Tag: King County Council

Drugs, human services, King County, Uncategorized

County’s Midyear Budget Sparks Controversy Over Harm Reduction, Human Service Contracts, and Lobbyists

1. After PubliCola reported on a King County Council supplemental budget amendment that would have prohibited spending county funds on safer smoking supplies for drug users, the proposal’s sponsor, Councilmember Rod Dembowski, decided to withdraw the amendment and replace it with one that simply requests more information on the program. It was a significant victory for harm reduction proponents, who pointed to data showing that the program provided access to services, including treatment, to tens of thousands of drug users last year.

The supplemental budget, usually a low-key affair, sparked a number of controversies  this time around.

During a work session before this week’s county council meeting, Dembowski said that in response to “feedback,” his amendment would “modify that language away from a strict cutoff to asking for some more information about the program. You know, how many supplies are being distributed? What is the cost? Who are they going to? What studies are out there? What assessments are out there? Give us some more information, and come back in a few months to let us know about the program.”

As we reported last week, the county spends a small amount—about $14,000 so far this year—on safe smoking supplies, plus some staff time for county employees who distribute pipes and foil at the county’s syringe exchange and to nonprofit groups that run their own syringe exchange programs.

Those programs had fallen largely into disuse as most drug users switched from injecting to smoking; the result was a sharp reduction in the number of people who accessed other county services that are a primary function of the program, such as case management, basic health care and STI testing, and referrals to treatment. Opponents of harm reduction have caricatured and demonized safer smoking programs in the Trump era, claiming that they “enable” drug users and encourage drug use.

2. The supplemental budget, adopted yesterday, also included a modified version of an amendment Dembowski proposed earlier this month that will add another layer of process to every new Best Starts for Kids contract. (Best Starts has been under fire for months after an audit and followup investigation found potential misuse of funds, and possible outright fraud, by some “high-risk” organizations that received contracts during and after the pandemic.)

The amendment adopted Tuesday will require the county’s Department of Community and Human Services to send a “notification letter” to the county council certifying that every new contractor has met a series of requirements— guaranteeing, for instance, that each individual contractor has sound financial systems and “qualified personnel” to administer the contract. Previously, the amendment would have also required such a letter for every contract amendment, which opponents said would have turned routine changes into lengthy administrative nightmares.

The amendment, like Dembowski’s original proposal, also requires contractors to attest that neither they, nor any person in a position to administer contracts, has ever lost a county contract because of misconduct or misuse of funds. But it provides a new out that wasn’t included in the original proposal: If the contractor has taken “all reasonable steps” to recover misused funds and can show that “adequate corrective action has been implemented,” the county can still contract with them.

Dembowski characterized every element of the amendment as “not unusual” or something that “shouldn’t be a challenge.” But critics of his amendment argued in public comment that it still creates more process without providing meaningful oversight, since the council is made up of elected officials, not contracting or financial experts.

Dembowski’s amendment doesn’t include a minimum contract size or explain how small organizations that may be new to government contracting are supposed to prove they already have financial controls and systems in place that will meet the new requirements.

3. Also Tuesday, the county council voted to retain the county’s current federal lobbying firm, Washington2 Advocates, for at least a year while also paying a new lobbying firm, Manatt, Phelps, & Phillips. The contract with Washington2 will be with the legislative branch, while the contract with Manatt will be with the county executive.

Tensions flared over the contract decision after King County Executive Girmay Zahilay hired Manatt through a request for proposals process without telling the council what they were doing, effectively canceling out a one-year option to retain Washington2 Advocates, run by longtime county lobbyist (and personal friend of some councilmembers) Jeff Bjornstad.

During Dow Constantine’s time as executive, the council and executive jointly approved the lobbying contract. So it was a surprise to some on the council when they learned that Zahilay had run a new bidding process and picked a new contractor. (After we published this post, the executive’s office reached out to let us know that the council’s government relations staff was aware of the RFP. “We communicated to all Councilmembers our desire to coordinate with them on this RFP before it went live in April,” the spokesperson said.)

“The renewal came up sort of abruptly—we weren’t notified until there was already an RFP put out by the executive branch to search for another contractor,” Councilmember Claudia Balducci told PubliCola Tuesday. “For a very long time, we hired a lobbyist and worked together across the branches very closely … so this was a little jarring.” It “didn’t help,” Balducci continued, that Zahilay “deleted the council from the RFP” itself, effectively cutting them out of the lobbying contract altogether. “We were told that wasn’t the intent, but this all happened very quickly.”

Zahilay’s office disputes this, saying the council is still “a receiver of the consultant’s services” and saying the contract has always been just with the executive branch.

Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda told PubliCola that the fact that Bjornstad didn’t apply in the executive’s competitive process was “a sign that he wasn’t interested in competing.” Mosqueda argued that the executive had the right to issue a lobbying contract, arguing at a Monday council pre-briefing that the decision “should not be about individual relationships that people have had with a contractor over X number of years. …  This is about how the county can best be represented in these immense times.”

Doubling up on lobbyists for a year will cost the county about $200,000.

Asked about the dustup with the council, a spokesperson for Zahilay said, “we are rebidding and refreshing all federal and state lobbyist contracts. As a new administration, we believe this is good practice.”

Addiction, Drugs, King County

County Councilmember Dembowski Wants to Defund Successful Harm Reduction Program
Source: ADAI, University of Washington

By Erica C. Barnett

Earlier this month, King County Council budget chair Rod Dembowski quietly slipped an amendment into a nearly 400-page supplemental budget proposal that would prohibit the county from spending any money buying or distributing safer smoking supplies, such as pipes and foil, to drug users.

The county’s public health department only runs one needle exchange, where drug users can also access services and treatment medication, but the county distributes supplies to nonprofits that provide similar services, making the potential impact far more significant than the small amount—around $14,000— the county has spent so far this year on pipes and smoking supplies.

King County Public Health (KCPH) estimates that staff distribute safer smoking supplies at the downtown needle exchange for 15 to 20 hours a week, “translating to an estimated $83,000 annually for staff time,” according to KCPH spokeswoman Sharon Bogan. “During these interactions, staff are also connecting individuals with tools to prevent overdose, offering connections to treatment, and addressing client needs,” Bogan said.

King County hands out some of these supplies at its own needle exchange, downtown, and also distributes them to other organizations, including the Hepatitis Education Project and the People’s Harm Reducation Alliance.

Dembowski did not respond to several requests for an interview.

Opponents of harm-reduction approaches, such needle exchanges and the distribution of overdose reversal drugs, argue that making drug use safer merely “enables” drug users to stay addicted. The Trump administration has aggressively rejected harm reduction in favor of punitive approaches, including in recent policy guidance for federal shelter and housing funds.

King County, however, has long embraced harm reduction, which reduces the spread of infectious diseases like HIV and attracts drug users who would not otherwise come in contact with health care and treatment providers. The downtown needle exchange, for example, provides treatment referrals and “warm hand-offs” to the Pathways treatment clinic located in the same location; refers people to detox and medication-assisted treatment; provides case management and connections to housing, food and shelter; and hands out the overdose reversal drug Narcan, among other services.

“Distributing pipes and foil allows Public Health to build trust among people who use drugs. By building this trust, we can reduce preventable deaths, interrupt the spread of infectious diseases, and serve as a bridge to treatment and recovery,” Public Health’s Bogan said. “Discontinuing pipe and foil distribution means that we will lose our connections to people in our community who use smoking supplies and do not inject and who rely on our services.”

Source: ADAI, University of Washington

Caleb Banta-Green, a research professor at the University of Washington’s Addictions, Drugs, & Alcohol Institute (ADAI). said he “was saddened and surprised to see King County do something that appears to be following in the footsteps of the federal government’s really ill-informed approach.” When politicians actually visit harm reduction programs in person, he said, they often change their minds, “because it’s not just giving things to people. It is health promoting and it is literally about engagement and helping people.”

A survey ADAI conducted last year found that in 2025, opiate and meth users overwhelmingly switched from injecting drugs to smoking them, a change (compared to ADAI’s 2015 survey) that corresponded with a dramatic reduction in people showing up at sites that provided clean needles.

In King County, the reduction in injection drug consumption led to a reduction from 25,000 annual visits, or “encounters,” with the public needle exchange program to a low of 12,000 in 2022. After the county began handing out pipes and foil, that number rebounded, from 20,000 in 2023 to 60,000 in 2025, according to the county’s public health department.

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“There has been a dramatic shift in a decade from heroin to fentanyl, and from injecting to smokin—that is how people are consuming substances, and if we want to keep providing public health services for people who consume substances, we have to be adapting to that,” Banta-Green said.

Smoking from dirty or broken pipes, or using cheap, thin foil as a smoking surface, both pose their own safety risks, such as facial wounds and burns—making it a good idea for drug users to replace pipes and only use thick, high-quality foil. But coming in for safer supplies has another benefit, ADAI’s research found: It keeps people from injecting drugs, which is much riskier and can lead to abscesses, infections, and collapsed veins.

At needle exchange sites that didn’t offer smoking supplies, participants were far more likely to have injected drugs (70 percent) than at sites that offered smoking supplies (35 percent), according to the survey. At those same sites, 83 percent of participants said they would “like to get free, clean pipes or foils to smoke opioids, cocaine, or meth,” and 75 percent of the people who injected drugs but were interested safer smoking supplies said they would “inject less often”  if smoking supplies were available.

“All of the evidence points to the same thing, which is when you make smoking supplies available, people will inject less, and if you take smoking supplies away, people will start injecting more,” Banta-Green said.

The county council is scheduled to vote on the full supplemental budget next Tuesday.

homelessness, King County

County Council Launches Action to Address Homelessness Authority’s Financial Issues

By Erica C. Barnett

The King County will take up legislation from Councilmember Jorge Barón this afternoon that directs the King County Executive’s office to take two concrete steps toward addressing the King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s financial issues, which have led local elected officials to start discussing a plan for “winding down” the agency. Shutting the KCRHA down would require either the Seattle City Council or the King County Council to adopt a motion to terminate an interlocal agreement between the city and county, triggering a dissolution process that must last at least one year.

Barón’s motion, co-sponsored by Rod Dembowski and Steffanie Fain, asks King County Executive Girmay Zahilay to conduct an assessment of the KCRHA’s forthcoming “corrective action” plan responding the issues identified in a recent forensic audit, and produce a report on “whether the county should continue, amend, or terminate its participation” in the interlocal agreement that created KCRHA.

The legislation sets a June 15 deadline for the briefing, which will cover the corrective plan (due May 23) and options for covering the KCRHA’s shortfall. The longer report, which the legislation says should include an outline for how to “transition contracts and activities currently managed or carried out by the authority,” is due August 1, a few weeks before the council is set to take up a separate proposal, sponsored by Dembowski and Reagan Dunn, to start the process of dissolving the homelessness agency.

“We need to be very thoughtful about this,” Barón said. “We don’t want to make the situation worse by trying to do something quickly and without a lot of thought for the people on the street and those who are getting services right now.”

Talking to PubliCola last week, Dembowski said he considers the KCRHA “a failed agency, by design and also in its implementation. … I don’t see the necessity or value of having the KCRHA continue.” But, Dembowski added, he wants to dismantle the agency “in an orderly way.”

Barón’s proposal comes in response to a forensic financial review that found the KCRHA had a growing negative balance, could not account for at least $8 million of its budget, and has few internal controls over its own budget and finances. A little over a week ago, the KCRHA’s governing board (on which Barón sits) learned from the auditors that just getting KCRHA’s finances to a baseline standard could cost millions of dollars and take years.

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There appears to be little enthusiasm for that option. While Dembowski (along with Seattle City Councilmember Maritza Rivera) has been the most vocal proponent for shutting down KCRHA as quickly as possible, his isn’t the only voice of resignation. County Councilmember Claudia Balducci, a former member of the KCRHA’s governing board, told PubliCola last week, “I think it’s really time to figure out a different path forward. It’s time to admit this isn’t working.”

But Barón told PubliCola the process can’t move forward until after the county know exactly what’s involved in fixing the agency’s financial issues, determine how much it will cost the city and county to pay down the agency’s overspending and debt, and he figure out how to handle the $200 million or so in homeless service contracts the KCRHA administers, most of them funded by the city and county.

If the KCRHA loses its authority to administer contracts, some have suggested that it could serve as a regional body that brings Seattle, King County, and suburban cities together to coordinate regional homelessness policy, while Seattle and King County resume control of homelessness contracts (something Seattle has already started doing with Mayor Katie Wilson’s shelter push).

Barón was cautious when asked what the future of the KCRHA might look like. I don’t want to say this is the end or that it definitely is headed in that direction, because KCRHA hasn’t had a chance to respond to the evaluation yet” or present its corective action plan, Barón said. “For me, the question is, is that where we want to spend resources, or do we want to put those resources in a transition? I am not prepared to make that decision now.”

Whatever the county and city decide about the future of the regional homelessness agency, Barón said they’re going to have to figure out how to pay for any funds the KCRHA can’t account for, including overspending and the interest on loans it took out with the county. “Both of us were funders and I think there should be equitable and fair distribution of responsibility for those issues,” Barón said.

 

City Council, immigration, Jails, King County

As City and County Consider Banning New ICE Facilities, Local Jails Are Exempted from Seattle’s Ban
Alexis Mercedes Rinck (l) and Teresa Mosqueda (r)

By Erica C. Barnett

City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck’s proposed legislation to bar new detention centers in Seattle, originally introduced in February, has been delayed and amended to accommodate other council members’ concerns about prohibiting new local jails even temporarily, as the original legislation would have done. The new version of the bill, which would explicitly exempt jails from the moratorium, went up online yesterday.

A brief recap: On February 13, Rinck announced legislation that would ban new detention centers, as well as jails, in the city of Seattle for one year. The bill, announced in tandem with King County Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda’s similar legislation prohibiting detention centers in unincorporated King County for a year. Both proposals contains an emergency clause to illustrate the urgency of passing the ban; in December, ICE quietly posted a solicitation for contractors to build a new 1,635-bed detention facility in the Seattle area.

Legally, because of the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution, federal law trumps state law—meaning that ICE, putatively operating in compliance with federal law, can violate any or all of the local and state laws blue cities and states put in their way. But laws like regional bans on detention facilities—and other anti-ICE legislation, including an executive order from Mayor Katie Wilson barring ICE from using city property  and a proposal from Mosqueda that will have the same effect for county land—can create friction, Rinck said.

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“We still will have a law on the books, and if they try to challenge our decision, we will see them in court over this,” Rinck said. “It does force a conversation.”

Both bills are based on local land use regulations. They argue that any new detention center could have major impacts on “water, sewage and wastewater, transportation and parking, public safety, and public health” and that a moratorium would provide time to create permanent legislation on detention centers.

“Here at the county, we have explicit authority in our statute to ensure that land is being used in the public’s interest,” Mosqueda said. “Any detention center in King County is going to not only disrupt the local community, but it goes counter to King County’s interests in making sure that we’re promoting safety and well-being.”

Both bills are classified as “emergency” legislation, allowing them to move forward without the usual committee process. On both councils, emergency legislation requires seven of nine votes to pass—which gets us back to why Rinck’s proposal exempts jails from the one-year moratorium while Mosqueda’s does not.

According to multiple city council sources, at least two council members indicated that they would vote against Rinck’s proposal if jails were included in the ban, even though King County has no current plans to build a new jail in Seattle, or anywhere, in the near future. Banning new jails for a year could create an impression that centrist council members who will be up for election next year, including Maritza Rivera and Bob Kettle, are soft on crime.

Rinck can afford to lose two votes, but not three, and several other council members’ votes can be unpredictable when it comes to legislation perceived as “progressive,” as any legislation proposed by Rinck, one of the council’s most progressive members, inevitably is.

Kettle, the chair of the council’s public safety committee, did not respond to questions PubliCola sent on Monday.

Mosqueda said on Tuesday morning that no one on the council had raised an issue about the inclusion of new jails in the ban, noting that her legislation does explicitly allow renovations at Echo Glen, a youth detention center in unincorporated eastern King County.

Rinck’s legislation will be up for a full council vote on March 10. She said the bill will “buy some time” for the city if ICE does propose building a detention facility here. “I think this is worth fighting over,” she said.

erica@publicola.com

Courts, Elections, LGBTQ+, Mayor Harrell

Ex-Police Chief Diaz Seeks to Toss a Third Judge from His Case, County Council Candidate Claims Planned Parenthood Endorsement After Losing it Over Anti-Trans Views

1. Former Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz is trying to get a third King County Superior Court judge tossed from his lawsuit against the city, claiming that the judge, Nelson Lee, is biased against him. Previously, Diaz petitioned successfully to have Judge Suzanne Parisien removed; a second judge, Cindi Port, later recused herself, sending Diaz’ case to Lee’s courtroom.

Mayor Bruce Harrell removed Diaz from his role as chief last May, after several women accused Diaz of sexual harassment and of fostering a hostile workplace environment for women at SPD. Diaz remained on full pay at the city until seven months later, when Harrell finally fired him after a lengthy investigation. That investigation concluded that Diaz and his chief of staff, Jamie Tompkins, had lied about having an inappropriate workplace relationship and coordinated to cover their tracks.

Diaz’ lawsuit claims Harrell’s true reason for firing him was because he wouldn’t assent to the mayor’s preferred discipline for Daniel Auderer, the officer who was caught on tape laughing and joking about the death of Jaahnavi Kandula, a 23-year-old student, shortly after SPD officer Kevin Dave stuck and killed her in 2023. Interim police chief Sue Rahr fired Auderer in January.

Diaz’ motion to have Lee removed from his case claims Lee is biased against him based on the fact that he is overseeing a case filed against the city (though not against Diaz himself) by SPD officer Lauren Truscott, one of several women who have sued over alleged gender discrimination, sexual and racial harassment, and retaliation at SPD. “Although Chief Diaz is not a named defendant or party in that matter, as this Court is aware, the allegations against him in Truscott are both false and highly prejudicial,” Diaz’ petition says.

In addition, Diaz claims that because Lee “expressly admitted to following media coverage about Chief Diaz,” he is admitting bias, since the coverage of Diaz has been “overwhelmingly negative,” “salacious,” and “false.”

As one of several examples, Diaz pointed to PubliCola’s report on his firing, using an inaccurate version of a headline that appeared on the article only briefly, “Mayor Harrell Fired Diaz over ‘False’ Statements Denying ‘Intimate Relationship’ With Top Staffer.” (I shortened the headline in the interest of brevity, but the newsletter version of the post is subheaded, “Harrell said Diaz repeatedly made ‘false statements’ about an ‘intimate relationship’ with a top staffer to members of the media, to SPD’s command staff, and to Harrell himself.”

Diaz’ attorney altered our headline to remove the quotation marks, making it appear as if we were asserting his statements were false, rather than  Harrell.

“Setting aside for a moment the false nature of these reports, the mere fact that Judge Lee has followed and commented on such coverage gives rise to a well-founded appearance of bias,” the motion claims.

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2. Planned Parenthood Votes Northwest (PPVNW) filed a complaint against King County Council candidate Peter Kwon, saying he falsely claimed to have their endorsement on a campaign mailing earlier this month.

Kwon, a SeaTac City Councilmember, is running against attorney Steffanie Fain for the South King County seat. The reproductive rights group rescinded their endorsement of Kwon on September 18 after learning he told the King County Republican Party that he supports banning trans girls from girls’ school sports and locker rooms.

This position was inconsistent with what Kwon told PPVNW in a written statement, according to the complaint.

The Republican questionnaire included the question, “What are your thoughts on allowing trans students assigned male at birth to play in girls’ school sports and use girls’ restrooms and locker rooms?” Kwon responded: “I believe students should compete in their respective biological category to preserve fairness and protect opportunities—especially for girls and young women. Competitive sports are often divided by sex for a reason: to ensure a level playing field and prevent physical advantages from undermining fair competition.”

In an email to Kwon rescinding the endorsement on September 18, PPVNW Washington State Director Courtney Normand wrote, “As we discussed on the phone last week and via email, there are inconsistencies between written statements you made to Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates and to other groups regarding your position on trans youth and their right to full inclusion and participation in all parts of school and community life.” 

“We hold our endorsed candidates to the highest standards of integrity and any decision to rescind an endorsement is made with careful deliberation and due diligence,” Normand said in a written statement. “We have zero tolerance for the misleading or unauthorized use of our trusted name and respected brand.”

Kwon did not respond to a request for an interview.

King County, Women

In Unanimous Vote, King County Council Calls for Assessor John Arthur Wilson, Accused of Stalking, to Step Down


By Erica C. Barnett

The King County Council voted late Tuesday afternoon to approve a motion stating they have “no confidence” in King County Assessor John Arthur Wilson and calling on him to resign. As PubliCola reported exclusively last month, Wilson’s ex-partner Lee Keller has accused him of stalking and harassing her and obtained a restraining order against him for the second time this year.

Councilmember Claudia Balducci, who sponsored the motion, said Wilson’s behavior since the new accusations came to light was classic DARVO, a term used to describe the way many men accused of mistreating women during MeToo behaved. DARVO stands for “deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender,” and Balducci said Wilson has done everything but deny the allegations against him: He’s denied he did anything wrong, attacked people who have criticized him and demanded he resign, and pretend that he himself is the victim.

“The only way to remove an elected official from office is through a recall election, which is not in our power to initiate or to do,” Balducci said. “But I believe we should make very, very clear that we have a line, and this behavior is beyond that line.”

Balducci was one of the only elected officials to call out Wilson publicly the first time he was accused of harassing Keller, in January, when the Seattle Times reported that Wilson had found Keller when she was hiding from him, refused to leave or stop texting and calling her, and even tried to get someone she dated briefly fired by calling his boss and falsely accusing him of sexually assaulting Keller. She didn’t call for his resignation at the time, she told PubliCola, because ““I was concerned at the time that the focus should be on survivors and supporting survivors.”

Councilmember Jorge Barón said he had supported the council’s decision to give Wilson a week to respond to the call for him to step down, but said he did not agree with Wilson’s defenders who have said the council should let the allegations work themselves through the court system before passing judgment.

“I think it’s important to note that this isn’t a judicial proceeding,” Barón said. “This is about our assessment, about whether this elected official has sound judgment … and the confidence of this body, as representatives of the residents of King County, to continue to carry out [his duties]. And I believe that the answer to the questions is clearly, no, we don’t have that confidence because of the way that Mr. Wilson has acted.”

The vote came after the council withdrew to a conference room for a nearly 40-minute executive session.

Since we first reported on the allegations against him, Wilson has been defiant, telling other reporters he has no plan to step down and putting up self-pitying posts on Facebook. In one, he posted a photo of a church in Seattle and said going to church “gives me a chance to ask God for forgiveness for those who I might have hurt and to forgive those who are bearing false witness against me. May that person find peace,” he concluded—an apparent reference to Keller.

In another, he wrote that it was “[g]reat to have friends that stick by you and don’t simply parrot what’s being said by the chattering class. #Onward!!!!”

In a third, he posted a photo of a plaque displayed at former state House Speaker Frank Chopp’s memorial, of a famous quote from a Theodore Roosevelt speech now known as “The Man In the Arena.”* The excerpt, which is frequently quoted by politicians frustrated with their critics, is about how critics, “those cold and timid souls,” stay on the sidelines and point fingers while the man of action strides forward to victory or valiant defeat. “This quote from Teddy Roosevelt seems particularly timely for me,” Wilson wrote on June 1.

“After seeing a glimpse of what accountability for unacceptable behavior looks like during the MeToo movement, I refuse to have to continue to operate in a society that just expects women to deal with stalking, harassment, assault,” Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda said. “I refuse to tell my daughter that she will have to continue to grow up in a society that just expects that of women. … So I hope that this act today will be one more effort to ask him to step down and to see that he has lost the trust of this body.”

The motion passed unanimously, with only Reagan Dunn—a Republican council member who was present via Zoom earlier in the meeting—absent.

* Politicians love to quote this one partial (partial!) paragraph from this one fucking speech, which is in reality almost 9,000 words long and probably took at least an hour to read out loud. The speech, “Citizenship In A Republic,” is a lengthy jeremiad against extremism in political and personal affairs, with a populist tilt favoring men who do “the rough work of a workaday world.” Unsurprisingly for such a long speech, it’s a bit all over the map—there are references to pioneers conquering an “Indian-haunted land” and Gamaliel the Old (had to look that one up), and at one point TR encourages his audience to “perpetuate the race” by having as many children as possible. What the speech does not encourage is grandiosity or self-pity, which is usually the context in which it is quoted.