Seattle Budget Season

Seattle looks to tighten its budget belt for 2027

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Seattle News:

I wrote about how Seattle’s new drug ordinance is going about two and a half years in. It’s not good, to put it mildly. Drug arrests are up, LEAD referrals are down. Even Councilmember Bob Kettle thinks it’s a failure. Be on the lookout for a revamped drug ordinance later this year. And District 2 only had 2 LEAD referrals in a one year period. I checked in with Councilmember Eddie Lin’s office after the public safety committee presentation, but he hadn’t yet received any answers as to why that is the case. 

SPOG made an interesting X post last week, calling Kent Loux, SPOG’s new president, “Seattle’s top cop union boss” and blaming “what’s gutting downtown” on socialism. But hey, at least Loux hasn’t started up his own SPOG podcast…yet. 

Mayor Katie Wilson and her Budget Director Ali Pennucchi sat down with Brian Callanan on the Seattle Channel to discuss Seattle’s budget. 2027’s budget now has a $175 million deficit. Wilson has asked all city departments to prepare models for 5% and 10% cuts, and has said she wants to address the deficit through a combination of cuts and new revenue. 

Wilson said there’s no “silver bullet” when it comes to a new progressive revenue source that could provide a permanent fix for Seattle’s structural budget problem. 

Wilson also said she didn’t foresee winding down the work of the United Care Team anytime soon. 

You can read my live-posting of the budget presentation here. It’s worth noting that $175 million is close to 10% of the total $2 billion General Fund. 

PubliCola wrote about an Office of the Inspector General (OIG) audit on the practice of retiring SPD officers going on extended leave to take advantage of accumulated sick leave. A new policy requiring officers to provide verification for taking sick leave is supposed to go into effect later this year. 

Looking at this coming Tuesday’s public safety committee agenda, the OIG will also be doing an audit on SPD overtime usage in the future, so that should be interesting. 

PubliCola covered what appears to be some communication issues between the new Mayor’s Office and the City Council. The land use committee still ultimately approved Wilson’s shelter expansion proposal. 

Surveillance News:

The City Council of Shoreline cancelled a planned meeting with Flock Safety after residents expressed their dismay.

Both Tukwila and Renton had Flock Safety/ALPRs on their agendas for their Monday, 5/4 meetings. 

Issaquah has Flock on the agenda for their Monday evening meeting on 5/11. 

WA State News:

Last week I published a story all about the Washington State Supreme Court elections, with a majority of the seats on the Court being on the ballot this year. I spent a lot of extra time on this piece because I think so much is at stake with these elections, so I hope you check it out and pass it along to others. 

Oh, election season! The filing deadline for this year was Friday, May 8 at 5pm. In addition to the 5 state Supreme Court justice seats, all 98 state House seats and 24 of the 49 state Senate seats are up for grabs. 

Governor Bob Ferguson and Attorney General Nick Brown have filed a suit against The GEO Group, the private operator of the immigrant detention facility in Tacoma, and the GEO Group recently signed a six-month extension of their contract with ICE. I have a new piece covering this news, including concerning details about this new contract, that should be published any time now. 

Speaking of Ferguson, his tight rules on government agencies and departments’ communications with the press have led to delays on important communications to the public, such as bridge repair updates, public health vaccine guidelines, and the like. Agency officials have been repeatedly complaining about the impacts of these strict guidelines. 

The press also has less access to the Governor in general, with Ferguson holding fewer press conferences and general press availability periods. 

Recent Headlines:

 

Seattle looks to tighten its budget belt for 2027 Read More »

It’s been a hard month for license plate readers in Washington State

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Seattle News:

Katie Wilson will be Seattle’s next mayor, and Seattle’s 2026 budget has been adopted! Whew, what a month. 

I wrote my take on the budget last week, a few days before its final passage. You can also read a list of budget amendments proposed by the councilmembers and PubliCola’s budget wrap-up. 

No budget discussion would be complete without noting both the efforts on the parts of councilmembers to limit the Mayor-elect’s budget flexibility. There are also deep concerns over the likely loss of federal funding for housing and homelessness programs via the Continuum of Care funds from HUD, especially permanent supportive housing funding. 

A coalition of states, including Washington, has filed a lawsuit against HUD over the above policy changes.

King County has selected Connections Health Solutions to run the new crisis care center in Capitol Hill. Connections already runs the crisis care center in Kirkland and is a national company as opposed to a local community based provider. 

DivestSPD published some charts last week about changes at the Office of Police Accountability (OPA). According to Divest, the OPA only fully investigated 23% of complaints in 2025 compared to 37% in 2023, when the department was under the leadership of former Director Gino Betts. 

OPA contact logs have also increased from 16% in 2022 to 28% in 2025, so it will be interesting to hear from the OPA next year (now under the leadership of Bonnie Glenn) as to why this is the case. 

For those interested in the Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise (FEPP) levy spending plan, the Department of Education and Early Learning (DEEL) is holding four community outreach/conversation sessions in December, for which you can RSVP:

  • Tuesday, December 2, 5:30–7:30 PM at the Magnuson Community Center, 7110 62nd Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98115 
  • Wednesday, December 10, 5:30–7:30 PM at the Ballard Branch – Seattle Public Library, 5614 22nd Ave NW, Seattle, WA 98107 
  • Thursday, December 11, 5:30–7:30 PM at Denny International Middle School, 2601 SW Kenyon St, Seattle, WA 98106 
  • Tuesday, December 16, 5:30–7:30 PM at Rainier Community Center, 4600 38th Ave. S, Seattle, WA 98118 

Divest SPD reported that less than 10% of 2025 SPD recruits were women, a blow to the department’s 30×30 initiative. 

Skeptics of the initiative point out that women making up 30% of the police force wouldn’t necessarily fix the systemic issue of police violence. Also concerning is the department’s efforts to recruit women without a clear plan in place to address what appears, from both lawsuits and conditions documented in a 30×30 report published in September 2023, to be a hostile workplace for women. 

New Councilmember Eddie Lin was sworn in today. Councilmember-elect Dionne Foster and Mayor-elect Katie Wilson won’t be sworn in until the beginning of 2026, but because Lin’s seat was being held by an appointee, he was sworn in early. 

For the same reason, King County Executive Girmay Zahilay was sworn in today. 

Surveillance News:

I wrote about Washington cities’ struggle with what to do about Flock Safety license plate readers (ALPRs), both because of the evidence that the data is being shared with federal agencies, including ICE, and because of a recent lawsuit brought by the cities of Stanwood and Sedro-Wooley in which ALPR video was deemed to be within valid public record parameters. As a result, many Washington cities have paused or delayed their ALPR programs. 

In the summer, I reported that it looked like the King County Housing Authority’s (KCHA) ALPR camera data had been shared with federal agencies such as ICE. KCHA has since decided to end their ALPR pilot. 

Since I wrote the article, Stanwood and Sedro-Wooley have appealed the court decision about whether ALPR video counts as a public record, and residents of Olympia are asking their city council to shut down their Flock ALPR program.

There are also new records showing that ALPR programs are being used to surveil protesters and activists, including in Washington state. 

Meanwhile,The Intercept found that fusion centers were being used to surveil pro-Palestine protests on at least five college campuses across the country. Fusion centers were established after 9/11 to better enable information sharing between federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, including campus police. 

“The normalization of intelligence sharing between campus police departments and federal law enforcement agencies is widespread across U.S. universities,” the Intercept wrote.

Washington State News:

Governor Bob Ferguson made an appointment to fill the upcoming vacancy on the Washington Supreme Court: Colleen Melody, who spent the last decade working at the Attorney General’s office leading the civil rights division (a position to which she was hired by Ferguson). While at the AG’s office, Melody was deeply involved in filing lawsuits against President Donald Trump’s executive orders during his first term from 2017-2020. A career government lawyer, Melody has never before served as a judge. 

Melody will serve as a Supreme Court justice for 2026, but she would have to run for election next November in order to retain the judgeship. The big question to consider, should she choose to run, is her stance on the legality of a wealth tax in Washington state. 

The latest state revenue forecast showed a slight uptick in revenue projections for the current biennial budget (2025-2027), but not enough to make much difference. Talk abounds about potential new revenue sources for the state. It’s unclear if we’ll see a repeat to this year’s legislative session when Ferguson said he’d veto any budget proposal that included a wealth tax. 

Ferguson is expected to release his budget proposal before the end of the year, giving us a few weeks to review it before the next state legislative session begins on January 12. 

Recent Headlines:

It’s been a hard month for license plate readers in Washington State Read More »

Will Katie Wilson be a Sea Change for Seattle?

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Election News:

It feels like for the last week, it’s been all Seattle mayoral election, all the time! But it looks like Katie Wilson squeaked out the win in what is likely to be a sea change for Seattle. 

In other Seattle election results, Alexis Mercedes Rinck handily won reelection as a councilmember, and Dionne Foster beat incumbent Sara Nelson as the other city-wide councilmember. Eddie Lin beat Adonis Ducksworth for the D2 council seat. 

For Seattle City Attorney, Erika Evans beat Republican incumbent Ann Davison. I chatted with Evans on the phone a few days after the election, and we discussed her vision for the office. 

The new (and much larger) Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise (FEPP) levy passed, as did the B&O tax restructure championed by Rinck. The spending plan for the FEPP dollars will be decided next year, including whether any of those dollars will go to police in schools, so that will be something that bears watching.

In King County, Girmay Zahilay will take over as King County Executive, beating out Claudia Balducci, who will remain on the King County Council. Zahilay is vacating a seat on the council, so look for a replacement to be appointed soon. Otherwise, on the King County Council, it was an election for the incumbents, with the open seat in District 5 going to Steffanie Fain. 

I also want to give a shout-out to Burien! Their progressive slate of councilmember candidates all won their races.

You might also want to check out my colleague Ryan Packer’s article about 6 election bellweathers, which include a city council race in Bellevue in which incumbent Conrad Lee has finally been unseated after… 32 years.  

Seattle News:

I wrote an article about Mayor Bruce Harrell’s response to the threat of escalating ICE enforcement and the possibility of President Donald Trump sending the National Guard to Seattle. I discuss Harrell’s proposed law enforcement mask ban and Rinck’s proposed Statement of Legislative Intent that will require the Seattle Police Department to report on their implementation plan for the two executive orders. 

This is a tough one because looking around the country, it looks like the most impactful/successful resistance to ICE is coming directly from the streets. So far, responses from city and state governments have been less productive. 

Budget Chair Dan Strauss announced his 2026 budget balancing package. There was enough money for him to provide funding for each councilmember to address at least some of their priorities. The councilmembers will be voting on amendments to the balancing package this Friday, November 14. The amendments have not been released to the public as of publication of this newsletter, giving very little time for review.

The final budget vote is expected to be on Friday, November 21. 

There’s been a shakeup at SPD, with Chief Shon Barnes firing two of his top civilian command staff members: Chief Operating Officer Brian Maxey and General Counsel Rebecca Boatright. It is unclear if the Mayor’s Office was involved in this decision in any way. This might mark a preference to move away from civilianization at SPD, a position that would certainly make the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) happy. 

Barnes also named Captain Jim Britt as the new commander of the East Precinct. Britt was formerly in charge of SPD’s real time crime center, and I haven’t yet heard who will be taking his place in such a highly technical role. 

It looks like it might not be just SPD that has a problem mistreating their women employees. The Seattle Fire Department’s (SFD) former head of human resources, Sarah Lee, has filed a $2.5 million claim against the department. Lee, who was fired in September, says she was let go in retaliation for standing up to workplace misconduct and discrimination against women in the department. Her claim contains details of 14 different allegations.

The Seattle Times wrote, “Lee’s filing speaks of a department that broadly mistreats women.”

Lastly, this afternoon, city council voted to confirm Bonnie Glenn as the new director of the Office of Police Accountability OPA). This is a bit surprising as in the past, the public has been able to hear from finalist candidates for the OPA director position and submit their questions to potentially be answered. This time there’s been no public engagement that I’m aware of and the appointment is simply being rushed through. 

However, the appointment of Glenn is only for a one-year term (until the end of 2026) to complete the term of former director Gino Betts. Wilson will be able to select her own candidate if she so chooses for a term beginning in 2027. 

My journalist colleague Glen Stellmacher has some direct and concerning experience with Glenn in her role as the interim OPA director. He says he had to file a bar complaint against Glenn before she would begin an investigation about an SPD intelligence officer who “knowingly lied to investigators about SPD’s use of informants during the 2020 protests.”

King County and WA State News:

King County Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda has a few interesting addendums to the 2026-2027 county budget that made it into the budget striker. One proviso will require the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office (KCPAO) to provide data on reoffending rates for youth subject to traditional prosecution. This data will allow a more meaningful analysis of the recidivism rates for youth participating in diversion programs. 

Mosqueda has a second proviso that will require the creation of a master list of surveillance technology being used by any King County department. She is interested in such a list as her office works to develop a surveillance technology ordinance for the county. 

On the state level, the Senate Democratic Caucus is discussing the idea of a “millionaires tax.” The proposal being discussed would levy a 9.9% tax on adjusted gross income over $1 million. The Democrats would have to pass this new tax during an election year, however, and Governor Bob Ferguson has proven to be resistant thus far to passing progressive taxes, having quashed the much-discussed wealth tax earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Senator June Robinson, the Democrat’s chief budget writer, has told her colleagues not to put in any new requests for funding for 2026. Since Ferguson approved the state’s budget in the spring, revenue forecasts have been grim and there is likely to be a large shortfall to deal with in the short legislative session this winter. 

Ferguson will submit his budget proposal in December in advance of the legislative session in January.

I do have an article coming out very soon (maybe tomorrow morning?) with more about license plate surveillance being used for immigration enforcement across Washington state, a recent Public Records Act lawsuit, and more, so keep an eye out for that. 

Recent Headlines:

 

Will Katie Wilson be a Sea Change for Seattle? Read More »

City Council begins budget gymnastics as alternative response in Seattle takes another blow from the new SPOG contract

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My Recent Stories:

First up, we have my Urbanist story documenting the saga of King County’s pre-filing youth diversion program Restorative Community Pathways, which King County Executive Shannon Braddock is planning to replace with a new program. I’ve been following this story for some months and was just waiting for the Impact Justice evaluation to be released before writing it up. However, it turned out to be so complex that I think this is the longest story to date I’ve published at The Urbanist. I haven’t seen this covered in this depth at any other outlet thus far, and I hope you’ll take the time to have a read. 

Last week the new SPOG contract was announced, and I combed through it so you don’t have to. Several aspects of this new contract surprised me, but perhaps most of all, I was surprised it wasn’t more favorable for the City, given the timing of its release only two weeks before the mayoral election. The continued hindrance of the SPOG contract on the CARE alternative response team’s ability to do their jobs is particularly noteworthy. 

Finally, I wrote about the recent King County Department of Public Defense report on Seattle’s 2023 drug criminalization ordinance and the folks being brought into the criminal legal system as a direct result of it. I also provide an update on the SODA order numbers. 

Seattle News:

In Seattle, much of the news is either budget or election related. 

The fall revenue forecast came out, and it was better than anticipated (certainly better than I thought it would be!) However, given all the recent tech layoffs and federal government worker furloughs, as well as the potential for the AI investment bubble to burst and continued uncertainty around tariffs, I do wonder if the adopted forecast might end up being a little rosier than what we’ll actually see in 2026. But I certainly hope to be wrong! 

That being said, the Seattle City Council has very little money to play with in terms of allocating spending to their own priorities in the 2026 budget, and we see this tension very starkly in all the new spending proposed by councilmembers’ proposed amendments this week. Councilmembers are suggesting spending many millions more than are available, which will mean either most of these amendments will be jettisoned or other cuts in the budget will have to be made. 

We’ll have to wait and see which amendments make it into Budget Chair Dan Strauss’s balancing package when he releases it next Wednesday. You can view the full agendas for previous budget meetings, including lists of the proposed amendments, here, here, and here. You can also find the agenda for the October 17 meeting, which included Central Staff issue considerations for SPD, SFD, CARE, and HSD.

Councilmembers are proposing budget additions of almost $3 million to SPD and $21.7 million to HSD, as well as several million to the fire department to expand Health One, among other priorities. Councilmember Bob Kettle has proposed moving LEAD, Co-LEAD, and We Deliver Care contracts from HSD directly to the CARE department, which involves a financial transfer between the two city departments. 

Councilmembers have also requested some reporting, including three reports I’d really like to see: one that would require SPD to report on federal immigration enforcement policies (co-sponsored by every councilmember except Council President Sara Nelson); one that would require SPD ​​to provide quarterly reports on staffing, overtime, and performance metrics; and one that would require IT to provide a series of reports on the City’s investments in and uses of AI. 

Also noteworthy, as reporting from PubliCola discussed, is a whopping 30% increase in the Office of Economic Development’s (OED) budget proposed by Mayor Bruce Harrell. An interesting facet of this is that the director of OED has donated to Harrell’s reelection campaign and sent an email soliciting city workers’ personal email addresses, which he gave to Harrell’s campaign manager. 

In other news, King County’s “Health Through Housing’s” Sharyn Grayson House, a 35-unit supportive housing unit in Capitol Hill run by the Lavender Rights Project with support from Chief Seattle Club, is ready to receive residents. 

Worth reading is an opinion piece in Real Change by Marigold Green, who is both a sex worker and a sex trafficking survivor who breaks down the City of Seattle’s recently announced awards for funding for sex trafficking prevention, which Green says has anti-sex-work implications. 

Surveillance News:

Last week, the University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights published a report about Flock Safety’s surveillance privacy gaps in Washington State, including license plate reader data shared with U.S. Border Patrol/ICE. Local cities found to be sharing data with Border Patrol included Auburn and Renton. The report’s release triggered several Washington police departments to “change” their surveillance programs, per The Seattle Times. 

On a personal note, one of my surveillance articles for The Urbanist was mentioned in the report, and I’m glad to see awareness of these surveillance issues continue to grow, as is evinced by Rachel Maddow speaking about federal surveillance via cell phone for several minutes on MSNBC on Monday. 

Recent Headlines:

City Council begins budget gymnastics as alternative response in Seattle takes another blow from the new SPOG contract Read More »

Seattle’s budget is precariously balanced, faces long-term problems

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Seattle News:

First off, we’re officially in budget season! Both Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed Seattle budget for 2026 and Executive Shannon Braddock’s proposed King County budget for 2026-2027 were introduced on Tuesday. 

I wrote an overview of the Seattle budget, which covers a lot of ground. Once again, the Seattle Police Department (SPD) was the clear winner, with the largest budgetary increase of any City department. 

And for those of you who remember that pesky budget deficit, Harrell managed to avoid having to make large cuts and layoffs by continuing to transfer the JumpStart payroll tax into the General Fund and getting behind two new revenue sources: the retool of the B&O tax championed by Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck and a new 0.1% public safety sales tax. 

Harrell got very lucky in that the most recent city revenue forecast was decidedly better than the one earlier this year. He would have also been in trouble if it weren’t for Rinck’s B&O tax proposal, which explains why he got behind a new progressive revenue source for the first time in his mayoral term. 

However, that revenue forecast is very uncertain, and it’s quite possible the next forecast, due October 20, will be significantly worse. Happily for Harrell, that will be the city council’s problem and his hands will remain relatively clean for his reelection campaign. 

King County has already passed its own 0.1% public safety tax, which is singlehandedly saving the county from its own large deficit. 

Speaking of SPD, ICE is launching a new advertisement campaign to recruit Seattle law enforcement. They’re offering hiring bonuses and student loan forgiveness to entice candidates, while telling them they’ll be working to detain illegal immigrants who have committed crimes. However, here in Washington State, 60% of those currently in detention have no criminal record, while others have minor infringements only like traffic violations.

I dived into Seattle’s new AI Policy so you wouldn’t have to. Somehow I survived the many buzzwords and learned about the 42 AI pilots the City of Seattle has conducted so far. I covered several concerns, but I think one of the most interesting things I discovered is SPD’s potential interest in diving into the world of AI-generated predictive policing. 

Relatedly, PubliCola reported on an Office of Police Accountability (OPA) complaint from a community member who used an AI-detecting tool that found several public-facing communications from SPD (blog posts and a statement from the new police chief) appeared to be completely or partially written by AI. 

As I reported at The Urbanist, on October 8, the Seattle Public Schools school board is set to vote on whether Garfield High School will have a “Student Enforcement Officer” (SEO) pilot program this school year. They were supposed to vote on this pilot during their September meeting, but board director Joe Mizrahi asked for a postponement while he works on an amendment. 

Washington State News:

In July, Cascade PBS reported that Governor Bob Ferguson has the lowest six-month approval rating of any Washington State governor since 1993. 

And things aren’t slated to get any easier for Ferguson. Out this week, the most recent state revenue estimate has gotten worse. Revenues are expected to drop another $889 million over the next four years. Lawmakers will grapple to rebalance the state’s 2026 budget during the short legislative session early next year. 

Local Media:

Earlier this week, Seattle’s Cascade PBS station announced it’s laying off most of its newsroom staff and discontinuing production of local long-form journalism. This is a huge blow to local journalism in the Puget Sound area, and to be honest, I’m still reeling. You can donate to the laid off journalists here.

The cancellation of Cascade PBS’s local coverage comes the same year we’ve seen a large shift over at The Stranger, which appears to have changed its focus to covering local arts and culture at the expense of covering as much local news as in the past. Certainly from my perspective, as a local reporter covering the public safety beat, the sudden lack of a criminal justice reporter at The Stranger has left a huge void in what gets covered.

Mayoral candidate Katie Wilson has been promoting her Local News Dollars program that would provide public funding to small local media outlets, which gives me some hope for the future. But in the meantime, now would be a good time to donate to those outlets that still exist, including PubliCola, The Urbanist, the South Seattle Emerald, and Real Change. 

I suppose I should also mention that you can support Notes from the Emerald City and my work through my Patreon. 

Recent Headlines:

Seattle’s budget is precariously balanced, faces long-term problems Read More »

Seattle budget season is oh so political

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Seattle News:

It’s been a busy week, and I have three new stories to talk about. 

First off, I wrote about Seattle’s proposed surveillance expansion for The Urbanist, which would give SPD access to 365 SDOT cameras as well as permission to purchase many more cameras to place in three more areas of the city. That the City is trying to push forward with this plan right now, given what’s happening at the federal level, is particularly concerning. 

The public safety committee will be discussing this expansion again (and voting on it)  on Tuesday, August 12 at 9:30am. There will be the opportunity to give public comment at the beginning of this meeting. 

Next up, as I reported at The Urbanist, the Seattle Shield Initiative passed this week, which means Seattleites will be voting on the B&O tax restructure in November. While the council watered the proposal down, it passed with an unanimous vote, which is something I wouldn’t have expected as recently as a month ago. The fact that Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck was able to get this passed in time to be put on the ballot in spite of not having any strong allies on the council is notable. It seems like having Mayor Bruce Harrell on board helped to smooth the way. 

The city received another revenue forecast this week, which was a bit less bad than the one in April. However, the Office of Economic and Revenue Forecasts’ interim director Jan Duras said it’s likely the next revenue forecast, due in October, will be worse.  

This is interesting maneuvering on the part of Harrell, who now gets to base his proposed budget, due at the end of September, on a better forecast than is likely to be true by the time the council actually has to pass the budget. Since his budget team is assuming the Seattle Shield Initiative will pass in their formation of the budget, it’s possible he won’t have to make many unpopular cuts in his proposed budget before the election at the beginning of the November. 

This also means the council will be left with the football when it comes time to grapple with any necessary budget cuts later in October, should the revenue forecast worsen. 

It seems like Harrell might not be overly eager to introduce the public safety sales tax hike after all. If the City doesn’t need the revenue to bridge a deficit gap, he can play it safe with public opinion and postpone implementing such a regressive tax. Even if a councilmember decides to go for it, it will leave Harrell with clean hands.

Councilmember Rinck was also able to add $300,000 to the city’s supplementary budget this week to pay for legal defense for unaccompanied children facing detention and deportation. This money was taken from underspend from Seattle’s much criticized SCORE jail contract. Councilmembers Rob Saka and Martiza Rivera were the sole “no” votes.

My third piece, at Bolts Magazine, covers the renewal of Seattle’s democracy voucher program this week. The City is supposed to convene a workgroup in early 2026 to look into possible improvements to the program, including strategies to better deal with independent expenditures in local races. This will be an opportunity for stakeholders to participate in figuring out what’s next for the program. I’ll also be very interested to see how the combination of democracy vouchers and ranked choice voting in 2027 pans out. 

More Seattle news:

We had a primary! Progressives in Seattle did very well. There is a ton of analysis available to read, none of which I am going to link to. My observation, for what it’s worth, is that many more people appear to pay attention to national news than to local news, so I tend to think the Trump effect is one of the main factors at play here. 

As I was writing this, the news dropped that Katie Wilson, who is running against Harrell for mayor, has broken 50% of the primary vote. Wilson is more than 15,000 votes ahead of Harrell at this time. 

The next consent decree hearing has been set for Wednesday, September 3. This could be the last hearing of Seattle’s consent decree. 

Seattle is paying $3 million to settle the lawsuit brought by SPD’s Deanne Nolette, who alleged wage, job and gender discrimination. She also alleged that former Chief Adrian Diaz had retaliated against her since she had also been up for the Chief job, and that he “has a history of misogyny.” 

Housekeeping:

I’ll be out on vacation the next few weeks, but never fear, I’ll be back at it before the end of the month. Close followers of local news know that the fall tends to be a particularly busy time, and this year should be no exception. 

Recent Headlines:

 

Seattle budget season is oh so political Read More »

We’re thinking about the Seattle budget early this year

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Seattle News:

First off, we have some new revenue possibilities on the table for Seattle, one of which is progressive and one of which is decidedly not. 

Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck introduced a B&O tax proposal that would bring in an additional $90 million of revenue every year. Should the city council pass the proposal, it will be brought before voters to decide this November. 

There have been some changes to the legislation since my reporting above. Most importantly, there will no longer be a specific spending plan that will be hammered out at the beginning of next year. Instead, the legislation outlines specific investment areas that are allowable uses for the new revenue being generated by the B&O tax restructure. Up to $30 million of the proceeds will be available to use to address potential federal funding reductions within specific categories, while the rest will be used to backfill certain investment areas within the general fund. 

You can take a look at the following presentations for more information:

One big thing to note from the first presentation: Last year, we forecast a 2027 budget deficit of $89 million. However, that number has gotten markedly worse and now stands at $233 million. That is for just 2027’s budget. Depending on how economic conditions develop, that number could continue to go up.

2025’s original deficit, dealt with during budget season last fall, stood around $250 million or so. Harrell chose to address it by reallocating JumpStart payroll tax proceeds away from its spending plan buckets to instead backfill the general fund. It is not clear whether that fix will work a second time to balance 2027’s budget, especially without largely eroding the intended JumpStart investments. 

Following the above presentations, Councilmember Bob Kettle stated he didn’t like how new revenue being passed is given buckets of investment areas for which it can be used. On Bluesky, I explained that often new revenue streams are dedicated to specific investment areas in order to avoid all new funding being used for purposes such as the police department, homeless sweeps, and pet projects of current electeds. Providing funding buckets focuses investment on urgent needs and/or long-term needs (such as affordable housing), meaning those investments don’t have to compete with other funding priorities. Especially with a voter-approved initiative, it’s important to give voters a clear idea of what investments they’re voting to support. 

Council President Sara Nelson also announced this week that should the council implement the state-allowed 0.1% “public safety” sales tax, up to 25% of the collected funds may be spent on “evidence-based treatment” for addiction. Don’t get too excited, though. Up to 25% is less than $9 million, and Nelson provides a long list of initiatives that she says the $9 million would support: a much longer list than $9 million could be realistically expected to pay for. 

PubliCola also expressed skepticism of the announcement, given that at the related press conference, Nelson was “flanked by a much larger contingent of allies from “treatment first” groups.”

Finally, a sales tax is a very regressive tax. We can already expect to see a sales tax increase of 0.2% in King County next year, and this would increase that to 0.3% within Seattle.

The Seattle Public Schools (SPS) school board met this week, but they decided not to take up their moratorium on police officers in Seattle public schools until later this summer. In the meantime, The Urbanist published an op-ed written by SPS students expressing the desire to keep police out of schools. 

The public safety committee heard again from SPD Chief Shon Barnes last week, followed by a full council vote on his confirmation as chief on Tuesday. 

The public safety committee also heard about new legislation that would fine graffiti taggers $1000 per piece of graffiti (Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison’s latest foray into policy making) and an amendment related legislation on chronic nuisance properties that would expand the CIty’s power to hold businesses responsible for illegal activities that don’t take place on their premises. You can read more about both of these pieces of legislation over at PubliCola.

The Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise (FEPP) levy will be on the ballot this November. In addition to the levy providing new investments in student mental health and school safety, which could include money going to SPD, PubliCola reported that the levy will shift funding for 30 programs that are currently supported by the general fund, the JumpStart payroll tax, and the sweetened beverage tax. This adds up to almost $50 million per year. Yikes! 

In the last edition, I reported about an AI pilot being tested by the City Budget Office and Central Staff. Last week we also heard about an AI pilot that began this spring to improve the City’s permitting process.

Lastly, ‘tis the season for endorsements, and The Stranger just came out with their Seattle mayoral endorsement for Katie Wilson. 

Upcoming local events:

There are several upcoming events in Seattle I’d like to call to your attention.

First, on Monday, July 7 at 7pm, there will be a crisis care center townhall at Vermillion to discuss the new proposed site of a crisis care center in Capitol Hill. 

Second, The Burner will be holding a candidate forum on Thursday, July 10 at 6:30pm at the First Baptist Church in Capitol Hill. Present will be three candidates for Seattle City Attorney, three of the four candidates for the City Council D2 seat, and three of the mayoral candidates, including the aforementioned Katie Wilson. 

The Stranger will be hosting their usual candidate forum on Thursday, July 24 at 7:30pm at Neumos. 

Finally, the Mayor’s Office will be hosting “Safer Seattle Community Forums” this summer in each council district, for which you need to RSVP to save a spot. District 2’s forum will be on Thursday, July 10, at Rainier Community Center from 6-7:30 PM. District 4’s forum will be at the Magnuson Community Center on July 15 from 6-7:30 PM. None of the other dates have been announced. 

WA State News:

The Washington State Economic and Revenue Forecast Council released a new forecast, which estimates that WA State will have a $720 million budget deficit over the next four years. Governor Bob Ferguson said he doesn’t anticipate having to call a special legislative session in response to this news. 

“As we begin preparing to draft my first budget, OFM has already communicated to agencies that they need to look for additional savings,” Ferguson said. 

In other words, look for Ferguson to be pushing more austerity in the coming months. 

Recent Headlines:

We’re thinking about the Seattle budget early this year Read More »

SPD wants to stop calling its surveillance program a “pilot” 3 weeks after implementation

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We have more news than usual in this edition because I took a vacation, and then it’s taken a long time to catch up from being on vacation. So let’s get to it!

Surveillance News:

First off, I have a new story out this week about the expansion of Flock license plate readers (ALPRs) in WA state…and how the data is being used to assist ICE/DHS and search for people who have received abortions. I received a tip last week about an audit of the King County Housing Authority’s Flock data that shows it’s likely been accessed for both purposes. I know this is a somewhat technical story, but in my opinion it’s also one of the bigger stories I’ve reported on. 

In important and actionable news, SPD has proposed material updates to its SIRs on CCTV cameras and its real time crime center. You might remember that these cameras and the crime center went live on May 20th of this year. SPD asked for permission to stop calling this program a “pilot” three weeks after everything went live. I don’t know about you, but when I think pilot, I don’t think three weeks of testing is sufficient. 

SPD is asking to add more CCTV cameras to the network in three NEW locations:

  1. Areas around Lumen and T-Mobile Field, including parts of the southern portions of Pioneer Square. 
  2. Areas surrounding Garfield High School between S Jackson St. to the South, E Cherry St. to the North, 20th Ave. S to the West, and MLK Jr. Way to the East.
  3. The Capitol Hill Nightlife District – E Union St. to the South, E Pine St. to the North, Broadway to the West, and 12th Ave. to the East. In addition, Neagle Pl. between E Pine and E Denny Way.

SPD is also asking to integrate SDOT’s traffic-monitoring cameras into its real time crime center, expanding its surveillance scope yet again.

Comments on the two surveillance impact reports (SIRs) for these changes are due on Monday, June 23. To comment on the addition of more CCTV cameras and making the surveillance program permanent after 21 days, click here. To comment on the addition of SDOT traffic cameras to the real time crime center, click here. 

In other surveillance news, the Seattle City Council approved Starchase for SPD use. Washington State Patrol has started using cell phone data to predict where people will practice unsafe driving habits, such as speeding and texting while driving, to increase patrols in those areas. Florida Highway Patrol appears to be taking advantage of Flock’s database to hunt immigrants, and law enforcement agencies in southern California have been breaking the law and sharing license plate reader data with out-of-state and federal agencies.

And when it comes to data privacy, I’d be remiss not to highlight reporting that federal Medicare and Medicaid data, including immigration status of patients, has been shared with the Department of Homeland Security. As the Seattle Times wrote, “The shared information includes protected health data from every Apple Health enrollee in Washington, state officials said, totaling about 1.7 million people. Among them are tens of thousands of immigrants, including undocumented immigrants and lawful permanent residents, who receive state-covered health services.”

Seattle News:

The big news as I was leaving on vacation at the beginning of the month was that Cathy Moore is resigning from Seattle City Council. Her last day will be July 7, and the council will be appointing a replacement to serve until the November 2026 election. Applications for the appointment will be open July 2 through July 9, with a public forum scheduled for July 21 and a final council vote scheduled for July 28. 

The tentative budget season calendar has been released, with Harrell’s budget proposal expected on Tuesday, September 23 and a final vote expected on November 21. That final vote is scheduled a little earlier than usual because the general election results are expected to be certified on November 25, meaning Councilmember Mark Solomon will be replaced by whoever wins the D2 general election. 

There are two public hearings for the budget, one on October 7 and one on November 6. The one on November 6 seems a bit tenuous, since the public will only have 48 hours (at most) to review Budget Chair Dan Strauss’s balancing package, and then councilmember amendments are due at noon the very next day. Such a tight turnaround makes it seem unlikely that anything new councilmembers hear during the second public hearing could make it into a proposed amendment unless something similar were already in the works. 

Interim Budget Director Dan Eder also presented to council, saying there is currently a $150 million budget deficit for 2026. That could well get worse, depending on the economy and actions of the federal government. Departments supported by General Fund and JumpStart dollars have been asked to suggest 8% departmental cuts for 2026, except for homelessness and public safety-related departments, which have been asked to suggest 2% cuts. Interestingly the Seattle City Attorney’s Office has been asked to suggest 8% worth of cuts, about which Council President Sara Nelson wasn’t happy. 

One topic of interest that came up was Councilmember Bob Kettle asking if the City is looking into using AI in order to improve city operations. Eder replied that the city budget office and Central Staff started working on this at the end of last year, considering using AI as a tool to compare and contrast some of the support departments as a pilot project to see how efficient the City’s staffing and budgets are for various duties that are common among peer cities. Eder couldn’t share more about a potential timeframe for this effort. 

Interim SPD Chief Shon Barnes is in the process of receiving his council confirmation. You can read his council confirmation packet and his answers to councilmember questions. There’s some interesting stuff in there! He presented before the public safety committee on June 10, making headlines when he said he expected to be jailed under the Trump administration. 

However, later that same day SPD used pepper spray on protesters at the downtown federal building when protesters were trying to prevent ICE from removing immigrants from the building. 

Against the backdrop of the $150 million 2026 Seattle budget deficit discussed above, Barnes has decided to spend $1.38 million annually to hire five new SPD high level staffers from outside the department, including a second deputy chief, another assistant chief, a chief of staff, a chief communications officer, and executive director of crime and community harm reduction. Whew! Thanks to PubliCola for their reporting on this pricey decision.

SPD will also be spending $30,000 for a department-wide training on stratified policing, about which I’ve written here. 

Former SPD Chief Adrian Diaz is suing the City and Mayor Harrell, alleging wrongful termination, retaliation, and wage theft, among other charges. PubliCola and KUOW also received new records about the investigation that led to Diaz’s termination, showing that involved officers feared retaliation (this was also included in the original write-up of the investigation). 

Finally, I interviewed Jeanie Chunn, who is running for the D2 city council seat. 

King County and WA State News:

I wrote a piece last week giving a rundown of the newly released 2024 data for King County’s Health through Housing initiative, which provides permanent supportive and emergency housing. 

The Washington state Supreme Court finally weighed in on caseload standards for public defenders. The new caseload limits take effect on January 1, 2026 and should be implemented as soon as possible, within 10 years. I can’t overstate what a big deal this decision is, and I hope I’ll have time to write a full piece about it sooner rather than later. 

Over at The Stranger, Marcus Harrison Green sat down with state attorney general Nick Brown in an interview that is well worth the read. 

Finally, Jeff Asher ponders why the US murder rate might be falling so much this year, and I want to share his conclusions: “With all of those caveats in mind, when I think about the main factors behind declining murder, a strong investment in communities from private and public sources after the shock of the pandemic stands out as a major cause. There is a wide array of types of support that I would put into the “community investment” basket, including jobs, infrastructure, and programming, but it could be summed up as “we spent a lot of money everywhere on stuff.””

Recent Headlines:

 

SPD wants to stop calling its surveillance program a “pilot” 3 weeks after implementation Read More »

Crime falls in Seattle in spite of SPD’s “organizational weaknesses”

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Seattle News:

First up, I had a new article out this week that covers continuing local developments from the Trump administration. I wrote about how both King County and Seattle are impacted, how various decisions from the Trump administration and Congress are likely to cause more homelessness, less affordable housing, and fewer services for those who are unhoused, and the worsening situation for unaccompanied immigrant and refugee children who lack legal representation when they face ICE in the courtroom. 

We’re also seeing eviction rates in King County skyrocket. KUOW reported that the King County Sheriff’s Office received 702 eviction orders this March, as compared to 317 eviction orders received in March of 2024. For 2025 so far, there has been a 30% increase from last year’s rate. 

Even though SPD only managed to hire a net ONE officer in 2024 (a gain that was immediately erased when former Chief Sue Rahr decided to fire Officer Kevin Dave on January 6), Danny Westneat reports that crime is “plummeting,” citing the following stats:

  • Shots fired YTD down 24%
  • Violent crime YTD down 15%, its lowest quarter for five years
  • 8 homicides through the end of March, the lowest figure since 2019
  • Car theft is down 30% from a year ago and 50% down from its peak

Looks like police department staffing really doesn’t have much to do with crime rates. 

Speaking of SPD, the OPA has recommended they institute an AI policy after one of their officers used ChatGPT and other AI tools to write his reports. SPD COO Brian Maxey made it into the news again this week. And SPD Captain Eric Greening reportedly settled his discrimination lawsuit with the City for around $1 million.

Seattle received its April revenue forecast yesterday, and the news is bleak. The revenue forecast council adopted the pessimistic forecast, given all the turmoil being caused by the Trump administration and Elon Musk. The total revenue forecast for 2025-2026 has been lowered by $241 million. This does not include the loss of $46.8 million of expected JumpStart revenue from 2024 (the tax only brought in $360 million in 2024 after being predicted to bring in $406.8 million). 

Seattle will need to make up that $241 million + $46.8 million gap this year during their mid-year supplemental budget process and their fall budget season. The revenue forecast could continue to grow worse during this time. And let’s not forget Seattle has already been projected to face an additional $78 million deficit for 2027, a number we can also expect to grow larger. 

It is really hard for me to emphasize enough how much trouble all of these budgets are in, from the Washington State budget to the King County budget to Seattle’s budget. They were already in deep trouble before any federal cuts, but the federal cuts will undoubtedly exacerbate the situation. Without significant new revenue sources, the current level of public services enjoyed in these localities is unsustainable.

That being said, it will be difficult for Seattle to pass enough new revenue sources, and especially to get them up and collecting quickly enough, to meaningfully address the problem. Thus far the city council has shown itself to be recalcitrant when it comes to passing any new revenue sources, but it remains to be seen whether this latest downturn will change any minds. 

One possible solution would be to move all JumpStart funds away from their originally intended purpose (affordable housing, Green New Deal, and equitable development) and plug it all into the General Fund. However, given what we know about how the Trump administration is already negatively impacting affordable housing projects and homelessness services, as well as how recessions generally further increase the unhoused population, pulling further large investments from affordable housing would almost certainly have disastrous consequences. Similarly, the longer the City postpones dealing materially with the climate catastrophe, the worse the fallout will be, and the less the City invests in addressing historical disparities, the more those inequities will continue to compound. 

Local journalist Guy Oron continues his reporting about homeless sweeps in Seattle, finding that the number of sweeps in 2024 was even higher than the record set in 2023 – there were 2,504 sweeps in 2024 and 2,205 sweeps in 2023. The vast majority of these sweeps were done without prior notice. 

Harrell clocks in with 5,633 sweeps performed during his three years and three months in office, by far the highest number of any Seattle mayor since at least 2008. Former mayor Jenny Durkan oversaw 1,781 sweeps during her four-year term, the second highest number. 

For the 2025-2026 biennium, the Unified Care Team that performs these sweeps is slated to get $66 million, a bump from their previous 2023-2024 budget of $52.5 million. 

Over the last year, at least 15 defendants at Seattle Municipal Court (SMC) have not been assigned public defenders to receive the defense services to which they are legally entitled. This particular issue does not seem to be resulting from the public defense crisis currently hitting the state, but rather seems to be due to errors on the side of SMC. Public defenders suspect this problem might be resulting from the Court’s expensive new case management system that originally rolled out a year ago and has been plagued by issues.

The Office of the City Auditor recently released a report on gun violence patterns in Seattle and then delivered a presentation about it to the council’s governance committee last week, which became unexpectedly heated when Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington appeared to feel attacked and disrespected by both the report and the process by which it came into existence. 

Politics aside, it’s an enlightening report that the Mayor’s Office doesn’t appear to have much interest in engaging with. It references a report delivered by the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy (CEBCP) to SPD in June of 2023, saying, “The report found that SPD does not follow many best practices for “investigative effectiveness” and that “even if the SPD returns to full personnel capacity, these organizational weaknesses will continue if unattended.”

The auditor’s report lists six specific weaknesses of SPD investigations found by the CEBCP and references SPD’s lack of public legitimacy as an ongoing issue. No one at the council meeting on this subject explicitly brought any of this up, however. 

WA State News:

The Washington State budget continues to wend its way forward. Governor Bob Ferguson’s budget director sent a letter to legislative budget leaders underlining his priorities. The letter underlines Ferguson’s desire to maintain strong reserves and acknowledges that “meaningful reductions alone will not fully address the budget shortfall.” It says new revenue sources should be “thoughtfully considered” but makes it clear that Ferguson remains opposed to the wealth tax, which is “untested in court.” 

More surprisingly, the letter goes on to list more than two dozen policies and programs that Ferguson would like to see receive more funding and attention. As the Washington State Standard reported, “Budget writers said this week that the level of granular detail in the letter didn’t surprise them. But the absence of advice from the governor on where they could make a bigger dent in addressing a multibillion-dollar shortfall did.”

What the letter does NOT do is give any specific advice about either cuts or new sources of revenue that Ferguson would support. 

The state’s capital budget proposals include more money for affordable housing compared to the last biennium, with the House proposal including almost $724 million for housing and the Senate proposal including $770 million.  

Meanwhile, hundreds of Washington state workers, who have been threatened with varying furlough plans by both Ferguson and the Senate, protested at Olympia on Wednesday. It’s possible that Washington State Federation of State Employees (WFSE) workers might strike over the proposal.

Recent Headlines:

 

Crime falls in Seattle in spite of SPD’s “organizational weaknesses” Read More »

Seattle capital gains tax dead…for now

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Seattle Budget and Progressive Revenue:

At long last, this year’s Seattle budget season is over, with the Seattle City Council voting 8-1 to pass the new 2025-2026 budget. You can read my takeaways from the budget here. You can also read what The Stranger and PubliCola have to say about it.

I hopped on the internet last week to point out that the 2% city-wide capital gains tax had a 4-4 vote (with Councilmember Tanya Woo abstaining), which meant that once Councilmember-elect Alexis Mercedes Rinck takes over this week, there are theoretically enough votes to pass the excise tax. My “theoretically” was doing a lot of work though, as five votes is not a veto-proof majority, and Mayor Bruce Harrell is on the record as opposing this tax. I also thought a few of the votes might not be solid, which was later evidenced by Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth changing her vote from yes to no for the extremely weak reason that the legislation received a committee recommendation of “Do Not Pass.” PubliCola posits that Councilmember Dan Strauss’s vote in favor might be “squishy” as well. However, we’ll probably be hearing more about this tax, as both Councilmember Cathy Moore and Councilmember Tammy Morales have said they’ll bring it forward again next year.

A new poll from the Northwest Progressive Institute shows strong support for new progressive revenue in Seattle. Check out the findings:

“NPI’s most recent survey of the Seattle electorate, which fielded a couple weeks ago, finds that only a quarter (25%) of Emerald City voters back the mayor’s proposal, with nearly-three fifths (58%) expressing support for an alternative approach — namely, levying new taxes on wealth that would keep essential public services funded and allow better than anticipated Jumpstart revenue collections to flow to the vital priorities that former Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda’s enabling legislation specified, like housing.”

Other Seattle News:

Gino Betts, the Director of the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) has resigned. OPA Deputy Director Bonnie Glenn will take over as interim director. Betts’s last day is December 13. 

We can expect some new legislation from Harrell creating two new misdemeanors, one for illegal street vending and one for interfering with City employees. 

SPD has adopted a new emergency driving policy. PubliCola reports that “though Merkel said he was skeptical that SPD officers will now face stronger discipline for unsafe driving, he does believe the new policy spells out what officers need to consider to improve safety.” Merkel is currently the co-chair of the Community Police Commission (CPC).

The King County Jail’s booking restrictions for misdemeanors booked by SPD have been officially lifted as of November 1.

The South Seattle Emerald has been doing investigative reporting on the infamous 2020 Proud Boys ruse, with both an exploration of personal impacts the ruse had on protesters active at that time and a more in-depth investigation of the ruse itself. The latter piece says that while an OPA investigation of the ruse found that six SPD officers were involved, the Emerald has determined that upward of 30 SPD officers appear to have been involved, many of them not being investigated and some of them since being promoted. 

I found this analysis of the recent Seattle Council seat election to be both interesting and amusing: “To wit, Rinck’s victory was a repudiation not so much of what the centrist City Council promised to do, but the fact that, handed a mandate of sorts in the 2023 election, it’s done what every Council does in Seattle: nothing anyone who doesn’t work for Publicola could explain to you.”

The Stranger recently ran two op-eds also about the Council seat election: How Alexis Mercedes Rinck’s Victory Reclaimed Public Safety as a Progressive Issue and its rebuttal, Hiding Centrism in Progressive Clothing. Both talk about the public safety messaging utilized during Rinck’s recent successful campaign but take vastly different lessons from it. 

King County News:

You can check out my recent article at The Urbanist on the public defender crisis, and specifically on what that crisis is likely to look like on the ground. This is likely to be a pressing issue for years to come so worth getting up to speed on now.

King County Executive Dow Constantine announced he won’t be running for re-election next year, leaving the top post at the County up for grabs after sixteen years. Current King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci has announced her run for the position. Current King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay is widely expected to run as well. 

King County passed its 2025 budget last week. A tougher budget season is anticipated next year for the 2026-2027 biennium, with a projected $150 million shortfall.

Recent Headlines:

Seattle capital gains tax dead…for now Read More »