Mayor Bruce Harrell and King County Executive Dow Constantine will submit legislation soon to disband the King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s Implementation Board, PubliCola has learned. The Implementation Board is made up of people who represent different communities impacted by homelessness, including businesses, affordable housing providers, advocates, and people with direct experience of homelessness. Both councils have to approve the changes, which require amending the interlocal agreement that established the agency in 2019.
The board includes no elected officials or service providers with KCRHA contracts. A second board, the Governing Committee, is made up almost entirely of elected officials; under the proposed changes, the Governing Committee would take over the responsibilities of the Implementation Board.
Under the interlocal agreement, the implementation board is supposed to oversee the operations of the KCRHA and approve all budget and policy decisions (like the agency’s contentiousFive-Year Plan), and make recommendations to the elected officials on the governing committee, which can ultimately approve, alter, or vote down those recommendations.
Critics, including many elected officials on the governing committee, have called this process unwieldy, and have pointed to the two-board structure as a primary reason the KCRHA has struggled to reduce homelessness in the region. Ceattle City Councilmember Rob Saka, for example, called the structure “clunky and confusing” earlier this year. “As I understand it, there’s three boards oversight with oversight authority over KCRHA, and in my mind, that’s two too many,” Saka said—including in his calculation a federally mandated Continuum of Care oversight committee, which is unrelated to the KCRHA’s governance structure.
But Alison Eisinger, director of the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, says eliminating the implementation board will only ensure that the region’s homelessness agency is governed by a body that includes no one with direct expertise or experience with research, analysis, and on-the-ground work to address homelessness.
And, she added, making tweaks to the KCRHA’s governance structure doesn’t address the underlying issues that have made it challenging for the KCRHA to make a meaningful impact on homelessness—a lack of “deep, sustained, additional funding for housing, rent assistance, crisis response, and support. … The regional commitment to site, open, and operate quality housing, shelter and services that match people’s needs has to be made real by actions, not just words.”
Seattle and King County provide the vast majority of the KCRHA’s funding. As we’ve reported, the agency’s 2025 budget will require the closure of at least 300 shelter beds.
Eliminating the board will require significant amendments to the interlocal agreement, which would have to be approved by the King County Council and Seattle City Council. Constantine and Harrell’s offices did not respond to PubliCola’s requests for comment.
Larry Jefferson, director of the state Office of Public Defense, testifies at the state bar association’s board of governors on Friday.
By Erica C. Barnett
The Washington State Bar Association’s governing board adopted new standards for public defenders last week that could dramatically reduce caseloads for defense attorneys and other staff at the King County Department of Public Defense (DPD), which represents indigent people accused of crimes.
The 12-1 vote could also have implications for public defense departments around the state, DPD director Anita Khandelwal says, because the state Supreme Court—which adopts rules that counties across the state must follow—asked the bar association’s Council on Public Defense to come up with these recommendations to respond to the statewide public defender shortage.
“We’ve seen a high rate of attrition and burnout, because the caseloads… are too high,” Khandelwal said. “And what happens is people leave is that the same cases get concentrated onto a smaller number of people. It’s basically like we’re in a death spiral.”
The new rules would have a more immediate impact in King County, according to DPD, because King County operates under its own unique rules: Under the King County Code, public defenders are required to follow the standards the WSBA adopts.
According to DPD director Anita Khandelwal, that means the county must either hire enough attorneys—along with support staff like paralegals, social workers, and investigators—to meet the new standards or invest in alternatives to prosecution and incarceration, reducing caseloads by reducing the number of cases.
“I think we have a chicken and egg problem here. I recognize that there’s a shortage of attorneys, but I think that shortage of attorneys is in part due to the fact that this work is impossible.”—King County DPD supervising attorney Michael Schueler
The guidelines, which would also change the requirements for attorneys to qualify for various types of cases (felonies that carry sentences of life without parole, for instance), include a phasing-in period that ends in 2027.
One criticism of the old standards, which have not changed significantly since they were adopted in the 1970s, is that they don’t distinguish between different types of crimes—treating murder, for instance, as if it’s no more complex than a car theft. The new standards no longer dictate a maximum caseload for each broad category of crime; instead, they use a formula that weighs each type of case separately; on average, the new formula would give attorneys about twice as much time to work on each case.
King County Executive Dow Constantine was alarmed enough about the proposed new rules that his general counsel, David Hackett, took the unusual step of sending a letter urging the bar association’s governing board not to adopt the new recommendations. Doing so before the state supreme court can issue its own statewide guidelines, Hackett wrote, would “contradict a standing court rule”—specifically, the current state guidelines for public defense attorneys. Khandelwal says there is no contradiction, because the state standards set a ceiling, not a floor, on cases.
Under the current WSBA standards, each public defense attorney is expected to handle as many as 150 felony cases or as many as 400 misdemeanor cases a year—a workload that would work out to as little as 11 hours per felony, or 4.5 hours per misdemeanor, if attorneys didn’t work overtime. “That’s obviously absurd,” Khandelwal said. “If you were charged with a misdemeanor, you would want an attorney who’s going to spend more than four and a half hours on your case.”
PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you. CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.
As it is, high caseloads are leading to an epidemic of burnout among public defenders, and leaving some jurisdictions with so few attorneys that people are languishing in jail for months waiting for a lawyer.
During the WSBA hearing last week, a steady stream of attorneys described the impacts severe overwork has had on their ability to spend time with their families and adequately represent their clients. Larry Jefferson, director of the state’s Office of Public Defense, said his family reacted with shock when he spent a Sunday at home when he was a public defender, because he was rarely able to take even one day off “An normal week for public defenders 60 to 80 hours of work, and [that’s when] they’re not doing a trial. So these standards represent us taking the best step forward to making sure that people get adequate assistance of counsel.”
Kitsap County prosecutor Chad Enright was the lone voice of opposition at Friday’s hearing, calling the standards “frankly comical” in light of the ongoing shortage of public defense attorneys across the state. His “friends in public defense,” Enright said, had two theories. The first was that the new standards are “designed to create chaos” in the hope of creating a new state agency to oversee public defense. The second was that by lowering the number of people public defenders can represent, defense attorneys are hoping to turn the current defense attorney shortage into a crisis, forcing prosecutors to dismiss some charges and effectively “decriminalizing” certain crimes.
Responding to those claims, King County DPD supervising attorney Michael Schueler said, “I think we have a chicken and egg problem here. I recognize that there’s a shortage of attorneys, but I think that shortage of attorneys is in part due to the fact that this work is impossible.” Last year, Schueler’s client D’Andre Glaspy was found not guilty of murdering his girlfriend’s two-year-old son after languishing behind bars, unable to pay bail, from 2017 to 2023—a situation Schueler attributed to the crippling caseloads he was working under during those years.
“These caseloads are crippling. It is an impossible task to sit down with a client and tell them, ‘I can’t work on your case effectively and quickly,'” Schueler said.
In his letter, Constantine’s general counsel Hackett warned that adopting the new standards could create “practical problems of adequate legislative funding from the state to fund the new caseloads and the daunting question of whether there are enough defense attorneys to staff the caseloads proposed.” The county is currently facing a $100 million two-year budget shortfall; DPD’s annual budget is currently around $170 million.
Khandelwal argues that the new standards don’t necessarily require the county to increase spending on attorneys.
“It doesn’t have to be a budget question,” she said. “The three-year implementation phase for the standards is also an opportunity to ramp up alternative programming for the next three years, so that we are using our criminal legal system for fewer things.”
Constantine’s office has not yet responded to questions about Hackett’s letter or the impact the new standards will have on the county’s public defense department.
Mayor Bruce Harrell has reportedly asked the King County Regional Homelessness Authority to come up with budget cuts of between 2 and 5 percent; the city has the authority to do this because the KCRHA receives more than half its funding from the city. The request is a sign that the city’s budget crunch will directly impact the homelessness authority’s ability to expand or maintain the work its contractors do to address homelessness in the region.
It’s also more evidence, for those who are looking for it, of Harrell’s disillusionment with the agency, which has gone through tremendous upheaval (and a number of unsuccessful, very high-profile initiatives) in its first two years. Harrell has repeatedly expressed skepticism about the KCRHA’s approach, ranging from the agency’s efforts, under former CEO Marc Dones, to invest in new approaches like medical facilities for people with significant needs and single-family group homes for people exiting homelessness, to the size of the KCRHA’s budget itself, which Harrell has declined, even in good budget years, to significantly increase.
Harrell’s office would not specifically confirm the request for KCRHA to come up with cuts, but spokesman Jamie Housen said that “[g]iven the 2025 forecasted budget deficit facing the City, we are evaluating all options to drive efficiencies, optimize investments, and prioritize the needs of residents.”
According to multiple accounts, Harrell chose the KCRHA’s new interim director, L. Darrell Powell, without much direct input from the KCRHA or King County, which provides nearly half the agency’s budget. Powell—a former financial director at the YMCA of Greater Seattle, United Way of King County, and the College Success Foundation—was Harrell’s teammate on the Garfield High School football team and more recently served on his mayoral transition team and fentanyl task force.
At a recent press conference announcing the new CARE Team, Harrell jokingly praised the “proud pop,” who was among the assembled supporters, for being the father of starting Husky cornerback Mishael Powell, who “won the Husky game singlehandedly” the previous week.
Housen said Powell’s “name came out of a meeting with the mayor and several members of the Mayor’s Office where multiple names were discussed and considered. I do not know if it was the mayor who first originated his name, but he certainly agreed with the suggestion.”
King County Executive Dow Constantine said he learned about the selection of Powell from Deputy County Executive Shannon Braddock, who “brought this name to me and told me about his qualifications and background. … I did not talk directly with the city, but others did, and understood that … the mayor knows him, and he sounded like a person who would be able to bring some good qualities to this still interim role, and hopefully gaining the confidence of the various parties [involved in] KCRHA, including the city of Seattle.”
The KCRHA has hired a search firm that ordinarily does executive searches for regional nonprofits to identify candidates for the permanent CEO position. As we reported, the search has been going slowly; the search firm, Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group, just finalized a job description for the position last month.
An encampment on property owned by the city of Burien could be swept as soon as this week, after a nonprofit animal shelter run by the director of Discover Burien, a local business group, secured the right to lease the property from the city starting on June 1, and—according to Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon—evict the people living there. The shelter, Burien CARES, has said it plans to “revert” the property, which had been an informal dog park, “back to its most recent use by the community as a dog recreation and relief area.”
The encampment was originally located next to City Hall and the downtown Burien branch of the King County Library system, but was booted earlier this year after the condo association that owns the property, whose sole members are the library and the city, voted to make the area around the building a “no-camping” zone. Encampments are also banned in all city parks, limiting where people can legally sleep to bits of city-owned property like the one Burien CARES now plans to lease.
“If the city had taken the responsibility and said, ‘here’s a spot for the people living at City Hall,’ and put up some boundaries, [the encampment] probably wouldn’t have grown,” said Nancy Kick, a Burien resident and activist who opposes sweeping the encampment. “This was all foreseeable; if you don’t create a solution, then the solution creates itself. It’s going to just be what it is and you can’t control it at all.”
Although local advocates and outreach groups have asked King County and the King County Regional Homelessness Authority to help secure housing or shelter for the dozens of people who will be forced to move their tents elsewhere in Burien if the sweep takes place, those efforts have been unsuccessful.
Earlier this month, KCRHA director Anne Martens told PubliCola agency staffers have been meeting with outreach, shelter, and advocacy groups, as well as the city of Burien, and “continue to work together to seek housing and shelter placements.” However, as of last week, those talks hadn’t resulted in a solution for the dozens of people who stand to be evicted from the site this week.
Last week, King County Executive Dow Constantine informed the city of Burien that the county sheriff’s department, which provides Burien’s police force, would not help Burien CARES or city officials remove encampment residents from the property.
“Although the City currently owns the City Lot, it has not identified housing alternatives for the persons who live there despite constitutional duties imposed on the City under federal law,” the letter, signed by Constantine’s general counsel, David Hackett, says. “Instead, the City is attempting to circumvent those duties by entering a lease with a private party, who will maintain and continue the use of the City Lot as a public dog park while attempting to use criminal trespass to force unhoused persons from the premises.”
Meanwhile, the Burien City City Council has scheduled a special meeting for Tuesday, May 30 to discuss—among other combatively worded agenda items—”the best response to the fact that Burien is one of the few, if not the only, jurisdiction other than Seattle to welcome a DESC facility, and yet King County refuses to help Burien help the unhoused” and “the value of the contract for King County Sheriff’s Office services since the Sheriff’s Office refuses to provide police services.”
Under a 2019 federal circuit court ruling called Martin v. Boise, governments can’t force people to move from public property if there is no suitable shelter available. Burien’s approach of leasing out its land and having its tenant evict encampment residents represents an attempt to “evade the holding in Martin,” Hackett wrote, because the land is still city property—and the city hasn’t offered the homeless people living there anywhere else to go.
Burien disagrees with this, arguing that the city doesn’t have an ordinance banning people from sleeping on city property in general, just parks, and that the city is “not asking for or seeking criminal penalties, fines, or even arrests” for the people it wants the sheriff’s department to assist in removing from its property.
Gallagher, a spokesman for Constantine, said the county has “continuously engaged with the City of Burien throughout the past few months to help the city identify a solution that meets the needs of our shared residents. Homelessness is a regional problem, and every jurisdiction plays a part in finding solutions. But that regional aspect doesn’t alleviate cities from the responsibility of serving their residents and taking action directly in their community.”
Last year the Burien City Council approved a new Downtown Emergency Service Center project that will provide 95 units of permanent supportive housing, with 30 percent of the units reserved for Burien residents. However, that building won’t come online until next year.
Meanwhile, the Burien City City Council has scheduled a special meeting for Tuesday, May 30 to discuss—among other combatively worded agenda items—”the best response to the fact that Burien is one of the few, if not the only, jurisdiction other than Seattle to welcome a DESC facility, and yet King County refuses to help Burien help the unhoused” and “the value of the contract for King County Sheriff’s Office services since the Sheriff’s Office refuses to provide police services.”
The nine-member King County Council is expected to vote this afternoon to place the Veterans, Seniors, and Human Services Levy renewal on the August ballot, although the size of the levy was still up for debate going into Tuesday’s meeting.
The two options on the table are a flat renewal at 10 cents per $1,000 of property value—the plan King County Executive Dow Constantine sent the council for approval back in February. A levy renewal at that level would raise about $565 million over six years, but—due to inflation and increased construction costs—would produce only about half as much housing as the expiring levy and require 45 percent cut to housing-related services. The other option on the table is to increase the levy to 12 cents per $1,000, which would raise about $678 million over the same period. The higher levy would cost the owner of a median ($838,000) home about $17 more per year.
The levy pays for housing, domestic violence prevention, senior centers, and supportive services for low-income and homeless veterans, seniors, and other King County residents. Over the last six years, it has raised around $350 million. Placing a levy on the ballot requires a six-vote supermajority, which means that in order to pass a higher, 12-cent tax, at least six of the county council’s seven Democrats will need to be on board.
In a special meeting last Friday, the county’s 12-member Regional Policy Committee, which makes recommendations to the county council, failed to reach agreement on the appropriate size for the levy, with five members voting for the lower rate and four holding out for the 12-cent option. (Because county council members on the RPC get two votes each, a 5-4 vote in favor of the smaller levy option resulted in a 6-6 vote).
Originally, the RPC was supposed to make a recommendation at its regularly scheduled meeting last Monday. Instead of voting then, the RPC decided to hold off on a recommendation until after Tuesday’s election on another countywide property tax levy—the King County Crisis Centers Levy, which will build five mental health crisis centers across the county, restore some residential mental health care beds, and increase behavioral health workers’ pay.
“Sadly, there is a bond measure for the Kent School District that failed by almost the same percentage, if not more, than [the crisis centers levy passed by] I think that is a pretty good indicator that there are individuals in our communities that have tax fatigue and are not looking for adding any new taxes.”—Auburn Mayor Nancy Backus
That levy is currently passing with nearly 57 percent of the vote. However, both County Councilmember Claudia Balducci, who represents Bellevue, and Auburn Mayor Nancy Backus noted last week that the levy was failing in parts of rural and suburban King County—suggesting a lack of appetite for higher property taxes outside Seattle.
“Sadly, there is a bond measure for the Kent School District that failed by almost the same percentage, if not more, than [the crisis centers levy passed by],” Backus said. “I think that is a pretty good indicator that there are individuals in our communities that have tax fatigue and are not looking for adding any new taxes.”
“I have to say that I hear very clearly the message that Mayor Backus is sending,” Balducci said. “We need to look at what our voters are telling us.”
Last week, around the same time that the RPC was meeting, King County Executive Dow Constantine posted a “community survey” asking voters to pick which services to cut in light of a $100 million projected 2025-2026 shortfall Constantine said was “due to the state’s arbitrary one percent limit on property tax collection.” Constantine’s announcement noted pointedly that services for domestic violence and sexual assault survivors, gun violence prevention, programs for BIPOC youth, and public health clinics were all among the options on the chopping block.
In the legislative session that just concluded, lawmakers proposed, but did not pass, a bill that would have raised the cap to 3 percent. The bill never got a hearing. A fiscal analysis by legislative staff found that it would increase local tax revenues statewide by about $480 million during the 2025-2026 biennium. According to an analysis of the legislation by Constantine’s staff, however, a 3 percent cap would have increased property taxes for the median King County homeowner by $7.96 a year, an amount that would not make up for the $100 million biennial shortfall Constantine blamed on the legislature.
Alison Eisinger, the executive director of the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, said it was absurd for Constantine to blame the legislature for the county’s budget shortfall, especially when he chose to leave money on the table by proposing a flat renewal of the levy.
“Are people supposed to think that government can actually be part of the solution if, on the one hand, government is saying we have a $100 million shortfall and we’re going to have to cut critical services, and on the other hand, they’re debating something that would cost the average homeowner pennies?” Eisinger said. “This is about elected officials not having the courage of their convictions and taking the necessary votes to let the public decide whether or not we are going to house veterans and seniors and support our communities.”
The services identified in the county’s survey are funded with the general fund, not the veterans’ levy, and the county can’t legally use levy dollars to supplant items that would ordinarily be paid for by the general fund; Eisinger’s comments were about the contrast between Constantine’s complaint about the county’s taxing authority and his support for the smallest version of the levy under consideration.
The last time the veterans, seniors, and human services levy was on the ballot, in November 2017, it passed with 69 percent of the vote.
Four potential light rail routes through the CID; the Sound Transit board adopted the third route from left, which Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell sponsored, as its preferred alternative last week.
By Erica C. Barnett
The city of Seattle spent $280,000 over the past year paying longtime local consultant Tim Ceis—a former deputy mayor widely known as “the Shark” for his combative, “Machiavellian” style—to lobby Sound Transit on a West Seattle-to-Ballard light rail extension, PubliCola has learned. The no-bid, sole-source contract falls just under the maximum amount, $285,000, that city agencies can legally pay consultants before they have to solicit public bids.
According to Ceis’ contract, his work included building “community consensus” on behalf of the city’s preferred light rail alternative—a controversial last-minute option that eliminates long-planned stations serving the Chinatown-International District and First Hill in favor of a second station in Pioneer Square and a new station a few blocks from the existing Stadium Station. Mayoral spokesman Jamie Housen said the contract amounts to around 20 hours of work a week, although it’s unclear how many hours Ceis has actually worked on the mayor’s behalf.
Harrell sponsored the new alternative with the support of King County Executive Dow Constantine, at a meeting where the Sound Transit board adopted Harrell’s proposal as its preferred alternative last week.
According to a redacted copy of Ceis’ amended contract, his work for the city involved “developing and representing the Mayor’s position” on the light-rail route, “developing positive board-level relationships that support Seattle’s goals for [the West Seattle-Ballard Light Rail Extension] and enable effective decision-making at the ST Board” and “encourag[ing] agreement around recommendations and modifications considered by the ST Board.” Formally, the contract is between the Seattle Department of Transportation, which answers to the mayor, and Ceis’ firm, Ceis Bayne East.
Update March 29: At PubliCola’s request, the city’s website has been updated to include Ceis’ original contract, which was not publicly available until today. The contract includes heavy redactions, including a blacked-out page titled “Consultant costs and estimated hours,” as seen above. State public disclosure law requires disclosure of public documents except in specifically, clearly defined cases; I’ve asked which exemption they believe Ceis’ contract terms fall under.
Update April 3: After PubliCola asked for a legal justification for redacting Ceis’ costs and estimated hours, the Seattle Department of Transportation provided unredacted copies of the original contract and the amended version. Both show that Ceis claimed 20 hours of work per week at $250 an hour—a rate that’s significantly lower than what consultants at Ceis’ level (both as a partner in his own firm and with his decades of experience) generally charge. Ceis’ contract does not require a specific accounting of hours.
Harrell and King County Executive Dow Constantine have repeatedly suggested that “the CID community” was united in support of a light rail alternative that bypasses their neighborhood, but the illusion of that consensus was decisively broken when thousands of people signed a petition supporting a station in Chinatown, and dozens showed up to hold signs and testify against a route that skips their neighborhood, last week.
Under the contract, Ceis was responsible for getting “key constituencies” to support the mayor’s preferred route and station locations and helping them craft their “comments and positions” in favor of this route.
Supporters of the “north-south” alternative have argued that “the CID community” was united in support of a light rail alternative that bypasses their neighborhood, but the illusion of that consensus was decisively broken when thousands of people signed a petition supporting a station in Chinatown, and dozens showed up to hold signs and testify against a route that skips their neighborhood, last week.
Ceis and his firm are being paid significantly more per year than Anne Fennessy, a consultant hired by then-mayor Jenny Durkan to serve as the city’s dedicated representative to Sound Transit in 2018. Fennessy’s $180,000-a-year contract raised eyebrows both for its size and the fact that Fennessy was a personal friend of Durkan’s. Fennessy’s work consisted largely of representing the city in meetings with Sound Transit staff and coordinating technical input, according to her contract.
Ceis’ firm, which helped draft the Compassion Seattle initiative, received $25,000 for its work on Compassion Seattle, the failed initiative on homelessness that Harrell adopted as a pillar of his homelessness policy. Ceis maxed out to Harrell’s mayoral campaign in 2021 and worked behind the scenes on an independent expenditure committee supporting Harrell.
Ceis directed our questions about his contract to Harrell’s office. Housen said Ceis “filled a gap” when the city was transitioning between dedicated representatives to Sound Transit, “providing expertise, analysis, and historical context over the last year.”
By Erica C. Barnett
