Tag: Nick Licata

City Hall, Crime, criminal justice, Election 2017, immigration, Morning Crank, Transit, Transportation

Morning Crank: “If you haven’t learned, I’m sorry. That’s your fault.”

1.  Have we had enough transparency yet? The 15 candidates to fill the city council seat being vacated by interim mayor Tim Burgess have now had two chances to make the case for themselves, and what we’ve learned is that Alex Tsimerman thinks Lorena Gonzalez is a “cheap potato,” Tiniell Cato thinks it’s her “human right” to talk out of order and go over her allotted time, and Lewis Jones—the guy who made hand-painted signs for his “campaign” for mayor—believes special enzymes in purple grape juice cure the flu.

The job qualifications for the temporary council position include knowledge of the city budget and familiarity with city government. A group of advocates that included third-place mayoral candidate Nikkita Oliver and Gender Justice League director Danni Askini argued that the process for filling the seat needed to be more “transparent” so that a wider range of people would apply. That range extends, apparently, from people who use the term  “colored people” (Jones again) all the way to people named Doug who have the endorsement of “Doug’s Voter’s Guide,” written by Doug.

The clear frontrunner remains former council member Nick Licata, who has participated gamely in both forums, and praised the council for opening up the process to the general public. Tsimerman, for his part, described the process as a “circus for children” that would end up with the same result as if the council had just picked a candidate. Then he was removed from council chambers by security.

2. Mayoral candidate Cary Moon, who appeared alone onstage at a mayoral forum Tuesday night (her opponent, Jenny Durkan, was hosting a campaign fundraiser at the downtown offices of the K&L Gates law firm), has maintained that she will be able to serve on the Sound Transit board despite the fact that her husband, architect Mark Reddington, is a principal at LMN Architects, a firm that is doing design work on numerous Sound Transit light rail stations. (The Seattle Times was the first to report that Moon might be unable to serve on the board.) At a forum on the arts and environment earlier this week, Moon said the potential conflict “doesn’t mean I won’t get to serve on the Sound Transit board” and said that if that “very minor situation… arises, I will recuse myself and someone else from the city will be empowered to make that decision on my behalf.”

After Tuesday night’s forum, Moon told me she believed that if the board was taking a vote that could impact LMN, such as a vote on one of the firm’s contracts, she could delegate her vote to “somebody else, like the SDOT director or deputy mayor or someone on the council.” It’s unclear whether Sound Transit board members are able to delegate their votes in this fashion, however, and Sound Transit’s ethics policy includes no obvious provision for board members to tag in another Seattle representative in this way. It says,

If a conflict of interest is confirmed, the Board member shall disqualify himself or herself from discussion or voting upon the legislation or matter, and an officer shall refrain from discussion or recommendation concerning the legislation or matter, if discussion or voting thereon would constitute a conflict of interest, or apparent conflict of interest, as described in this section or violate any other governmental law or regulation. Any Board member or officer who is disqualified by reason of such conflict of interest shall, after having made the required disclosure set forth above, remove himself or herself from his or her customary seat during such debate and leave the Board Resolution No. 81-2 Page 14 of 20 chambers until such time as the matter at hand, from which such Board member or officer has been disqualified, has been disposed of in the regular course of business. Any action taken by the Board or a committee related to such interest shall be by a vote sufficient for the purpose without counting the vote of the Board member having the interest.

Sound Transit spokesman Geoff Patrick said he couldn’t “speculate about issues or circumstances around any particular candidate or other individual in the event she or he were to be appointed to the Board,” and noted that it’s up to the county executive to decide which Seattle representative or representatives to appoint to the Sound Transit board.

3. Also at Tuesday’s forum, things got heated between city attorney Pete Holmes and his opponent, former mayoral public-safety advisor Scott Lindsay, when Lindsay blasted Holmes for aggressively prosecuting men who pay for sex even when those men may be subject to deportation. (In recent years, the city has moved away from prosecuting prostitutes to cracking down on johns, in an effort to avoid revictimizing women who have been trafficked and sold against their will.) Lindsay said he would adopt an approach that did not result in men being deported for attempting to solicit prostitutes.

Then Holmes took the mic: “We have to hold sex buyers accountable for driving the commercial sex industry that, in turn, is driving most of human trafficking,” Holmes said. “We have a fundamental disagreement [with immigration lawyers.] It only takes a second violation for sex buying before you can be subject to deportation under federal law. The first one will not get you deported. And I’m sorry, I lose sympathy on the second one. If you haven’t learned, I’m sorry. That’s your fault.”

4. Seattle Subway, a transit advocacy group, has been in a bit of a war with the political arm of the Transportation Choices Coalition, the influential pro-transit nonprofit, over its endorsement of Jenny Durkan for mayor. (TCC spearheaded the Sound Transit 3 and Move Seattle campaigns; its endorsing arm is called Transportation for Washington). On its Twitter feed, Subway said that TCC’s endorsement was “clearly” not based on Durkan’s platform (nor, presumably, her political views, track record, or ability to deliver on her promises), but on some mysterious “something else.”

Yesterday, the group doubled down with this subtweet, claiming that “racist shock jock Jason Rantz” (of right-wing radio station KTTH) had endorsed Durkan:

The implication is that Durkan has views that are somehow in line with Rantz’s, and is perhaps even “racist” by association—and what kind of transit group would support a candidate like that? However, I found no evidence anywhere that Jason Rantz has endorsed or expressed support for Durkan—which makes sense, given that Durkan is a liberal Obama appointee and a mainstay in the local Democratic Party establishment. Rantz doesn’t write about Seattle electoral politics much (his audience is more “hypertensive suburban MAGA dad” than “Seattle odd-year voter”) but I did find one piece where he mentioned Durkan—as the candidate to vote for if your issue is “identity politics.”

If you enjoy the work I do here at The C Is for Crank, please considerbecoming a sustaining supporter of the site! For just $5, $10, or $20 a month (or whatever you can give), you can help keep this site going, and help me continue to dedicate the many hours it takes to bring you stories like this one every week. This site is funded entirely by contributions from readers, which pay for the substantial time I put into reporting and writing for this blog and on social media, as well as costs like transportation, equipment, travel costs, website maintenance, and other expenses associated with my reporting. Thank you for reading, and I’m truly grateful for your support.

City Hall, Mayor Murray, Media, Morning Crank

Morning Crank: “I Just Don’t Think It’s a Big Deal.”

1. Yesterday, new Mayor Tim Burgess announced he was hiring Eli Sanders—an old Stranger colleague of mine—as his deputy communications director and speechwriter. Sanders, who writes feature stories and comments on national politics for the Stranger, will return to his job at the paper in November and write about what he learned during his ten weeks on the city payroll. (He will also continue to host the Stranger’s Blabbermouth podcast while working for Burgess). In his Slog post about his new temporary gig, Sanders writes, “I’ve often wondered… what it’s actually like on the inside.”  Now Burgess is giving him the chance to find out, and Seattle taxpayers will be picking up the tab.

Burgess says he chose Sanders because “I respect him. He’s a talented writer, I trust him, and I wanted to do something different in terms of not just another person who’s been writing in government. I wanted a new perspective—a new, outside set of ideas— and he’s capable of delivering.”

City hall staffers and others who work with the mayor’s office are understandably wondering whether it will be possible to hold sensitive conversations with Burgess in the future, given that all conversations in Sanders’ presence will effectively be on the record. (Sanders writes that he told Burgess, “If I do this, I’ll be writing about the experience afterward. Everyone will have to know that going in. And I’ll be coming back to The Stranger with a story. “) Sanders and Burgess got to know each other back in 2012, when Sanders wrote a long, mostly laudatory piece about the council member, who went on to run for mayor the following year.

Asked about the wisdom of embedding a reporter in his office and entrusting him with confidential information, Burgess says, “We have an understanding about confidentiality parameters with Eli—what he can and can’t write about, who he can and can’t quote. We’ve worked all that out.” Burgess says people will be reminded of those parameters whenever Sanders is in the room, adding, “I just don’t think it’s a big deal.” Reporters go to work in government jobs and then write about it afterward all the time, Burgess pointed out. That’s true. However, I can think of no other time when a reporter has gone on temporary leave from his journalism job to work for an elected official with the express purpose of using the temporary gig as material for an “eye-opening” story about “what it’s actually like on the inside” of City Hall.

Sanders didn’t return my call for comment, but as a reporter, I understand the appeal of his new assignment—dipping one’s toe into city politics for a couple of months, at what I’m guessing is a significantly higher salary (Sanders’ predecessor in the job, Katherine Bush, made $127,650 a year), is a plum reporting gig. (In his post, Sanders calls it  “experiential journalism.”) What motivated Burgess (whose paramount mission right now should be to restore trust and integrity to municipal government) to bring Sanders on now  is more inscrutable. Burgess took the office promising to restore sanity and a steady hand to an office rocked by scandal and low morale. It’s hard to see how participating in a Stranger writer’s reporting experiment furthers that goal.

2. As Sanders was packing up his notebooks at the Stranger, his coworkers were gleefully celebrating the firing of another mayoral staffer, communications director Benton Strong.  (Previously,  Strong was a spokesman for the state Democrats and SEIU 775). In a post titled “Good Riddance, Benton Strong,” the Stranger‘s news staffers—Heidi Groover, Sydney Brownstone, Ana Sofia Knauf, and news editor Steven Hsieh—took turns trashing the “bad flack,” concluding with a call for readers to submit their own damaging stories about Murray’s former spokesman. As I said on Twitter, I’ve been frustrated and irritated by many different spokespeople for elected officials over the years, Strong included, but shitting all over a largely unknown staffer who just lost his job is unnecessary, tacky, and pointless.

3. Former city council member Nick Licata has been lobbying hard to fill Burgess’ now-empty seat on the council, sending a letter to council members “formally requesting that the City Council consider me as a candidate for filling the Council seat.”

“I believe that I can bring additional value to the Council’s budget process since I’ve been through it 18 times and have served as either the Chair or Vice Chair of the Budget Committee for a third of that time,” the letter continues. “As the former chair of the public safety, human services, and parks committees, as well as serving as Council President, I’m familiar with both the operations and capital budget’s contents and process. And, I understand from that experience how it affects city government services in a number of different areas.”

If appointed, Licata would be working alongside his former council aide, Lisa Herbold, who is now a council member and Burgess’ replacement as chair of the budget committee. Licata, once considered the furthest-left member of the council, now says his politics are more or less in line with most of the current council members’. “I think my agenda has always been pretty much a rational, cost-effective way to try to get social justice issues passed. That’s not new,” Licata says. “The majority of the council and I are on pretty much the same page on most issues.” Former interim council member John Okamoto’s name is also circulating as a potential “consensus” appointment, as is former council member Sally Clark’s. Neither is a shoo-in, though, particularly Okamoto, who won his appointment in 2015 (to Clark’s old position) by a vote of 5-3. Three of the people who voted for him two years ago are no longer on the council.

If you enjoy the work I do here at The C Is for Crank, please consider becoming a sustaining supporter of the site! For just $5, $10, or $20 a month (or whatever you can give), you can help keep this site going, and help me continue to dedicate the many hours it takes to bring you stories like this one every week. This site is funded entirely by contributions from readers, which pay for the substantial time I put into reporting and writing for this blog and on social media, as well as costs like transportation, phone bills, electronics, website maintenance, and other expenses associated with my reporting. Thank you for reading, and I’m truly grateful for your support.

City Council, Mayor Murray, Transportation

Licata’s Move Seattle Alternative Isn’t Progressive

nl1City Council member Nick Licata, who’s retiring after his term ends at the end of this year, would like his legacy to include amending Move Seattle, Mayor Ed Murray’s proposed $930 million transportation levy, to be smaller and less dependent on regressive property taxes.

Arguing that voters are approaching tax fatigue and that his alternative is more progressive than the mayor’s proposed property-tax levy, Licata has introduced amendments that would reduce the overall package by $100 million and cut the levy itself to $600 million, with the $230 million difference paid for through the commercial parking tax (which would increase from 12.5 to 17.5 percent) and an annual employee hours tax, paid by businesses, of $18 per employee.

He also proposed an amendment explicitly barring SDOT from spending any Move Seattle Money on streetcars, and another requiring the department to file annual reports showing how they’d spent levy dollars each year.

The cuts and substitutions, Licata said during a briefing on Move Seattle last Tuesday, would reduce the size of the average homeowner’s annual property tax bill to $179 in the first year, compared to the Murray option’s $275. It would also reshuffle the tax burden to employers in a way that appeals to the economic-lefty crowd (the bigger the company, the more it would pay), and to drivers in a way that appeals to the transportation-lefty crowd (drivers would pay more to maintain the roads they use).

Dig about an inch under the surface, however, and the Licata amendments are far less progressive—in both the economic and the political sense—than they appear.

Let’s start with that streetcar amendment. It reads, in its entirety, “None of the Levy Proceeds may be used to build or operate streetcars.” In other words (as an increasingly agitated SDOT director Scott Kubly pointed out last week), no matter how circumstances may change, or how priorities may evolve, or how much outside funding may become available, not a dime of the Move Seattle money could be used on streetcars for the nine-year duration of the levy.

This is no small prohibition.  Currently, Kubly noted, the city is finishing up the First Hill streetcar and may want to extend its northern terminus to Aloha in the future. Under the Licata amendment, the city would have no “flexibility to use the funds [for] the streetcar to have better access to light rail.” With per-mile ridership projected at about double what Link light rail is currently carrying, Kubly said, “This is a real transportation option. It’s not a toy.”

msLicata, a frequent rail opponent during his 18 years on the council, noted that Move Seattle currently includes no explicit references to streetcar, making it only logical to make the prohibition official. “This simply memorializes what was seen as the intent from the mayor,” Licata said. After a test back-and-forth with Kubly about whether the streetcar was or was not inherently a boondoggle, Licata concluded with a pretty cheap shot—”This is new information, that the levy’s intent is to build and operate a streetcar”—to which Kubly responded tersely, “That’s a mischaracterization of what I said.” Continue reading “Licata’s Move Seattle Alternative Isn’t Progressive” →