Tag: Heidi Wills

Campaign Crank: Complaints and Accusations Fly in Final Week Before Election

Image via Phil Tavel PDC complaint

1. Egan Orion, the former Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce director who’s challenging District 3 City Council incumbent Kshama Sawant, has filed amended reports indicating that the campaign retroactively paid Uncle Ike’s pot shop owner Ian Eisenberg $500 a month for the use of a former Shell station owned by Eisenberg as its headquarters.

Under state and Seattle law, expenses like rent have to be reported in the same month in which they’re incurred, and the campaign treasurer has to update the campaign’s books to reflect expenditures within five days. After I broke the news that the campaign had not reported its use of the space as an expenditure, the campaign filed several amendments to its expenditure report, including two changes filed late last night.

The first amendment filed yesterday retroactively reported debts of $500 in rent for September and October—an amount that appears to be significantly below the average market rent for the area where the office is located, at 21st and Union in the Central District. (Olga Laskin, Orion’s campaign manager, said the office includes 350 square feet of “usable” space and was in poor condition when the campaign arrived. It has since been upgraded and painted with a large street-facing sign for the campaign.) The second change, filed as part of a report covering a longer time period 18 seconds later, reports the same $1000 as having been paid on October 28, along with another $500, presumably for November’s rent. One person has already filed a complaint at the state Public Disclosure Commission about the initial lack of reporting, which the campaign has called an oversight.

Eisenberg, who initially refused to comment on whether or how much he was charging the Orion campaign to use the space, has since gone on a Facebook rampage aimed at me and this website, calling me “fake news” for reporting factually (via Twitter) on the campaign’s use of the space he owns. (In his initial refusal to comment, Eisenberg politely told me that the rent he charges on the space was none of my business.) Failing to report an expenditure in a timely fashion, or undervaluing the office space, would amount to a campaign finance violation and could result in a fine. The Orion campaign has already paid one fine of $1,000 after the Public Disclosure Commission determined that the campaign had failed to report who paid for an ad it ran on the cover of the biweekly Stranger newspaper, as required under state campaign finance law.

The Orion campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

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2. Speaking of Eisenberg, the Central District and Capitol Hill business owner is one of the top five funders of a group called “District 1 Neighbors for Small Business,” which recently sent out a mailer that featured a list of “neighborhood mom & pop small local businesses” (including Uncle Ike’s) who are supporting Phil Tavel over incumbent council member Lisa Herbold. Eisenberg’s name appears on that list, with about 20 other people who either are not small business owners or who do not own businesses in the district. Eisenberg has an outlet called Ike’s Place in White Center, just outside Seattle city limits.

Also on Tavel’s list of small local businesses: Roger Valdez, a lobbyist for developers who does not live in the district; one of the owners of Smarty Pants and Hudson, two restaurants in council District 2; several partners at downtown Seattle law firms; Ryan Reese, one of the employee-owners of Pike Place Fish Market in downtown Seattle; and seven people who list their occupation as “retired.”

Besides Eisenberg, the top contributors to the District 1 Neighbors PAC are developer Dan Duffus; NUCOR PAC (the political arm of the local steel company); Seattle Hospitality for Progress (the political arm of the Seattle Hotel Association and the Seattle Restaurant Alliance); and Donna and Ken Olsen, who are retired). The top three contributors to the PAC contributors are Vulcan, the Washington Hospitality Association, and Hyatt hotels. Continue reading “Campaign Crank: Complaints and Accusations Fly in Final Week Before Election”

Election Crank: Three Weeks Out

I’ll be rolling out my remaining city council candidate interviews, with Phil Tavel, Mark Solomon, and Debora Juarez, this week. (Kshama Sawant and Alex Pedersen did not respond to repeated requests to sit down for an interview, and Ann Davison Sattler canceled our interview and has not yet responded to a request to reschedule.)

In the meantime, a quick roundup of campaign news from the past week:

• Heidi Wills, the former city council member who’s running to represent District 6, held a fundraiser last week that was hosted by a who’s who of anti-Burke Gilman Trail, anti-transit, anti-authorized encampment, and anti-worker interests, along with some elected officials and neighborhood activists.

Among the sponsors:

Pacific Merchant Shipping Association director Jordan Royer, who was a spokesman for Save 35th, the group that fought to kill a planned bike lane on 35th Ave. NE  in Wedgwood;

Sonja Foster, the former vice president of Enterprise Washington and current Seattle director of the Associated General Contractors, which gave $25,000 to the Seattle Metro Chamber of Commerce’s political action committee. AGC is currently suing to overturn the state’s new prevailing wage law;

Eugene Wasserman, president of the anti-Burke Gilman Trail North Seattle Industrial Association, which sued to stop the Move Seattle transit initiative; 

Ballard Alliance director Mike Stewart, who once called on Ballard residents and businesses to  flood the city’s Find It Fix It app with reports of homeless encampments; and

Former Seattle Times reporter Marty McOmber, who organized a meeting for people opposed to a city-authorized encampment in Ballard and created a petition blaming current District 6 council member Mike O’Brien for homelessness and crime in Ballard.

Both Wills and her opponent, Dan Strauss, oppose completing the Missing Link of the Burke-Gilman trail as originally planned; Wills wants to go back to the drawing board and build an elevated pathway, while Strauss supports a plan, endorsed by the business-backed group whose court challenges have stalled the trail’s completion for years, to add a bike lane to Leary Way in lieu of the trail.

Support The C Is for Crank
Sorry to interrupt your reading, but THIS IS IMPORTANT. The C Is for Crank is a one-person operation, supported entirely—and I mean entirely— by generous contributions from readers like you. If you enjoy the breaking news, commentary, and deep dives on issues that matter to you, please support this work by donating a few bucks a month to keep this reader-supported site going. I can’t do this work without support from readers like you. Your $5, $10, and $20 monthly subscriptions allow me to do this work as my full-time job, so please become a sustaining supporter now. If you don’t wish to become a monthly contributor, you can always make a one-time donation via PayPal, Venmo (Erica-Barnett-7) or by mailing your contribution to P.O. Box 14328, Seattle, WA 98104. Thank you for keeping The C Is for Crank going and growing. I’m truly grateful for your support.

• As I mentioned above, District 4 council candidate Alex Pedersen did not respond to my repeated requests to sit down for an interview. Turns out I’m in good company: Pedersen has failed to appear at a number of events, and respond to a number of questionnaires by, groups ranging from the Seattle Human Services Coalition to the Seattle Police Officers Guild. Laura Loe Bernstein of Share the Cities has been keeping a running tally.

The groups Pedersen has failed to respond to also include the MASS Coalition (Pedersen skipped their forum); Citizens for a Progressive Economy, sponsored by Working Washington, OneAmerica, and other progressive groups (Pedersen did not respond to their questionnaire); Rooted in Rights and Disability Rights Washington (Pedersen skipped their forum); and Seattle Subway and the Urbanist (Pedersen did not respond to their questionnaires). Continue reading “Election Crank: Three Weeks Out”

The 2019 City Council Candidates: District 6 Candidate Heidi Wills

Image via Heidi Wills campaign

This year’s council races include an unusually high number of open seats, an unprecedented amount of outside spending, and eight first-time candidates. To help voters keep track, I’m sitting down with this year’s city council contenders to talk about their records, their priorities, and what they hope to accomplish on the council.

Today: District 6 candidate Heidi Wills. Wills, a former city council member, lost her reelection bid in 2003 and spent the next 13 years as the executive director of The First Tee of Greater Seattle, an organization that teaches kids “to play golf along with life lessons and leadership skills.” We jumped right in on the issue that led to her 2003 loss to David Della.

ECB: Let’s talk about Strippergate [the scandal in which Wills was reprimanded and fined for failing to report a meeting related to a zoning request from strip-club owner Frank Colacurcio, who contributed thousands of dollars in illegally bundled donations to Wills and two other council members.] What have you learned from that experience, and how has it changed your approach to campaign financing as a candidate?

HW: I think the democracy vouchers has that really lessened the influence of donors and special interests in fundraising and in fueling campaigns and it’s really given voice to average people who otherwise aren’t getting involved. Everyone has $100 to spend. When I ran 20 years ago and I felt like to get my name out there, and it was a citywide race, I needed to fundraise. And remember, this was pre-Google. [Editor’s note: Google was founded in 1998 and was pretty big by 2003. Yahoo had slightly more users, and MSN had slightly fewer.] I didn’t have Google as my friend. It was $650 per person maximum.

Remember, I was trying to solve a small business issue for Governor [Al] Rosellini [who was also involved… you know what? Just read this summary], who had been a mentor to me, and I did not question his motives or sincerity or his agenda. And in retrospect, I would have asked more questions. I would have wanted to know his relationship to the Colacurcio family. I didn’t ask that question. I didn’t know the history of the Colacurcio family. 

I was the youngest person who’d ever been elected to the city council and I did not know the headlines about all their corruption and criminal activity. It raised red flags at the [Public Disclosure Commission] when those checks came in, but I wasn’t aware.

“In retrospect, I would have asked more questions. I would have wanted to know his relationship to the Colacurcio family. I didn’t ask that question. I didn’t know the history of the Colacurcio family.”

ECB: You and Judy Nicastro were booted from the council and Jim Compton, who took just as much money from the Colacurcios as you did, was reelected. Did you think there was any sexism involved in that?

HW: Yes. But I don’t want to get into it.

ECB: Density is a major point of contention in District 6, particularly in Ballard, which has changed so dramatically. What do you think of the changes that have happened around 15th and Market, where the new density has been most dramatic?

HW: I’m a supporter of density. I supported it when I was on the council, and I support it now, especially where we have transportation to support it. What’s concerning to people [about the six-story buildings at 15th and Market], and it’s a reasonable concern, is that it’s not human in scale. If we had courtyards. If we had setbacks, if it felt human in scope, not like a canyon, I think that people would welcome more density. So I think that’s really too bad that that was built in a way to maximize footprint.

The thing about [Mandatory Housing Affordability, which upzoned the city’s urban villages], which I think is a great way to include more density in  urban villages, is that it feels as though it was one-size-fits-all. And there are parts of our community that would welcome more density. In talking with folks from Lake City, they want more density. I feel like neighborhood planning, which was disbanded, is the way to go. 

I talked to [former Department of Neighborhoods director] Jim Diers recently and asked him, you know, what about this? And of course he agrees we need more housing in our community. He said that we can bring people with us, and I think that’s true. There’s been a lot of hostility within District 6 about the city’s engagement with community, that it’s been lacking, that community voices are not being heard or welcomed in these conversations. And I think that that’s led to a lot of unrest that we’re feeling now, probably leading to more incumbents not wanting to run for to reelection. I think if the city actually empowered community that would look a lot different.

Support The C Is for Crank
Sorry to interrupt your reading, but THIS IS IMPORTANT. The C Is for Crank is a one-person operation, supported entirely—and I mean entirely— by generous contributions from readers like you. If you enjoy the breaking news, commentary, and deep dives on issues that matter to you, please support this work by donating a few bucks a month to keep this reader-supported site going. I can’t do this work without support from readers like you. Your $5, $10, and $20 monthly subscriptions allow me to do this work as my full-time job, so please become a sustaining supporter now. If you don’t wish to become a monthly contributor, you can always make a one-time donation via PayPal, Venmo (Erica-Barnett-7) or by mailing your contribution to P.O. Box 14328, Seattle, WA 98104. Thank you for keeping The C Is for Crank going and growing. I’m truly grateful for your support.

ECB: When you say ‘community,’ what do you mean? Sometimes people use the word ‘community’ when they really mean ‘homeowners.’

HW: I bring that up. People talk about owner-occupancy requirements [for accessory dwelling units] and I ask what their objections are. They say they’re concerned about developer speculation and they’re concerned about homeowners not being on site, as if that leads to the degradation of a neighborhood. And I take issue with that, because I moved 13 times before I graduated from high school. I went to 10 different schools. Housing instability was hard on my childhood, and I know how disruptive that is. It’s hard on families, it’s hard on children. If we do care about community, we need to ensure that people have housing security.

ECB: If you’re getting that kind of reaction to the idea of backyard cottages in District 6, what are you hearing about  homelessness?

HW: I feel like people want solutions. District 6 is very progressive and people care about ensuring that people have the services that they need. I think they recognize that we need permanent supportive housing, and that a housing-first approach is the only means by which we’re going to gain traction on that issue. At the same time, they’re frustrated by the city’s lack of communication and innovation around how to address homelessness. I think the integration [of the homelessness system], has broad support in District 6. Continue reading “The 2019 City Council Candidates: District 6 Candidate Heidi Wills”

Early Morning Crank: Wills Confirms Council Rumors, Johnson Denies Early Departure, Incentive Zoning Delayed

Image result for heidi wills
via Twitter.

1. Former council member Heidi Wills will soon declare her candidacy for city council in District 6, after District 6 incumbent Mike O’Brien announced that he did not plan to run for reelection. The news came courtesy of Wills’ Facebook page over the weekend, when Wills posted the following in the comments to a post by—of all people—former council member Judy Nicastro, who was ousted along with Wills in the wake of the Strippergate scandal in 2003:

Heidi Wills Thank you, Judy! I ❤️ Seattle. We’re growing so fast and facing big issues. I’d like a seat at the table to elevate all our voices for a more common sense, inclusive, equitable and sustainable city. Campaign logistics will be in place soon. Stay tuned!

I first reported on speculation that Wills would run in December. After losing to one-term council member David Della, Wills spent almost 15 years as the  executive director of The First Tee, an organization that teaches golf to disadvantaged youth.

 

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2. City council member Rob Johnson denies rumors that he plans to leave his council position to start a new job advising the National Hockey League on transportation issues related to KeyArena as early as May. (A more recent rumor had Johnson leaving as early as next month.) “It’s not true,” Johnson says. “I have no plans to leave early.” However, in the next breath, Johnson appeared to leave the door open for an early departure, adding, “I’ve got a firm commitment from [the NHL] that we won’t even start talking about that until we have concluded MHA”—the Mandatory Housing Affordability plan, which will allow more density in some areas in exchange for affordable housing. That process is supposed to wrap up in mid-May.

If Johnson (or any of the other three council incumbents who have said they will not seek reelection when their terms end this year) does leave early, the council will have to appoint a replacement; the last time that happened was when Kirsten Harris-Talley replaced Position 8 council member Tim Burgess, who left the council to serve as mayor after former mayor Ed Murray resigned amid child sexual abuse allegations. Harris-Talley served for 51 days.

3. One issue that won’t come before Johnson’s committee before he leaves is a planned update of the city’s Incentive Zoning program—another density-for-public-benefits tradeoff that has been partly supplanted by MHA. Incentive zoning is a catchall term for a patchwork of zoning designations that allow developers to build more densely in exchange for funding or building affordable housing or other public benefits, such as child care, open space, or historic protection through a transfer of development rights (a program that has been used to protect historic buildings, such as Town Hall on First Hill, from demolition.) Once MHA goes through, incentive zoning will still apply in downtown and South Lake Union as well as parts of the University District, Uptown, and North Rainier neighborhoods.

The whole program was supposed to get an update this year to consolidate IZ standards across the city, strengthen some green building requirements (barring the use of fossil fuels for heating, for example), and impose minimum green building standards throughout downtown (currently, the city’s standard, which requires buildings to be 15 percent more efficient than what the state requires,  are only mandatory outside the downtown core). The proposed new rules would also remove “shopping corridors” and publicly accessible atriums from the list of public amenities allowed under incentive zoning, since these tend to be public in name only.

Last week, the city’s Office of Planning and Community Development sent out a notice saying that “Due to the volume of land use policy and legislation work that the City of Seattle is currently undertaking, the Incentive Zoning Update has been temporarily delayed.” The notice continued, “There is currently no revised schedule for release of public draft legislation or transmission to Council. While there is still a possibility that legislation could be transmitted to Council for consideration in 2019, it is likely that the legislation will be delayed until 2020.”

City staffers say the delay is largely because the city’s law department, which reviews legislation, has been backed up not just with MHA, but with a backlog of litigation, from challenges to city rules allowing backyard apartments to defending legislation gerrymandering the Pike Place Market Historical District to include the Showbox. Developers, meanwhile, may be breathing a sigh of relief. In a letter to OPCD last year, NAIOP, which represents commercial real estate developers, objected to the new green standards, arguing that they would  lead to higher housing costs and jeopardize MHA’s ability to produce more density. NAIOP also argued that because the new energy standards have advanced faster than the technology that would enable builders to comply with them, the city should reduce the amount by which it requires new projects to best the state-mandated energy code. OPCD disputes NAIOP’s characterization of the current standards, but acknowledges that there may come a time when they need to be revisited.

Afternoon Crank: Polls Test Taxing Uber and Challenging Mike O’Brien

1. There’s a new poll in the field, to gauge support for a fee or tax of up to $3 per trip with ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft. The fee, according to the poll script, would raise “between $75 million and $100 million” for “housing for working families,” programs to help the homeless, “transportation programs to reduce congestion,” and benefits for ride-hailing drivers. The poll tests a number of positive and negative statements about the proposal, including (on the con side) the argument that higher prices will encourage more drunk driving, and (on the pro side) that drivers often make less than minimum wage and “are not entitled to many of the same work protections” as regular employees.

Mayor Jenny Durkan has been considering such a tax since at least September, when I reported that her office was considering a per-ride fee on ride-hailing customers. The city could unilaterally impose a fee on ride-hailing customers; in contrast, a toll on drivers who enter the center city—what most people think of when they hear the term “congestion pricing”— would require a public vote.

It’s unclear who’s behind the poll. Representatives for both Uber and Lyft say it wasn’t them, although Uber spokesman Nathan Hambley says the company “would be concerned about any proposal that hurts low income riders and decreases trips for drivers.” The company has said it supports broad-based congestion pricing. Mayor Durkan’s spokesman, Mark Prentice, says, “This is not a City-funded poll.” I have a call out to the Teamsters Local 117, which is working to unionize Uber drivers, to see if the poll is theirs. The mayor’s office says they don’t know who’s behind the poll; they did not immediately respond to a question about whether Durkan plans to propose a ride-hailing fee in the near future, and, if so, which programs such a fee would fund.

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2. Another poll—this one a robopoll in Seattle City Council District 6, where Mike O’Brien is the incumbent—is testing voter support for two potential council candidates: 36th District State Representative Gael Tarleton and Fremont Brewing co-owner Sara Nelson, who ran for citywide Council Position 8 last year but didn’t make it past the August primary. Tarleton didn’t respond to a call for comment, but her Twitter feed has focused an awful lot on city of Seattle politics lately; Nelson declined to say whether she plans to run again. O’Brien hasn’t said whether he plans to run for reelection.

If he does, he may have another opponent who wasn’t included in the poll—former city council member Heidi Wills, who lost to David Della (a one-term council member who slapped Wills with the moniker “Rate Hike Heidi” after she voted to raise electric rates) in 2003. Wills, who has spent most of her 15 years out of office as the  executive director of The First Tee, an organization that teaches golf to disadvantaged youth, says she is taking the next couple months to decide whether to run, and will make a decision by the end of January.

One possible sign that Wills is leaning “yes”: The former council member is running for a position on the executive committee of the Washington State chapter of the Sierra Club. O’Brien first got involved in politics through the Seattle chapter of the group, where he has volunteered for more then 15 years; currently, he serves on the Sierra Club’s national board. A position on the Sierra Club’s state leadership team could help inoculate Wills against charges that she lacks O’Brien’s environmental cred. Or it could mean nothing. Either way, it’s probably a good idea to bookmark the city’s 2019 campaign page, because the race for Position 6 is going to be crowded.