JumpStart

Seattle Budget Inches Towards the Finish Line

By / December 24, 2022

Seattle Balancing Package Budget Amendments

Amy Sundberg
Good morning and welcome to Seattle’s budget meeting! Today CMs will vote on amendments to the balancing package.
After a marathon budget meeting yesterday lasting almost twelve hours, we have a much better idea of the final shape the 2023 Seattle budget will take. The Council will vote on the final budget in budget committee on Monday, November 28 and take the final vote in Full Council on Tuesday, November 29. However, barring a dramatic event and/or last minute shenanigans, most changes to the budget during the next week will be technical in nature.
So where are we with the budget in terms of public safety?
  • the PEOs will be moved back into SPD (more about this later, as it is the subject of much opining); CMs Herbold, Juarez, Lewis, Nelson, Pedersen, and Strauss voted yes, CMs Sawant and Morales abstained, and CM Mosqueda voted no.
  • in the same budget move that achieved the PEO move, a few SPD balancing package cuts were restored: $750k for a recruitment media campaign and $191k for an assistant city attorney position within SPD
  • the following SPD cuts remain: $450k from police equipment (guns, tasers, etc); $450k from additional retention initiatives; $1m for a gun detection system like ShotSpotter
  • 80 “ghost cop” positions were abrogated; CMs Herbold, Juarez, Morales, Sawant, Strauss, and Mosqueda voted in favor; CMs Lewis, Nelson, and Pedersen opposed. While CM Mosqueda argued for the measure as expected (since she included it in her balancing package), CM Herbold and CP Juarez both also argued strongly in favor of this proposal. Central Staff found there were even more ghost cop positions than previously known; the total number was 240. With the abrogations, the new number of ghost cop positions will be 160.
  • SPD salary savings will continue to be under a proviso to allow Council to be part of the conversation about how these dollars will be spent; all CMs but Nelson and Pedersen voted in favor.
  • Seattle will be spending some unexpected SPD salary savings to fund a seaplane awareness campaign, among other priorities.
  • Sweeps will continue to be funded.
  • Human Service workers will be paid commiserate with inflation.
  • $50k was added to develop an Impacted Person’s Program for victims of SPD violence and their families; this work will be done by forming an OPA workgroup.
Other items of interest:
  • CM Morales’s amendment to create a Municipal Housing Administration Program (one that could interface well with I-135 should it pass in February) failed to pass. CMs Lewis, Morales, and Sawant voted in favor, CMs Herbold, Juarez, Mosqueda, Nelson, Strauss opposed, and CM Pedersen abstained.
  • CM Sawant’s amendment to increase the JumpStart tax also failed, which was not a surprise, but it did garner support from two additional CMs: CM Morales and CM Mosqueda.
  • The law will not be changed this year making the JumpStart tax a permanent fill-in for General Fund woes at the expense of its intended spend plan.
  • Seattle Public Schools look like they’ll be getting around $1.5m for mental health services, which is better than nothing but far below students’ $9m ask. Let’s hope this fight for much-needed funding is taken to the state during the next legislative session in January.

What about the PEOs?

As Erica Barnett reported in Publicola, the PEOs’ ULP (Unfair Labor Practice) against the City was rejected. This suit was one reason given for wanting to move the PEOs back into SPD; however, CMs couldn’t resist the lure of several million more dollars to invest in pet projects if they went ahead with the move. The failure of this suit is still relevant, however, since the PEOs argued they needed access to the Criminal Justice Investigation System (CJIS), a database they can only currently access if part of SPD. However, the Public Employee Relations Commission (PERC) said access to this database is not necessary for the PEOs to do their jobs, clearing the way for them to be located in CSCC or another department in the future, an idea favored by several CMs.
If you want a rundown of the history of the PEO controversy, look no further than Will Casey’s article on this in The Stranger. If it seems like a strange issue to be fighting over, you are not alone in this assessment. And it is true that in their year over at SDOT, the PEOs weren’t supported in making any kind of meaningful culture shift away from a policing, punitive mindset. They were even still housed in an SPD building, and their uniforms and vehicles retained SPD labels.
However, this doesn’t mean the location of the PEOs doesn’t matter. They certainly won’t succeed in shifting their culture from within SPD, and they are part of a bigger policy question: do civilian workers belong within a non-civilian department like SPD or are they better housed in civilian departments? In 2020 the Council came down clearly on the side of the latter, when they also moved the 911 dispatchers and victim advocates out of SPD.
Another policy question looms large over Seattle: will our elected leaders ever choose to make meaningful investments in addressing root causes of crime and suffering, or will they continue to primarily invest in a strategy with a thus far poor track record: police and sweeps? Only time will tell, but looking at allocated dollars remains a powerful way to understand a city’s priorities.

Housekeeping

As most of you already know, Twitter is not the most stable service right now. This newsletter is currently running through a Twitter-attached service. I am weighing options on the best solution to meet Notes from the Emerald City‘s needs in the future, but rest assured, I will be continuing to report, and I will keep you informed about any changes that might be coming.
I am also on vacation next week, so there will be no newsletter. Yes, this was planned before budget season was extended for an extra week. I’ll do a wrap-up of budget season upon my return, from which we will all benefit from the wisdom of everyone else’s wrap-ups!

Recent Headlines

OLEO Finally to Get Its Subpoena Power

By / December 24, 2022

King County News

We’ll start off with some big news: King County has finished negotiating their police union contract with the King County Police Officers Guild (KCPOG). While I have not yet read through the contract (oh, what fun weekend reading I have ahead of me!), the big headline here is that the Office of Law Enforcement Oversight (OLEO) has finally been given the powers King County voters decided to grant them that have been blocked by the old contract. OLEO will be able to issue subpoenas and conduct independent investigations of alleged misconduct and use of force cases involving the King County Sheriff’s Office (KCSO). Until now OLEO has had their hands tied without access to the information they would have needed to perform solid investigations, but this contract would change that.
The new contract will have to be voted upon by the King County Council before going into effect. It will cover the 3-year period of 2022-2024.
Meanwhile, the King County Jail is still having water problems, and inmates are still drinking bottled water. These problems first began more than three weeks ago, and there are questions as to whether inmates are getting sufficient bottled water for their needs.

Election in Two Weeks

The election is coming up, ballots have been mailed out, and voting guides are being published. Here are a few worth checking out:
The Stranger’s Voting Guide/Endorsements
People Power Washington’s NonPartisan Public Safety Voting Guide
Publicola Endorsements

Seattle News

As expected, it looks like CM Mosqueda is not supportive of permanently changing how the Jumpstart tax funds are allowed to be used in Seattle’s budget.
Budget amendments relating to SPD, the CSCC, and HSD will be discussed this Thursday so expect more on that in the next newsletter. The next opportunity for public comment will not be until the morning of Tuesday, November 8 at 9:30am. Budget Chair Mosqueda’s balancing package will drop the previous day, Monday, November 7. And there’s a tight turnaround for any amendments CMs might want to add to that package.
There will be a Rainier Beach Public Safety town hall this Thursday, October 27 from 6-8pm at the New Holly Gathering Hall, 7054 32nd Ave South. The proposed gunfire detection system (likely ShotSpotter) will be discussed. Masks are required, and dinner, child care, and translation will be provided.
We are not quite done with the Seattle redistricting process. The final map vote will take place on Monday, October 31, and the final map and resolution from the committee will be confirmed on Tuesday, November 8. Apparently a new map not favored by the Seattle Redistricting Coalition was introduced at a meeting earlier today, and you’ll have a last chance to give public comment about the map options on Monday 10/31 at 12pm at this Zoom link. You can find a script (that will probably be updated before that meeting) here.

Other Resources

City Leaders Fight over Policing Pirates - The Stranger

City Leaders Fight over Policing Pirates – The Stranger
A spat over funding for SPD’s harbor patrol reveals looming conflict between City leaders over the police budget.
www.thestranger.com  •  Share
Policing Seattle

Policing Seattle
How labor, migration, and police violence shaped the urban northwest in the 20th century.
storymaps.arcgis.com  •  Share

The 2022 Seattle Budget Underspend Hit Public Safety Alternatives Hard

By / December 24, 2022

Seattle Budget

Amy Sundberg
This morning in Seattle we’re getting a presentation on balancing and other fund policies pertaining to the budget. I’m hoping to gain a greater understanding of the JumpStart funds reallocation and how that is being framed.
Amy Sundberg
Seattle City Council is now discussing the JumpStart find spending plan.

 

The Seattle City Council has begun issue identification for various portions of Mayor Harrell’s proposed budget. First up on Tuesday was a general discussion on how the proposed budget is being balanced, including the changes in how the Mayor is suggesting JumpStart funds be used. You can find a detailed overview of this first day of discussions over at Publicola, which I recommend reading in full to understand all the nuances.
As we’ve previously discussed, the City is facing a deficit of about $141m for 2023. And the trend of the City having greater expenses than revenues looks like it will continue for the next several years at least. So the question becomes, how do our elected officials address this gap?
Mayor Harrell’s answer appears to be by using JumpStart tax revenues, for which there is a specific spending plan, to make up the difference. In order to do this, the laws governing the use of this tax would have to be changed, and Mayor Harrell is proposing to do so not just temporarily while the City identifies other progressive revenue streams (for which they’re putting together a work group that is supposed to have recommendations to put before the Council by May 2023), but in perpetuity. As Central Staff said in a memo:
“the proposed policy change … could result in permanently backfilling revenue losses that are due to noninflationary factors in other funds. Put another way, the JumpStart Fund transfer would be permanently solving stability issues inherent with the existing [general fund] financing structure.”
This shift in usage potentially means this tax could be permanently pulled away from the funding priorities for which it was intended.
CM Mosqueda has said that she (and a coalition that sent a letter earlier this year re the JumpStart funds) would like to see any JumpStart funds that are taken from their intended allocations used to prevent austerity and cuts, not to fund new programs. However, the Mayor’s proposed budget contains what amounts to a pay cut for human service providers while, per Erica C. Barnett, it also adds $32m in net ongoing new expenditures for 2023 (and $52m for 2024). And some of the money allocated towards the JumpStart priorities doesn’t seem to fit into the designated categories for which the tax is supposed to be used. However, it’s going to be a struggle to fix all of this: if the Council doesn’t wish to go along with Harrell’s plan to reallocate JumpStart funds, they’ll potentially have to find alternate funding for certain programs and/or make cuts, and they’ll have to decide whether to hold fast to their commitment to the community about how these dollars were to be spent.
Also as part of his proposed budget, the Mayor plans to underspend the budget by $10m in unspecified ways in 2023. He already performed an underspend of $19.77m in 2022, and looking at which projects were paused is instructive: 32% of the funds not spent were in the Human Services Department for uses such as restorative justice programs, expanding pre-filing diversion contracts, a survey on national best practices on interrupting gun violence, expanding behavioral health services, expanding the mobile crisis team, preparing a survey for designing a new behavioral health facility, and investments to address AAPI hate crimes. Other public safety investments in the 2022 budget that fell victim to this underspend included Mayor Durkan’s ill-fated Triage One, adding 26 dispatchers to the 911 call center, and a victim compensation fund. You can look at the complete list here in Attachment B, starting on page 44.
In summary, it turns out that when the Mayor’s office was choosing where to underspend, public safety alternatives were some of the first programs up on the chopping block. And because of the nebulous nature of the underspend going forward, we can’t really say what programs will end up getting nixed in 2023 and 2024, although we do know whatever programs get frozen will have had the consensus to be funded in whatever budget is passed in November.
Continuing budget season, the Council will hear issue identification for the CSCC and SPD, including the proposed transfer of parking enforcement officers from SDOT to SPD, tomorrow, October 12, and you can expect some analysis of those discussions early next week.
Finally, in more ShotSpotter news, the South Seattle Emerald ran a piece by Carolyn Bick reporting that the CEO of ShotSpotter donated $535 to Harrell in 2013, and ShotSpotter’s Director of Customer Success donated $100 in Harrell’s 2021 mayoral campaign. It’s possible this is something of a pattern, as the CEO of ShotSpotter also donated $1000 to Detroit Mayor Duggan’s 2013 campaign, and Detroit is another city where ShotSpotter had been lobbying its product and where it is now operating. As Bick writes:
Personal campaign contributions from company employees are not illegal, and these are relatively small amounts of money. However, the Emerald felt it important to report on these personal donations because they were made against the backdrop of Harrell launching several attempts to bring the ShotSpotter system to Seattle over the same period of time.

Recent Headlines

Council Member Opposes Mayor’s Plan to Spend $1 Million on Unproven Surveillance Tech

Council Member Opposes Mayor’s Plan to Spend $1 Million on Unproven Surveillance Tech
Mayor Harrell’s proposal to spend $1 million for questionable surveillance tech for the cops draws opposition from the City Council.
www.thestranger.com  •  Share
Alternatives to Police and Prisons: Activists Share How to Better Address Violence | Teen Vogue

Alternatives to Police and Prisons: Activists Share How to Better Address Violence | Teen Vogue
Amid a backlash to criminal justice reform, money is pouring into police departments. Activists share alternative ways of addressing community violence.
www.teenvogue.com  •  Share

A Road Map for the Fall

By / December 24, 2022

Seattle News

Hannah Krieg
Today the council will vote on hiring bonuses for cops. An organizer, TK, from Every Day March called into public comment to accuse the council of lying to Black organizers about their commitment to police accountability and reform during the summer of 2020.

Yesterday the Seattle City Council voted to pass the SPD hiring incentive legislation 6 to 3, with CMs Morales, Mosqueda, and Sawant voting against it. You can see CM Morales’s remarks about why she didn’t support this bill here:

Councilmember Tammy J. Morales
We have a LOT of challenges in this city that cannot be solved with a badge and a gun: inadequate housing options, homelessness, limited behavioral health services.

That’s why I voted no on hiring incentives for SPD yesterday. It passed @SeattleCouncil 6-3. Remarks below:

1/10 https://t.co/AtkCR6oq5f

I-135, Seattle’s social housing initiative, has turned in more signatures and is now aiming to be on the ballot in February 2023, pending signature verification.
The Seattle Times reported that in Q2, the Seattle City Attorney’s Office filed 1,708 cases, an increase of 124% from the same quarter last year.
At Wednesday’s Finance and Housing committee meeting, CMs received the city’s revenue update, and it’s not looking great for 2023 and 2024. The August forecast for 2022 comes in at $1,745,610,000. whereas the August forecast for 2023 is $1,519,120,000 and the August forecast for 2024 is $1,557,310,000. It’s worth noting those forecasts for 2023 and 2024 are the baseline forecasts, not the pessimistic ones.
Erica C. Barnett
Seattle Councilmember @CMTMosqueda has proposed using some JumpStart payroll tax revenues to once again pay for general-fund services in light of the city’s ongoing budget shortfall; funding would come from excess/higher-than-anticipated JS revenues. /1

CM Mosqueda has proposed using some of the JumpStart tax revenues to continue paying for general fund services in 2023 and 2024 to help fill the revenue vs. expenditure gap. The Mayor is also pulling together a progressive revenue task force to look for potential new sources of revenue for the city (think more in the 2025 range for when this could kick in). This news sets the stage for the upcoming budget season.

Looking forward….

The City of Seattle goes on its two week summer break starting on Monday, August 22. Unless something mind-blowing happens during that time, I’m not planning another edition of the newsletter until after Labor Day. But fear not, Budget Season will be upon us before we know it.
Upcoming Dates of Note:
9/13 9:30am: Seattle Public Safety and Human Services committee meeting, where there will be a Q&A with OPA Director nominee Gino Betts
9/20 2pm: potential final Council confirmation vote of Gino Betts as OPA Director
9/25 11am: People Power Washington’s General Meeting; come if you want to hear me talk about budgets (and honestly, who doesn’t want to hear that?)
9/27: Mayor Harrell transmits Seattle’s proposed 2023 budget; Executive Constantine transmits King County’s proposed 2023-2024 budget
10/21: Ballots for the General Election are mailed out to WA voters
11/8: Election Day!
11/22: potential final Council vote for Seattle’s 2023 budget

Recent Headlines

WA state delays watchdog reports on prisons, concerning advocates | Crosscut

WA state delays watchdog reports on prisons, concerning advocates | Crosscut
Washington’s prison oversight agency shelved half a dozen reports that were underway when its inaugural director departed last November.
crosscut.com  •  Share
TV News Is Ignoring the Eviction Crisis - by Adam Johnson

TV News Is Ignoring the Eviction Crisis – by Adam Johnson
After running nonstop sob stories about put-upon landlords in 2021, CNN, ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News have largely ignored the devastating spike in evictions in 2022.
thecolumn.substack.com  •  Share
Local Leaders Announce New Coalition to Address Behavioral Health Crisis - The Stranger

Local Leaders Announce New Coalition to Address Behavioral Health Crisis – The Stranger
Local leaders announced a coalition to address King County’s behavioral health crisis, but no one is sure exactly how much it will cost or who will foot the bill.
www.thestranger.com  •  Share
A New Agency Seeks to Hold Washington’s Killer Cops Accountable - The Stranger

A New Agency Seeks to Hold Washington’s Killer Cops Accountable – The Stranger
Family members who have lost loved ones to police violence hope a new statewide oversight agency will end the practice of police investigating police.
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The JumpStart Tax Stands

By / December 23, 2022

Seattle News

The City of Seattle won its most recent legal battle over the JumpStart tax this week, which means they can continue to levy it. This is particularly crucial given the City’s $117m projected revenue shortfall for 2023, as Seattle Times‘s Sarah Grace Taylor recently reported:
But another large part of making 2023 work will likely be asking the council to free up money earmarked for specific causes — like the Jumpstart tax — to cover general expenditures.
You may recall that JumpStart tax revenue expenditures were a major source of conflict in last year’s budget, with then-Mayor Durkan allocating them away from the Council’s spending plan, and the Council yanking the money back to be spent as originally intended. With such a large revenue shortfall, however, we could see a different outcome in this budget season.
The public inquest into the wrongful death of Charleena Lyles has begun and will run through July 6. In spite of attempted opposition, this inquest is available for the public to watch via streaming.
Carolyn Bick continues their excellent reporting into problems at Seattle’s Office of Police Accountability (OPA) and Office of the Inspector General (OIG):
The Emerald has obtained multiple documents that show that former Office of Police Accountability (OPA) Dir. Andrew Myerberg appears to have withheld key information from the Office of Inspector General — the OPA’s accountability partner agency tasked with certifying OPA investigations — by submitting a case for certification and later adding information to the case report. In doing so, and in drawing conclusions from said information, Myerberg appears to have subverted not only the OPA’s own rules and procedures but also the City’s 2017 Accountability Ordinance.

Washington State News

It sounds like the $1.5m settlement paid out to the Nazi-sympathizing police officer in Kent might be drawing attention to the realities of some of the problems with police accountability in Washington State. Depending on how elections go this fall, we could see a renewed effort during the next session of the state legislature to address some of the problems with officer discipline. One potential vehicle for this, SB 5677, which you may remember me discussing at the beginning of the year, “would require municipalities to establish procedures that meet a set of minimum standards for receiving complaints and conducting investigations regarding “serious misconduct” by police officers.”

Recent Headlines

The Washington post - by Alec Karakatsanis

The Washington post – by Alec Karakatsanis
Democracy Dies When the Editorial Board Speaks
equalityalec.substack.com  •  Share
Seattle protester critically hurt by driver during BLM demonstration sues state, city, suspected driver | The Seattle Times

Seattle protester critically hurt by driver during BLM demonstration sues state, city, suspected driver | The Seattle Times
Dawit Kelete is accused of hitting two protesters, killing one of them, after driving around roadway barricades and taking an offramp onto Interstate 5 on July 4, 2020.
www.seattletimes.com  •  Share
WA attorney general seeks to require Pierce County Sheriff Ed Troyer to post $10,000 bail | The Seattle Times

WA attorney general seeks to require Pierce County Sheriff Ed Troyer to post $10,000 bail | The Seattle Times
Prosecutors are seeking to require Pierce County Sheriff Ed Troyer to post $10,000 in bail as a condition of release pending a trial on false reporting charges.
www.seattletimes.com  •  Share

Digging into Seattle’s SPD and Public Safety Budgets

By / December 22, 2022

Seattle Budget Meetings

Today was the last of the Seattle Select Budget committee meetings on issue identification related to the 2022 budget.
This first thread is on alternatives to police response and the criminal legal system:
Amy Sundberg
Good morning! I’m here live tweeting at today’s Seattle select budget committee meeting where they’re about to discuss issue identification for alternatives to police response and the criminal legal system.

The second thread finishes up the alternatives conversation and then covers the SPD presentation:

Amy Sundberg
Okay, we’re back with Seattle’s select budget committee, finishing alternatives to police response and the CLS. We’re talking about subsidies for electronic home monitoring.
The City Council has a bunch of decisions related to public safety to make regarding next year’s budget. Here are some things to watch for:
CM Mosqueda sounds dedicated to clawing back as much as possible of the JumpStart funding the Mayor used in the proposed 2022 budget; she wants to implement the JumpStart spending plan passed by the Council last year and avoid future spending cliffs. Unfortunately, this seems to entail taking $27.2m of PB, leaving $30m to spend in 2022 rather than the much larger $57.2m in the proposed budget; some large amount from the Equitable Communities Initiative so they’d have exactly $30m to spend in 2022; and possibly some money from the HSD community safety capacity building program so they’d have exactly $10m to spend in 2022. This means we’re seeing the above priorities be pitted against JumpStart spending plan priorities. For anyone who is generally in favor of both sets of spending, the effect is a bit dampening, to say the least. Of course, for the former priorities, any additional money beyond the ongoing annual amount would need to be spent on one-time projects and investments.
There is a lot of question as to which alternatives to police response should be funded in the new budget, as well as disappointment expressed by CMs that more investment isn’t already in the budget in this area. The new Triage One program, which is being proposed to be housed in SFD, will not be able to be implemented until December 2022, which is still fourteen months away; if it were instead to be housed in CSCC, it would take even longer. Other alternatives being considered by CMs include contracting with an outside community organization for these services or beginning a new different pilot project within CSCC. CM Lewis in particular is in favor of experimenting with a few different approaches in 2022 and then deciding in future budgets which efforts to scale up or down. Several CMs agreed on the urgency of this work.
There was also a bit of discussion about administrative responders, which would be civilians who answer certain calls to take reports, for example for minor traffic accidents or damages/burglaries when the insurance company requires a police report be filed. This could potentially be a body of work taken on by the CSOs or another group. And of course, there’s the perennial question of where the CSOs should be located: within SPD or within the new CSCC.
CM Herbold suggested they might be able to take a different approach to moving certain bodies of work outside SPD. Because there is such a staffing shortage at SPD at present, this may be creating extenuating circumstances that create a different legal framework for having civilians do certain tasks because the City is otherwise unable to get the work done at all. This could have potential implications for parking enforcement officers, community service officers, and even for things like how much work the fire department does in Harbor Patrol compared to SPD.
Response times to 911 priority one calls have been going up, but it turns out the number of sworn officers responding to calls hasn’t changed between this year and last year. (This is because Chief Diaz has moved a number of officers onto patrol duty to make up the difference.) That indicates the greater response times might not be because of SPD’s staffing woes, but rather because of management problems, the way responders are being deployed, increased traffic, increased number of calls, etc.
The SPD appears to be saying they want to spend around $1m on technology to do even more analysis on the NICJR report about which 911 calls could be responded to by people other than police officers. They anticipate having a risk analysis done on the 29 call types that are being considered “low hanging fruit” by the end of quarter one of 2022…so a bit more than five months from now.
There continues to be a somewhat antagonistic relationship between SPD and the Council in that Greg Doss from Central Staff, when discussing technology investments for which SPD wants to spend salary savings, said that SPD appears to be telling the Council what they’re going to do rather than asking. They’ve already entered into some commitments regarding these technology investments even though they haven’t yet received budgetary authority for them. In better (?) news, it does appear SPD might not overspend their overtime budget in 2021, although given that we’re still in a pandemic, that isn’t perhaps as big an achievement as it would have been in other times, especially when we also consider the fact that other city departments aren’t generally in the habit of overspending their budgets and then asking for more money after the fact.
Then there is the issue of SPD’s salary savings spending plan. In the proposed budget SPD will have 1357 sworn officer positions funded, but will only be able to actually fill 1223 of those positions (and that’s if they can meet a very ambitious hiring plan, hiring more officers in 2022 than they have in any of the last ten years, and have the lower attrition rate in 2022 they’ve estimated). This will result in an estimated salary savings of $19m. The Council has to decide, first, whether to continue funding those additional 134 sworn officers positions that will remain empty in 2022. If they do, then they have to decide whether to approve of SPD’s plan of how to spend this salary savings, including on another squad of CSOs; $1.1m on hiring bonuses in an ongoing program; and $5m on various technology projects. Additionally there is the issue that funding for the proposed Triage One team and the Peacekeeper’s Collective is currently coming from this salary savings; this means that if SPD staffs those unfilled positions in the future, there will no longer be a funding source for those two programs.
Meanwhile, some details pertaining to sustaining and/or expanding the pre-filing diversion program seem to depend on the upcoming election for City Attorney. The City Attorney, for example, gets to decide when to charge somebody and how much diversion to practice. CM Lewis once again pushed for the Council to pass legislation to require the City Attorney to maintain a diversion program. The City Council could also theoretically pass legislation to decriminalize certain crimes (although not those on a state level), which may save money that could then be spent on the diversion program.
The next budget committee meetings are on October 26-28, starting at 9:30am, when the CMs will be discussing their proposed amendments to the 2022 budget. There will be time for public comment at the beginning of each of these three meetings.

More Resources on these Budget Discussions

Seattle’s Proposed Budget: More Cops, JumpStart power play

By / December 22, 2022

Seattle’s Proposed 2022 Budget

The Solidarity Budget held their kickoff of their budget recommendations over the weekend. From their website:
The 2022 Seattle Solidarity Budget is a collective call toward a city budget that centers the needs of the most marginalized and vulnerable Seattle residents, responds with funding that is commensurate with the crises we are facing, and prioritizes collective care and liberation.
They go onto say, “Divesting from police systems and investing in Black communities goes hand in hand with climate justice work and housing justice work and Indigenous sovereignty.” Here is a good summary of many of their proposals. Full disclosure, I’m on the steering committee of one of the organizations that has endorsed the Solidarity Budget.
The Solidarity Budget launch was strategically timed, as the Mayor transmitted her 2022 proposed budget to the City Council yesterday.
First, some good news. The Mayor is honoring her commitment to continue investment in BIPOC communities, calling for an additional $30m for participatory budgeting (increasing the overall pot to $57m since the bulk of the 2021 investment remains unspent), $30m to the Equitable Communities Initiative (aka the Mayor’s task force), and $30m to the Strategic Investment Fund for acquisition of property located in high risk of displacement neighborhoods. She is also continuing the $10m investment in HSD for community safety capacity building. However, the Solidarity Budget asks for a $60m investment in participatory budgeting.
In terms of SPD, the Mayor proposes increasing their budget by around $2.5m. The total proposed SPD budget for 2022 is about 23% of the estimated available General Fund. She makes several other proposals:
  • the addition of 35 net sworn officers, which means hiring a total of 125 officers in 2022, for a total force of 1230 (in contrast, the Solidarity Budget suggests a total force of 750 officers)
  • $1.1m for bonuses for hiring new recruits and lateral transfers (another attempt after CM Pedersen’s similar amendments failed last week)
  • the addition of another team of CSOs (five officers and one supervisor); the CSOs (community service officers) want to remain within SPD instead of moving the CSCC, meaning expanding this program continues to grow SPD
  • SDOT and the Parks & Rec Department will both get more money to continue removing encampments
The Mayor has provided $2m funding for Triage One, to be housed in the fire department to perform wellness check calls. At this amount of funding, Triage One could only respond to a small fraction of the calls that even SPD agrees don’t need a sworn officer response (14%). And don’t forget the recent NICJR report that found 49% of 911 calls in Seattle don’t require a sworn officer response. However, there is no mention of funding any kind of alternate community emergency response program like CAHOOTS or STAR in the budget, in spite of the proven track record of such programs.
The budget committee presentation on Community Safety & Community Led Investments and SPD will be on Thursday, September 30 at 2pm. You can give public comment Thursday morning at 9:30am; sign-ups begin at 7:30am.

Jumpstart Funds and the Proposed Budget

As Erica Barnett reports in Publicola, another interesting facet of the Mayor’s proposed budget is the fact that she takes $148m from the new JumpStart tax fund to spend on her own priorities. This is in spite of the fact that:
The council adopted the payroll tax specifically to fund programs addressing housing, homelessness, and equity, and created a separate fund for JumpStart revenues with the intention that they couldn’t be used for other purposes—which is precisely what Durkan is proposing to do.
In 2022 Mayor Durkan is planning to use one-time federal relief funds to pay for the stated JumpStart tax purposes, but this plan will leave the new Mayor and Council in a pretty pickle with the 2023 budget, when they will either have to cut the programs funded by the reallocated money in 2022 or abandon their original JumpStart spending plan.
In addition, one in a volley of parting shots, she is proposing legislation that will allow future Mayors to use the JumpStart funds for almost any purpose.

More OPA Problems

Carolyn Bick is back with more excellent reporting on the OPA at the South Seattle Emerald, this time about more discrepancies in a OPA report about the 2020 Labor Day protest outside SPOG HQ. It gets pretty convoluted, so here are some main takeaways:
  • Director Myerberg told the Emerald back in June that he was planning to finalize the Director’s Certification Memo (DCM) for the case in early July, but the DCM had actually been finalized back in April.
  • The DCM appears to craft a narrative of the protest not supported by the evidence that involves conflating three different individuals in easily distinguishable dress and has many discrepancies with various video sources.
  • The narrative tells a story of the protest being broken up in order to arrest a specific person with Molotov cocktails rather than the protest being stopped for no legal reason.
  • You may remember that a different OPA report about this same protest received a partial certification from the OIG because “OIG finds that the deficiencies of the investigation with respect to thoroughness and objectivity cannot be remedied.”
  • You might also remember the resignation of an OIG employee who made an ethics complaint against top staff within the OIG; Bick reports: “The apparent inaccuracies identified in the aforementioned OIG memo included in the ethics complaint start almost at the very beginning of the 35-page DCM.”
Perhaps most damning is this quote from Carolyn Bick’s article:
This throws into question the claim that SPD’s aim was not to disperse the crowd but only to target one person allegedly carrying a dangerous weapon for arrest.
However, the OPA appears to ignore this and, further, appears to convey a specific reason for doing so: The OPA writes in the DCM that it “declines” to reach a conclusion that, under the Federal Consent Decree, would legally bar SPD from policing demonstrations, because the OPA claims that these protest situations could become dangerous without police. For that reason, the OPA writes, it will not sustain this allegation.
It is unclear how this conclusion aligns with the Consent Decree, as OPA’s purpose is to hold SPD and its officers to account.
The above quotation clearly suggests the OPA is failing in its duty to hold SPD and its officers accountable. Further, it suggests that had the OPA followed the actual evidence of the case, SPD would be prevented from policing demonstrations in future because of their failure to comply with proper policing standards. Therefore, the OPA is protecting SPD and its officers not only from discipline for misconduct but also from consequences from the consent decree. It is difficult to see how the OPA can maintain community trust in the face of such actions.

Recent Headlines and News of Note

Amy Sundberg
Good morning! It’s Monday and time for this week’s Seattle Council Briefing. CM Juarez isn’t feeling well enough to be here this morning.
Seattle Budget Headlines
Seattle mayor proposes increasing police staffing in 2022 budget | Crosscut

Seattle mayor proposes increasing police staffing in 2022 budget | Crosscut
Mayor Jenny Durkan’s final proposed budget is aided by new taxes, a recovering economy and mountains of federal relief.
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Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan’s 2022 budget plan would add police, allocate federal aid to housing | The Seattle Times

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan’s 2022 budget plan would add police, allocate federal aid to housing | The Seattle Times
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan’s 2022 budget plan would add police officers and allocate COVID-19 federal assistance to affordable housing. Durkan is scheduled to speak about her budget plan on Monday…
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Lots of Seattle news for your Friday evening

By / December 22, 2022

In Seattle

Lots of interesting Seattle news to end your week!
First of all, this afternoon the Court ruled that the Jumpstart payroll tax is constitutionally permissible. You can read more about the case here. This is important because whether you care about green transit projects, more affordable housing and shelter for the homeless, making Seattle a more equitable city, etc., it all costs money. Seattle can make more of these investments when it’s able to pursue more progressive revenue options. This particular ruling is likely to be appealed, but it’s an important step forward.
Meanwhile, it looked like City Hall might not be held accountable for the Mayor’s missing texts (not to mention the missing texts of former Chief Best, Chief Scoggins, and several members of SPD command staff). Happily The Seattle Times has decided to sue the city of Seattle,“alleging that the city of Seattle mishandled requests from reporters for officials’ text messages during a tumultuous period last summer when police abandoned the East Precinct and used tear gas on protesters.” Even more damning, “some of The Seattle Times’ requests for the mayor’s texts were submitted before her phone settings were changed to retain messages, meaning they were deleted while the requests were pending.” This should be an interesting case to follow.
In good news, the Equitable Communities Initiative Task Force released their recommendations for how to spend $30m in funding for BIPOC communities. They divided the money into four equal pots: one for small business support, one for education, one for a lease to purchase home owner program and a generational wealth and apprenticeship pipeline program, and one for health issues including money for food access and environmental justice, culturally responsive health care, and workforce development of healthcare providers of color. An implementation plan is currently in the works, and we should see associated legislation transmitted to the Council in late June or early July.
More good news: an RFP has been released in Seattle for the acquisition of land and property to respond to the displacement of BIPOC communities and build community wealth. This is the $30m from the Strategic Investment Fund (funded by the sale of the Mercer Megablock) that activists fought to reinstate in the 2021 city budget. You can find out more information about the RFP process and how to apply at the city website. Mayor Durkan also announced she plans to allocate another $100m to BIPOC communities in her 2022 proposed budget.
Paul Kiefer of Publicola looks at an interesting option regarding Seattle’s consent decree: the city is allowed to propose a revision to the consent decree.
In order to propose a revision to the consent decree, the mayor and the council would need to agree about the goals and details of the change. Some simpler changes, like replacing out-of-date and ineffective technology used to flag officers who are more likely to use excessive force, would only require the city to identify better software; others, like adjusting the consent decree to require a large-scale civilian crisis response program, would require lengthier debates and pilot programs to produce a workable proposal for the court and DOJ.
In the article, CM Herbold goes on the record saying she would support changing the consent decree but would like the CPC and community groups who had originally advocated for the consent decree to be the ones deciding how it should be changed. However, there are limits to how much the consent decree could be changed in this fashion, and meanwhile, we have a Monitor who “believes that he can’t dictate the terms the city agrees to in its next contract with SPOG,” leaving some obstacles to compliance with the decree firmly in place

Election News

This year we have several interesting races on the county level here in King County. County Executive Dow Constantine has his first credible challenger for a long time in state Senator Joe Nguyen, who is running to his left. Several of the county council members are also being challenged this year. These council members will have some influence on how the King County Sheriff job changes next year, as well as the ability to provide more support to OLEO, King County’s oversight body. You can check out the most promising bids and the money that has been raised so far in these races.
Hope you have a great weekend!

Recent Headlines

Public hearing on the budget tomorrow

By / January 3, 2023

Very short Council Briefing today! We were through everything in half an hour.

Public Hearing

There is a public hearing on budget-related matters tomorrow, Tuesday, October 6, starting at 5:30pm. Signups begin at 3:30pm. This is one of two hearings in the evening hours if you’d like to comment and can’t make the normal public comment windows during business hours.

King County Equity Now’s Response to the Mayor’s Proposed Budget

KCEN continues to call for defunding the police department by at least 50%. In addition they are asking that the JumpStart spending plan remain the same, and that the Mayor doesn’t touch that money to make good on her promise of the $100m investment into BIPOC communities. They are still calling for a true participatory budgeting process as opposed to a task force, stating on Twitter that “@mayorjenny‘s hand-picked task-force is a tried & true tactic to halt Black progress. But our communities will not accept these anti-Black practices any longer.”

Budget Chair Teresa Mosqueda weighs in on the budget process and about the JumpStart revenue package and 2021 spending package with an op-ed at the South Seattle Emerald.

Other News of Note

Washington state ballots are mailed on October 16.

If you’re into podcasts, the latest episode of Crystal Fincher’s Hacks & Wonks podcast is worth a listen. She and guest host Heather Weiner provide an excellent overview of recent Seattle news, the importance of the SPOG contract, and an analysis of Mayor Durkan’s recent actions as well as news around R-90 (the state-level referendum about sex health education), which has some very interesting bankrollers as the Republican party in Washington state attempts to do some list-building and galvanize their supporters to vote. You can read more about it in The Stranger as well.

You can read more about how important the SPOG contract is, as well as how damaging the 2017 contract has been, in Crosscut.

In legal news, the City of Seattle petitioned the court to convert its temporary restraining order regarding the SPD’s use of crowd control weapons into a preliminary injunction. They plan to invoke the the provisions of the Consent Decree in order to change policies, and have stated they want to review and potentially change crowd-control, use-of-force, and crisis intervention policies.

Finally, I know you all know this, but yes, you should be taking precautions against catching COVID-19, including wearing masks, practicing social distancing, doing any socializing out-of-doors, and staying at home. If you catch this disease, you will not in fact feel better than you did twenty years ago, especially given the long-term adverse health effects that are still in the process of being studied.

Stay safe out there!

On the Budget Meeting Overviews

By / January 3, 2023

Are you ready to talk about budget meetings?

First, the relevant Twitter threads.

This Twitter thread covers the budget overview presented on Wednesday morning.

This Twitter thread covers the SPD budget presentation this morning.

And this Twitter thread covers the Reimagining Public Safety presentation and Seattle Municipal Court presentation.

SPD Staffing Levels

My report on SPD sworn officers from the last newsletter was not completely accurate, so I want to go over the numbers now. The original 2020 budget included 1497 sworn officer positions but only funded 1422 of these positions, leaving the remainder unfunded and vacant. The proposed 2021 budget includes 1450 sworn officer positions but only funds 1400 of these positions, leaving the remaining 50 positions unfunded and vacant. Hence the confusion about whether the Mayor’s proposed budget includes the layoff of 100 officers called for in the Council’s revised 2020 budget. It doesn’t in practice, but the numbers aren’t straightforward.

SPD says that in order to maintain its current level of service and response times, it needs a minimum of 1400 sworn officers. It is important to note this number represents staffing needed if there is no decrease in the police scope of work. There is disagreement between the Council and SPD as to which staffing models should be used and potentially the timing of the shift of functions. SPD also wants to halt the current hiring freeze and start recruitment and hiring again in 2021 in order to maintain this staffing level. Otherwise with expected attrition they will fall below 1400 officers, and in addition, it takes some time to begin recruitment and training so needs to be planned ahead.

It’s also worth noting, in regards to the revised 2020 budget, the Mayor has asked the Council to reconsider the command staff pay cuts and has noted that the $200k cut to legally obligated hiring bonuses needs to be revisited, as it violates the City charter. You can read more here about the Mayor’s take on implementing the revised 2020 budget, including copies of the three recent letters on this subject from the Mayor’s office.

The Mayor’s Plan to Reimagine Public Safety

In an excellent example of the Seattle process, the Mayor is forming the Community Safety Work Group and the Functional IDT. The work group will formulate policy around reimagining public safety based on data and analysis, and the IDT serves the research and analysis function, as well as hopefully presenting an idea of what community wants from SPD. The Mayor presented a timeline for this work; going through the end of 2021, it is vague and repetitive and doesn’t present a very clear picture of what will be happening when.

Potential Issues

  • Although the General Fund is one big pot and can therefore be confusing to assess, it seems clear the $100m for BIPOC communities is coming from the new JumpStart tax revenue that had already been allocated to other purposes, mostly COVID relief in 2021. There is a lot of confusion around this, and lots of numbers being thrown around. There is concern this is taking money away from BIPOC groups that advocated for various JumpStart spending, therefore pitting BIPOC community members against one another. In response to this, community released a statement entitled “Towards a Solidarity Budget.”
  • Of the $14m the Council allocated for community organization ramp-up and gun violence prevention, $4m will be dispersed this year to organizations with already existing city contracts. Because she believes the rest cannot be spent by the end of the year, the Mayor has decided not to execute the interfund loan that was the major source of most of these funds, which the Council intended to repay next year, either with further SPD cuts or with JumpStart tax revenue. However, the Mayor’s proposed 2021 budget has already allocated all JumpStart tax revenue while ignoring this obligation and has also already allocated any savings from SPD, so the Council will be forced to figure out how to pay for the remaining $10m.
  • A task force is being put together of BIPOC community members to recommend priorities for the $100m worth of investment into BIPOC communities. There is concern that this task force won’t truly be representative of the BIPOC community and doesn’t answer the demands for a true participatory budget process. The counter argument is that a participatory budget process takes about a year, and the Mayor wishes to get these funds out the door sooner, potentially by mid-2021.
  • There is concern about having several parallel processes within the BIPOC community, one through this Equitable Communities task force of the Mayor’s, one through the research/PBP led by King County Equity Now funded by the Council, and potentially one led by the IDT for reimagining public safety. It is not known whether these processes will be complimentary, and how they could work together has not been determined. It is possible that a lot of work might be duplicated, or that work could be done at cross purposes.
  • There is concern that the Mayor’s various efforts divorce divestment (aka defunding the police) from the process of investment. Investment without divestment won’t lead to the same systemic changes overall and therefore will have a greatly reduced impact. In addition, this separation could cause various additional sources of confusion.
  • The Mayor says disbanding the Navigation Team could potentially violate the law as interpreted in the Hooper case and moves the SPD in the wrong direction by expanding its sworn officer duties for what should be services provided by civilians. The Council stated its intentions this summer that the money provided by disbanding the Navigation Team should go to community partners providing homelessness services, but it is unclear whether this investment is reflected in the Mayor’s proposed budget. At her town hall last night, CM Herbold said she was concerned because there was no plan to get this money out the door. This might become more clear at the overview on homelessness response presentation tomorrow morning (although I won’t be covering that myself.)

The Seattle Municipal Court Reforms

The Seattle Municipal Court is enacting various reforms that they think will help address current racial inequity:

  • Ending in-person day reporting
  • Moving to a collaborative Community Court model
  • Eliminating various discretionary court fees
  • Decreasing their Probation Services budget by 25%
  • Adding a contract social worker to help with the new Community Court and service referrals
  • Participating in a 3-year bail project

It will be interesting to see how these conversations develop! In the meantime, there will be a public hearing next Tuesday, October 6 at 5:30pm where you can sign up to give public comment on any issues related to the budget, including reimagining public safety. After the final budget overviews tomorrow, the next scheduled budget meeting currently on the calendar isn’t until October 15, when the Council begins their Issue Identification process. Of course, as always, that is subject to change.

Until next time!