Tag: Seattle Office for Civil Rights

Elections, LGBTQ+, Mayor Wilson

Former City Department Director Admonished by PDC; City IT Director Resigns; LGBTQ Advocates Call for Removal of Civil Rights Director

1. Seattle’s IT director since September 2024, Rob Lloyd, step down on March 27. “Leading IT and our dedicated teams in service to Seattle has been an honor,” Lloyd said in an email to staff. “Thinking more on recent events and transitions, it’s clear that this is the right time. I wanted you to hear this directly from me and as quickly as possible.”

A spokesperson for Mayor Katie Wilson confirmed Lloyd’s resignation but did not respond to questions about whether he had been asked to leave. In an email to IT staff, Wilson did not exactly gush about Lloyd’s tenure.

“We would like to acknowledge and thank Rob for his service and the work he performed during his time with the department,” the mayor wrote. “We appreciate his contributions to our technological operations. I wish him the best.”

Tracye Cantrell, the department’s assistant chief technology officer, will take over as interim director, Wilson told IT staff.

Lloyd, a Bruce Harrell appointee, was a gung-ho AI proponent who advocated for funding a number of new AI programs at the city—including an $800,000 program that will replace permitting functions previously performed by workers at the city’s Department of Construction and Inspections. That program will purportedly “streamline the permitting application process and improve customer services using Artificial Intelligence and data integration.” Lloyd also implemented a public-facing AI chatbot called “SEAMore Voice” and a separate internal generative AI system from Microsoft called NebulaONE.

2. The Friends of Denny Blaine are calling on Mayor Wilson to remove Seattle Office for Civil Rights Director Derrick Wheeler-Smith in response to allegations of anti-LGBTQ bias made by his staff in interviews with PubliCola for a story we published earlier this week. The group of advocates got together after learning that a wealthy homeowner, Stuart Sloan, was working with then-mayor Bruce Harrell to install a children’s playground at the longstanding nude beach, effectively shutting it down.

Several SOCR staffers told PubliCola that Wheeler-Smith and his deputy director, Fahima Mohamed, made insensitive comments and dismissed LGBTQ+ rights in general, including one staffer who said Mohamed laughed in front of staff at a text message Harrell sent Sloan saying “I share your disgust” about the beach. Staffers said Wheeler-Smith, whose previous employer was a Christian nonprofit that does not hire people in same-sex relationships, frequently sidelined LGBTQ+ rights or treated them as insignificant.

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“The Office of Civil Rights is entrusted with enforcing our city’s equity initiatives and safeguarding the rights and dignity of all marginalized communities within Seattle, including LGBTQ+ people,” the group wrote on Instagram. “The statement ‘l share your disgust’ is not neutral language; it perpetuates a long legacy of marginalizing and dehumanizing language targeting LGBTQ+ individuals in public spaces. For SOCR leadership to treat this rhetoric in such an offensive and dismissive manner undermines community trust in the department, and calls into question its legitimacy as a department claiming to hold a commitment to civil rights.”

“This concern is compounded by the broader reporting showing repeated dismissal and minimization of LGBTQ+ civil rights issues within the department,” the post continued. “Seattle’s commitment to LGBTQ+ equality cannot be symbolic. It must exist from the top down, and if the Office of Civil Rights of all offices cannot be trusted to genuinely foster those values and protect the rights of LBGTQ+ people, there can be no trust in any city department, and the sincerity of all commitments to being a welcoming city” to LGBTQ+ individuals must be called into question.”

3. The state Public Disclosure Commission ruled on Tuesday, February 24 that former Seattle Office of Economic Development Markham McIntyre violated election rules when he used an internal City of Seattle Teams chat to solicit contact information from city department heads on behalf of Harrell’s reelection campaign. But they decided not to issue a fine or other penalty beyond a written admonishment. “Staff expect that you will refrain from any use of city equipment, staff or other resources for any effort tied to support or opposition of a candidate or ballot measure,” PDC Executive Director Peter Lavallee wrote.

Lavalee’s ruling reveals that after the Harrell appointee obtained the directors’ personal emails last August, he followed up with an email on September 8. It read: “A little while ago, I asked for your personal information. Part of my intent is to help the campaign. If you are not OK with me sharing your contact information with them, please let me know by tomorrow night. For those you are interested in helping out: we need ideas! Yes, we can do all of the traditional campaign activities (door knocking, phone banking, etc.) but is there something special that we could contribute as City leaders? Now’s the time to get in the game!”

State law prohibits public employees from using their office or any public facilities for campaign purposes. PubliCola reported exclusively on McIntyre’s request for department director’s private contact information in October.

Paul Chapman, who filed the complaint, filed a similar complaint with the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission. SEEC director Wayne Barnett dismissed that complaint on Thursday, writing, “Having reviewed the PDC’s letter of February 24, I agree with their conclusion that the evidence collected (and summarized in their February 24 letter) does not warrant further investigation. Mr. McIntyre is no longer a City employee, and Bruce Harrell lost his bid for reelection.”

Mayor Wilson

After PubliCola Story Details Discrimination Claims, Civil Rights Office Director Accuses Deputy Mayor of Threats and “Defamation”
Seattle Deputy Mayor Brian Surratt: Not a source.

By Erica C. Barnett

On Tuesday, after PubliCola reported on turmoil at the city’s Office for Civil Rights, SOCR director Wheeler-Smith sent a lengthy email titled “COMPLAINT re DEPUTY MAYOR Brian Surratt” to the city’s Human Resources department and the City Attorney’s office, cc’ing a list of city officials, reporters, and editors (though not PubliCola).

“I write to submit a formal complaint against Deputy Mayor Brian Surratt who engaged in workplace misconduct by threatening me while I was on vacation celebrating my 50th birthday,” the email begins. “Given the city’s efforts to tarnish my name, character, and reputation through defamatory accusations and allegations, I thought it imperative to get my complaint filed quickly despite being on FMLA to support my mother” through a health challenge.

The complaint is based on two assertions. First, Wheeler-Smith says Surratt told him to resign before my story came out or it would be “really bad” for him. Second, he says Surratt and possibly other Wilson cabinet members “worked in tandem” with me to craft a false story about Wheeler-Smith based on “anonymous sources, mistruths, and misrepresentations.”

“It is devastating to learn that people in the Cabinet would work to coordinate such a piece going so far as to direct a few disgruntled staff—current and former—to the reporter,” Wheeler-Smith claimed.

PubliCola’s story was about allegations by Wheeler-Smith’s employees that their boss and his deputy engaged in “discrimination, retaliation, harassment, and mismanagement,” in the words of a memo to Wilson from their union, PROTEC17. Acting on behalf of represented staff, PROTEC17 asked Wilson to remove Wheeler-Smith shortly before she took office. Under a law passed in 2017, the SOCR director can only be removed for “just cause.”

Nine current SOCR employees and one who recently left the department spoke with me on condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation. In all, I spoke with about a quarter of SOCR’s current staff.

Surratt, Wheeler-Smith claimed, had informed him on February 7 that “a story would be coming out from Erica Barnett and that it was really bad.” Wheeler-Smith wrote that this was the first time he had heard of such a story, and that he was “flabbergasted” at this news.

In fact, I told Wheeler-Smith I was writing a story more than a week before he said Surratt contacted him. On January 29, I reached out to Wheeler-Smith directly and through SOCR’s communications staffer, Sage Leibenson, describing each of the allegations individually. I requested a phone or Zoom interview with Wheeler-Smith but said “email is fine” as an alternative, and I included dozens of detailed questions.

My email concluded, “‘I apologize for the voluminous number of questions in this email; however, I always think it’s better to put everything out there than for anyone to be blindsided by allegations or concerns that they were unaware of or would like the opportunity to respond to.”

After I received no response to that email, I sent the list of questions again on February 20, writing, “I’m following up on these questions. I’m planning to publish a story next week about the union’s request, on behalf of staff, for Director Wheeler-Smith to be removed for cause and the experiences described to me by staff, and I’m re-sending these questions to provide another opportunity to respond.” I never heard back.

In the email he sent Tuesday, Wheeler-Smith said he knew Surratt was “the source” for my story, because he had “made a rookie mistake. Generally, when someone can point to a story coming out, its author, and its contents—they were in fact the source. … It is devastating to learn that people in the Cabinet would work to coordinate such a piece going so far as to direct a few disgruntled staff—current and former—to the reporter.”

Surratt was not a source for the story. Wilson’s office did not respond to PubliCola’s questions on Tuesday.

Wheeler-Smith alleged that during their call on February 7, Surratt said he should resign or “things would ‘get really ugly’ for me.” Quoting a text message he sent Surratt, his complaint continued, “I am confident that an investigation will absolve me of any wrongdoing and I will be vindicated. I am in discussions with counsel about legal action to protect my character and reputation given the defamatory nature of the allegations.”

“I would urge [Human Resources investigators] and the City Council to redirect their energy from these baseless claims and examine why 50% of Black department heads have been relieved of their duties under this administration,” Wheeler-Smith wrote. “This alone signifies why I must stay and so must this Department.”

Wilson replaced two of Harrell’s seven Black department heads: former transportation department director Adiam Emery, who was previously Harrell’s deputy mayor, and Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs director Hamdi Mohamed, who spoke with PubliCola about her departure last month.