Nov 17, 2023
On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Seattlepolitical reporter and editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett!
First up, for those looking to supercharge theirengagement in Washington State policymaking or advocacy, Crystalgives a shout-out for the Washington State Institute for aDemocratic Future program. Applications for their 2024 class areopen and due by November 20th for early applicants (there is alsoan extended “late application period” until November 27th but withan increased application fee). Check out the program that launchedCrystal’s career in politics and see if it’s right for you!
Crystal and Erica then dive into a roundup of electionnews starting with how the Seattle City Council is losinginstitutional knowledge with its makeup shifting after last week’selection results, meaning the new council will need to get up tospeed on many complex upcoming issues such as the City budget, theSeattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) contract, and theComprehensive Plan. Contributing to this loss of experience isTeresa Mosqueda moving over to the King County Council and howspeculation has begun over who her appointed replacement will be.The election news wraps up with two snafus - the King Countywebsite breaking on Election Night and USPS finally deliveringmissing ballots from an unchecked mailbox.
Moving on from elections, they discuss Seattle budgetnews - a $20 million increase in the JumpStart Tax to fund studentmental health care programs, narrow passage of controversialShotSpotter surveillance technology, continued struggle to fundCity employee pay increases, and a spotty outlook for much-neededprogressive revenue solutions. Delving further into City workerwage issues, the City sent an oblivious email to workers providingfinancial tips whilst asking them to accept a sub-inflationary payincrease and the tentative firefighters’ union contract alsodoesn’t keep up with cost of living. Finally, Crystal and Ericarevisit the saga unfolding in Burien with a looming deadline toaccept $1 million to address their homelessness crisis and SoundTransit resumes fare enforcement.
As always, a full text transcript of the show isavailable below and at officialhacksandwonks.com.
Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today’sco-host, Erica Barnett, at @ericacbarnett.
Resources
WAIDF -Washington State Institute for a Democratic Future
“MoralesSurges While Other Progressives Flail in Latest Election Results;Mosqueda Explains Why She’ll Stay Through the End of This Year”from PubliCola
“WhoWill Replace Teresa Mosqueda?” by Hannah Krieg from TheStranger
“CountyWebsite Failed on Election Night Due to “Traffic Issue”” byErica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“USPSfailed to deliver ballots from one Seattle mail drop box” bySarah Grace Taylor from The Seattle Times
“CityBudget Will Fund Shotspotter—But Also Significant ProgressivePriorities, Including $20 Million for Student Mental Health” byErica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“AMixed Seattle Budget, While a $221 Million Deficit Still Looms”by Amy Sundberg from Notes from the Emerald City
“CityEmployees Seeking Wage Increase Advised to “Avoid ImpulseBuys”” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“Firefighters’Tentative Contract Could be Bad News for Other City Workers SeekingPay Increases” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“AsDeadline to Use or Lose $1 Million in Shelter Funding Looms, TopBurien Official Offers New Explanation for Failing to Inform Someon Council” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola
“KingCounty gives Burien deadline to take $1 million for homelessshelter” by Greg Kim from The Seattle Times
“SoundTransit to start issuing citations today to riders who don’tpay” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times
“Seattlelight rail is about to get heavy for those who don't pay thefare” by Joshua McNichols from KUOW
Find stories that Crystal is reading here
Listen on yourfavorite podcast app to all our episodes here
Transcript
[00:00:00]CrystalFincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm CrystalFincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On thisshow, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gatherinsight into local politics and policy in Washington State throughthe lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenesperspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what youcan do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get thefull versions of our Tuesday topical shows and our Fridayweek-in-reviews delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, themost helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listento Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in theshow are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in ourepisode notes.
If you missed our 2023 Post-Election Roundtableon Monday night, you can catch the recording on our YouTubechannel, or Facebook, or Twitter feeds. We'll also be releasing theroundtable next week as podcast episodes. Tune in for our breakdownof last week's election results with guest panelists Katie Wilson,Andrew Villeneuve and Robert Cruikshank. Also wanna make sure ifyou can't listen to the Post-Election Roundtable, it will beavailable on the website with a full text transcript. Today, we arecontinuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the newsof the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend ofthe show, today's co-host: Seattle political reporter and editor ofPubliCola, Erica Barnett.
[00:01:38]EricaBarnett: It's great to be here.
[00:01:40]CrystalFincher: Great to have you back as always.
It's the time of year where I get to talk aboutthe Washington Institute for a Democratic Future. It is that timeagain and seeing as how this is Hacks & Wonks and a lot of you arehacks and wonks who are listening, the Washington Institute for aDemocratic Future is really ideal for people who may be interestedin looking at working in policy or politics, getting more involvedin their community and activism. It is a six-month fellowship thatruns from January to June that has 10 intensive weekends plus anoptional week in Washington, DC. And each of these weekends is in adifferent place geographically across the state. And it gives youthe opportunity to do a deep dive on policy, how that policy isimpacting people on the ground from a variety of differentperspectives - so, you know, there's a huge network of legislators,policy experts, advocacy organizations, unions, business owners,different people. So you may go to Kitsap County and explore theeconomy in Bremerton and issues that are happening there. InCentral Washington, issues that are important there and talkingabout legislation that impacts migrant workers and immigration -from a policy perspective - but also talking to workers andrepresentatives for themselves, talking to farmers and businessowners there to see how they're being impacted and what theirfeedback is and what they feel the most prevalent issues that theyhave.
So it's getting a really comprehensive view ofwhat people are facing on the ground throughout the state and howpolicy is impacting that and has a potential to impact that. Sojust really important - that is absolutely what I credit for meworking in politics. I started my political career after doing IDF- just a really powerful network and a really powerful policyeducation in ways that really matter and getting to see that a lotof times the situations aren't simple, different people havedifferent perspectives, policy impacts people in different ways.Few things are 100% good and positive and 100% bad or negative.It's really understanding how things impact people differently andtrying to do the most good as possible, particularly consideringsometimes what's politically possible, different types of activism- whether you're working legislatively, electorally, just more onthe ground in community, mutual aid, just a lot of differentthings.
So I recommend this. The early applicationdeadline is Monday, November 20th - so coming up. There's anextended late application period that continues through Monday,November 27th. The website is democraticfuture.org. There's moreinformation about it there, but definitely encourage anyone who maybe considering working in politics or who's interested in that -who wants to understand how they can more deeply impact policy intheir community and state - to do that. I do want to underscorethat you don't have to already be an insider. You don't have tohave any idea of what's going on, really. This is a Democraticorganization - it is not catering to Republicans, I can tell youthat - but looking at people with a variety of experience fromdiverse backgrounds across the state. It's just a program that Iheartily recommend, and I believe most people who go through itcome out on the other end more able to impact change in the worldaround them. So apply to the Institute for a Democratic Future.
Well, we think we have a pretty good view of whatactually happened with the election now. It's taken a while tocount, but what are your takeaways from the general election thatwe just had?
[00:05:39]EricaBarnett: Well, I mean - as others have said, and asI've said in other venues - obviously we are, the City we, aregoing in a more centrist direction with the city council. FromPosition 7 - electing Bob Kettle over Andrew Lewis - kicking out acouple other councilmembers. So politically, I think the directionis going to be a little less progressive generally, a little morein the sort of Sara Nelson centrist direction. And I think - bigpicture - the council is going to be made up primarily of newpeople and people without a whole lot of experience. The mostexperienced councilmember, I believe, will be Tammy Morales, whojust narrowly got reelected - correct me if I'm wrong on that. Butnot a lot of institutional memory and knowledge on the council,which I think is going to be - it's always problematic when youlose the majority of an institution all at once, right? And whenyou're talking about staff who have been there for a long time, aswell as councilmembers who maybe have a few terms under their belt- so people are going to be learning on the job and they're gonnabe doing it in a year when there's a massive looming budget crisis,when there is the Seattle Police Officers Guild contract on thetable, and just lots of other things that the new council is goingto have to grapple with - that are really, really big problems andbig questions - and they'll be doing it, sort of coming in withvirtually no City experience in almost every single seat.
[00:07:23]CrystalFincher: Yeah, that is - it's a really big deal.And we talked about this kind of in the beginning when people werefiling or announcing that they weren't running for re-election -kind of hitting a lot of people going - we're losing a ton ofinstitutional knowledge. And just the work that it takes to get upto speed, it's not just what do you wanna do with issues, with -and even with that, a number of the new councilmembers on thecampaign trail had a lot of questions, had a lot of things thatthey wanted to find out and investigate and get to the bottom of,but maybe not as many new ideas. And they're gonna have tounderstand just procedurally how do things work. Legislation is aweird thing - crafting legislation, working it through the processis not an intuitive endeavor. And it does take institutionalknowledge. There's so many reports, committees, just things todigest when you're getting in - even if you've held office before.If you haven't, that's just a big mountain to climb to get yourfeet underneath you as far as how to understand what's happeningfrom all of the different information sources, advocates,departments, but also how to then enact and respond to thechallenges that are happening.
I think in this situation, it actually passes abig advantage to the mayor's office. The mayor's office does have alot of institutional knowledge. The mayor's office does have anagenda that they wanna enact. And right now the council - the newcouncil - is not going to really be in a position to ask questionsbased on historical knowledge, to investigate or interrogate whatexpenditures may be, what proposals may be, if there is precedentfor something, if there isn't, how something fared before when itwas proposed or when it was enacted. There are a lot of things thatwe do and undo in government and understanding the history of that- how it worked out - is actually really useful so we can learnfrom what we did before and do better next time, particularly whenimplementation with a lot of programs has been a major issue. So Iam concerned for what this is going to look like in practice with acouncil that just is really inexperienced.
[00:09:41]EricaBarnett: Yeah, I mean, and I just was thinking asyou're talking - just kind of going through all the different folksthat have been elected and thinking about how - on the currentcouncil, I would lift up Lisa Herbold as an example of somebodywho's been there 25 years in various roles. And she is the person,particularly like during budget, who brings up things that havehappened in the past or says - Well, we actually discussed this sixyears ago and this was the discussion then, or there's a proviso onthis money that says this. And you need someone who is able to dothat, whether it's a staff member or a number of staff members or acouncilmember, not just during budget time, but during - forexample, the SPOG contract. Five members of the council sit on theLabor Relations Policy Committee and they're going to be bargainingwith the police guild and Mayor Harrell's office. And if you aretalking about people that don't have a lot of institutionalknowledge of what came before, I mean - like you, I'm concernedthat they're just going to get steamrolled by whatever the mayor'soffice and SPOG decide that they want or that they can agreeto.
And I also thought of another thing that they'regoing to be doing next year, which is the Comprehensive Plan.There's a major update every 10 years and that's happening nextyear. And that's the document that guides planning and developmentand zoning for the entire city. And during the campaign, this was aquestion that came up - which Comp Plan option do you support? Andeverybody said Comp Plan 5 - for the most part. And I think thatwithout getting into the details of what that even means, I wouldbe really curious to ask every single person who was elected - Sowhat's in Comp Plan 5? Because I think that sometimes campaignsdeal with surface level issues, but the Comprehensive Plan is amassively complex document that they're going to be discussing overthe course of a year now - starting in January, February - and it'sreally consequential. So that's just another example of a complexdecision that this council is going to have to be making - again,without a lot of institutional knowledge.
And I will say just to mention one idea that gotsquashed this year, Teresa Mosqueda, who is one of thecouncilmembers who's leaving to go serve on King County Council,brought up the idea of doing staggered elections so that instead ofelecting all 7 district city council seats all at once, like we didthis year, we would do 4 one year and then 3 two years from then.And the idea is that even if you elect a completely new councilevery four years, at least people have a couple of years ofexperience under their belts. And that idea just got quashed, and Ithink it's very unlikely to happen - but that would have made alittle bit of difference.
[00:12:51]CrystalFincher: Yeah, and I thought that was an excellentidea - was sad to see that not be able to move forward. Now,speaking of Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, who was just elected tothe King County Council - this now brings up an issue of therebeing a vacancy timing around when she can choose to go or not.Evidently there's been some calls - maybe people looking at theSupreme Court or Congress, different things, and then looking atthe Seattle Council and going - Well, hey, if there's anopportunity to get another progressive in, maybe you should leaveearly. Why did she appear to decide against that?
[00:13:31]EricaBarnett: Yeah, I mean, Teresa Mosqueda is not RuthBader Ginsburg. And one big difference is that she is notindependently wealthy and - nor is her staff. And so I think thatjust as a practical matter - and this was my immediate reactionactually when I started seeing calls for her to step down and justkind of not have a job for a couple months, was - well, like normalpeople can't do that. And even if you're making $130,000 a year, orwhatever it currently is at the city council, it is hard when - shehas a little kid. And her staff, some of whom may go over with herto King County Council, still need to make a living. So there's avery practical consideration.
And the other thing is, I think it's a bit ofsour grapes. I mean, the voters have spoken and I think it would bea bit of sour grapes to say - Well, we're gonna shove a progressiveonto the council under the wire. But more importantly, I don'tthink that it would probably work. I don't think it would besuccessful to try to get - for Teresa Mosqueda to try to appointanother Teresa Mosqueda-type to the council because you have to getthe support of your colleagues. And I don't know that the currentcouncil would be willing to sort of subvert the process. I mean, itwouldn't be subverting the process, it would just be rushing it abit. But to do that at this point, when we have a new councilcoming in, it just - there's a sense of fairness about that, that Ithink would strike some of the current council the wrong way, evenif they are more progressive people who are leaving.
[00:15:17]CrystalFincher: Yeah, and it's not like there's asituation now, or upcoming with the new council, where there is aone-member majority and this one change is going to tip the balanceof decisions that are made. I think with looking at some of thebudget action, which we'll talk about shortly, earlier this week -we can see that's not the case. And there's also just theresponsibilities of the job, which I think Teresa Mosqueda takesseriously. The City of Seattle is heading into a pretty significantbudget deficit - hundreds of millions of dollars budget deficit.And I think most people consider her to be the foremost budgetexpert on the council - particularly with so many new people cominginto the council and so much work to do on the budget, the morework she can do to help prepare this next council for what's gonnahappen, to help usher in what hopefully will be sustainable changesto the budget, the better for everyone and for the city, I believe.So that's gonna be interesting.
I did see Hannah Krieg report on rumors thatTanya Woo is either angling for, or people are angling for her, tobe appointed to that position when that does happen. Tanya justlost a very narrow election to Tammy Morales in Seattle's District2. What do you think the prospects for that would be, or what thatwould mean?
[00:16:45]EricaBarnett: Well, I mean, I would be completelyspeculating, but it does seem - and segue to completely speculateabout that - I mean, it does seem sort of unlikely, you know, justlooking at historical appointments for the council to appointsomebody who ran against one of the people that won. Historicallywhat the council has done is either appoint sort of placeholderpeople who have said they're not going to run for re-election,because remember - this is just a temporary position until the nextelection, which in this case would actually be in 2024. Because ofthe way it works, it would be the next state election since there'snot another city election until '25. So you're talking about a verytemporary seat. I don't know. At this point, my gut would be thatthey wouldn't do that. But again, that is just speculation. I knowBrianna Thomas, who ran for council a couple of times and now worksin the mayor's office in labor relations, is another potentialperson who is definitely angling for that position. So she seemslike another possibility, but again, that's somebody who reallywants to stay on the council and maybe perceived as progressive, ora member of the kind of progressive wing of the council - sheworked for Lorena González, who's quite progressive, before joiningthe mayor's office. So I'm not following that super, super closelyyet, but yeah - it'll be interesting, but perhaps not hugelyconsequential, except for 2024, who ends up getting thatposition.
[00:18:36]CrystalFincher: I wanna talk about another Election Nightstory, or one that was really made plain on Election Night. Andthat was King County's elections website and its performance orlack thereof on Election Day. What happened?
[00:18:50]EricaBarnett: Yeah, so I've been wanting to write aboutthe King County website and it's not just the elections website,but we'll talk about that specifically. But I would encouragepeople to go to kingcounty.gov and just check it out. See what youthink. They did a big website redesign, revamp. And one of theconsequences of that revamp is that it's really hard apparently toload sort of new information into the website for just kind ofregular County departments. And so on Election Night, if you are anelection watcher, what ordinarily happens is that you startrefreshing the webpage around 8:10p. The results usually go upright around 8:15p. And so on Election Night, people wererefreshing, refreshing, refreshing, but there were no results forat least 15 minutes. I actually gave up and got the results fromKing 5, which apparently got them because the elections people hadto post the results on Twitter. I'm not really on Twitter that muchanymore, so I didn't see this, but they had to create essentially aworkaround for this website that is - it's not only does it looklike something from - I don't know, 1999, maybe that's a littlemean, 2003 we'll say - but it doesn't function very well and a lotof stuff is broken, and links don't work, and all the photos aregone, and it's just a mess. And yeah, it was really consequentialon Election Night when people were trying to find out who won andcouldn't get this information for 15, 20 minutes, which I knowmight not sound like much, but it is hugely consequential if youare a campaign or if you are somebody interested in the results,like I was as a reporter. So man, it was just a mess.
[00:20:54]CrystalFincher: It was a mess. I was at KIRO doingElection Night coverage and it was a big challenge. Fortunately,their team was able to get the results from the alternate posts, sowe had them before they were live on the website. But it's really achallenge. And especially at this point in time where there is somuch bad faith information, misinformation about elections, theintegrity of our elections, and what's happening. Unfortunately,that means that we need to do as great a job as possible at beingtransparent, at making sure that things work as expected, that wecan explain what's happening and why it's happening, and providesome predictability and transparency in the process. And havingthat happen on Election Night is very suboptimal. We'll see whatimprovements they make to it. And we've seen rollouts of websites -these things are hard. It is not like you flip a switch andeverything works. So I don't wanna devalue the work involved, but Ido hope they reflect on the timing of this, the type of testing andrigor that they use to test this - especially for the kind ofstrain that is expected on a night like Election Night. I think weheard some of the reasoning was that - Well, you know, it just hada lot of traffic and that contributed to the collapse. Well, yeah,that's gonna be expected on Election Night. And I hope they areable to do a better job in the future - making sure that it canaccommodate the infrequent but predictable heavy loads that thewebsite is going to experience.
[00:22:40]EricaBarnett: Well, I think in one way it was actuallyoptimal - possibly - because I think it, you know, people have beencomplaining about this website for a while. I mean, when I firstwent to it - and I don't know, it's probably been a month or twonow - I truly thought, and again, it's kingcounty.gov. I trulythought it was a, like a test website. Like it was sort of theinterim version between the old website and the new one, and thiswas just like temporary. And then called and found out - no, thisis the website. And I think there are just - there are so manythings that are suboptimal and just bad about it. And I think thatsometimes in my experience, the tech side of things tend to, youknow, say things like - Well, it's just, you know, it's not thedesign, it's that you're just not used to using it, or you're notusing it right, or there's nothing wrong, there's nothing to seehere. And I think a website falling apart on Election Night thatjust really like pissed off a number of people outside the countymight impel them to actually take some action on this thing,because it is infuriating to use. I mean, it is - just one quickexample that, you know, that's emblematic - is you go to thewebsite now, and one of the, it's sort of like "the top thingspeople need." And one of them is like animal control. Another is acamera in rural King County that like is on some road in rural KingCounty - I don't know who needs that, but I wouldn't put it in thetop, you know, 10,000 things on that website that people arelooking for. So hopefully this will bring some sanity back, 'causeI use that website pretty frequently and it is very frustrating touse.
[00:24:35]CrystalFincher: Yeah, and I also use it frequently. And wedidn't talk about this part before, but yeah - I had the samethought as you. I thought it was an interim site that - okay, well,they - my read was - well, they were hoping to do some upgrades,but clearly they couldn't get them done in time. So this is the,you know, meantime, they just stripped it down to bare bones andjust want to make sure it's functional. That was my read, myassumption - I didn't look very deeply into it besides just beingfrustrated that everything was hard to find and wasn't where it wasbefore. But yeah, it was a challenge, these things often are. Butthat would also make me want to keep it as, these things happeningas far away from elections as possible. Like, you know, let'simplement changes in January or February instead of later in theyear, you know, closer to the primary or general election if we'redoing these things. And yes, it may be a bigger site-wide thing,but my goodness - if you're hoping that things land well with thepublic, this is certainly - elections are one of the most visiblethings that the county does. I would be surprised if there wassomething that generated more traffic to the website than theelection site around election time. But we will see how thatcontinues and hopefully they're able to get that together soon.
Also want to talk about another elections-relatedstory, and that was the story of the post office missing pickupsfrom a ballot box that contained ballots in some races - one ofthem still is too close to officially call. What happened here?
[00:26:21]EricaBarnett: Well, from what I understand, the postoffice just didn't pick up any mail from this one site - or sorry,from this one box for like a month. And I just read about it in TheSeattle Times, probably like you did. And I got a tip about it andwas gonna look into it, but you know, a one-person website, so Ididn't get around to it - Times did. And yeah, it just sounds likethey somehow messed up and didn't pick up any mail at this box. Sothere are 85 ballots, I believe, that are being counted now. Notenough to turn around Ron Davis's election prospects againstMaritza Rivera in District 4, but still - 85 ballots is 85 ballots.When you're talking about margins of like 300 votes, every littlebit counts. So this was pretty significant to find out about atthe, you know, at the 13th hour, really.
[00:27:31]CrystalFincher: Yeah, absolutely. And then just readingabout the process that occurs when this does happen. It looks likethey were able to follow the process and get these ballots countedby verifying the dates and signatures on them, but certainly aconundrum here, and would love to see what's put in place to makesure that this doesn't happen again. Yeah, will be interesting tosee.
And the last thing I'll just say about theseelections is - you alluded to a little bit earlier with talkingabout Teresa Mosqueda - it's not just her, but it's her staff. Andin big cities - smaller cities and suburbs don't have councilstaff, but in Seattle, they do. And the role of staff is reallyimportant. It's going to be even more important because they'regonna hold the institutional knowledge. They do a lot of the policywork, preparation work, doing the research, interacting withcommunity, doing constituent service. And a lot of them have beenthere for a while. They are absolutely valuable resources.Sometimes bureaucrats get a bad name for working in governmentservice, but I just - seeing the work that they do, howinstrumental they are to the process, particularly in support ofelected officials who oftentimes just need good information andassistance to get stuff through the system. It's really importantto have capable and competent bureaucrats. I think the City doeshave a number of them, and I think we're gonna see how importantthey are in the coming year.
[00:29:04]EricaBarnett: Yeah, the City couldn't run without thedeep state. I mean, truly. You need those people who've been there20 years who like know Robert's Rules of Order in and out, and canwrite a script and, you know, for a city councilmember to read, andcan write legislation and just do all the sort of grunt work thatkeeps things running. I mean, they, you know, staff gets malignedand they're always sort of subject to budget cuts because - whoneeds all these administrative people? But in a lot of cases, youreally do need the administrative people because they're the onesthat make the council meeting not look like chaos.
[00:29:41]CrystalFincher: Absolutely. And who help make legislationstand up to legal challenges and get things implemented in the waythey were intended. It is really important and just wanted to saythat I see them. And when - I'm thinking about Andrew Lewis, whowas not reelected - that means that his staff has a lot of questionmarks too. And in a city as expensive to live in in Seattle, thatis a harrowing thing. So elections do impact lots of people in lotsof different ways.
I do wanna talk about the budget, and action thisweek with the council pertaining to the budget. What did theydo?
[00:30:21]EricaBarnett: Well, they are still continuing to sort ofhack away at Mayor Bruce Harrell's 2024 budget. And they have votedon a whole slew of amendments. I would say the headline, andsurprisingly it has not been a huge headline, is that Kshama Sawant- outgoing councilmember, often does a lot of kind of performativestunty stuff that doesn't actually result in legislation - but shewon on a big issue this week. She got $20 million - a very, verytiny increase, I think it was 0.01%. So 0.0001 to the JumpStart Taxto fund mental health care and mental health programs for students.And $20 million is a really big deal at a time when the City isanticipating big budget decisions next year, potentially budgetcuts. And when a lot of these debates in the City budget are over$300,000 or $1.5 million, just these very tiny increments. So tome, that is the huge headline is that Kshama Sawant sort of won thebudget as she is walking out the door.
But other stuff in the budget this year includesShotSpotter, which is the controversial proposal that Mayor BruceHarrell has made for a couple of years running to put surveillancesystems in neighborhoods to detect gunshots or things that soundlike gunshots. A lot of criticism of that system, but it soundslike the council is going to finally give in - on a 5-4 vote mostlikely - and fund that. And City pay increases are still sort ofoutstanding because that work is happening in the background, butthere's gonna need to be money for City employees to get payincreases. And there's a lot of other stuff kind of around themargins - Sara Nelson is getting some money for the City tosubsidize private drug treatment for some folks. And then kind oflooming in the background after they pass this budget - and this isanother reason Teresa Mosqueda, as you mentioned, is stickingaround - They've got to figure out some revenue solutions for nextyear, 2025, and beyond. So they're looking at other increases toJumpStart, a capital gains tax, and there was talk of a CEO excesscompensation tax but it seems like that's not gonna raise very muchmoney - so it's off the table for now.
[00:33:14]CrystalFincher: Well, it certainly is gonna be interestingto see how those conversations play out as this year progresses,this next year progresses. I know several of the candidates whowere elected expressed curiosity at some of the revenue options butwere notoriously hesitant to commit to supporting any particularoption. And knowing that so much of the outside spending that cameinto these races during the campaign was fundamentally aboutresisting taxation and some of those efforts and proposals, it'sgonna be interesting to see what actually does wind up passing, ifanything.
[00:33:58]EricaBarnett: Yeah, I - on that note, I will just saythat a lot of candidates said that the City doesn't have a budgetproblem, it has a spending problem. And I think they're going torealize that the City actually does have a budget problem when theyhave to get in and actually deal with the budget. I don't thinkthat - there's a lot of talk of, We're gonna audit the whole systemand I wanna look at the whole budget. Well, good luck, that's notreally possible. I mean, you have entire departments each withtheir own budget division - hashing out the budget, looking at theactual budget documents for any one department could be a job for aperson for a year. So I think they're going to be, they're in for abit of a rough awakening if they think that they can't raise anynew revenues and that they can accomplish $250 million in budgetreductions through cuts alone. So we'll see when that awakeningtakes place, but I think it will.
[00:34:58]CrystalFincher: Oh, I absolutely think it will. It iscertainly one thing to have catchy and simple slogans and taglinesand soundbites when you're running for office, but governing is aserious thing. It is actually harder than running the campaign. Sowe will see how this progresses.
Now I also want to talk about this week - acouple of things when it does come to the potential raises for Cityworkers - that they've been saying, Hey, it's really expensive tolive in Seattle. We count on cost of living adjustments to helpkeep up, but even that is hard with inflation, the cost of living.We aren't making enough in the first place. We need more money.This is teeing up to become a major confrontation, really, with themayor's office signaling that they're hesitant to give raisesanywhere close to what workers are asking for. There may be laboractions taken. We will see what happens. But this week, oneinteresting thing came out in an email from the mayor's office.What did they send?
[00:36:16]EricaBarnett: So an email went out to most Cityemployees this week. And what it said was - I think the subjectline was "Financial Self-care," something related to that. And whatit said was basically - if you are struggling with money, maybe youshould look at your spending. And it gave some examples of thingsthat you can do to sort of reduce your costs in your day-to-daylife. And one was pay yourself first, which is this sort of very -I would say for a normal person - very unrealistic idea that beforeyou pay your bills, you should put money in savings or ininvestments. And I think it's self-explanatory why most peoplecan't do that. People living paycheck to paycheck need to keep thelights on, need to pay their rent. And then another suggestion wasthat people consider - when making purchases, whether something isa want or a need - which again, I mean, there's just something socondescending about that and so out of touch with the way normalpeople make spending decisions. And like, sure, like, do I makeimpulse buys? Does everybody sometimes? Yes. But the advice in thisemail - not to sort of waste your money on frivolous stuff - hitsreally poorly at a time when City employees are saying, Look, we'renot asking for raises, we're asking for a cost of living adjustmentto deal with the fact that inflation went up 8% last year andcontinues to rise. And what that means is a dollar buys less. Soit's just - it was very, very, very poorly worded and poorly timed,considering that City employees are literally talking aboutstriking right now. And so I just, I was sort of blown away byit.
And one of the reactions - it got a lot ofreaction when I posted about this. And one of the most commonreactions was - huh, this is interesting because Mayor Harrell issaying that we all need to work from the office at least three daysa week as part of his downtown revitalization plan. And part ofthat plan is that we're gonna go out to eat at lunch, and we'regonna go out to get drinks after work. And I don't know - is that awant or need, Mayor Harrell? So it's - I think it hit really poorlywith a lot of City employees. And I've gotten a lot of reactionfrom folks who received it, sort of saying - Thanks for pointingthis out, this is ridiculous.
[00:38:54]CrystalFincher: Yeah, absolutely. I've also seen a lot ofreaction to that. When you're saying - Hey, help me, I'mstruggling, and it's, you know, the cost of living, inflation isjust unreasonable - it's hard to keep up with. And when the cost ofrent is going up, and childcare is going up, and groceries aregoing up, and people are feeling this in every way - to have theperson who does have the power and authority to say, You know what,we will ease this a little bit. We will grant your cost of livingadjustment. We already know that you have shortages, and we'reburning you out with the amount of work that we're placing on youand the amount that we're not paying you. So we're going to easethat burden and address some of these work shortages, some of thesestaff shortages in areas that are critical to delivering essentialservices for residents of Seattle. Seems like there's precedent forthinking that way - we've talked about financial solutions with thepolice department to help address retention and staffing. Seemslike that should apply to other departments, but somehow it doesn'there. And just doesn't seem to be landing with people verywell.
And just to be clear, right - it's not likefinancial education and financial planning tips are neverwarranted. But they are not an intervention or response to poverty.The problem with poverty is not poor people making bad decisionsand that's why they're poor. It's that they don't have enoughmoney. And wow, we just got a whole lot of new data on howeffective giving people in poverty more money is, as opposed to allof these extra things that are not more money. If you want toreduce poverty, invest in the people who are experiencing it. Andif we want a city that is resilient moving forward, if we want acity where we do take pride in paying people a living wage -meaning a wage where they can live in the city - we're gonna haveto do better than this for City employees, certainly.
Now I also wanna talk about what the prospect is,and what the outlook is for this pay increase. And there wassomething that happens that maybe makes that cost of livingadjustment look a little questionable. What was that?
[00:41:11]EricaBarnett: I believe you're talking about thefirefighters' contract, which was sent to firefighters - members ofthe Fire Department - last week. And the votes on that are gonna betallied soon. But basically what it said was the firefighters, ifthey vote on this, will agree to a sort of maximum annual wageincrease of 4%, a minimum of 2%, which is quite a bit less than theother City workers were asking for, the Coalition of City Unions.And the sort of compromise or payback for that is that if inflationis above 4%, then the money that would be paid to workers gettingan inflationary increase is gonna go into what's called a COLAbank. And so - like say inflation 6%, your wage increase is 4% -you get 2% in the COLA bank. If next year inflation is 1%, you canget some of that back. So your minimum increase will always be 2%for the life of the contract. So that's still 2% to 4%, which isnot a whole lot of increase, particularly for workers whose pay hasbeen falling further and further behind under their existingcontract. But the thinking is that this could be sort of aforeshadowing of what Harrell is going to ultimately offer the restof the city. So I think there's quite a bit of discontent aroundthat. And again, there is talk of some sort of action. There havebeen practice pickets happening. And I don't have any specialinsight into whether the City workers would strike, but I know it'sbeing discussed. They are not technically allowed to do that undertheir contract. So again, not sure what sort of action they'regoing to take, but I know that there is a lot of discontent withthe idea of settling for a 2% to 4% wage increase at thispoint.
[00:43:16]CrystalFincher: I wanna shift a little bit and really talkabout a story that you broke - a couple weeks ago, I feel like itwas - that we also saw reported at The Seattle Times as new thisweek. What is going on in the City of Burien right now?
[00:43:33]EricaBarnett: Oh man, the - well, I mean, just a very,very quick background - the City of Burien passed a ban on sleepingin public at night. And has meanwhile, been sort of pushing aroundthis group of unsheltered people from place to place - And now hasthe legal authority to use the Sheriff's Office to do so. They havemeanwhile, been sort of sitting on an offer of a million dollarsfrom King County, which originally proposed sort of a land swapdeal where a Pallet shelter could be built in downtown Burien. Butof course the city rejected that, I think, primarily because itwould be in sort of a visible location. They've been sort ofhemming and hawing on what to do with this million dollars eversince. And we're talking about, I think that was over the summer -I believe in June or July - that they, it was in July, that theyvoted against using it for that shelter. And so now it's Novemberand King County has said - Look, we have to use this money. Or youhave to use this money or we're going to put it out for bid.
And so they have until November 27th to do that.The City Manager, Adolfo Bailon - apologies if I am mispronouncinghis name - but he essentially sat on this information for a weekand did not tell most of the council that this sort of deadline hadcome up until a week into the four weeks that they have to figureout a new location. So meanwhile, I think the council has one moremeeting before this deadline passes. And my guess is they're notgoing to come up with a solution since they haven't done so so far.And this money is just going to go back into King County and thenthey'll put it out for bid for other South King County cities touse.
[00:45:45]CrystalFincher: Yeah, I think - if people do want to catchup on what's happened, there has been no one following what's beenhappening in Burien with more rigor than you and PubliCola. So Iwould encourage people to catch up on what you have alreadycovered. But just a little more context - this is happening with avery polarized council. There is a 4-3 moderate conservativecouncil majority. The three members in the minority have been veryvocally opposed to the way things have gone. This all kicked offbecause the county basically - they were trying to figure out howto deal with this as a city, were looking like they were going toembark on some illegal sweeps. The county executive's officebasically said - Hey, looks like you're about to embark on illegalsweeps. Since you contract your police department through theSheriff's department, we're just letting you know that the sheriffscannot participate in an illegal sweep. This kicked off a lot ofhemming and hawing by the council - ended up coming to what, Ithink, the county viewed as a reasonable compromise and offer forhelp that lots of cities would love to have. And they said - Okay,you're trying to deal with this. We'll help you with a milliondollars, some Pallet shelters. You talked about the land swap deal- there's publicly owned land that is being leased to a cardealership, we'll accommodate for that. And basically you have landavailable to make this happen. We know you need more resources toadequately address this. We will help you with that. And thecouncil majority basically refused to engage with that for a longtime.
So the county finally has gotten around to saying- Okay, this isn't just an offer out there forever. We need to putthis money to good use, so do you wanna take it? And the citymanager in Burien initially said, Hey, I didn't even see it. I hadno idea this was happening. Turns out he did, he actually respondedto the email. But it has been quite a trial and tribulation there,and so we'll have to see what's gonna happen. But it does look likebasically an effort to sabotage any attempt to do anything butcriminalize homelessness, which just feels so out of joint fromwhere most people are on this topic. Even people who feel that -hey, eventually sweeps are justified, almost uniformly feel like,but we need to do all we can to make sure that we do transitionpeople into housing if possible, that offers of shelter are made,that we don't just move the problem from one place to another. Cityis not engaged with that at all. They seem perfectly satisfied tojust sweep people from one place to another, as has been documentedby the sweeps that they did of one location - seeing the peoplejust move to another location. Homelessness is a problem about thelack of housing. If you aren't doing anything to provide housing,you aren't doing anything to solve homelessness, unless you feelthe visibility of it, and not the people who actually don't havehomes and are dealing with everything associated with that, whichis just a very, very, very hard way to live. So we'll see whatcontinues to happen. What are the prospects for them taking thisup? Do they still have the option to ignore it?
[00:49:14]EricaBarnett: Well, do you mean taking up the offer fora million dollars? Well, I mean, certainly they have the option toignore it. I mean, it will go away. I mean, I think that - I'mperhaps a little bit less charitable than you are in my assessmentof what people want, just having watched all these meetings ofpeople sort of screaming that these are - Seattle people aresending mobs of homeless people down to Burien and just this kindof very unrealistic, fantastical stuff that people say. But I thinkthere's some magical thinking going on on the council as well. Thecity has just hired, just signed a contract - a no-bid contract -with a group called The More We Love that's run by one individual,a Kirkland mortgage broker named Kristine Moreland. And she hassaid that she has access to special resources that no one elsedoes, and she can easily house and shelter people. And that it'sjust that all these other experienced homeless outreach providershave failed. And I think that is a fantastical notion because, asyou said, there is not enough housing, there is not enough shelter.And generally what she does is put people into detox, which is athree to five day program that doesn't include any housing ortreatment, or takes people to Seattle and puts them into UnionGospel Mission shelters. Those are two of the things that I amaware of her doing, neither of which is a solution. And one ofwhich is just moving people out of Burien and into Seattle, whichis not housing them. So I think that there's just, there's a lot ofunrealistic thinking going on. And of course, there was an electionin Burien as well. And two of the more progressive members will nolonger be on the council next year - they've been replaced bypeople who agree more on this issue with the conservative councilmajority. So yeah, it's, you know, I don't expect the situationthere to get any better on this issue, nor do I think that this newcouncil is going to have more realistic notions of what's possiblewithout additional resources.
[00:51:35]CrystalFincher: Yeah, certainly the election results therewere definitely a move in the other direction. We saw King CountyGOP endorsed candidates like Kevin Schilling handily winning hisrace there. Now, some of the opponents were pretty new, didn't havemany resources, but can pretty much see a continuation and perhapseven an acceleration of these policies that are very punitive andhostile towards the unhoused population.
The last thing I wanna talk about today is anupdate on Sound Transit's fare enforcement policies and processes.We've talked about this before, you have covered this for quitesome time. So now they're coming out with a new fare enforcementsystem. What are they going to do now?
[00:52:32]EricaBarnett: Well, as far as I can tell, the maindifference - they're going to be enforcing fares and this has beencovered in the past, but there will be more opportunities forpeople to get warnings and things like that - the initial fineswill be lower. But the main difference is that the fare enforcementpeople are now called fare ambassadors and they are not in securityuniforms, which Sound Transit is saying is a significant change. Imean, I guess it does make things feel different if you have aperson who is not in a uniform, but an orange vest, checking yourfare. But ultimately, I mean, that's the big substantivedifference. They say that this is gonna be more equitable, they'regonna check everybody on the train, but as you mentioned, I've beencovering this for a long time and for years, they've been sayingthat their process is completely equitable and that they - it isessentially impossible for them to discriminate against anybody ortarget anybody because of their race or perceived socioeconomicstatus because they start at both ends of the train and they moveto the middle. And there was a slide that they showed so many timesthat I started kind of making fun of it on PubliCola because, youknow, it was just this very, you know, sort of bored recitation atevery council, or sorry, at every Sound Transit meeting where theywould say - You know, we start at both ends of the train, we workour way to the middle, it's completely equitable. So, you know,they're saying this is gonna be completely equitable too. I don'tthink that it is possible to have an equitable fare enforcementpolicy because I think fare enforcement hits different peopledifferently. And if you can't pay it, eventually, you could go tocourt and get a misdemeanor on your record. So fare enforcementinherently and fares inherently are not equitable. So we'll see howit plays out in practice, but once you start enforcing fares, youhave instituted an inequitable process because poor people are lesslikely to be able to pay fares, more likely to get caught withouthaving paid their fare, and then more likely to be unable to paythe fines that will eventually start accruing.
[00:54:50]CrystalFincher: I have a major pet peeve - pet peeve istoo minor a way to say it, but it probably comes through and Ihaven't overtly articulated it, but you know, in lots of thingsthat I talk about - but people just taking action to take action,that is not a serious attempt to fix the problem that they saythey're trying to fix. Whether I agree with what they're stating isa problem or their way that they're going about it - even if youtake everything at face value, their solutions are not in any wayadequate enough to address what they're saying is a problem. And sothe momentum - we've heard Sound Transit board members talk abouthow important fare enforcement is - people are getting away with itand we need to collect these fares for our system. We - our budgetdepends on fare box recovery and if people aren't paying, thenthat's throwing our finances and our system into chaos. Which wouldmake most people reasonably think - Okay, so if they're doing fareenforcement action and spending all of this money on these fareenforcement people, and instituting this basically entireadministration dedicated to fare enforcement - one would think thatthe fines that they issue would be collected by Sound Transit. Iwas surprised to learn from your reporting before that that wasn'tthe case. And it seems like it still isn't the case under this newsystem, is that correct?
[00:56:24]EricaBarnett: My understanding is - yes, that the finesgo to the, go into the administration, into the court system, but,you know, I am not 100%, I have not looked into this. So pleasedon't, please do some fact checking on this for me, 'cause I -maybe you can look into it, Crystal - but I'm pretty sure that,yeah, the fines don't go to Sound Transit. I mean, I think like bigpicture, Sound Transit does have some financial problems. A lot ofthem are related to the fact that they continue to provide servicethat is suboptimal for a lot of people. A lot of times trains arestopped because of incidents, escalators very often don't work. Andthe trains are running a lot slower now, they're more crowdedbecause there's not enough cars and they're not running asfrequently. And so the service has really suffered. And so - numberone, it's not a great product right now. It could be a greatproduct again, but you're sort of instituting fare enforcement at atime when the product itself is suboptimal. And second, they'replanning the next expansion of the light rail system and a lot ofthe stuff they're doing, you know, in particularly in South LakeUnion, for example, to appease Amazon and other companies in thatarea is moving stations around and making big changes that aregoing to cost money. And then on the flip side, eliminatingstations like the Midtown Station that have huge constituencies,like all the people on First Hill that got robbed of a station inSound Transit 1 when they cut the station there. So you're sort ofputting the squeeze on people who might be your riders in thefuture and moving things around to appease big companies. So Idon't know - I think a lot of people are frustrated with SoundTransit right now and focusing on, Oh my God, it's those damn, youknow, fare evaders, as they call people who don't pay, they're theproblem - just feels really off point right now. And, you know, Imean, I'm sure you've ridden light rail. It's noticeably slowerrecently because people, the drivers for one - I mean, one reasonfor that is that the drivers are slowing down in the Rainier Valleyto avoid hitting people because Sound Transit put the trains atgrade in the first segment of light rail. So yeah, it's just - it'snot a great look.
[00:59:05]CrystalFincher: It's not a great look. And yes, I haveridden light rail recently. I've also ridden BART recently and LAMetro trains recently. And my goodness, is it just noticeable? Ifyou know me, you've heard this rant, but Los Angeles, the carcapital of the world, and Seattle actually started planning theirlight rail systems at the same time. And Seattle has wound up witha partial line that still has end points getting pushed off fordecades, it seems like. And LA has built this vast network ofmultiple lines and everything in a city where it's not easy to getstuff done, where people have more of a connection to their cars,where it's harder to get around in other areas - so the lift ofgetting people to make that change seems heavier down there. Andwow, we've just gotten bogged down in the Seattle process, itseems. But it seems like the main problem, what's underlyingeverything else, is that their - the people in charge of thissystem, the Sound Transit Board, are not regular transit riders.They don't seem to use the product that they're responsible for.And listening to them talk - most of them are, predominantly drivecars, they don't take transit often. And you can hear that in theircomments, you can see that in how they are planning, or notplanning, or the things that they're missing, as we progress here.So I certainly hope that we see more of a focus on appointingleaders to that board who understand the system and use it, andunderstand how important it is to their community and the relevanceof their community, and how it needs to adapt to other communities.Yeah, it's really interesting. I'm thinking of a number of suburbanleaders, whether it's Bothell or Covington - people wanting toimprove the service, make it relevant for their community, but itis just been a big challenge.
With that, I thank you for listening to Hacks &Wonks on this Friday, November 17th, 2023. The producer of Hacks &Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was Seattlepolitical reporter and editor of PubliCola, Erica Barnett. You canfind Erica on Twitter @ericacbarnett and on multiple platforms now- just search Erica and on PubliCola.com. You can follow Hacks &Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks and soon you'll be able to follow iton other platforms. You can find me on most platforms as@finchfrii. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,or wherever else you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks andWonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe and leave a reviewif you're able - to get the full versions of our Fridayweek-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to yourpodcast feed. You can also get a full transcript of this episodeand links to the resources referenced in the show atofficialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes.
Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.
