Tag: Election 2023

City Council, homelessness, Mayor Harrell

Harrell Considered Hiring Ceis to Embed in Homelessness Authority, Council Starts Government 101 Briefings

Editor’s note: Due to a glitch, this article went out to newsletter subscribers earlier today but was not published on the site. We apologize for any confusion.

Mayor Bruce Harrell reportedly planned to hire controversial consultant Tim Ceis to serve as a city representative inside the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, where Ceis would work to reorganize and “fix” the organization, according to several sources. The plan to embed Ceis inside KCRHA hasn’t happened—PubliCola hears the mayor’s office decided it would be “too controversial”—but Harrell did manage to more or less singlehandedly appoint his longtime ally (and Garfield football teammate) L. Darrell Powell as the agency’s latest interim director.

It’s unclear whether the mayor plans to send someone other than Ceis over to the homelessness authority, which he recently criticized (along with Seattle-King County Public Health) to the Seattle Times, characterizing both the KCRHA and Public Health – Seattle & King County as “county” functions that should be doing a better job addressing homelessness and fentanyl, respectively, than they are. The city is actually a joint partner in both efforts, and provides a majority of KCRHA’s funding.

Ceis, a former deputy mayor whom Harrell hired to advocate for changes to Sound Transit’s station locations last year (Ceis received $310,000 to push for a plan that will eliminate stations near First Hill and in the Chinatown/International District), was recently criticized for his efforts to elevate business-backed candidate Tanya Woo, the business-backed candidate who lost last November to District 2 council incumbent Tammy Morales, to the city council. The eight elected councilmembers appointed Woo to replace former citywide councilmember Teresa Mosqueda late last month.

Neither Ceis nor Mayor Harrell’s office responded to requests for comment.

Now that Woo’s appointment is complete, the council has said it plans to get to work implementing the policy changes they promised during their campaigns, like hiring more police officers, getting “back to basics” like reducing visible drug use and filling potholes, and finding waste and inefficiencies in every city department.

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(Why they couldn’t start holding committees during the first month of their terms is unclear. The new council decided not to hold a single committee meeting until filling the vacant position. In contrast, the council filled the most recent several vacancies while holding committees and conducting a typical full roster of council business.)

But first, the new council members’ committee agendas consist of a series of Government 101-style briefings from city departments and council staff about what the departments do, how the division of powers works when it comes to the budget and executive departments, and how the city functions as a whole. On Monday, council central staff director Ben Noble held a briefing to explain how the city budget works. Throughout, new councilmembers offered suggestions about how the budget could change this year—including adopting a whole “new model” for budgeting, “benchmarking” Seattle’s spending on certain areas (say: homelessness or transportation) in comparison to what other cities, such as Houston, do; and “driving efficiencies” by “consolidating functions” that are being done by multiple departments.

“Taxpayers need to see some good return on investments, and members of the public, they’re just not seeing that today. And I think the number one area where the members of the public are seeing lack of ROI is in our homelessness spending.”—Councilmember Rob Saka

Councilmember Rob Saka, in particular, said he would like to see the overall city budget (written by the mayor’s budget office, but amended and approved by the council), change to reflect the values of the “two-thirds net new council,” which is politically to the right of the previous council. “We need to align our budget priorities with the priorities of everyone here that sits at the dais,” Saka said, “not that of previous councils.” Specifically, he added, the city’s “taxpayers… need to see some good return on investments, and members of the public, they’re just not seeing that today. And … I think the number one area where the members of the public are seeing lack of ROI is in our homelessness spending.”

Saka, along with new councilmember Maritza Rivera, promised to “audit the budget” during his campaign. On Monday, both said that they do not think a full “budget audit” is affordable or feasible. (The exact definition of a “full budget audit” has always been vague, and the city already conducts routine audits of its departments).

“It would be great to audit the full budget, but that’s not practical,” Rivera said. This is something their opponents noted repeatedly on the campaign trail, but both stuck with their “audit the budget” promise until the end of the campaign, abandoning it only once they were securely on the council.

City Council, Elections

Dozens Apply for City Council Vacancy, Some More Viable Than Others

By Erica C. Barnett

The 72 applicants for the vacant citywide Seattle City Council Position 8 seat include six recently unsuccessful council candidates, one police officer, and dozens of average residents with no government experience (and no particular reason to think they might win appointment, given the somewhat foregone nature of the appointment process.) Of the half-dozen or so names that insiders say are in serious contention, Tanya Woo—who lost her race against District 2 incumbent Councilmember Tammy Morales in November—is currently said to be at the top of the new council’s list, with the exception of Morales, of course.

On key issues, Woo and Morales could hardly be further apart. Morales has pushed for equitable density and police accountability, and against encampment sweeps, while Woo the campaign against a homeless shelter expansion in SoDo, suggested downzoning as a response to displacement in the Chinatown International District, and made police hiring a focus of her campaign. If the council appoints Woo, they’ll be effectively overturning an election she just lost—and sending a clear signal to Morales about whose perspective they prefer. As a counterfactual, it would be like a progressive-majority council appointing Andrew Lewis to serve alongside Bob Kettle, who defeated him in November.

Speaking to PubliCola earlier this week, Morales said if it were up to her, she’d like to see someone with experience working on some of the big-ticket issues the council will be dealing with this year, including the Seattle Police Officers Guild contract, a revenue shortfall of between $200 million and $250 million, and concerns that headlined this year’s campaigns, like housing, homelessness, and fentanyl addiction.

“The issue with the appointment processes is that we have very clear guidelines on how the process itself should unfold, but we have no guidelines on what selection criteria we should use, so it it is so completely subjective,” Morales said, “which is why I felt like I need to state from the beginning that I will be looking at people who have experience or expertise in at least one of these topic areas we have to deal with.”

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Morales is only one vote, though, and the rest of the council—feeling their voter mandate—may have more political criteria in mind. If they choose Woo, she’ll join five new members elected in last year’s council sweep to form an inexperienced centrist supermajority. Whoever wins will have to run again this coming November if they want to keep their seat, and Woo—who got 12,720 votes in her race for District 2 last year—may have trouble gaining traction in a citywide race.

Other names on the list of possible contenders include another former Morales opponent, Mark Solomon; Seattle school board member Vivian Song Maritz; south Seattle activist and Bloodworks NW government affairs director Juan Cotto; West Precinct police captain Steve Strand; and—wild card!—Human Services Department manager Mari Sugiyama, whose father, Alan Sugiyama, was a civil rights leader and the first Asian American elected to the Seattle School Board in 1989. On Tuesday, Sugiyama supporters sent a letter signed by more than 300 people to the council; a petition for Woo reportedly has more than 1,300 names.

Ray Dubicki, a writer for the Urbanist, applied, as did Mac McGregor, an LGBTQ+ diversity trainer and 2017 city council candidate. Perennial council candidate Kate Martin, along with 2023 candidates Preston Anderson, Phil Tavel, Shobhit Agarwal, Ry Armstrong, and Shane McComber also submitted applications.

The council will hold a meeting Friday afternoon at 2pm to take public comment on the candidates, and will have until January 23 to make their choice.

City Council, Elections, Mayor Harrell

Harrell Hosts Friendly Press Conference With Council He Helped Elect

By Erica C. Barnett

Mayor Bruce Harrell hosted an unusual—possibly unprecedented—press conference at City Hall on Friday morning to “welcome” five new City Councilmembers to the city, including four whose campaigns he supported and a fifth, Bob Kettle, whose views largely align with Harrell’s but whom the mayor did not endorse. (Andrew Lewis, the incumbent, ultimately supported legislation backed by Harrell to criminalize drug use in Seattle, but Lewis’ early opposition became a key issue in the campaign.)

He was “very proud,” Harrell said, to “see how [the five] led with integrity, commitment, passion” during the campaign.

“Too often, I think, people want to put politicians in a binary box of progressive or moderate, when in reality, this group is less concerned about the hardline ideologies and more committed to just simply getting stuff done,” Harrell said. “And that’s why I think this is so exciting.”

Harrell, a longtime former council member himself, has spoken often of his “collaborative” approach to dealing with the city council; at a going-away event for three of the departing councilmembers last week, he ticked off a list of council bills he had signed and noted that even socialist Kshama Sawant voted to support all but 22 of the bills he sent down over the last two years. (Harrell, who showed up at the end of the event, shushed outgoing councilmember Lisa Herbold as she chatted away in the back of the room during his speech).

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As much as the mayor and council may collaborate on legislation, though, they are two independent branches of government that are supposed to exist in natural tension—which makes the new councilmembers’ decision to line up behind the mayor in his office and thank him for his campaign support, as several did on Friday, all the weirder. For the mayor to hold a photo op with the council majority he just helped sweep into office communicates, in the starkest visual terms, that he sees them as allies, not (potential) adversaries. By participating in the photo op, the new council members sent a message, intentionally or not, that they agree with this interpretation.

The new council is meeting now to discuss who will be in charge of which committee, in preparation for official assignments by incoming council president Sara Nelson first thing next year. (Although the council is subject to the state Open Public Meetings Act, which prohibits a majority of an elected body from meeting to discuss business in private, future council members are not.)

Although no one would talk openly about the new assignments, PubliCola has heard that incumbent Dan Strauss will be budget chair; incumbent Tammy Morales will head up the land use committee; Kettle will be in charge of public safety; and Rob Saka will chair the transportation committee. If those assignments are correct, that leaves Nelson, Joy Hollingsworth, Maritza Rivera, and Cathy Moore to carve up the remaining committee assignments, which currently include utilities, homelessness, renters’ rights, economic development, and governance and Native communities. The council president usually takes on one of the lower-profile committees—like outgoing council president Debora Juarez’ governance, Native communities, and tribal governments committee.

As always, committees’ subject areas will change (and have changed dramatically in the past), depending on council members’ interests. Currently, for example, Morales chairs the Neighborhoods, Education, Civil Rights & Culture committee, while departing Councilmember Kshama Sawant chairs the Sustainability and Renters’ Rights committee. Neither is likely to continue in its current form under the incoming council.

City Council, Elections, labor, Mayor Harrell

City Unions Reach Tentative Contract, Business Spending on Council Campaigns Tops $1.5 Million
City union members roll out a petition for better wages in the lobby of City Hall earlier this year.

1. The Coalition of City Unions, an umbrella group for 11 unions that represent more than 8,000 city of Seattle employees, reached a tentative agreement with the city this week that will—if the unions approve the contract—provide a 5 percent retroactive cost-of-living adjustment for 2023 and a 4.5 percent COLA next year, resulting in a total 9.7 percent boost for city workers in 2024. After that, employees will get an annual COLA equal to or 1 percent higher than the increase in the local consumer price index, a measure of inflation, with a floor of 2 percent and a cap of 4 percent a year.

The proposal does not include a “COLA bank”—an innovation in the new fire department contract that allows firefighters to store “excess” cost of living increases during years when inflation is higher than 4 percent. This means employees represented by Coalition unions could see their COLAs dip as low as 2 percent if inflation sinks to that level, without “saved” funds to add to their annual cost of living increases to keep their annual adjustments more steady.

According to a letter union leaders sent to represented staff Thursday morning, the new contract proposal also includes market wage adjustments for more than 170 job classifications, an increase in hourly pay for swing and graveyard-shift workers, and improvements to vacation time accrual rates.

PubliCola has been reporting on the negotiations since March, when Mayor Bruce Harrell started negotiations with a proposal to increase city employees’ pay by a sub-inflationary 1 percent, an offer union leaders and rank-and-file workers called “insulting.” In November, workers held “practice pickets” as a prelude to a potential strike.

2. Independent expenditure campaigns once again raised and spent far more money actual city council candidates this year, flooding mailboxes and dominating TV airwaves in the weeks before the November election. Together, six business-backed campaigns spent well over $1.5 million, including one—Elliott Bay Neighbors, which backed former Meta attorney Rob Saka in West Seattle’s District 1—accounting for almost a third of that amount.

According to campaign finance documents, all but one of the six IE campaigns funded by real estate interests this year spent significantly more than they raised, meaning that they laid out huge amounts to win elections, assuming that funders would come up with the money later.

There’s nothing illegal or unusual about campaigns spending money they don’t, strictly speaking, have, but the new expenditure reports do put into stark relief just how much real estate companies, landlords, the hotel and restaurant industry, and business owners in general were willing to spend to get a city council friendly to their interests.

Take Saka, who defeated Amazon labor activist Maren Costa in West Seattle’s District 1. According to reports filed this month, the independent expenditure campaign working on his behalf, Elliott Bay Neighbors, spent $472,000 to get him elected while bringing in $307,000—a $165,000 gap. In District 5, the similarly named Greenwood Neighbors spent $280,000 and raised $203,000 supporting former judge Cathy Moore in her lopsided race against social equity consultant ChrisTiana ObeySumner, while in the more competitive race for District 4 (northeast Seattle),  University Neighbors spent $337,000 helping former city Arts and Culture deputy director Maritza Rivera defeat urbanist attorney Ron Davis, against a total of $275,000 raised so far.

In downtown Seattle’s District 7, Downtown Neighbors spent $190,000 helping retired Navy vet Bob Kettle defeat incumbent Andrew Lewis while raising $149,000, and in District 2, Friends of Southeast Seattle spent $168,000 boosting neighborhood advocate Tanya Woo’s unsuccessful campaign against incumbent Tammy Morales, raising $118,000.

In fact, the only outside spending campaign that raised close to what it spent in the fairly amicable race for District 3 (central Seattle), where cannabis entrepreneur Joy Hollingsworth defeated transportation advocate Alex Hudson with the help of $106,000 from the Seattle Neighbors campaign. On a per-vote basis, businesses spent the most on Saka (about $26 a vote, based on current expenditures reported), followed by Rivera with around $24 per vote).

Elections, King County

County Website Failed on Election Night Due to “Traffic Issue”

By Erica C. Barnett

County Executive Dow Constantine’s office chalked Tuesday night’s very late-to-go-live election results up to a “traffic issue” related to a new  web platform and design that has more than its share of very visible bugs. Essentially, according to the county, the new system was not set up to handle the large amount of traffic caused by thousands of people trying to load the website at 8:15 —when the first batch of results are posted every year—and, as a result, the link that would ordinarily go to a results page simply didn’t function.

King County Elections, which has been busy counting ballots after a brief delay when someone mailed white powder to election offices across the state, has not yet responded to our request for comment on the glitch, which forced people at election night parties, and elsewhere across the county, to turn to KING 5’s website, which had the results before they were generally available on the county site.

The county’s actual, “improved” elections website.

Earlier this year, King County IT staff and a group of outside consultants transformed the county’s website into a bare-bones, temporary-looking shell of its former self, with few images to break up the white space of what is now a mostly text-based site. The “upgraded” site—now includes many broken links (like the ones on this page to programs funded by the county’s Mental Illness and Drug Dependency levy) and gives prominent placement to a random assortment of county services: Metro, live traffic cameras in unincorporated King County, animal services, and job listings.

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The county’s 2019-2020 budget included $1.3 million for upgrading the site. According to that budget, the changes were necessary to ” facilitate increased engagement with the public and improve their experience… [by] reduc[ing] web content, so people spend less time searching for information they want and more time engaging with the information. …To ensure engagement, KCIT will invest in modernizing the KingCounty.gov platform and the County’s web presence.”

Post-“modernization,” it can be maddeningly difficult to navigate the site—which, even if technically outdated, used to be fairly intuitive. If you’re interested in looking up a specific department’s website, your best bet is to go to the throwback A-Z site index, but you better know exactly what you’re looking for: “Garbage and recycling facilities,” for example, goes to a different page than “Garbage, recycling, and compost services,” and the Maleng Regional Justice Center—the downtown Seattle jail’s South King County counterpart—can now be found at a link labeled “Kent Jail.”

The county does plan to conduct an after-action report on what went wrong on election night. Fingers crossed that it will prompt to re-evaluate the entire “upgrade”—and perhaps downgrade it to a version that people can actually use.

City Council, Elections

Morales Surges While Other Progressives Flail in Latest Election Results; Mosqueda Explains Why She’ll Stay Through the End of This Year

1. UPDATE: On Friday afternoon, District 2 incumbent Tammy Morales pulled ahead of challenger Tanya Woo and now has 50.15 percent of the vote, a gap of 317 points. Alex Hudson conceded to Joy Hollingsworth in District 3, and District 7 incumbent Andrew Lewis conceded to Bob Kettle.

Dan Strauss (District 6, Northwest Seattle) officially pulled ahead of challenger Pete Hanning after King County Elections posted its latest set of results on Thursday, while the other two incumbents seeking reelection—Tammy Morales (District 2, Southeast Seattle) and Andrew Lewis (District 7, downtown and Queen Anne) began closing the gap on their opponents, Tanya Woo and Bob Kettle.

As is typical in local elections, progressive voters who were losing (or barely winning) on election night pulled ahead significantly in this first large batch of later results, though generally not enough to come back from election-night trouncings.

With another 47,000 votes counted, Strauss now leads Hanning 50-49, while Woo is a little more than three points ahead of Morales, at 51.5-48.2. That’s a big gain for Morales since election night, when Woo was leading by almost nine points, making this a competitive race.

Lewis, meanwhile, is now 7 points behind conservative challenger Kettle, at 46.2 to his opponent’s 53.4—a seven-point gap that’s unlikely to close unless the remaining ballots are wildly lopsided compared to those counted so far.

In the open seat for District 4 (Northeast Seattle), Ron Davis is now 6 points behind Maritza Rivera, with 46.7 percent of the vote to Rivera’s 52.9. In the other races in which no candidate has conceded (Districts 1 and 3—Rob Saka v. Maren Costa and Joy Hollingsworth v. Alex Hudson), the more progressive candidates remain double digits behind their centrist opponents.

In short, the new council will most likely consist of seven moderates (Sara Nelson plus six new members, one appointed by the council when Teresa Mosqueda leaves to join the County Council), plus Strauss and, potentially, Morales—a major shift from its current, more progressive makeup, and a sign that voters were in the market for candidates who promised harsher policies toward drug users, unsheltered people, and people committing low-level crimes.

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2. Council budget committee chair Teresa Mosqueda, the presumptive winner of the King County Council seat being vacated by Joe McDermott, has come under pressure from left-leaning activists to resign now, before the council loses as many as seven progressive members, so that the council can appoint a progressive to serve until the next election. Under the city charter, the council has 20 days to replace a council member who resigns after their final day in office.

It’s an absurd argument, for a number of reasons, not least among them that most of the current council already votes in lockstep with Mayor Bruce Harrell, who openly backed many of the moderates who are currently leading in the races for open seats. A scenario in which Mosqueda “pushes through” a left-leaning candidate like former Lorena González aide Brianna Thomas would require support from both Andrew Lewis and Dan Strauss, against a council president (Debora Juarez) who would almost certainly oppose the idea, assuming that all the other progressives on the council got on board.

More important than that hypothetical, however, is the fact that Mosqueda’s budget committee will still be meeting to hammer out revenue options for future budget years until December, when the council is scheduled to vote on new taxes that could include expansion of the JumpStart payroll tax, which is earmarked primarily for affordable housing, and a local capital gains tax. “We have unfinished business in the Budget Committee that we won’t even get the chance to start voting on” until December, Mosqueda noted.

Neither Mosqueda nor her staff are independently wealthy, and living without a paycheck for six to eight weeks could represent a significant hardship, as it would for most people.

Whoever the council appoints next year will serve until the end of next year; if they run for the seat in 2024 and win, they will serve until Mosqueda’s original term ends in 2025, and will have to run again then.

 

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