1. On August 12, the reporters, anchors, and other on-air staff at KOMO TV, a station owned by the conservative media company Sinclair, are scheduled vote on a proposal to leave their union, the Screenwriters Guild/ American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA). The action, known as a decertification petition, was filed with the National Labor Relations Board last month, with reporter Jeremy Harris submitting the paperwork.
The group of KOMO staffers who want to leave the union is represented by the National Right to Work Foundation, a national anti-union organization.
It would be easy enough to characterize Sinclair staffers as anti-union activists politically aligned with their bosses and a controversial national anti-labor group. KOMO’s anchors and high-profile “talent,” including vocal Katie Wilson critic Chris Daniels and “Seattle Is Dying” creator Eric Johnson, who’s now retired, skew conservative.
But the issues at play in KOMO’s union debate seem a bit more complicated. On-air reporters and editors typically negotiate their own individual contracts with management, rather than working through the union, and the minimum union guarantee for reporters is reportedly in the mid-five figures—far below what most on-air reporters and anchors actually make. The group already gets its health care through Sinclair, rather than the union. Union dues cost money. All of that has prompted a robust internal debate at KOMO about whether union representation is worth it.
Holding a decertification vote requires a petition signed by at least 30 percent of represented staff; the KOMO petition reportedly received more than 60 percent support.
Patrick Semmens, a spokesman for the NRWF, said the KOMO staffers reached out to the group for legal representation. Semmens didn’t offer specific details about why KOMO’s reporters and anchors wanted to de-unionize, but said typical reasons include the union’s responsiveness—”sometimes they aren’t around except when it comes time to pay dues”—the cost of dues, and political objections to unionization.
No one from the anchors’ and reporters’ group was authorized to speak with PubliCola on the record. SAG-AFTRA’s local representative did not respond to a call and email Thursday.
2. Former police chief Shon Barnes will receive 29 days of additional full pay, on top of his previously reported $700,000 payout, PubliCola has learned—a total additional payout of $41,653. Mayor Katie Wilson’s office confirmed this additional payout on Friday.
The total Barnes will receive in exchange for signing a settlement, which includes a stipulation that he won’t sue the city, now tops twice his annual salary. Barnes was police chief for just over 17 months.
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It’s unclear how much official time Barnes took off during 2026; we’ve asked SPD and the mayor’s office how much paid time Barnes got off each year and whether it rolled over from year to year. As we’ve reported, Barnes had planned to be out of town for 12 weeks through August 10 of this year; that includes time spent at his family home in Chicago as well as vacation time and conferences.
3. I talked about Mayor Katie Wilson’s decision to part ways with former police chief Shon Barnes, Tuesday’s election in legislative and local races, and more news from this week on three different shows this week, two of them with my Seattle Nice co-host Sandeep Kaushik. In roughly descending order of spiciness, they are:
- Seattle Nice (in which Sandeep, David, and I debate how Wilson handled the Barnes decision and whether anyone pays attention to which legislative candidates the mayor endorses—also embedded below);
- KUOW’s Seattle Now (Sandeep and me again, talking with Patricia Murphy about the same topics, with a dash of public radio politesse and zero cusses!
- City Cast Seattle (with host Jane Hu and the Seattle Times’ tech reporter Alex Halverson, also about elections and the police chief, plus what’s really going on with the big local companies’ AI spending).