Tag: Tanya Woo

City Council, public safety

Council Members Approve Fine for Street Racing, Claiming It Will “Deter” Racing, Save Lives
Charlie XCX would never.

By Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle City Council approved a bill this week that will impose fines on people who engage in or watch street racing, with fines that begin at $500 and range up to $1,500.

Supporters of the bill, originally sent to the council by City Attorney Ann Davison, vastly overstated its likely impact, suggesting that the “deterrent” threat of fines would not only prevent people from racing in the first place, but save lives that might otherwise be lost to gun violence. (A young man was recently shot and killed at a street racing event on Alki).

“Too many people are dying,” Councilmember Rob Saka said. Addressing a public commenter who raised concerns about the constitutional rights of spectators, who can now be ticketed and fined for being present at a street race, Saka noted that the city of Kent has long had a similar law, “and I think this bill … strikes the right balance between the competing demands of constitutional rights and the rights of people who want their community safe across the city.”

Bill sponsor Bob Kettle, who represents downtown, Queen Anne, and Magnolia, praised Saka’s amendment creating graduated fines, rather than the fine of $500 per incident Kettle originally proposed, “because checking in [with] the community, you know, $500 wasn’t enough to deter. … And we have to have that deterrence point. Otherwise, more people are going to lose their lives.” The legislation also received an emergency designation, meaning it will go into effect immediately.

Street racing is already illegal under state law, and has been for more than 100 years; reckless driving, which encompasses street racing, is illegal on both the state and local levels. Under these laws, people convicted of illegal racing can be fined up to $5,000, jailed for up to 364 days, and lose their license. Compared to these existing potential penalties, a fine of $500, or up to $1,500, is fairly minor.

Tanya Woo, who co-sponsored the bill, said there are already legal outlets for people who “feel the need to express themselves with speed,” like racetracks and official races, and suggested that people “leave these high risk maneuvers [like drifting and burnouts] to the professionals in a controlled environment.”

Councilmember Tammy Morales, who represents Southeast Seattle, said that what the city needs isn’t more criminalization of something that’s already illegal and subject to significant penalties, “but what we do need is safe places for young adults to go. We need better lighting on our streets. We need to design our streets to make it difficult for drivers to race on them, and that’s why we just approved a $1.5 billion transportation levy package to begin to address all of that other infrastructure that’s needed.”

Morales cast the lone vote against the bill.

City Council

Seattle Nice: Is Civility Dying in Seattle?

By Erica C. Barnett

On this week’s episode of Seattle Nice, we ask whether recent graffiti targeting Seattle City Councilmember Tanya Woo—which said, among other things, “Fuck Tanya Woo—Get Her Out” and “Tanya Woo Hates Black People”—is another sign of what Sandeep has described as a new era of “toxicity” in Seattle politics.

The graffiti, which most council members have denounced as reprehensible hate speech targeting Woo as an Asian-American woman, was  undeniably milder than the violent, directly threatening language used to target women on the council who voted against a basketball stadium, and did not have the impact of the literal brick someone threw through the home window of a progressive council member during the 2020 protests.

But Sandeep argues that the tone of local politics was poisoned by former councilmember Kshama Sawant, who routinely denounced her council colleagues and organized crowds of red-shirted activists to show up on her behalf, and has never recovered.

I countered that “Fuck [council member/mayor/city attorney Whoever” has been a staple of local political rhetoric since long before I arrived on the scene. See, for example, posters declaring “Fuck Mark Sidran: This poster is legal!!!  in 2003;”  “Fuck You, Greg Nickels,” a view expressed in the Stranger in 2005, when both Sandeep and I worked for that paper; and, of course, our former boss Dan Savage’s tirade against the whole mayor and city council, written in 2000:

I wanna say to five of Seattle’s nine city council members: Fuck you people. Fuck you, Richard McIver, and you too, Heidi Wills. Fuck you, Jan Drago. Fuck you, Jim Compton. And fuck you, City Council President Margaret Pageler. And I’d like to say the same to you, Mayor McOneTermWonder: Fuck you, Paul “Protest-Free Zone” Schell. There isn’t a city in this country being run by a bigger collection of log-stupid assholes.

My point being: The rhetoric against Tanya Woo isn’t new, nor is it the product of some new era of “incivility” brought on by Sawant’s “redshirts,” the 2020 protests (remember when Jenny Durkan claimed “Dykes for BLM” was an example of “homophobic” graffiti?) or the most recent city council, which lost most of its progressive members in the 2023 backlash election.

But that’s just, like, my opinion, man. Sandeep and David have different ones, and you can hear us all hash it out by listening to our latest episode below, or wherever you get your podcasts.

City Council

Councilmember Tanya Woo Reported Graffiti to FBI as Hate Crime
Graffiti on the alley side of the Louisa Hotel, owned by the family of City Councilmember Tanya Woo

The “xenophobic” messages include “Fuck Tanya Woo—get her out” and “Tanya Woo Hates Black People”

By Erica C. Barnett

Last week, the Northwest Asian Weekly newspaper ran an article denouncing what the author described as “anti-Asian hatred and xenophobia” targeting Seattle City Councilmember Tanya Woo. According to the story, historic buildings and parking pay stations had been tagged with graffiti that “included hate speech, references to race, and evoked themes of exclusion.”

The image accompanying the story shows a parking pay station on which someone has crudely scrawled “fuck Tanya Woo get her out”—a phrase that, while disrespectful, isn’t hate speech. (Posters bearing similar messages about various council members have been seen on Capitol Hill for many years, generally targeting whoever happens to be the most conservative members of the council members.)

A quick afternon walk around the area identified in the NW Asian Weekly article—which, according to the Stranger, was submitted by Woo herself—turned up just one other clear example of anti-Woo graffiti: A message scrawled in two-inch-high letters in the alley behind the Louisa Hotel apartments, owned by Woo and her family: “Fuck Tanya Woo/Tanya Woo Hates Black People!” The Stranger apparently took a similar walk and turned up another example that, while hard to read, seems to call Woo racist.

During the city council’s weekly briefing on Monday, Woo said she had been reluctant to say anything about the “hateful attacks,” but was persuaded to speak up because “the graffiti was done on historical buildings and landmarks”—a reference, apparently, to her family’s own property. She also said the CID community “doesn’t understand politics” and would be more likely to think of “exclusion laws and xenophobia” when they saw the graffiti than booting Woo out of office.

By Tuesday, the parking pay stations had been painted over with lumpy gray paint, but the graffiti on the bricks remained. “With the landmark structure,” Woo said, “we can’t take that off. It’s still there. That’s going to require even more thought and permitting and implementation to get that repainted.” Woo did not mention that the landmark structure was her family’s property.

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Woo said she was threatened by two men in the CID some time after the graffiti went up, including one who said he was going to kill her and another who “came at me with a large stick that he’s swinging around like a bat. He pointed it right at me, and just kind of repeated what the graffiti said,” Woo recalled.

During their comments, other councilmembers referred to the graffiti as “misogynistic [and] xenophobic” (Rob Saka), a “racist attack” (Sara Nelson), “destruction [of] historic buildings” (Joy Hollingsworth), and “hate speech” (Maritza Rivera, Cathy Moore) that was designed to “try to intimidate [Woo] out of office” (Nelson again.)

A spokesperson for the Seattle Police Department said Woo herself reported the graffiti to the FBI. “Our Bias Crimes detective is aware of this incident,” they said, but “SPD has not yet received a police report.”

A spokesman for the FBI’s Seattle branch, Steve Bernd, said that while he couldn’t comment on a specific case, investigators looking into hate crime allegations generally consider three factors: “Use of force or the threat of force or conspiracy to use or threaten force or willfully cause bodily injury; [t]argeting the victim because of actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, or familial status; and [a]dditional motive to injure, intimidate, or interfere with some specific federally protected activity or right,” like the right to vote.

“No matter how offensive to some, we are keenly aware that expressing views is not a crime by itself and that the protections afforded under the Constitution cannot be compromised,” Bernd said. “Non-threatening hate conduct is protected by the First Amendment and the FBI does not investigation that conduct.”

Woo responded to PubliCola’s questions, which included a request for any additional examples of graffiti that might include more explicitly anti-Asian, xenophobic, misogynistic, or hateful messages, by referring to her remarks during the council briefing.

“My hope is that people will direct their comments to me, as their city council representative, instead of defacing property and local businesses,” Woo said. “It’s unacceptable that workers and small business owners should have to deal with these types of property crimes.”

During the 2020 protests against police violence, then-mayor Jenny Durkan argued for closing down the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) zone because of “homophobic slurs” left-wing protesters had supposedly graffitied in the area, harming the queer community in a “historic sanctuary” for LGBTQ+ people, Capitol Hill. As we reported, the so-called “slurs” turned out to be tags from self-described “fags against cops,” “dykes for anarchy,” and “dykes for BLM,” protesting Durkan’s administration and policies.

City Council, labor, Uncategorized

“I Will Accept Whatever You Think is Best”: Woo Says She’ll Recuse Herself From Gig Worker Wage Vote

By Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission declined to take action Wednesday afternoon on a request for a second opinion from City Council Tanya Woo, who asked the full commission to reconsider Ethics director Wayne Barnett’s recommendation that she recuse herself from voting on a bill that would roll back minimum wage guarantees for gig delivery workers. Woo’s family, including her husband and father-in-law, owns Kau Kau Barbecue, a restaurant that uses Doordash and other delivery services.

Delivery app companies have spent months lobbying for legislation, sponsored by Council President Sara Nelson, that would reduce the minimum amount they have to pay their workers by requiring workers to pay for expenses such as employer-side taxes and mandatory insurance and business costs such as maintenance, business insurance, and gas.

After the law went into effect, most delivery companies added a $5 surcharge to every order, reducing order volume overnight in what many drivers viewed as an attempt to turn customers against the new minimum wage. Nelson’s legislation would reduce drivers’ hourly wages to Seattle’s legal minimum, $19.97 an hour; accounting for expenses, drivers and labor advocates say that works out to a sub-minimum wage of around $13 an hour.

Barnett recommended that Woo recuse herself from an upcoming vote repealing parts of the minimum-wage legislation, known as the PayUp law, because the city’s ethics law bars city officials from participating in “matters,” such legislation, when they or a close family member has a financial stake in an entity that will be impacted by that matter. Woo asked for a second opinion from the commission, which effectively let Barnett’s recommendation stand.

On Wednesday, Woo said Kau Kau (“a small neighborhood restaurant in the Chinatown International District” and “a legacy business,” Woo said) had seen a steep decline in small orders after companies added the $5 surcharge, but that large orders had increased, minimizing the financial impact of the price increase. “I believe that the small business benefit is unclear, and that it’s an indirect connection, basically, because if this legislation were to go through, it’s unclear… whether there’d be more sales or less sales,” Woo said.

Commissioners’ comments were split. Zach Pekelis, a litigation partner at Pacifica Law Group, said he didn’t think “anyone in these circumstances could reasonably conclude that her vote is going to be based on a questionable, and potentially quite, small pecuniary interest of her in-laws and … husband.”

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But Richard Shordt, a senior attorney at T-Mobile’s compliance and ethics division, said he believed Woo’s family ownership of a restaurant that uses delivery services “presents a pretty clear conflict of interest.” After the commission tabled Woo’s request without taking action, Woo thanked them for their comments, adding, “I will accept whatever you think is best.”

The council could consider the partial repeal of PayUp as soon as next Tuesday, but it’s unclear whether, without Woo, Nelson has the five votes she’ll need to pass her legislation. Last week, six councilmembers voted to forestall a vote on Nelson’s bill until a later date, with Woo recusing herself and Tammy Morales and Dan Strauss saying the council should vote on the legislation right away.

City Council, Density, housing

Council Kills Morales’ Affordable Housing Bill, Arguing for More Process and Delay

By Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle City Council voted 7-2 to kill legislation sponsored by Councilmember Tammy Morales aimed at helping community organizations with “limited development experience” build small-scale affordable housing developments and “equitable development” projects, such as health clinics, day care, and retail space.

Morales had been working on the program, called the “Connected Communities Pilot,” since 2022. The five-year pilot would have helped as many as 35 community organizations build larger, taller buildings, as long as they preserved a third of their rental units for people making 60 percent or less of the Seattle’s area median income (AMI), or built homeownership units for people making 100 percent of Seattle AMI or less.

It would have also allowed community groups to build apartments in areas of the city that have historically been reserved for single-family houses, and exempted certain projects in historically redlined areas from design review and parking minimums, two requirements that can add significant time and cost to projects.

The council’s land use committee, which Morales chairs, voted against her bill last week, citing vague concerns that the bill had been rushed and that there were more appropriate avenues for building affordable housing.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Morales’ new colleagues repeated those claims, suggesting that the city should instead provide affordable housing through the comprehensive plan, the housing levy, or some unspecified future legislative route.

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“After the comp plan process is finalized, we can determine if additional legislation is needed to achieve our housing goals,” Councilmember Maritza Rivera said on Tuesday. “In addition, the city just passed a nearly $1 billion [housing levy] and we do not yet know how these funds will be implemented. … Finally, given our housing shortage and the slowing down of recent development, we need to consider how to incentivize all development, rather than singling out some investments over others.”

In fact, as Morales pointed out, the city does know how the Housing Levy funds will be spent. And the comprehensive plan update is a set of policy guidelines, not legislation—the city can still pass housing legislation and incentives before finalizing the update, which might not happen until next year. “This is just another tool to help us meet our housing shortage, which we all acknowledge we have,” she said. Continue reading “Council Kills Morales’ Affordable Housing Bill, Arguing for More Process and Delay” →

City Council, Elections

In “Foregone Conclusion,” Council Appoints Tanya Woo to Citywide Position
Newly appointed citywide Councilmember Tanya Woo takes questions as council president Sara Nelson looks on.

By Erica C. Barnett

In a vote that Councilmember Tammy Morales called a “foregone conclusion,” the city council appointed Tanya Woo to fill the vacant Position 8 council seat on Tuesday. Woo—a Chinatown-International District activist who recently led a successful campaign to stop the expansion of a Salvation Army shelter in SoDo—lost to District 2 (Southeast Seattle) incumbent Tammy Morales in November; now, she’ll represent the entire city.

The council’s choice for this seat was never truly in question, giving the meeting a pro forma, deflated air. Fewer than half the seats in council chambers were full, and almost no one offered public comment in favor of candidates other than Woo; PubliCola spoke briefly with also-rans Linh Thai and Steve Strand before the meeting, and both were in good spirits but resigned to the inevitable. Strand said he was surprised by how much outright campaigning was involved in seeking a council appointment; Thai said the experience had been positive and renewed his faith in ordinary Seattleites.

The vote, which in past council appointments stretched into multiple “rounds” as council members nominated their own preferred candidates, had a scripted feel, with Dan Strauss and Joy Hollingsworth casting courtesy votes for Vivian Song and Thai, respectively; their votes, along with Morales’ vote for Mari Sugiyama, were just enough to ensure that Woo received a five-vote majority on the first round without taking the decision into contested territory.

During her campaign, Woo touted her experience advocating for the CID community, including elderly residents who don’t speak English, as the leader of a community watch group and a co-owner of the Louisa Hotel, a low-income apartment building. Opponents criticized her for failing to vote in local elections for decades (“I come from a community that does not vote,” Woo said at a recent forum) and for seeking appointment to the citywide seat immediately after losing a single-district election.

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The councilmember who won that election expressed disappointment in the process that installed her recent election opponent on the council, noting that as much as her new centrist colleagues talked about collaboration and collegiality, they nominated two people who ran against her in a general election—Woo and SPD crime prevention coordinator Mark Solomon—as finalists for the open seat.

“This appointment process should have been set up to give all candidates a fair shake,” Morales said. “But instead, it did become about big business telling donors that they earned the right to tell this council who to choose. And that is deeply problematic, and it is anti-democratic. Seattle voters have been clear, over and over again, that they reject the notion that special interests have a right to buy our elections.”

As PubliCola was first to report last week, political consultant Tim Ceis sent a letter to the funders of the independent expenditure campaigns that swept five new centrist councilmembers into office that their success in those races had “earned you the right to let the Council know not to offer the left the consolation prize of this Council seat” by appointing Seattle School Board member (and former Goldman Sachs analyst) Vivian Song.

Speaking to reporters after the vote, Woo said she thought it was “great that District 2 will have two representatives to serve that district”—herself and Morales. “That district—south Seattle—has been marginalized and, I believe, underserved. It will be great to get double coverage and to be able to work on these issues together,” she said.

Council president Sara Nelson also brought up Ceis’ letter, appearing to blame the media (for the second day in a row) for “the weaponization of a leaked third-party email,” which she called “an effort to cast doubt on the integrity of this process and the outcome of our decision today” as well as “disrespectful” to city council staff and “insulting” to the council itself. In fact, reporting on newsworthy information that politicians would rather keep secret is part of the basic job description of any political reporter, and communications between lobbyists and donors are not government secrets.

Speaking to reporters after the vote, Woo said she thought it was “great that District 2 will have two representatives to serve that district”—herself and Morales. “That district—south Seattle—has been marginalized and, I believe, underserved. It will be great to get double coverage and to be able to work on these issues together,” she said.

Woo will face a citywide election in November; already, one finalist, Bloodworks Northwest government affairs director Juan Cotto, has said he plans to run, and Song told PubliCola after the meeting that she would decide within the next week or so. Asked whether it would be a challenge to run a campaign and be a full-time councilmember, Woo said, “I ran a campaign before, so I think I have that experience. … Doing the work [of a council member] at the same time and expanding that [campaign] to the entire city…. I’m confident that I can do it going forward.”