Tag: Seattle Metro Chamber

Crime, King County, Mayor Wilson, Police, public safety

King County Enlists Uncanny AI Videos for Ethics Training; Drop in Mayor’s Approval Rating Follows Anti-Wilson Media Frenzy

1. King County is using what it calls an “innovative tool” to train 4,000 executive branch employees on how to prevent waste, fraud, and misuse of public dollars: A series of short videos in which an uncanny AI avatar, wearing a tech CEO-style quarter-zip fleece, recites scripts about various training topics in front of shelves filled with leather-bound books.

According to a King County spokesperson, the videos are part of a new training protocol the county instituted “as part of Executive Girmay Zahilay’s Better Government actions,” after an audit found potential fraud, waste, and abuse of funds in youth contracts overseen by the Department of Community and Human Services.

A quick reverse image search found dozens of identical-looking videos produced for a wide range of small companies, from a “dental AI” company to a rare-earth metal dealer to a flower shop.

Usually, the AI speaks with a plummy British accent, but occasionally it speaks in other languages, like German, or in the American accent King County’s IT department chose for the training videos.

The King County spokesperson said the AI videos are based on an anti-fraud training DCHS launched in April, and said the content was generated by humans at DCHS, “in consultation with King County’s Finance and Business Operations Division.”

King County IT put together the videos using a company called Synthesia, which costs the county about $900 a year. According to the spokesperson, the IT department approved the use of the company under the county’s AI policy.

“King County embraces the use of innovative tools, including AI,” the spokesperson said. “The training went through multiple reviews internally to ensure accuracy, the AI-generated presenter has been disclosed to staff, and no prohibited County data was provided to the AI service.”

We think they dost protest a bit too much. Our question was, “Does DCHS believe this kind of AI talking head video is an effective training tool, and if so, why?”

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2. The Seattle Metro Chamber of Commerce released another batch of poll results on Thursday. (The first poll, done in collaboration with Challenge Seattle and released earlier this week, purported to show overwhelming support for police camera surveillance in Seattle neighborhoods). One poll question found that Mayor Katie Wilson’s approval rating has slipped 20 percentage points, to 37 percent; the other showed broad public support for a long list of potential public safety strategies and interventions.

Local media outlets interpreted the results as bad news for Wilson, which is certainly the case with her approval rating. But it’s worth noting, as my friend and colleague Marcus Harrison Green did on Bluesky, that approval ratings don’t exist in a vacuum: The same media that’s dutifully reporting on the mayor’s drop in support has also spent the last several weeks falling over themselves to blame Wilson for a delayed press conference after a shooting at the Bite of Seattle last month and suggest that she fired former police chief Shon Barnes on a baseless whim. (Marcus, citing his podcast co-host Nora Kenworthy, also pointed out that the backlash is transparently gendered, and I’ll add that it’s also ageist—no one would say Bruce Harrell had no right to fire his department heads or tell them what to do.)

As we’ve noted, Wilson had many pre-existing reasons for letting the police chief go—beyond his embarrassing explosion at a reporter who asked him a question, arguably a fireable offense in itself. And many in the mainstream press have done a disservice to their profession by failing to ask basic questions Barnes’ role in delaying his own department’s press conference while he waited to be briefed from his hotel room in Dallas. The press, as much as any official action or press release, create public opinion, and they’ve been working overtime to make Wilson look feckless, incompetent, and out of bounds.

The responses to the public safety questions, which the Chamber characterized as a sign of  “growing concern among voters about public safety,” are not so much… that, as they are a sign that people continue to support a combination of punishment (arrests and jail) and services (treatment and housing). Although the Seattle Times (which ran the news under the headline “Seattle voters are done waiting on public safety, new poll finds”) was “staggered” by the fact that people like ideas like foot patrols and drug treatment, these concepts generally poll well, as do ideas like banning encampments near schools and in public parks.

None of the coverage I’ve seen added much context to the poll results. Context like: SPD has said it lacks the resources to do regular foot patrols , or the fact that the city already prohibits sleeping in parks. The wording of questions like these is both misleading (suggesting that the mayor could do these things but is refusing) and designed to elicit a positive response. They are, in other words, predictable. But to a mainstream press invested in promoting a narrative of “socialist failure” (Wilson, who’s overseen steady improvement in public safety and increased police hiring, is hardly Leon Trotsky), the results of a business poll are just more evidence the mayor is refusing to give voters what they want.

 

Business, Elections, LGBTQ+, Mayor Harrell, Police

Chamber CEO Leaves, Mayor’s Office Contradicts SPD Explanation for Police Chief’s Bonus, Progressives Prevail in Burien, and More

1. Rachel Smith, the longtime CEO of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, is moving on to become director of the Washington Roundtable, a statewide group that represents large employers.

According to a press release, Smith will leave the Chamber as of October 1; Gabriella Buono, the Chamber’s Chief Impact Officer, will be interim president and CEO until the Chamber’s board picks a permanent replacement.

Smith became head of the Chamber in January 2020, just as the group was reeling from a 2019 election in which the Chamber’s political action committee, Civic Alliance for a Sound Economy, spent unprecedented millions to defeat City Council incumbents. That flood of money appeared to spark a backlash against big-business spending, and the Chamber’s candidates mostly flopped. In 2021, the Chamber decided not to endorse any candidates—and, in that election, the more conservative candidates prevailed.

Under Smith’s nearly five years as its leader, the Chamber  has thrown its weight behind internal and public-facing campaigns to defeat social housing (the Chamber urged the council to delay the election and backed a ballot alternative that would have directed the city to spend existing funds on traditional affordable housing), as well as a number of efforts to squelch progressive tax proposals.

They’ve opposed the business and occupation tax reform proposal, which—if voters approve it—will pay for critical programs at risk for budget cuts; supported Mayor Bruce Harrell’s efforts to sweep homeless encampments, particularly downtown; and backed a proposed city charter amendment, “Compassion Seattle,” that would have required the city to keep all public spaces clear of encampments while imposing an unfunded mandate for homeless services on the city.

Under Smith, the Chamber also backed the Seattle Transportation Levy and connected the dots between the housing crisis and Seattle’s need to upzone, supporting efforts to build “middle housing” across the city.

2. As we reported earlier this week, Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes received a $50,000 hiring bonus when he was hired, as did a new deputy chief and assistant chief he hired from Beloit, Wisconsin, and New Orleans, respectively. According to SPD, all three chiefs were eligible for the bonuses under legislation, passed in 2022 and amended two years later, that authorized $50,000 “lateral” hiring bonuses for police officers with existing job experience.

As we also reported, the sponsors of the legislation never intended for the bonuses to go to command staff, and the legislation itself says it applies only to police officers in the civil service, not management or executive-level staff.

SPD told us the city “offered as part of [Barnes’] compensation a ‘hiring incentive’ of $50,000 under the City’s 2024 legislation, which is related to the recruitment and retention of police officers at the understaffed Seattle Police Department. Asked about this, Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office gave a somewhat contradictory response.

“Chief Barnes is a nationally recognized leader in the field and the inclusion of the $50,000 was negotiated as part of his offer letter,” a spokesperson said, adding that the mayor was “not involved” in the other two $50,000 bonuses. This suggests that Barnes’ bonus was not actually a standard “lateral” incentive—as SPD has said—but was something the mayor’s office offered him on top of his $360,000 salary and other perks. The two contradictory explanations for Barnes’ hiring bonus leave the true origin of this unusual hiring bonus unclear.

Harrell’s office said Barnes’ “negotiated compensation makes his package consistent with the West Coast Seven (Long Beach, Portland, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose, and Seattle), where in 2023 the median salary for police chiefs was $476,454 and the average salary was $424,712.” the spokesperson said.

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3. The Burien City Council, which in recent years has adopted a series of increasingly onerous laws targeting homeless people, could soon take a more progressive turn. Progressives (including incumbents Sarah Moore and Hugo Garcia, plus Sam Méndez, a progressive running to replace Jimmy Matta, who’s leaving the council) hold commanding leads in all three council races on the August primary ballot.

That bodes poorly for Stephanie Mora, the council’s most conservative member, who’s being challenged by progressive Rocco DeVito; their race wasn’t on the August ballot because they were the only two candidates. Mora, a staunch opponent of allowing homeless shelters or authorized encampments anywhere in Burien, has argued that the government has no role to play in addressing homelessness.

Kevin Schilling, the council member who currently serves as mayor of Burien, isn’t doing so well in his own race to defeat 33rd District state Rep. Edwin Obras, either. With the election certified, Obras has 48.2 percent of the vote to Schilling’s 34.6 percent. Schilling lost by the highest margin in the city where he’s mayor, trailing Obras by 15 points in Burien.

4. PubliCola obtained a copy of the permit for a controversial “Revive in ’25” rally in Gas Works Park. As PubliCola was first to report, the contentious event was relocated from Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill after negotiations between its anti-LGBTQ organizers and city officials, including City Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth and Mayor Harrell.

The permit reveals few details about the event, except that the group, led by Christian nationalist minister Sean Feucht, expects 350 people to attend—less than a similar “Mayday USA” rally at Cal Anderson earlier this year.

Although the permit goes from 9 am to 9 pm, the rally and concert is scheduled for 5 pm—leaving organizers plenty of time to hold a planned “Jesus March” in the streets around Cal Anderson before heading over to Fremont for the main event. Organizers have removed references to this march from their Facebook page, but have not publicly said they won’t be marching. According to city officials, Feucht’s group did not apply for a street use or special event permit for a march.