in five different neighborhoods, as a homeowner and a renter, people aren’t worried about me going on and on about Shell. They care about affordable housing, getting a transit center, connecting Thornton Creek and the North Seattle Community College, building a real community center with real services. A community center is almost like a neighborhood tribal center. Everything’s there: Social services, evening classes,  open space. A real community center doesn’t mean a couple of rooms and a kitchen.

The other exciting part is economic vitality. Lake City is one the 18 urban centers targeted for development, and the question is, what does that look like? You know you want to be an economic anchor and engine and become a destination for the city. There needs to be equity and safety.  When I say “equity,” I mean, you can’t just serve rich neighborhoods on Lake Washington but not the places that surround them. There are some neighborhoods that need sidewalks more than others. I live on the bottom of a hill, and up the hill, they’ve all got sidewalks and they’re all brand new because when they built, they had [erosion problems], and so they needed them. I hope it goes beyond the squeaky wheel gets the grease. In Indian country, you would call that nation building.

ECB: Would you have considered running for city council if we did not have a district system?

DJ: I  would not be running for Seattle City Council if we hadn’t moved to a district system, because I don’t think one person can be accountable to a city as large and diverse as ours. [Under the current system], you have a council handwringing, and pandering, and not paying attention to their neighborhoods, because the downtown core and other certain groups had all the influence. This is my neighborhood. I have raised my kids here, despite the fact that I couldn’t have owned a house under the racial covenants that are mentioned in the HALA report. I’ve always been a renter. I didn’t know what a mortgage was until I went to law school. I was born in 1959 and my mom, in my neighborhood, could not have bought a house at that time.

ECB: Your opponent, Sandy Brown, has criticized you from taking a lot of money from out of town, much of it from members of Native American tribes outside the city. How do you respond?

DJ: There are no borders when it comes to Indian country and how this area was established. They have sovereignty. When you question that, you’re basically saying that the tribes are outsiders and their money is somehow from outsiders. These are tribes. This is their land. And if people want to label them as outsiders or say it’s money from outside city limits, that it’s “outside money,” I’ll bite. Yes, the tribes want to do business with the city of Seattle. But the tribes have been in this area long before the city sf Seattle and this is their land. The tribes are supporting me because I’m one of them. I was raised with them.

ECB: You’re running for a districted seat, with boundaries, to represent a city that also has boundaries. Why is it not legitimate to ask what interests the tribes might have in giving you money?

DJ: It’s the Snoqualmie and Muckleshoot who are in King County. If you people want to draw lines like you do, fine. You ask what is their interest. You have the Muckleshoot and Snoqualmie tribes, who make up less than 3 percent of the King County population, and they’re the fourth largest employer in King County. Their workers live here. Who represents their interests? You have two sovereign nations within King County. Seattle is the biggest city in the state. The city of Seattle does rely on and seek the opinion of the Duwamish and the recognized Snoqualmie and Muckleshoot tribes. Everett worked really closely with the Tulalip. When you bring more people to the table, you have less lawsuits. The tribes diversify the economy. They diversify where they spend their money. They want to invest in Seattle.

When you say, “outsider,” [Ed. note: I said money from outside Seattle, not “outsider”], I find it offensive. I find it offensive that people would call the tribes outsiders. How are the tribes different from the people at Gates or Weyerhauser? The whole reason why the tribes support me is I’m one of them, and they care about me, and I came from the reservation. I’m a success story. They don’t want anything from me. I worked for the governor [as an attorney] and I negotiated on the other side, but they were glad I was there. It’s more philosophical. They’re proud for me and they love me.

ECB: Talking about some of the recommendations from the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda task force, your opponent has said that he thinks developers shouldn’t be allowed to build until neighborhoods have the amenities they need, including bus lines. Do you agree, and what did you think of the HALA recommendations?

DJ: I’m impressed that it was consensus-based and that there were only nine areas out of 65 recommendations where they didn’t agree. I don’t think you should wait [for density], because I don’t think anyone should have to sleep outside. It’s a red herring when people say we should wait until we have all the information before we can build affordable housing. As a person who’s built housing, golf courses, and casinos, I know the brick and mortar system and what happens when you want to build. There’s layers of decisions. It’s naive to think you have to build [infrastructure] before you can actually build housing. The tribes say, we’re going to put a casino here and a convention center there, and the way it gets built and how it gets planned happens the same way when you’re using debt financing and you have a public function. It’s still discussed the same way and the horse trading, as my people call, still happens. That’s how you build stuff.

[This debate] underscores why it’s good that we’re in a district system. We don’t have everyone to say, “This is how we did it before.” I know my neighborhood and I can say what we need. 

The city is very clear that we have quite a way to go [on outreach] on the north end. In [HALA] public comment, they only had, like, 100 responses from people. Some of them said they would rather have a dream neighborhood than a dream house. That was encouraging. What people really want is a neighborhood. A ZIP code is so key. Where your born shouldn’t determine the whole course of your life. HALA is what we need. It’s kind of like what happened when Al Gore did “An Inconvenient Truth.” It shook people’s consciences and made people uncomfortable, and when people get uncomfortable and caught off-guard, people get nervous.

ECB: It seems to me that after the HALA recommendations came out, the mayor and other supporters backtracked on some of the report’s language about how racist zoning covenants led to our current land use map and made certain parts of the city enclaves for wealthy white homeowners. Were you disappointed to see that happen?

DJ: I was disappointed. I think the white community is starting to realize this system and this constitution and this democracy were made for them. The constitution was written for white male property owners. It wasn’t until the 13th Amendment that black men could vote, and it still wasn’t allowed for women. Our people didn’t get to vote until 1932. HALA pushed back against that system.

ECB: What, if anything, did you learn from your DUI three years ago that was uncovered by the Seattle Times earlier this year?

DJ: The past is always with you, no matter how hard you try to look away. I’ve always said this and what I said about the DUI is that when you have pain and healing, it doesn’t mean damage doesn’t happen, but from the damage you heal. The Creator will teach you this lesson. It will come over and over and over again until you get it. It will come in different ways, that lesson, until you get it. I made the mistake. The difference is that it doesn’t mean that that’s the only thing I’ll ever do. I am flawed and I’m very vulnerable. I went through that pain with my mother and my daughters at my side. You can’t learn values unless you have had obstacles, unless you have had pain. You need those character-building experiences in your life, and that was one of them for me.

Previously:

Shannon Braddock, District 1

Lisa Herbold, District 1

Bruce Harrell, District 2

Tammy Morales, District 2

Michael Maddux, District 4

Rob Johnson, District 4

Sandy Brown, District 5

Mike O’Brien, District 6

Catherine Weatbrook, District 6

Deborah Zech-Artis, District 7

Sally Bagshaw, District 7

Tim Burgess, Position 8

Jon Grant, Position 8

Lorena Gonzalez, Position 9

Bill Bradburd, Position 9

City Council, Elections

A Last-Minute Challenge to Banks Endorsement in the 37th

The upheaval in the 37th District Democrats about the group’s endorsement process, which led to a narrow vote to endorse District 3 candidate Pamela Banks over council incumbent Kshama Sawant, in part, because Sawant is not a Democrat, continues to reverberate.

Late last week, Erin Schultz, who works for Banks’ consultant Christian Sinderman, sent out an “open letter from members of the 37th District Democrats” expressing concern about some members’ efforts “to disqualify the endorsement votes of some of our East African members based on who they supported for City Council. As Democrats, we are passionate about the right to vote, and we condemn any move to silence our members.”

Currently, the district’s rules say that a member must live in the district and must have been a dues-paying member for 25 days prior to a vote. Due to confusion over some new members, a few members may have voted who weren’t eligible, according to a statement district chair Rory O’Sullivan posted to the group’s website. According to two 37th District Democrats members, Banks needed at least 73 votes to win the endorsement, and received exactly that number.

Without the ineligible members, it’s possible that Banks wouldn’t have received the Dems’ nod. (The win would have then gone to “no endorsement,” the de facto Sawant endorsement). Banks finished far behind Sawant in the September primary, and has raised far less than the Socialist going into the general, making endorsements from groups like the Democrats more important than they might be for a candidate with a comfortable lead.

Commenting on my original Facebook post about this, a Democrat who was present at the meeting said she couldn’t remember any instance in this past where members sought to challenge people’s eligibility to vote on endorsements after the fact.

A couple of other random election-related notes:

District 5 candidate Sandy Brown, who came in far behind Debora Juarez in the primary election, is accusing Juarez of avoiding campaign forums where she’d have to appear with him. Late last month, Brown posted a series of tweets with hashtags like #whereisjuarez and #emptychair (sorry, Sandy, that one’s kinda already taken), such as this one, on September 23: “How do we debate N Seattle issues if 1/2 candidates won’t appear?” 

Asked about her absences (apparently, Juarez missed three appearances in September, but her campaign said she had attended “at least 23” by the time Brown wrote his tweets), Juarez’s campaign manager Tyler Emsky said, “Debora was out of town (on a short family trip) for the Sept. 3rd Haller Lake Community Club forum.  She also was not able to attend a small neighborhood block party on September 13th due to an unavoidable last minute personal situation. …We have also declined the invitation of the group putting on the Oct. 1st candidate forum at Ingraham High School. This was very tough for us to do, but we had little choice. We received information from multiple sources that a few members of the group had succeeded in setting up the debate to be highly impartial.” Three of people reportedly organizing that forum are Brown contributors.

The meeting Emsky was referring to was ultimately turned into a meet-and-greet for Brown’s campaign.

Speaking of campaign contributions, Vulcan, along with the SEIU 775 health care workers’ union, is holding a fundraiser on October 12 for Position 8 candidate Tim Burgess and Position 9 candidate Lorena Gonzalez, at SEIU headquarters downtown.