February 2025

Cities that own SCORE jail seem uninterested in accountability or improvement

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SCORE Jail:

PubliCola has continued its crucial coverage of the terrible conditions at the local SCORE jail in Des Moines. 11 people held in the jail have now died over the past two years, which is a shockingly high number. The jail has been reported to have inadequate medical care, filthy conditions, and contemptuous staff. 

The jail is owned and operated by six local cities–Auburn, Burien, Des Moines, Renton, SeaTac, and Tukwila–and it has contracts with many more local cities, including Seattle, Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Shoreline, Kenmore, Federal Way, and more. The jail is run by an executive director who reports to an administrative board with representatives from the six cities. 

The most recent board meeting was this past Wednesday, when the executive director called PubliCola’s recent reporting “misinformation.” The board didn’t ask the executive director anything about the conditions and facts reported in the article nor showed any interest in accountability or improving conditions inside this deadly facility. 

If you live in one of the six cities that operates the jail, here is a document with talking points and contact information.

Seattle News:

I sat down last week with Seattle City Attorney candidate and current public defender Nathan Rouse, and we had a long talk about his road in deciding to run and his vision for the Seattle City Attorney’s office. 

Real Change ran an op-ed by David Stoesz this week, entitled “Facts and evidence are our greatest strength: A response to Katie Wilson.” He makes some compelling arguments, and he also provides a nugget of information I think is important to emphasize. 

While discussing how in addition to housing, some folks are also in need of wrap-around services, Stoesz says that Plymouth Housing has calculated that one year of assisted living with the highest level of service costs the same as three days at Harborview or three months at the King County Jail. (King County Councilmember Sarah Perry said at a meeting this past Tuesday that a night at the King County Jail costs $250 per night.) 

While there are plenty of other evidence-based reasons why housing first and providing services to folks is smart policy, in this time of looming governmental budget deficits, remembering the relative cost of these policies is also useful. 

The City Attorney’s Office has slightly relaxed their blanket affidavits of prejudice against sitting Seattle Municipal Court Judge Pooja Vaddadi, who is now able to oversee some criminal cases. However, the Office still filed several affidavits of prejudice against her last week for DUI and domestic violence cases, and her primary assignment remains in infractions, as she does not yet have enough criminal cases for a full courtroom calendar. 

New interim SPD Chief Shon Barnes presented to the city council’s public safety committee for the first time on Tuesday. I’ll be reporting more on that meeting soon. 

Seattle awarded $22 million through its Equitable Development Initiative (EDI) in January. Projects funded include: “Africatown Community Land Trust (completing the Africatown Plaza development), Cham Refugees Community (completing a Cham community center), Rainier Beach Action Coalition (completion of the Food Innovation Center), the Somali Health Board (assisting construction of the Somali Community Cultural Innovation Hub), and Trans Women of Color Solidarity Network.”

WA State News:

The fiscal committee cut-off for bills this legislative session is TODAY, so soon I’ll be going through a bunch of interesting bills to see if they survived. I can already tell you that the Traffic Safety for All bill has unfortunately died. 

Yesterday Governor Bob Ferguson proposed $4 billion in state budget cuts. These cuts, combined with those proposed by former Governor Jay Inslee before his departure, would add up to $7 billion of a budget gap Ferguson is now estimating will be $15 billion over the next four years. 

Part of his plan involves state workers taking one unpaid day off per month. These furloughs would begin in July and save the state $300 million. He also wants to cut funding to food banks, which, given the combination of potential federal cuts to the SNAP food assistance program and the much higher demand on food banks since the pandemic began in 2020, seems potentially disastrous. 

Ferguson says it’s still too soon to say whether he’ll support state tax increases, which seems strange, given that were his cuts to be adopted, they still only address half of the state’s four-year budget deficit. There is also no word on how he is considering dealing with any federal fund cuts. Again, Washington State received $27 billion from the federal government in fiscal year 2024. 

In Praise:

I highly recommend reading author and organizer Kelly Hayes’s most recent piece, How to be a Fighter When You Feel Like a Punching Bag. It is long so you will need to put aside some time to read it (or there is also a listening option!), but I found it incredibly valuable and think it is worth your time. 

Among other topics, it covers:

  • Agency, trauma, learned helplessness, and feeling stuck/frozen in the current onslaught
  • The impact of social media, the bubbles it often relegates us to and how that encourages despair, isolation, and misanthropy, and the necessity for trust in order to organize collective action
  • The necessity of building social skills and relationships to meet this moment, as well as the importance of community
  • A key quote in the piece from Aaron Goggans: “Every time Musk or Trump weaponizes cruelty to shock a group into compliance we have to show, not with our outrage but with our care, that another response is possible.”
  • The strategy of taking small steps of agency and thinking about what activities/routines you can add to your life that are aligned with your values and keep you more informed and connected.

I hope you all find this piece to be as inspiring and helpful as I did. 

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AI as game-changer, AI as a tool of political control

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Seattle News:

This week I had an article at The Urbanist about a state bill that is trying to circumvent SPOG and free the CARE alternative response teams to do their jobs. I was able to talk at some length with both the sponsor of the bill, Rep. Shaun Scott, and CARE Chief Amy Barden about their thoughts on why this bill is necessary.

Since the article’s publication, there have been updates. The bill was heard in executive committee on Tuesday and replaced with a substitute. The substitute changes the applicable population for the bill from cities of more than 500,000 to any political subdivision (cities, counties, towns) of 200,000 or more. It passed out of the committee on a purely partisan vote, and so onwards through the legislative process it goes.

Seattle Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, who called for the formation of a Select Committee on Federal Administration and Policy Changes to monitor how the actions of the Trump administration and Elon Musk might impact the City, spoke at a protest on Monday.

Here is a quote from Rinck’s speech: “Local government is the last line of democracy. The city has a role to play, and it is time for our city to step up to safeguard our democracy and protect this city. Continue to call upon your local leaders to be stepping up to this challenge, to make sure we’re continuing to fund and find ways to protect these programs that people know, love, and depend on. To protect our civil liberties, it will need all of us. We know that we don’t need billionaires. We need each other.”

The first meeting of that select committee is on March 6, and I will be covering it. In addition to impacts for kids and adults seeking gender-affirming care and immigrant and refugee communities, there is a real danger of budgetary impacts at every level of government, including the City. King County will be meeting next week to review potential budgetary impacts on an already gaping budget hole for their 2026-2027 budget. 

In election news, Eddie Lin, who currently works as an Assistant City Attorney at the Seattle Attorney’s Office under Ann Davison, is running for the open D2 city council seat. Lin had applied for the vacant D2 seat at the beginning of the year and became a finalist, but ultimately the Council chose SPD’s Mark Solomon to fill the vacancy until the November election. 

You can read a summary of Mayor Bruce Harrell’s State of the City address here, or just go ahead and read the entire transcript. People on the internet seemed really upset about Harrell’s joke about the Sonics. 

Both KUOW and The Seattle Times reported on an arrest on Harrell’s record back in 1996, which he says was a result of racial profiling. Perhaps the most noteworthy thing here is that this incident only came to light now, after Harrell has gone through several election cycles since 2008, first for city council and now for mayor.

The co-chair of the City’s Community Surveillance Working Group, René Peters, had an op-ed in The Seattle Times last week, in which he shared his disappointing experience reviewing AI-enabled CCTV cameras last year, a process which he’d hoped would be collaborative with the City Council and Mayor’s Office. His takeaway? “We need young, well-informed thinkers, especially those from underrepresented communities, to engage in technology policy at every level.”

Burien and WA State News:

Last week I mentioned that the lawsuit brought against Burien by the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness and several homeless residents was having a hearing on February 14. PubliCola wrote about how that hearing went.

InvestigateWest and Cascade PBS reached out to all 39 sheriffs in Washington State to ask how they were planning to deal with conflicting state and federal laws in enforcing immigration law. Washington State is a sanctuary state with a law on the books that restricts how much local law enforcement can participate in federal immigration enforcement activities. 

Responses were mixed, with many sheriffs either not responding or returning a canned response from the Washington Association of Sheriffs & Police Chiefs. 15 of the 39 emphasized they’d be following the state sanctuary law, including King County’s Sheriff Patti Cole-Tindall. 

The Communications Office at the King County Sheriff’s Office provided a statement, which said in part, “As to specific policies and actions, King County adheres to the Keep Washington Working Act, which limits cooperation with federal immigration enforcement and prohibits county departments, including the King County Sheriff’s Office, from assisting ICE without a court-issued warrants. Additionally, the county council passed an ordinance in 2017, which limits the immigration-related information that county employees can share or collect. It also restricts ICE’s access to this data, and ensures employees aren’t required to share data unless legally necessary.”

Unfortunately, Sheriff Keith Swank of Pierce County wrote the following: “The Pierce County Sheriff Office will abide by all enforceable US immigration laws and legal mandates. Law enforcement agencies are obligated to honor applicable federal detainers. I believe there will be more legal guidance in the near future.”

As you can see, he made no mention of the Keep Washington Working Act. 

Meanwhile, Washington is bracing itself for potential budgetary impacts from the federal funding freeze and potential retaliation against a Blue state from President Donald Trump, a situation not improved by the $11-15 billion deficit the state is already facing over the next four years. 

The state received $27 billion in federal money in fiscal year 2024, which was 32% of the fiscal state budget. While $13 billion of that was in Medicaid reimbursements, which aren’t impacted by the freeze, they could be affected if Republicans take a knife to the federal Medicaid program, as is currently being discussed. Washington State has approximately 2.4 million total Medicaid enrollees whose health care could be impacted by any cuts. 

Potential cuts that would be impacted by the federal freeze add up to at least $3.4 billion for 2026, and would impact transportation projects; child care and education, including special education and school lunches, foster care, allergy and disease research, and substance abuse treatment programs, among many other programs.

National:

I’ve been taking an interest in AI, at least partly because we can expect to see AI expanding further into the public safety space in the future. Last year Seattle approved AI-enabled surveillance cameras, for example, and that’s just one of many possible (and concerning) use cases. 

As such, it seems appropriate to share this discussion of AI and the part it’s playing in Elon Musk’s current plans regarding the federal government, with more about it here. It looks like Musk may be seeking to make government systems reliant on AI technology. This would be great news for big tech, who would then profit from lucrative government contracts. It would also be good news for those, like Musk, who wish to consolidate political power, displace labor, and exercise tighter government control. 

It would be bad news for those of us who value democracy, a dedicated nonpartisan public service workforce, and robust public services. 

From Eryk Salvaggio’s piece: “AI then becomes a tool for replacing politics. The Trump administration frames generative AI as a remedy to “government waste.” However, what it seeks to automate is not paperwork but democratic decision-making.”

From there, one can engage in a thought exercise about what decisions these AI algorithms could potentially be making. There is already a lawsuit against UnitedHealthcare, a large health insurance company; the plaintiffs allege that UnitedHealth was using an AI program instead of medical doctors to make decisions about denying claims, which sometimes led to declining health and the deaths of the involved patients. Imagine if similar AI systems were used to make decisions regarding Medicare and Medicaid, food stamps, or, Heaven forbid, the criminal legal system.

If we narrow our focus down to Seattle and King County, many of the programs and services we’ve discussed in Notes from the Emerald City have the potential to be negatively impacted by the incorporation of AI. Last year’s CCTV cameras and real time crime center could be just the beginning. 

Harrell currently sits on the Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Board. Geekwire reported in November that “Harrell said he’s looking at ways AI can help his city, from protecting infrastructure to more simple tasks like filling out police reports. He pointed to existing AI-related projects, such as Google’s traffic light project. “You all know AI is a game-changer, right?” the mayor said….”

As I was writing this, a new piece about AI arrived in my inbox that is also relevant. Brian Merchant writes about J.D. Vance’s speech last week at an international AI summit in Paris: “But the speech, with its saber-rattling, its calls to end oversight and regulation, its declaration of intent to further concentrate power, and its equating of American might with industrial AI supremacy, stuck with me. It echoed what was (and is) unfolding back home, where Elon Musk and the DOGE boys are at work excitedly gutting the federal government under the auspices of an “AI-first strategy.”

Merchant went on to interview Kate Crawford, who is a leading AI scholar, and she had this to say: “You’re aware of the alignment problem, as it’s referred to in the AI world, which is that an individual AI system might become misaligned with human values and ethical values and intentions. What we saw at the summit was a different type of alignment problem, which was a misalignment from very concentrated corporate power and the interests of civil society in general.”

Combine those two alignment problems, and I think you can see why current developments are concerning. This, of course, doesn’t even take into account the severe environmental impacts of AI.

(Side note: Brian Merchant used to be a tech columnist at the LA Times and has now struck out on his own with his newsletter. If you appreciate independent journalism in the AI space, you might consider supporting his work.)

As with any new technology with the potential for huge impacts, it behooves us as a society to think carefully about in what ways we are comfortable deploying AI and what kind of guardrails and fail safes we want to adopt. This includes us in Seattle and King County having a deliberate discussion about the potential benefits and dangers of any AI technology. René Peters above was exactly right in calling for folks to engage with tech policy, with a focus on ethics and equity, as we move forward into a future shaped by what Kelly Hayes has called “the AI industrial complex.” 

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Social housing Prop 1A is a major progressive victory in Seattle

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Seattle News:

Good news first! Prop 1A to fund social housing has passed with a resounding 20-point lead. Congratulations to everyone who put in so much hard work into helping this pass.

As I said on Bluesky, “House Our Neighbors and their two social housing initiatives are an inspiring example of the kind of progressive victory and progress we can achieve in Seattle without compromising our values or appeasing big business.”

On Tuesday, the Seattle City Council voted to pass the less lethal weapons legislation (which includes SPD use of blast balls). Councilmembers Alexis Mercedes Rinck, Joy Hollingsworth, and Cathy Moore voted no. 

Moore tried again to put some limits on mutual aid (help SPD gets from other law enforcement agencies) by requiring said mutual aid to agree to comply with Seattle’s crowd control policies–which, given the policing would be taking place in Seattle, seems eminently reasonable–but even Hollingsworth voted this amendment down. 

Reading the first sentence in PubliCola’s article about the decision is illustrative: “The Seattle City Council approved legislation yesterday that retroactively authorizes the Seattle Police Department to adopt its own policies governing how officers can use “less lethal” weapons such as pepper spray, foam-tipped bullets, and blast balls—rubber grenades that can cause serious, even life-threatening injuries when they explode.’” The bolding is mine. 

The Urbanist ran a first-person account by MJ Jurgensen (they/them), who was permanently injured by a blast ball deployed during a Seattle protest in 2020. 

Another lawsuit was filed against SPD by SPD Lt. John O’Neil, alleging discrimination and retaliation. O’Neil has experienced quite a saga for more than two years being bounced around SPD. Four of the people identified in his lawsuit were the same four women who brought their own lawsuit against SPD last year. 

The Washington Supreme Court decided that the SPD officers who attended the January 6, 2021 rally in Washington DC can be identified by name. Their names are Jacob Briskey, Jason Marchione, Alexander Everett, Caitlin Rochelle-Everett, Michael Settle, and Scotty Bach. The Everetts were fired by SPD for the part they played at the insurrection.

The Seattle City Attorney’s Office has said they will finally allow an elected municipal court judge, Judge Pooja Vaddadi, to hear criminal cases again. It has been almost a year since Natalie Walton-Anderson’s March 1 memo stating that the office would be filing a blanket affidavit of prejudice over all future criminal cases for Vaddadi. The memo cited three specific cases involving Vaddadi, about which Ashley Nerbovig wrote, “The case facts appear to deviate from the claims made by the CAO in their memo.” 

In spite of this change, not enough cases have been restored to Vaddadi for her to resume her previous role.

King County News:

The lawsuit against Burien brought by the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness had a hearing today. The lawsuit is regarding Burien’s homeless camping law.

I wrote a piece for The Urbanist about Kirkland’s new 24/7 drop-in mental health crisis center–Connections Kirkland–that opened last summer. King County announced this week that Connections Kirkland has been selected to be one of the five crisis centers supported by the crisis care levy. 

Washington State News:

The Legislative Black Caucus, which represents 14 state lawmakers, has some concerns about Governor Bob Ferguson’s $100 million police officer hiring grant program. 

Rep. Kristine Reeves, the Chair of the caucus, told The Washington State Standard, “We’ve spent the last five years trying to repair the harm done over law enforcement investments in communities where real people have been harmed, and particularly Black people have been harmed,” she said. “We want to make it clear that we are equally prepared to have hard conversations about how we prioritize community investments.”

The caucus would like to see equal investment for social services and other supportive community programs as is made into the police grants. They particularly support more investment in the Community Reinvestment Project that was originally created in 2022. 

In Praise:

I recently read If We Burn, a book by journalist Vincent Bevins, covering societal uprisings from 2010-2020, which occurred right as social media was becoming mainstream. I thought its many awards and positive reviews were very well deserved, so if you have some reading time, you might want to check it out. 

Recent Headlines:

Social housing Prop 1A is a major progressive victory in Seattle Read More »

Big business goes hard against social housing funding in Seattle

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Seattle News:

First off, we have an election on Tuesday, February 11, which is very soon! Recent polling shows Prop 1A (which funds social housing) and Prop 1B (which takes some JumpStart money and puts it towards something that isn’t actually social housing) being very close. The Northwest Progressive poll shows 33% of Seattleites prefer option 1A, while 31% prefer 1B. 

A large amount of money has recently been spent to push 1B. As Real Change reports, “The campaign is largely sponsored by the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and its membership, which includes many of the region’s largest businesses.” This includes a sizable donation from Amazon. These are the same donors who donated heavily to our current mayor and many current city councilmembers, and who are known for their failed attempt to buy the City Council elections in 2019. Mailers are being sent by the campaign against 1A that feature statements that frankly are lies. 

Here is a list of recent articles about these social housing propositions:

The same poll also features ratings for our local elected officials up for election this November:

  • Mayor Bruce Harrell: 36% viewed favorably, 52% viewed unfavorably
  • City Attorney Ann Davison: 31% viewed favorably, 31% unfavorably
  • Council President Sara Nelson: 24% viewed favorably, 44% unfavorably
  • Councilmember Alexis Rinck: 30% viewed favorably, 25% unfavorably

The poll also included ratings of job performance for all the Seattle councilmembers, none of whom fared particularly well. Only Rinck and Nelson had ratings over 20% approval, although in most cases those who were unsure made up 50% of those polled. 

Meanwhile, 46% of likely Seattle November voters said they would support a Democratic challenger for Seattle City Attorney running against Davison, while only 32% said they’d vote to reelect her. 

Speaking of Davison, she has a new challenger for Seattle City Attorney in Nathan Rouse, who currently works as a King County public defender. I’m hoping to sit down for an interview with Rouse soon, and one of my top goals will be to help folks differentiate between Rouse and Rory O’Sullivan, who announced his candidacy for the position last year. 

If you want to go ahead and hear more from O’Sullivan right now, he published an op-ed this week about his ideas about how the Seattle City Attorney could combat “the harm and chaos caused by Trump.” 

In other Sara Nelson news, her office released a campaign message without doing their proofreading first.

After The Seattle Times published an article about how the new SODA laws passed by City Council last year are not being used (it’s been invoked a single time since it went into effect in October), Nelson took to Twitter with a statement that appears to blame SPD for not implementing her pet legislation. 

King County News:

King County Executive Dow Constantine released an executive order this week that will streamline and simplify the county’s inquests related to law enforcement-caused deaths.

King County appears to be engaged in an interesting political strategy to try to encourage the state legislature to raise the cap on property tax increases for municipalities. King County is currently facing a $150 million budget deficit for 2026-2027, which the county will have to address this fall during budget season. The budget proposal recently  released by Constantine cuts over $85 million from the criminal legal system, which is unsurprising given what a large portion of King County’s discretionary spending goes to public safety. But cuts to other departments could be equally crippling. 

Particularly hard hit in Constantine’s proposal would be the King County Sheriff’s Office with a $30.2 million cut and the Department of Community and Human Services with a $25.2 million cut. The Department of Public Health would receive a $17.6 million cut, and the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office and the Superior Court would both receive $15.5 million cuts. 

HB 1334, which would raise the property tax cap for municipalities, receives its first hearing in the House Committee on Finance on Tuesday. 

WA State News:

Washington State’s spending to settle lawsuits and tort claims that allege negligence or misconduct of state agencies has been rising rapidly. The state paid out $281 million in fiscal year 2024 and $223 million in fiscal year 2023. Before that, the average annual cost was $123 million. A lot of the additional cost comes from suits against the Washington State Department of Children, Youth & Families that runs the state’s child welfare investigations and foster care system. 

New governor Bob Ferguson is even less accessible to the press than his predecessor Jay Inslee. Since assuming his new role about a month ago, he hasn’t held the traditional weekly press conference. His office has also been lax about notifying the press about the Governor’s upcoming public appearances. 

Lastly, The Urbanist ran an op-ed this week warning that the election for a Washington State Supreme Court judge last year, in which Sal Mungia only narrowly beat Dave Larson, a dark money-backed conservative, might presage a future in which dark money wins out and puts conservative judges preferred by wealthy backers on the bench in 2027 and 2029. The piece also has some suggestions about how to avoid this outcome. 

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