CARE

Will Seattle run a ballot initiative next year to unleash the CARE team?

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Seattle news:

I wrote about the imperilment of the Graham Street and Boeing Access Road light rail stations. The Sound Transit vote on the issue took place on Thursday, and the Graham Street station is back on track, mostly because Seattle stepped up to make it happen. Unfortunately, Boeing Access Road and three Ballard stations didn’t fare as well. 

I also wrote about the obstacles facing the CARE team. Yes, I’ve written about it before, but 1.there still seems to be confusion about it, and 2. I wanted to present a few new options on the table to address it. 

As we all know, Seattle is facing a significant budget deficit for 2027. One option on the table, reported on by PubliCola, is a special fire district tax that would move much of the Seattle Fire Department’s budget out of the general fund by raising property taxes to pay for it instead. Interesting idea, and only possible because of a law change earlier this year in the state legislature. 

Residents along the Aurora Ave North corridor have been putting up makeshift barricades to address the gun violence in their neighborhood. Mayor Katie Wilson has directed SDOT to replace these barricades with temporary traffic calming treatments expected to be installed sometime this weekend. 

Meanwhile, the Council will be considering a bill that would allow SPD and SDOT to close streets for public safety reasons.

At the same time, the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office reports that deadly gun violence incidents in Seattle and King County have continued to drop. As Capitol Hill Seattle Blog reports: “In her office’s latest updates, Manion says the first quarter of 2026 marked a new milestone in the return to safer levels as deadly shootings dropped to “single digits” for the first time in nine years.” 

AI/Surveillance/Immigration news:

A new report from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights found that “without deliberate and outcome-oriented interventions, AI will likely amplify the racial wealth gap rather than narrow it.”

I reported on the large data center moratorium currently being discussed by the Seattle City Council. Committee votes are expected on Wednesday. 

404 Media reported that the FBI wants to buy nation-wide access to automatic license plate reader data. The most likely vendors for this would be Flock Safety and Motorola Solutions.

Meanwhile, the city of Renton suspended their Flock contract and the city of Edmonds cancelled their Flock contract, following in the footsteps of Mountlake Terrace and Lynnwood. Everett and Stanwood have ceased their pause of their Flock networks, however, and are back to using them . 

The Electronic Frontier Foundation analyzed millions of police searches of Flock license plate data and found that “law enforcement agencies have moved beyond specific investigations to use these surveillance networks for virtually any whim.” Their analysis looked at police use of this surveillance for school district residency checks, background checks, and noise complaints. 

I reported on the temporary contract between the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma and ICE, which has lowered the standards for the facility. I also covered the new lawsuit the Washington State Attorney General filed against the GEO Group, who operates the center, to allow the state department of health to perform inspections of the facility.. 

Last week The Stranger reported that ICE transferred leaders of a hunger strike at the detention center away from the Tacoma center in what advocates say was retaliation.

Recent Headlines:

Will Seattle run a ballot initiative next year to unleash the CARE team? Read More »

PROTEC17 moves to help the CARE team do their jobs

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Seattle and King County News:

This will be a short edition of Notes From the Emerald City, as I don’t have a lot to say about many of the recent headlines. This may well be because I am in the middle of writing a very intensive piece that is taking up most of my brain bandwidth at present, but in any case, today I’m going to keep things short and sweet. 

I’ve been covering some election news in the past few weeks. I was able to sit down and have a long conversation with Jaelynn Scott, who is running to become a Washington state representative for the 37th LD. If you’re interested in learning more details about Scott and her policy positions, this one is for you.

Also in election news, Toshiko Hasegawa and Rebecca Saldaña–both running for the District 2 seat on the King County Council–released their public safety platforms last week. I spoke with both of them, and while the platforms are similar in many ways, I tried to tease out the differences in both platforms and experience. 

And this week, environmental justice group Got Green released a report alleging that the Seattle Housing Authority’s public housing is “unsafe and unhealthy.” I read through the report and attended the rally about it so I could give you the most important details.

In the latest addition to the CARE team saga, PROTEC17, the union representing City workers, has filed an unfair labor practice against the City and SPOG saying that the section in the new SPOG contract regulating crisis response should be thrown out since the CARE workers’ union was not engaged with about their scope of work. 

The other headline I want to call to your attention is PubliCola’s recent article about the new forensic report on the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA), which shows their finances in pretty rough and messy shape. 

Earlier today, Erica Barnett attended the KCRHA meeting discussing the report, and I’d like to highlight some information she posted about the meeting. 

“This presentation, which sheds more light on the concerns the auditors raised, is more devastating than the audit themselves,” Barnett wrote. “What Nurse is describing is what “would be required” for stabilization—a complete overhaul of the entire organization.”

Other important details reported by Barnett: the KCRHA has a negative cash balance of $63 million as of March 2026, and addressing the issues uncovered in the report could take a year or more and cost millions of dollars. There was also no evidence found of corrective action taken by KCRHA after their negative audits from 2023 and 2024. 

 Recent Headlines:

PROTEC17 moves to help the CARE team do their jobs Read More »

State millionaires income tax: a big swing among budget cuts

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Seattle News:

Last week I chatted with Hannah Sabio-Howell, who is challenging Washington State Senator Jamie Pedersen for his seat in the 43rd LD. I expect this to shape up to be an interesting race!

I also recently covered the current backlog over at the Seattle City Attorney’s Office, and how City Attorney Erika Evans is planning to adjust workflow to try to deal with it. Evans also said the office needs more money, which could be difficult given Mayor Katie Wilson recently asked all city departments to prepare a list of potential cuts for this year’s budget season. 

And I reported on SPD’s committee report in response to a budget SLI passed last November on their federal immigration enforcement policies. I used quotes liberally in this article because it was one of those meetings where I felt it was important for people to know what had been said. 

I’ll have an article out very soon about the detention facilities moratoriums in Seattle, King County, and elsewhere, as well as some more news out of the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma. 

SPD has claimed that its real time crime center has tripled “the odds that a victim receives justice.” PubliCola wrote about what this means, pointing out that SPD is defining “receiving justice” as arrests made (with no details about prosecution, jail time, or how the RTCC was involved), which can also result in overpolicing.

Almost a month ago, CARE Chief Amy Barden attended a Public Safety committee meeting to reiterate what she’s been saying all along: that the new SPOG contract approved in December is preventing Seattle’s CARE team from doing their jobs. I was on vacation at the time, but Erica Barnett wrote a great article on the topic, which also links to her live reporting on Bluesky. 

Memorably, Barden was chided by Councilmember Martiza Rivera for being honest about the impacts of the new SPOG contract on the CARE team. 

“I agree there’s plenty of work to go around, and we need to work together,” Rivera said. “And so what I would like to see is working together, less accusatory language, and how can you be, you know, a person of change, to really work together to make things happen. So rather than constantly pointing out maybe the negative and what is not going well, let’s hear about what is going well and how you can help make things better.”

From her words, it sounds like Rivera doesn’t want to hear about the negative consequences of her vote on the SPOG contract, nor does she appear to want to grapple with the reality that the police are blocking the effective deployment of alternative response in Seattle.

WA State News:

The big news has been the passage of the millionaires’ income tax after over 24 hours of debate in the House. It even looks like Governor Bob Ferguson might agree to sign it! In return, lawmakers have rolled back last year’s increase on the estate tax, bringing down the top rate from 35% to 20%.

Included in the millionaires tax is a rollback of a sales tax on services passed last year, set to take effect in 2029. Because cities and counties collect sales tax (not just the state), this repeal will have an effect on local municipalities’ bottom lines, as well as Sound Transit’s finances.

The legislature also passed the state’s operating budget. There is already an $878 million budget hole expected for 2027, which will have to be dealt with next session. Legislators used the rainy day fund and a few discontinued tax breaks to try to close this year’s budget gap, which was worsened by the state having to pay large amounts on lawsuit payouts for government misconduct. The budget includes cuts to child care, Transition to Kindergarten, and local effort assistance money for public school students.  

The ALPR bill also made it through concurrence and is on its way for the governor’s signature. I’ll be writing in detail about what’s actually in the final bill and what it means for surveillance in the state.

On Flock license plate readers specifically: Flock updated its terms and conditions on February 16, 2026, making several changes. Of particular note, Flock now has a perpetual license to use Customer Data (meaning even after a specific contract ends or is canceled) and Flock is now allowed to use all Customer Data for its own product development. The terms for privacy commitments around training data have been removed from the new contract, including the commitment to never sell or share the training data with third parties. 

Other changes have been made, including making the agreement governed by the laws of the State of Georgia, after mandatory mediation and arbitration. You can read about all the changes here.

Recent Headlines:

State millionaires income tax: a big swing among budget cuts Read More »

Seattle, Washington State brace for potential ICE impact

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AI, ICE, Surveillance:

During the last two weeks, I’ve written two in-depth articles. 

The first takes a look at Washington state legislators’ attempts to regulate AI this year. 

The second takes a look at state and local leaders’ response to ICE actions in Minneapolis and elsewhere. Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown said we’re now experiencing a constitutional crisis. 

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson released some responses to prepare for ICE’s possible invasion of Seattle. Notably missing from the list was anything having to do with surveillance. 

404 Media reports that a Houston-area police intelligence center has instructed police to “be as vague as permissible” about why they’re using Flock license plate reader surveillance data. These kinds of instructions will make the audits available via public record request less useful for determining if and when surveillance data is being shared for purposes such as immigration enforcement or seeking out people trying to get reproductive care.

WA State News:

Wednesday marks the policy committee cut-off for this short legislative session. Any bills that haven’t been passed out of their respective policy committees by the end of the day Wednesday will be officially dead for the session. The fiscal committee cut-off is Monday, February 9. 

The Washington State Democrats have finally dropped the bill containing their much touted “millionaires” tax. The bulk of the new tax, which wouldn’t be collected until April 2029 and is expected to generate more than $3 billion a year, would go straight to the state’s general fund, with a few tax breaks and 5% dedicated to a new fund to help counties pay for public defense costs.

Meanwhile, Governor Bob Ferguson, who used his support for this tax to paper over the budget cuts he was proposing, has come out and said he actually cannot support it after all–at least, not without changes. He wants more tax breaks and less investment in services.

Other proponents of the tax would like to see more of the new tax allocated for specific uses such as education, rather than all go into the general fund where it could be used for a mishmash of priorities.

Meanwhile, state Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen says there’s no path forward for a state-wide payroll expense (a la JumpStart) tax. Pedersen implies that big business’s dislike for this tax has played a role in his lack of support for it. 

The Washington State Supreme Court is having a big election in November, with four justice seats (out of nine) up for grabs. These races will shape the future of the court for potentially years to come.

Seattle News:

A King County jury found the City of Seattle negligent in responding to the fatal shooting of teenager Antonio Mays Jr. in the CHOP in 2020. 11 out of the 12 jurors agreed on the verdict, which is sufficient for a civil trial in Washington state. The city will be paying out $30.5 million. 

Last week, Mike Solan, who is still president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG)–although he is expected to step down later this month– responded to Mayor Wilson’s announcement of actions to prepare for ICE’s eventual descent onto Seattle. Solan wrote the following message on X: “Toothless virtue signaling rhetoric like this has already cost two people their lives. The concept of pitting two armed law enforcement agencies against each other is ludicrous, and will not happen. I will not allow SPOG members to be used as political pawns.”

PubliCola reported that CARE Chief Amy Barden has not had a single one-on-one meeting with SPD Chief Shon Barnes since he began in the position a year ago. 

Barden told PubliCola that “the sergeants who decide whether to dispatch CARE are increasingly sending out community service officers (CSOs)—civilian SPD employees without formal training in mental health care or social work—to calls that Barden says should go to CARE.”

Recent Headlines:

Seattle, Washington State brace for potential ICE impact 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 »

Is there a budget bloodbath in the offing?

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Personal News:

I’ve been a bit quieter than usual lately because my beloved little dog Nala died last week. I took several days off to spend some quality time with her beforehand, and I’ve been slowly gearing back up. I miss her terribly, of course, and am also very grateful that she lived such a good, long life (she was nearly 18!) and that everyone is being so kind to me as I adjust to this huge change.

Amy in a coat, hat, and scarf holding a cute little dog in a red jacket, the sandy beach and sunset behind them

Seattle and King County News:

I wrote about the Seattle Public Schools school board vote last week on a year-long pilot to bring a police officer back to Garfield High School. Things didn’t go the way I thought they would, as the board rejected the pilot proposal.

I wrote about Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposal to use part of the new public safety sales tax money (which Council just passed in an 8-1 vote, Councilmember Maritza Rivera the sole nay vote) to double the number of CARE alternative responders. The CARE alternate response teams have been struggling since their inception due to an overly restrictive MOU with SPOG. I also wrote about a “mysterious” and sudden drop in police referrals to the CARE team, which coincidentally happened right after SPOG members had trouble with their paychecks due to the City using faulty new payroll software. Hmm. 

The Seattle Times published a similar story with this great lede: “Leadership with Seattle’s new police alternative has become increasingly frustrated with what they view as “a pattern of subversion” by street-level officers who seem to be routinely rejecting or ignoring assistance from civilian responders, records show.”

Relatedly, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) just released a report on the CARE team.

And I wrote about the new SPOG contract that Harrell has said he is almost done negotiating. Will it drop before or after the election? I’m fascinated to find out. 

SPD and Chief Shon Barnes have been engaging in some questionable promotions, as PubliCola has reported: Marc Garth Green, who was demoted after making offensive comments about sex workers, was promoted to commander of the West Precinct, and Mike Tietjen, who has several worrisome disciplinary actions on his record, including allegedly harassing a trans woman, was promoted to be in charge of the East Precinct. Barnes later walked back Tietjen’s new assignment, seemingly due to PubliCola’s coverage, blaming “internal leaks” and “a lack of comprehensive input from those involved in employee assignments.”

The King County Council approved the plans for the new crisis care center in Capitol Hill at the old Polyclinic building. 

I have been industriously listening to both Seattle and King County budget meetings. King County has successfully bridged their deficit for the 2026-2027 biennium with the new public safety sales tax, although they’ll be struggling to deal with federal impacts on services. Seattle will be receiving its revenue forecast on Monday, which might lead to a bit of a bloodbath for the budget depending on how bad the forecast turns out to be.

Surveillance news:

The Seattle Metro Chamber recently conducted a poll with this statement: “Recently passed laws, such as installing closed circuit cameras to capture real -time information about crime on our streets and keeping people out of areas where they have previously committed crimes are making Seattle safer and reducing crime.”

51% of respondents agreed (with only 17% strongly agreeing), while 46% of respondents disagreed. 

In local journalism circles, SPD is known as a place where you send public record requests to die. However, recent reporting from Hardpressed reveals that SPD is fulfilling public record requests for ICE in less than four days. The article further states:
“The initial six pages of records provided by Mayor Harrell’s office show that ICE is requesting information on people the SPD has charged with lowly crimes such as drug possession and fourth degree (gross misdemeanor) assault, which can be charged with no injury and for something as simple as a push. It is unclear based on the limited information and redactions made by Harrell’s office within the released records if the individuals SPD arrested were ever convicted of a crime.” 

404 Media has followed up on their reporting about Flock Safety and their ALPR database. Flock’s database was searched by law enforcement in Texas looking for a woman who had self-administered an abortion. It turns out that said law enforcement had considered charging the woman they were searching for with a crime.

Meanwhile, 404 Media discovered that ICE, the Secret Service, and the Navy’s criminal investigation unit all had access to Flock’s huge data network. This news prompted US Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon to write a letter to Flock, in which he said, “I now believe that abuses of your product are not only likely but inevitable, and that Flock is unable and uninterested in preventing them. Cities around the country, including in Oregon, are currently reevaluating their decision to install Flock cameras. I commend and support this reexamination. In my view, local elected officials can best protect their constituents from the inevitable abuses of Flock cameras by removing Flock from their communities.”

The City of Mountlake Terrace, which voted to purchase Flock automated license plate recognition (ALPRs) back in June, has been continuing to discuss the issue. Councilmember William Paige, Jr. originally voted in favor of the technology, but he has changed his mind and now wants to cancel the contract. It’s possible the most recent news, along with the letter from Wyden, might sway more councilmembers.

The Flock cameras haven’t yet been installed in Mountlake Terrace. 

A few more recent articles about surveillance you might be interested in checking out:

Recent Headlines:

Is there a budget bloodbath in the offing? Read More »

The City of Seattle is watching you

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Surveillance News:

First off, I’ll share my piece on Seattle’s surveillance expansion. City Council passed the legislation to implement this expansion on a 7-2 vote on Tuesday. Yesterday I heard about a website that some concerned citizens put up with a good round-up of media coverage of the vote.

Lavender Rights Project, Seattle Pride, and the Seattle DSA have made social media posts against the expansion. Lavender Rights Project wrote, “Lavender Rights Project is located directly within the zone of this projected surveillance expansion. Yet no impact analysis was conducted, nor was robust effort made to engage with our staff, or the communities we represent–those who will be most affected by these decisions. This disregard highlights exactly whose safety is prioritized, and whose lives are put at risk.”

This flier was also spotted in Capitol Hill:

In other surveillance news, DivestSPD found that state and federal law enforcement officers are sharing license plate data on obscure Seattle police email lists. 

The Intercept reported on how the company Fusus connected City of Seattle officials, including Claudia Gross-Shader from the Auditor’s Office, to a man, Marshall Freeman, who they introduced as the deputy chief administrative officer of the Atlanta Police Department. What Fusus neglected to tell the City was that Freeman is a member of their board and owns a small share of the company. The City didn’t find out until recently; in the meantime, Seattle bought Fusus’s real-time crime center software for an estimated price of $1.8 million. 

The kicker? “Gross-Shader also noted that the city had not seen research demonstrating the ability of Fusus’s technology to play a significant role in reducing retail theft, the issue that originally brought her to look into the company.”

Flock Safety, known for its extensive nationwide network of license plate readers, has rolled out a new feature that analyzes driving patterns to determine “suspicious” behavior and flag people as potential participants in organized crime. The ACLU writes about several reasons why this is concerning.

Forest Park, a city in Illinois, gave U.S. Customs and Border Patrol access to their license plate data. This example is noteworthy because Forest Park doesn’t use Flock Safety license plate readers, which have been garnering a lot of press recently. Their license plate readers are provided by Motorola Solutions, showing the dangers of this technology aren’t a matter of a single problematic vendor. 

Finally, Waymo self-driving cars are now being tested in the Seattle area. I know self-driving cars are a controversial issue and there are many big fans of the technology out there, but I would be remiss not to point out the surveillance capabilities of these vehicles, with LAPD and other police departments obtaining surveillance footage from these cars and using it as evidence. You can read 404 Media’s reporting about that here.  

Seattle News:

Earlier this month, I wrote about the opening of the new post-overdose stabilization ORCA center across from the King County courthouse. DESC, the organization that runs the new center, is also pioneering a different medicine treatment protocol for opioid addiction that thus far seems to be easier for people to tolerate. 

Last week, Seattle’s long-lasting consent decree finally came to an end. Mayor Bruce Harrell also announced he expects to finish negotiating a new contract with SPOG by the end of the year, about which he is very optimistic. We’ll see what he trades away to keep the CARE responders in existence. 

Harrell announced that as of the first day of school, the City has now hired more than 40 additional mental and behavioral health professionals across Seattle Public Schools (SPS) middle and high schools, for a total of over 60 mental health staff. You can read the press release about safety measures at SPS here.

Speaking of SPS, there will be a key board meeting on Wednesday, September 17 at 4:15pm where school board members are expected to vote on a pilot bringing a police officer back into Garfield High School.

Today Harrell announced $1.7 million in awards to expand services for survivors of commercial sexual exploitation (CSE). Organizations that received awards are the Organization for Prostitution Survivors, the Seattle Indian Health Board, Real Escape from the Sex Trade (REST), and Consejo Counseling and Referral Service. Notably absent from the list is one of former Councilmember Cathy Moore’s favorite providers, The More We Love.

King County and Washington State news:

This week, the King County Council voted in favor of moving forward the process of buying and opening a crisis care center in Capitol Hill. 

Washington Supreme Court Justice Mary Yu announced her retirement at the end of the year. Governor Bob Ferguson will appoint a replacement to serve until an election next year, where candidates will run to finish Yu’s term, which goes until the end of 2028. 

Washington Supreme Court justices are required to retire the year they turn 75 years old. Associate Chief Justice Charles Johnson will be turning 75 in 2026, and Justice Barbara Madsen will be turning 75 in 2027. With three Supreme Court seats up for grabs in the next few years, these upcoming judicial elections will shape the future of Washington state. 

Recent Headlines:

The City of Seattle is watching you Read More »

Toxic work environments reported at both the Washington governor’s office and the Seattle mayor’s office

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Seattle News:

First off, let’s catch up on last week’s public safety committee meeting, which featured a presentation about the CARE alternative response team from CARE Chief Amy Barden. 

As of last week, the CARE teams are responding city-wide, 10 hours a day, seven days a week. Thus far they have answered 1,648 calls, of which 30-40% is giving someone a ride. Barden mentioned that the CARE department, which currently consists of the CARE alternative responders and 911 dispatch, needs more administrative support in order to grow. 

However, CARE is currently limited by the SPOG MOU to an upper limit of 24 responders, which is not enough to meet the current demand of calls, let alone an expansion that would grant more coverage across the city 24/7. HB 1816, which I reported on last month, might have rectified this issue, but unfortunately it didn’t receive a floor vote last week so is effectively dead. 

It is unclear to me if the previous MOU with SPOG has done enough to establish the CARE team’s body of work for them to expand without further bargaining, as I have heard different answers to this question, which hinges on how the MOU is interpreted.

 It is also unclear to me if there is any other avenue beyond further bargaining with SPOG to move the CARE team away from dual dispatch so they’re able to respond to calls without police being present. It is very clear at this point that doing so would be safe (a fact we already knew from the data from alternative response teams doing similar work in other cities). Barden says some SPD sergeants feel comfortable clearing CARE teams to answer calls alone over radio channels, while others do not. 

Barden is adamant that public safety in Seattle would improve if she were able to send the best first response. At the council meeting, she cited the NICJR report on 911 calls in Seattle, saying that the study said 80% of calls had nothing to do with criminal behavior or law enforcement and that only 6% of calls had some kind of criminal implication. She also emphasized how much money the City would save by dispatching the CARE teams more often.

Some councilmembers were very critical of Barden’s efforts thus far, saying she isn’t doing enough. They didn’t all seem cognizant of the barriers erected by the SPOG MOU, in spite of the fact that several journalists have covered this issue, and at some length. 

Some councilmembers seemed to be unaware that many services have been perennially underfunded and not scaled up to the level of need. Happily, PubliCola covered this, writing, “One thing Barden didn’t bring up explicitly is that the CARE Team can only refer to services that are available, and that those services—including long-term treatment, case management, housing, and even basic detox—are not as ample and widely available as council members repeatedly suggested. Nor is it a great use of resources to send people through inadequate light-touch services again and again, Barden noted.”

Councilmember Martiza Rivera asked why Barden hasn’t taken on the role of coordinating services for folks in need, including with community-based organizations, which she said is directly in the CARE department mandate. Barden said that Senior Deputy Mayor Tim Burgess hasn’t given her license to take on that aspect of the department’s work yet because he thinks she lacks capacity. 

Two more interesting things of note from this meeting: Barden said SPD put together a work group last year to reassign call types. The results of this work are that in February of 2025, 911 received 50% fewer Priority 1 calls than in February of 2024. 

Secondly, Councilmember Cathy Moore, who was perhaps the most adamant in repeating how many services are already available for people in need, stated her interest in increasing involuntary confinement. “Your civil liberties do you no good if you’re dead,” Moore said.

I hope that, especially in these times, we can see the dangerous slippery slope to which that argument leads. I have written before about how when it comes to people’s rights around involuntary confinement in Washington State, amendments have chipped away at the original robust law, making it easier to force involuntary treatment on vulnerable people. And at a time when Americans’ civil rights are under direct and robust attack, Moore’s words perhaps do not land the way she intended. 

The Mayor’s Office held a press conference this week to celebrate the expansion of the CARE teams city-wide.

In other news, there has been a second SODA order issued, this time in the CID. However, Davison says there have actually been three SODA orders and one pending SOAP order. She says the reason these aren’t being used more often is a combination of police officer training taking time and judges not granting these orders as part of their rulings.

Late last Friday, KUOW broke the news of former Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell, also the niece of Mayor Bruce Harrell, speaking out about the toxic working environment of the Mayor’s Office. As KUOW reported, “She describes the mayor’s office as being a dog-eat-dog environment where white male advisors vied for power and influence. She said her experience, as a high-level woman ignored by the mayor and his lieutenants, is not unique at City Hall.”

The article continues, “KUOW spoke with six other women with ties to the mayor’s office who supported Monisha Harrell’s account of a boys’ club environment where women were condescended to and shut out of important meetings, even though their roles would suggest they be included.”

Tying into the above story, PubliCola reported on several women who have decided to come forward in the wake of a mayoral staffer being accused of sexual assault. The King County Prosecutor’s Office has not yet made a charging decision in this case, but several women have come forward to tell their own stories about their interactions with former external affairs director Pedro Gomez, which appear to illustrate a pattern of behavior that involves Gomez making promises to help women professionally while bragging about his influence, plying them with large amounts of alcohol that they feel pressured to accept, and then making sexual advances and/or trying to get them to a private location. 

It is worthwhile to read both of the above articles in their entirety. 

Washington State News:

Washington State Senate and House Democrats plan to release their budget proposals on Monday, March 24. 

The news from this week’s updated state revenue estimate was not good. While the state is expected to bring in $54.4 million more than expected in the 2023-2025 biennium, it is expected to bring in almost $900 million less in 2025-2029, leading to a total further deficit of $845 million. This is on top of the already existing deficit that Governor Bob Ferguson most recently estimated at $15 billion over the next four years. 

Senate Democrat budget leaders just released their 2025 revenue proposal, which is admirably ambitious, given the scope of financial problems confronting the state. I will be writing at more length about this soon, but in addition to one version of a wealth tax and a state-level Jumpstart-like tax, the package does include lifting the 1% annual cap from property tax increases, which would give King County a fighting chance to eventually recover from their current tough budget situation. 

Meanwhile, Ferguson’s office has been undergoing quite a shakeup. Last week, his legislative director Joyce Bruce quit, following the recent resignation of his deputy legislative director Shawn Lewis, which raised troubling questions about the working environment at the governor’s office and left it short-staffed in the middle of a challenging legislative session. 

This week, top Ferguson aide Mike Webb, who had worked for Ferguson since at least 2012, resigned with this statement: “I deeply regret that the allegations of a hostile work environment have created an unhelpful distraction that impacts the team’s ability to do their work, as well as my ability to be effective in the near term. To be blunt, given the stakes of the work ahead, I cannot stomach that.”

Ferguson is expected to retool his administration in the wake of these resignations, and some state lawmakers are hoping for a re-set. 

Ferguson is also garnering criticism from state workers over his proposal to furlough government workers one day a month to save money. However, it is unlikely that state Democrats would support this proposal. 

Finally, if you’re wondering why universal health care for Washington State is not on the agenda for this legislative session, The Stranger writes about what happened to the proposed bills. 

Recent Headlines:

Election Season: 

Toxic work environments reported at both the Washington governor’s office and the Seattle mayor’s office Read More »

Seattle and King County on a bumpy road due to Trump administration chaos

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What I’ve been working on:

I’ve had four articles out at The Urbanist in the last two weeks, which is more than usual, hence the delay in this edition of Notes from the Emerald City. 

Top of mind for me, I’ve been working on two pieces covering local impacts of the Trump administration thus far.

 Seattle and King County Grapple with Federal Disinvestment and Threats primarily covers the financial and budgetary impacts of the federal administration on Seattle and King County. Long story short, we’ve got a rough ride ahead. 

Seattle Gears Up to Fight Back as Trump Eviscerates Funding, Rights primarily covers the impacts on civil rights and vulnerable communities, including coverage from Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck’s first meeting of the Select Committee on Federal Administration and Policy Changes. I also cover the danger to the Pacific Northwest’s electricity supply and how the University of Washington is being impacted (although there is more recent news on that in the recent headlines below as well). 

I hope these two articles can get people up to speed on what’s going on and prepare for the struggles ahead. 

I wrote a piece about new SPD Chief Shon Barnes, who appeared before the City Council’s public safety committee for the first time at the end of February after being on the job for one month. 

Finally, I covered Mayor Bruce Harrell’s recent proposal to renew Seattle’s democracy voucher program, going over the program’s successes as well as reforms that might be needed. This program is the first of its kind in the country, and after 10 years, we have some idea how it is working. 

Other Seattle news:

This week, there was new coverage of the surveillance pilot starting soon in Seattle, and it includes a map with the proposed locations of 20 CCTV cameras in the CID. 

The CARE department presented to the public safety committee this week. In a testament to how busy I’ve been writing, I haven’t yet watched it, but I heard some councilmembers were criticizing the program. More on this when I’ve had a chance to catch up. 

The City Attorney’s Office is requesting to add more staff to their Federal Response Team in response to President Donald Trump’s chaos. No details yet on how many staff or how much this might cost.

PubliCola reported on a $40,000 two-day media training held by SPD in March and June of 2024, saying, “This is how-to-boil-water stuff: At some point, someone probably has to tell you how to do it, but it probably doesn’t require hiring a $40,000 consultant.”

Prism reported on the backchannel coordination between Seattle’s Federal Monitor for the consent decree, Antonio Oftelie, SPD’s general counsel Rebecca Boatwright, and SPD’s then-Executive Director of Strategic Initiatives Chris Fisher. The article cites conversations between the three at some length. As the article states, “While the Seattle Police Department (SPD) struggled with accountability in 2020, the federal monitor tasked with overseeing police reform was privately seeking input from the very department he was meant to regulate, according to documents obtained by Prism.”

New media analysis

A new Media Matters analysis of online shows found that 9 out of the top 10 online shows they assessed were right-leaning. Right-leaning online shows had nearly five times as many followers and subscribers as left-leaning online shows. 

Over a third of the shows said they were apolitical, but when analyzed, 72% of those “apolitical” shows were found to be right-leaning. Of the top nine right-leaning shows (only one left-leaning show makes the top ten at all), four are identified as news and politics, with the other five being instead called comedy, education, and society and culture. 

As an increasing number of Americans rely on these online shows and podcasts for their news, we can expect the impacts of this disparity to continue to grow. 

Recent Headlines:

Election Season:

 

Seattle and King County on a bumpy road due to Trump administration chaos Read More »

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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