JumpStart

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

/

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 »

Turmoil continues at SPD; WA State legislators search for new revenue to bridge a huge deficit

/

Seattle News:

First of all, my interview with Seattle City Attorney candidate Erika Evans is now out. This race is shaping up to be very competitive, with three candidates challenging incumbent Ann Davison. I think one of the big challenges of the race will be for the three candidates, who are united in their criticism of Davison, to distinguish themselves from one another. 

I also had a piece out about SPD and an email that recently came to light. In mid-January, SPD COO Brian Maxey wrote to the head of the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, calling the department “increasingly unstable” and referencing “chaos.” I also take a look at all the recent lawsuits coming out of SPD and how SPD complaint systems are potentially being weaponized.

The revenue report for the end of 2024 was released this week, and it contained bad news about the JumpStart payroll expense tax, which collected $47 million less in 2024 than forecasts had predicted. It is important to note, however, that the tax still brought in more money in 2024 than it did in 2023 (by $45 million.) 

This underscores the dangers of using the JumpStart tax to backfill the general fund as opposed to using it to fund affordable housing, investments which can more easily be adjusted to match whatever revenues are produced by this more volatile funding source.  

Last week, Councilmember Cathy Moore decided to direct $1 million in City funding for survivors of commercial sexual exploitation to The More We Love, bypassing a competitive bidding process that had been expected by other providers in the region.

As PubliCola reports, “Representatives from existing Black-led groups that work with survivors said that by giving $1 million to a white-led group that has not previously held a contract to work with CSE survivors, the city is ignoring and undermining the expertise of organizations that focus on Black and brown survivors, who make up a disproportionate number of people in the commercial sex trade.”

And also, “Many of the organizational leaders who spoke to PubliCola said they felt the city had not only wasted their time but violated their trust.”

Finally, Councilmember Rob Saka’s resolution denouncing the defund movement passed a full council vote this week. Councilmembers Alexis Mercedes Rinck, Cathy Moore, and Dan Strauss were not present for the vote. 

In order to clear up any confusion, this ordinance was not necessary to end Seattle’s consent decree. In addition, it does not provide a complete assessment of all the reasons behind SPD’s attrition in recent years, which mirrors that of other police departments across the country. DivestSPD brought up the point that many police officers hired in the 1990s by COPS grants started reaching retirement age in the past ten years. In addition, some officers left due to Covid vaccine mandates. 

PubliCola does an excellent job covering some of what was said about this ordinance on Tuesday.

That this resolution would be a top matter of council business over the last few weeks appears to demonstrate a lack of urgency on the part of certain councilmembers when it comes to the rolling impacts of federal-level decisions made during that same time period. 

Next week I’ll be covering the latest news of local impacts due to the decisions of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk. This week, committees from both the King County Council and the Seattle City Council received more information about what’s happening on the ground right now. 

King County News:

As one of his last acts as King County Executive, Dow Constantine nominated Matt Sanders, who is currently acting as the interim director of the King County Department of Public Defense, to continue as the permanent director. The King County Council will vote on whether to confirm this nomination sometime in the next few months. 

SEIU 925, the union that represents public defenders and other legal professionals in the department, opposes this nomination, PubliCola reported. PubliCola writes: “Rank and file union members have expressed concerns about Sanders, saying his management style has contributed to low morale and high turnover at the agency.” 

The union prefers Snohomish County public defense department director Jason Schwartz for the position.

This week the King County Council appointed Deputy County Executive Shannon Braddock to serve as acting County Executive following the departure of Dow Constantine for Sound Transit. Braddock indicated interest in AI implementation during her brief tenure as County Executive, even though this is a policy area about which she said, “I am not a technology expert. I don’t know these things.” 

Another death has been reported at the SCORE jail this week, marking at least 11 deaths that have taken place inside the jail in a 2-year period. PubliCola has been untiring in its coverage of this local deadly jail, even though “Rivera was the only one of 45 city leaders from the six cities that own SCORE who agreed to speak to PubliCola about conditions at the jail.” (Rivera is a councilmember from Renton.) 

As Andy Engelson, the reporter covering this story, told me on Bluesky, “The only time SCORE has answered questions from one of the 6 cities that own it, there were just 12 minutes for questions and no time for public comment.” 

WA State News:

Yesterday I had a piece out that covers the discussions around the state’s operating budget, which will need to be finalized before the end of the month. There are many progressive revenue options on the table for the House and Senate to discuss. Complicating matters, Governor Bob Ferguson has indicated he will veto any budget that implements the so-called “wealth tax” or that doesn’t have $100 million over two years for police hiring grants. 

Apparently state Democrats are now looking for alternate taxes to make up the difference in revenue that would have been provided by a new wealth tax. Options include other business taxes and changing the capital gains tax. Many of the taxes under discussion, however, bring in relatively small amounts of revenue compared to the wealth tax, which was estimated to provide between $2.4 and $4 billion annually beginning in fiscal year 2027. 

The state legislative session is scheduled to end on April 27.

Recent Headlines:

Turmoil continues at SPD; WA State legislators search for new revenue to bridge a huge deficit Read More »

SPD officers are some of the best-paid workers in the city

/

Election News:

First, the elephant in the room. Last week we had an impactful election.

While the nation elected Republican Donald Trump to be our next president, local results were much more promising for progressives. Interestingly, Washington was one of only two states (along with Utah) who shifted further left rather than right. 

Three of the four Washington state-level initiatives backed by millionaire and hedge fund manager Brian Heywood failed, with Washingtonians voting resoundingly in support of progressive revenue, public education, long-term care insurance made possible by universal participation, and prioritizing the climate and environment. Only the initiative regarding natural gas access succeeded and is now likely to face legal challenges. Initiative 2109, which would have repealed the state level capital gains tax, passed with a resounding 63.91% of votes. 

In Seattle, Alexis Mercedes Rinck decisively triumphed over Tanya Woo. The Council had appointed Woo earlier this year to fill the at-large seat vacated by Teresa Mosqueda, who moved over to the King County Council (where, btw, she is busy working on making their budget process a little more transparent). Rinck currently has 197,428 votes, which is 57.94% of the total vote. The newly formed Progressive People Power PAC spent around $177,000 supporting Rinck.

Meanwhile, Democratic Socialist Shaun Scott, running against Andrea Suarez to be state representative for the 43rd Legislative District, won with 68.53% of the vote. 

Discussions now abound about what these local results could mean for the 2025 elections, when Seattle will be voting for the positions of mayor, city attorney, and the two at-large councilmembers, including Council President Sara Nelson’s seat. 

Budget News:

The second and final Seattle budget public hearing is tomorrow, Tuesday, November 12, beginning at 5pm. Sign up for public comment here. That hearing is followed by three full days of budget meetings to discuss councilmember amendments, so you know what I’ll be doing for the rest of the week. 

Councilmember Cathy Moore proposed a 2% capital gains tax to go into effect at the beginning of 2026. Her co-sponsors are Councilmember Tammy Morales and Councilmember Rob Saka. Her proposed “spending plan” is expressed in a single sentence: “Proceeds of the capital gains excise tax are intended to support rental assistance to rent burdened households, down payment assistance to low, moderate, and workforce households, and food assistance to food insecure households.”

Meanwhile, Budget Chair Dan Strauss’s proposal regarding changing the JumpStart tax legislation would, just as the Mayor’s original proposal did, do away with required percentage allocation of the tax revenue to pay for affordable housing, Green New Deal, and equitable development investments, a policy move I continue to oppose.

Morales has proposed amendments to the Mayor’s proposed JumpStart legislation. She has also proposed two statements of intent (SLIs) regarding progressive revenue, investigating a professional services excise tax and a digital ad tax.

A city budget tracker tool that provided increased transparency to the budget process has been removed. I will say as someone who has followed Seattle’s budget process closely since 2020, there has been a marked difference in reduced transparency this year, especially as key documents aren’t being shared publicly until the very last moment.  

Seattle criminal legal system news:

Andy Engelson reported there was another death in the SCORE jail in August, meaning 8 people have died there in the past 2 years. Seattle has been actively working on a contract with SCORE.

SPD Deputy Chief Eric Barden sent an email to all officers last week celebrating the end of the King County Jail’s booking restrictions for misdemeanors and instructing officers to increase arrests. 

The Office of Police Accountability (OPA) sustained allegations against SPD Officer Kevin Dave, who ran over and killed Jaahnavi Kandula with his patrol car on January 23, 2023. The next step is for discipline to be decided.

Interim SPD Chief Sue Rahr is apparently clashing with the OPA and its civilian director Gino Betts. She has overturned or modified more disciplinary recommendations from the OPA over the last six months than had been done by former Chief Adrian Diaz and former Chief Carmen Best during the last five years. 

Meanwhile, Jamie Tompkins, who was Diaz’s former chief-of-staff who was put on leave from SPD recently, just resigned. There were rumors that she and Diaz were romantically involved.

Ron Willis, an SPD officer, was suspended again (for 90 unpaid hours) for filing excessive overtime hours. PubliCola reported he “reported working 133 hours in a single week, including 93 hours of overtime, plus 10 hours of vacation.” He was first suspended for the same offense back in 2021. Willis has appealed his punishment, saying it’s “excessive.” It’s worth clicking over to the article to read excerpts from Rahr’s report on the matter, in which she sounds quite exasperated by how unrepentant Willis appears.

DivestSPD revealed that five other SPD officers reported more overtime than Willis last year, meaning “it’s mathematically impossible that they didn’t violate the same rules as he did.” However, they do not appear to be under current investigation by the OPA.

Finally, new census data for 2023 shows that in Seattle, law enforcement workers have the second highest level of compensation, with median earnings of $124,600. The highest level of compensation is enjoyed by tech workers (specified as computer and mathematical workers), who earned a median of $157,200. 

As The Seattle Times reports: “While the median earnings for law-enforcement workers was $32,000 lower than that of tech workers last year, the gap could shrink. In May, the Seattle City Council approved a new contract with the Seattle police union that includes significant increases in compensation, and which will make Seattle officers the highest paid in the state.”

The new SPOG contract also meant significant backpay for SPD officers, which would be reflected in their 2024 earnings.

Meanwhile, for 2023, legal workers (aka lawyers) were ranked fourth with median earnings of $116,061. And community and social service workers had median earnings of $58,810, less than half that of the median law enforcement wage.

Recent Headlines:

 

SPD officers are some of the best-paid workers in the city Read More »

What would Seattle do without JumpStart?

/

Seattle News:

Budget Chair Dan Strauss released his balancing package for the 2025-2026 City budget this week (presentation here). This new budget proposal actually increases the amount of JumpStart dollars moved from JumpStart spending priorities to the General Fund, which now clocks in at a gobsmacking $305 million. 

As The Stranger reports: “Strauss’s balancing package proposed two new tiny shelter villages, additional funding to the storefront repair program, four new 911 dispatchers, another $10 million for the Seattle Police Department (SPD), Council Member Rob Saka’s goofy proviso to remove the traffic barrier on he compared to former President Donald Trump’s border wall, and much more.”

You can read more about Saka’s plan to remove a traffic calming measure right next to a preschool here. Not only is the amount he put under proviso for this project a stunning $2 million, but at the budget meeting, Strauss announced that Saka had told him this self-serving measure that will actually decrease safety for those in the neighborhood was his top priority for the budget. You can’t make this stuff up.

You can read my op-ed at The Urbanist about the Mayor’s proposed JumpStart legislation that would remove the guardrails on JumpStart tax revenue spending, permanently siphoning it into the General Fund as needed. The proposed legislation also gets rid of the JumpStart oversight board that was meant to provide much needed oversight and transparency to the expenditures of this major source of progressive revenue for the City. Unsurprisingly, I argue that these are both poor ideas. 

Before we get to this week’s SPD drama, some Seattle Municipal Court news: the ACLU of Washington is suing the Seattle City Attorney over their blanket policy to file affidavits of prejudice against sitting Judge Pooja Vaddadi for all criminal cases. The ACLU states: “The city attorney’s actions go beyond a mere impediment to functionality – the city attorney has effectively removed a sitting judge from the bench.”

On Monday, former SPD Chief Adrian Diaz and SPD Communications Director Jamie Tompkins were placed on paid administrative leave. Diaz is still receiving his annual “chief’s” salary of $339,000, and KIRO reports he hasn’t been seen at Police Headquarters in weeks. 

KUOW reported Diaz was placed on leave for allegedly lying during an investigation. The investigation in question was conducted by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) around a complaint that Diaz had hired a romantic partner to a top-level position at SPD, assumedly Tompkins. KIRO reported Diaz also potentially violated department policy.

Diaz responded by filing a $10 million tort claim against the city, Mayor Bruce Harrell, and Deputy Mayor Tim Burgess. The claim alleges Diaz was discriminated and retaliated against, as well as harassed, when he expressed his sexual orientation to Harrell and Burgess, and also alleges Diaz refused to commit an “illegal act.”

Regarding that illegal act, The Seattle Times reports: “While he was chief, Diaz was also directed to take actions he believed would violate police officers’ due process rights and other regulations, Downs said, declining to share specifics.”

In other news, PubliCola reports that SPD officers have a demonstrated pattern of speeding, even when they’re not responding to high level emergency calls: “The data shows that SPD officers regularly drive at speeds higher than 80 mph and sometimes even over 90 mph, on streets with speed limits between 25 and 30 mph. Officers consistently drive well over 70 mph on perennially dangerous streets such as Aurora Ave. (which accounts for 20% of Seattle’s traffic fatalities) and Martin Luther King Jr. Way S, where the SPD dataset showed at least 270 instances of speeds exceeding 70 mph.”

One noteworthy example is former SPD officer Daniel Auderer, who made international headlines when he was recorded mocking the death of pedestrian Jaahnavi Kandula. On the night he went to assess whether Kevin Dave, the officer who hit and killed Kandula, had been driving impaired, he was driving consistently at 90mph and sometimes over 100mph. This was not, of course, in response to an emergency call. 

King County News:

King County’s 100 Days of Action against gun violence is officially over as of October 18. Gun lockboxes are still in the process of being distributed, with several events planned for November. Next, the Regional Office of Gun Violence Prevention will develop a five-year plan.

Recent Headlines:

 

What would Seattle do without JumpStart? Read More »

Seattle City Council considers undoing more of the work of their predecessors

/

This time their focus is on the JumpStart spending plan, participatory budgeting, and less lethal weapon legislation.

Seattle News:

First off, this week Judge James Robart held his annual hearing to determine the status of Seattle’s consent decree. I wrote about it in detail here. Of note, the Mayor’s Office just transmitted new legislation to the City Council that would replace the less lethal weapons ordinances passed in 2020 and 2021 in response to SPD’s violence during the George Floyd protests. 

This new legislation would remove the personal right of action from people harmed from less lethal weapons, allow mutual aid partners (law enforcement agencies other than SPD who come into Seattle to help out) to use less lethal weapons, and leave it up to the discretion of SPD policy as to which particular less lethal weapons they can use. It complies with the state law about the proper use of tear gas and adds a few additional restrictions. 

During the consent decree hearing, Judge Robart praised the OIG, their work, and their independence. But a recent article in The Urbanist questioned that very independence, as an OIG-planned audit on policies of use of SPD mutual aid was ultimately downgraded to a short review.

This week the Seattle City Council has started their budget issue identification meetings. You can look at presentations about JumpStart, HSD (memo), the Unified Care Team, and Participatory Budgeting (memo), among others. Presentations on SPD, the CARE team, Seattle Fire Department (SFD), and the City Attorney’s Office (LAW) will be given on Monday.

I’ll be writing more about the newly proposed JumpStart legislation soon, but in a nutshell, the new legislation would add the General Fund as an approved use of JumpStart funds (along with the original purposes of affordable housing, Green New Deal, equitable development, and small business, and newly added student mental health). Further, the legislation would do away with any percentage mandates for each category. In practice, what this means is that in future, the Mayor and/or Council could use 100% of JumpStart dollars for General Fund purposes.

For participatory budgeting, the public voted on six different projects that are to receive $27.3 million worth of funding. During this budgeting season, the Council needs to pass legislation to implement the program and allow the funds to be appropriated to the relevant departments. Otherwise, the projects won’t go forward as planned.  

You can read my live tweets of this meeting here. Councilmembers expressed concerns that the chosen projects do not obviously benefit Black communities as much as they think they should. They expressed particular confusion over the presence of the CARE alternative response team expansion as one of the projects, apparently forgetting that one of the reasons advocates originally wanted alternative 911 response was to limit the interactions of BIPOC community members with the police, especially given SPD’s history of biased policing. 

On the other hand, some councilmembers expressed the need to fulfill commitments made to community since 2020. To go back now on projects that the community voted on in a City-approved process would be quite a bold decision that would likely lead to the erosion of community trust. 

However, councilmembers did ask about the possibility of only funding some of the projects voted for by community. Budget Chair Strauss suggested the possibility of adding funds to include more dollars for projects that would benefit communities of color. 

During the HSD presentation, councilmembers had some questions about the $2 million allocated for commercial sexual exploitation interventions. There was a suggestion that the 5 proposed new staff positions within HSD to support survivors and interventions was perhaps too many, although having one position to coordinate the work could be of value. There was interest in instead giving a larger proportion of the money to community-based organizations.

Councilmembers also had a lot of questions about the $4.25 million investment in school-based violence intervention services, the proposal for which originated with the Mayor’s Office’s plans for the $20 million for student mental health passed last year through a tiny increase to the JumpStart tax. A lot of details about these services remain to be decided by HSD, which gave certain councilmembers some pause, even while they all agreed that gun violence in schools is an issue of utmost importance. 

There was also some confusion about the difference between this new program and the Seattle Community Safety Initiative (SCSI) that began in 2020. One of the key differences between the two programs is that the SCSI is community and neighborhood based, while the new program is school-based, with violence intervention specialists and case managers imbedded within 11 chosen target schools. Another key difference is that the focus of the SCSI is more towards response, while the focus of the new school program is more about prevention and interruption, meaning the goal is to stop the violence before it happens whenever possible.

King County News:

King County is also going through their budget cycle. While they usually pass a biennium budget, this time around they are passing a budget for the single year of 2025. 

This week they held their second budget panel on public safety, where the King County Sheriff Office (KCSO) gave a presentation about their budget priorities. KCSO now has 71 vacancies, down from a high of 120 vacancies in the summer of 2022. 

The committee then went through a list of several questions they had from last week’s meeting. You can download the informational packet about various budget questions they were considering here. 

One issue that stood out was that the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention (DAJD) is planning a gap analysis to better understand the gaps of service faced by juveniles having longer stays in the youth jail. The youth jail was originally designed to be for short term detention only, but the recent trend has been for youth to experience much longer stays at the site. However, this DAJD analysis isn’t due until later next year to be addressed in the 2026-2027 budget, even though these kids have already been suffering and this problem has already been identified for some time. Councilmember Jorge Baròn said he would work with the DAJD to try to move up that timeline because as it stands, any actual action to improve the situation wouldn’t take place until well into 2026. 

Also being considered is the increased funding need of the Department of Public Defense (DPD) given the bar association’s newly adopted standards for public defenders that is reducing the caseloads of attorneys. This drop of allowable caseloads will mean the need for more attorneys to cover the same number of cases. 

The Stranger recently interviewed newly appointed interim director of the DPD, Matt Sanders, who talks about the current public defender crisis in the state of Washington and how you can weigh in as the state Supreme Court considers the matter. 

Recent Headlines:

 

Seattle City Council considers undoing more of the work of their predecessors Read More »

Seattle’s budget looks to be in trouble for years to come

/

Seattle Budget News:

First off, we have my analysis of the 2025 proposed Seattle budget over at The Urbanist. I dig into proposed police and other “punitive” spending and compare it to what’s being spent for alternatives, diversion, and upstream solutions. 

PubliCola reports on the Seattle budget outlook for future years, with projected deficits of $78.6 million in 2027 and $151.2 million in 2028. While not as large as the deficit faced this year of around $250 million, these are still large numbers that signal we’re not out of the woods even if we follow Mayor Bruce Harrell’s plan of diverting a large percentage of the Jumpstart payroll tax away from its intended purpose of supporting affordable housing, Green New Deal, and equitable development investments and into the General Fund to pay for things like big raises for SPD officers and the ability to sweep homeless encampments even on the weekends. 

As PubliCola reports: “But Harrell’s 2025-2026 budget also depletes the JumpStart fund balance—essentially, a non-renewable reserve of unspent money—taking $140 million from this pot next year and another $90 million in 2026. By 2026, the total amount of funds left over at the end of the year, after all spending is accounted for, will be reduced from $97 million to $179,000.”

While I know this might sound wonky, what it means in practice is continued budget deficits (and cuts) well into the future unless another source of progressive revenue is identified. 

Other Seattle News:

On Tuesday, the city council voted to pass the crime prevention pilot that includes CCTV and a new real time crime center. It also voted to pass $50,000 hiring bonuses for lateral hires at SPD. 

This week the Seattle Fire Department announced it’s making buprenorphine, a drug that treats opioid withdrawal, available to use by all its emergency crews. According to the press release, “The SFD currently has about 35 paramedics trained to administer the medicine and has begun the process of training the firefighter/EMTs who staff the post-overdose response unit (Health 99) and Health One units.”

PubliCola interviewed interim SPD Chief Sue Rahr last week. While Rahr had previously said she’d only stay in the position for six months (until around the end of the year), she’s saying now that she’s not going to make that promise. Erica Barnett does ask Rahr what went wrong in the backgrounding process of Kevin Dave (the officer who killed Jaahnavi Kandula and had a history of reckless driving and no current WA driver’s license), a question I’ve been asking for some time, but surprising no one, Rahr replies that she doesn’t know. 

I found this exchange to be particularly illuminating:

“ECB: I totally get the problem statement. What you’re describing as the solution, frankly, is kind of Whac-a-Mole.

SR: It is, but doing nothing doesn’t work either. And what we know is that just having social workers go out and talk to people, in and of itself, is not working. If it was working, we wouldn’t have so many people out there. I think you need to have a multi-pronged approach, and if nothing else works, there has to be a backstop.”

One could argue that the reason social workers aren’t effective all on their own is because there aren’t enough services and places to live for them to offer people. But alas, instead of trying that out as a solution, it looks like Seattle will continue robustly funding the backstop that doesn’t get to the root of the problems. 

The Seattle Municipal Court judges elected Honorable Anita Crawford-Williams to serve as Presiding Judge and Honorable Damon Shadid to serve as Assistant Presiding Judge. They will serve a term of two years starting at the beginning of 2025. 

Current Presiding Judge Faye Chess will be stepping down. You might remember that she was elected to that position right after the election of Judge Pooja Vaddadi in late 2022 in what I called at the time “an act of breathtaking pettiness.” In an early vote with no notice, neither Vaddadi nor Judge Damon Shadid were allowed to participate in that vote. 

Articles to make you think:

Last weekend Kevin Schofield wrote about a paper studying bail reform: “The report thoroughly and completely debunks the notion that bail reform causes a rise in crime.”

The Stranger published an article about candidate for the state legislature Andrea Suarez. All politics aside, this article provides one of the best explanations of housing first I’ve read.

Also in The Stranger is a column by Justin Ward calling for a more robust public health response focusing on mental health to increase public safety:

“Instead of mobilizing the vast resources of one of the richest metropolitan areas in human history to solve our housing and mental health crisis, area leaders are doubling down on the failed strategy of criminalization. On top of pointless prosecutions of the mentally ill that waste money and that are frequently dismissed, city officials are escalating sweeps, scaling up surveillance, implementing banishment areas, and raiding housing funds to pay for police raises.

If we want to prevent murders like that of Ruth Dalton, we must get serious about treating mental health problems before they become public safety emergencies.”

And over at South Seattle Emerald, Gennette Cordova wrote about how funding education reduces crime: “Every glaring, shameful example of our city’s leaders overinvesting in police under the guise of increasing public safety, while underfunding the community programs that are proven to reduce crime, must be highlighted again and again until people come to understand that so many of the shortcomings we experience in our communities are a result of our patterns of intentional systematic failures.”

Recent Headlines:

Seattle’s budget looks to be in trouble for years to come Read More »

The budget fight over affordable housing continues as questions surface about 2026

/

Seattle Budget News:

This week was filled with budget departmental presentations, including by SPD, HSD, and CARE. Having watched these presentations every year since 2020, I will say I found this year’s batch to be a bit less informative than they have been in previous years.

In a nutshell, SPD and CARE both have increasing budgets, although CARE’s increase is actually quite small in absolute dollars. While the total dollars going to HSD is greater than last year, many programs within HSD are being cut. Many of these programs are quite small and don’t cost much, but their removal will undoubtedly impact those who rely on them for services such as food and meal programs, tax preparation, public benefits legal assistance, home health programs, legal counsel for youth and children, youth and young adults for success, technical assistance for community organizations, and aging and disabilities case management.

One of the main controversies in the proposed budget is the use of JumpStart tax dollars, also known as the payroll expense tax (PET), to fill the General Fund deficit as well as add extra money to SPD’s budget and for increasing sweeps to seven days a week.

PubliCola points out that the estimate used to determine how much Jumpstart money will remain in its original funding priorities (affordable housing, equitable development initiative, small business supports, and Green New Deal) is a deliberately low 2020 estimate that doesn’t take into account the pace of inflation since then. Nor does it take into account that since its beginnings, JumpStart has brought in more money than originally estimated before it was passed.

Meanwhile Ron Davis, former councilmember candidate, calculates that the proposed budget amounts to a $100 million cut to affordable housing. He further says, “We need to be building about 3500 affordable units per year for the next year to catch up. The housing levy was going to support only about 450 of these per year, before Harrell took a hatchet to it.”

Kevin Scofield, formerly of SCC Insight, has also performed some analysis on the budget proposal, and he writes that the 2026 numbers include “some worrisome sleight-of-hand that should make us question whether the budget deficit is truly and permanently fixed.” Yikes!

The next Seattle budget meeting isn’t until Wednesday, October 16, which is also the date of the first public hearing on the budget, which starts at 5pm.

In the meantime, the King County Council will be holding the first of two public safety budget panels for their budget on Wednesday, October 9 at 9:30am.

Other Seattle News:

In other news, SE Network SafetyNet Executive Director Marty Jackson was indicted along with thirteen other people on Wednesday for being involved in a fentanyl drug trafficking organization. It appears she was indicted for allegedly conspiring to commit money laundering.

SE Network SafetyNet is part of the Boys & Girls Clubs of King County, and Seattle contracts with them to provide violence interruption and prevention services. As the Stranger reported, “SE Network SafetyNet recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the Seattle Public Schools (SPS) to provide violence interrupters at Rainier Beach High School, and the City of Seattle had agreed to provide funding for additional case managers at the high school as well through the organization.” 

Jackson pleaded not guilty. The Boys & Girls Club of King County fired her following the indictment. 

In other news, SPD apparently lost 23 firearms. The weapons have been missing since 2017. The Office of the Washington State Auditor is now looking into the matter.

Recent Headlines:

The budget fight over affordable housing continues as questions surface about 2026 Read More »

Harrell’s proposed budget might lead to permanent defunding of affordable housing

/

Seattle News:

The big news this week is Mayor Bruce Harrell’s proposed 2025-2026 budget. Here is an overview from the Budget Director of the proposed budget, along with a list of summary and related articles:

In the proposed budget, Harrell moved MORE than the amount of the deficit from the Jumpstart tax fund to cover that deficit. (For those who want figures, he’s transferring $287 million from Jumpstart to the General Fund, and his Budget Director is now saying the deficit for 2025 is around $250 million.) 

This means significantly LESS money for affordable housing, the Green New Deal, small business support, and the Equitable Development Initiative, which Jumpstart is supposed to fund. 

He also cut many programs and 159 positions, 76 of which are currently filled. This means 76 layoffs.

Through a combination of defunding affordable housing and other Jumpstart prioritizing, cutting city programs, and planning for layoffs, he was able to fund some new priorities in the proposed budget, many of which center around public safety.

SPD’s budget is increasing by 16%, or $62 million, in 2025, standing at $457 million. It now constitutes 26% of the entire General Fund. The department’s “ghost cop” positions are maintained, and 30 more civilian positions are added, including 7 new civilian investigators, 2 new special parking enforcement officer positions, and 21 new Real Time Crime Center analysts, 12 to begin in 2025 and the remainder to begin in 2026.

SPD emphasis patrols in the new SODA and SOAP zones will receive an additional $10 million. Almost $4 million are allocated for the surveillance technology pilot that includes RTCC software and CCTV cameras, compared to $1.5 million allocated for this purpose in the 2024 budget.

Seattle will be spending almost $3 million for beds at the SCORE jail in Des Moines, as well as an additional $2 million for more beds in the King County Jail. 

The Unified Care Team that performs the city’s encampment sweeps will be receiving an additional $3.19 million and will be conducting sweeps on weekends.

There will also be legislation transmitted to the council to make permanent the city’s ability to use the Jumpstart payroll tax funds to pay for General Fund priorities however it chooses. Were this change to be made permanent, in future years it could lead to even further defunding of affordable housing, Green New Deal, small business support, and the Equitable Development Initiative. 

The next opportunity to give public comment on the budget is on Wednesday, October 16 starting at 5pm. Budget Chair Dan Strauss has said everyone planning to speak at that particular hearing will receive two minutes to speak. (During most of the public comment periods, if there are enough speakers present, time will be cut to one minute or even 30 seconds.)

If you want a break from thinking about the budget, you can read my article on the new surveillance technology approved by the public safety committee this week. A final vote on the new technologies–CCTV cameras and RTCC software–is expected on Tuesday, October 8 at 2pm.

Other News:

King County Executive Dow Constantine announced the county’s proposed budget this week. Some investments include: 

  • $7.9 million to maintain the Regional Peacekeepers Collective’s work to prevent gun violence
  • $2.3 million for 13 new juvenile detention officers at the Patricia H. Clark Children and Family Justice Center, otherwise known as the youth jail; two new juvenile probation counselors; and additional community programs and transition navigators for youth in and exiting detention
  • $1.725 million for installing “jump barriers” and replacing bunks at the King County Jail to make it harder to commit suicide
  • $56 million to support affordable housing projects within a half mile of a transit station

Marcus Harrison Green wrote (his first?) column at The Stranger in defense of closing the youth jail. Here’s a little taste:

“Instead of blaming a strategy to diminish incarceration that has not been fully implemented, fully funded, or fully committed to, you’d think he and other King County Council Members might be the first to admonish and blame our current system, which is still heavily focused on a carceral approach that has resulted in a 61% rise in juvenile bookings last year, and the same percentage rise in bookings so far this year—returning us to the incarceration levels of 2019.”

Tacoma’s police chief was suddenly placed on leave earlier this week, and in a bizarre turn, the city is refusing to answer any questions about it. 

Recent Headlines:

 

Harrell’s proposed budget might lead to permanent defunding of affordable housing Read More »

Homelessness up 23% while Seattle plans to cut funding for homelessness by 19%

/

Seattle News:

The new interim SPOG contract passed City Council on Tuesday with a 7-1 vote, Councilmember Tammy Morales being the only CM opposed. Mayor Bruce Harrell signed the legislation soon thereafter. You can read more about it in my article here. You can read about some of the SPD officers who will be receiving large backpay payments here.

Officer Kevin Dave, who hit and killed Jaahnavi Kandula last year, was issued a traffic citation by the Seattle Municipal Court. Dave was required to pay a $5k fine by May 13, but as of the evening of May 14, he hadn’t yet paid. If he continues to fail to pay the fine, he could have his driver’s license revoked.

At the Public Safety committee meeting this week, councilmembers discussed the bill to approve the expansion of SPD’s automatic license plate readers (ALPRs). SPD wants to include these ALPRs in all existing patrol vehicle dash cameras, which would cost about $280k per year. Councilmembers expressed concern about the current data retention period as well as harms this technology could cause to people seeking reproductive healthcare. The legislation has not yet come to a committee vote, but may do so as early as May 28. 

At the Select Budget committee meeting on Wednesday, councilmembers heard presentations on the General Fund Financial Plan Update and the JumpStart Payroll Expense Tax. The budget deficit for 2025 has grown once more, from $241 million to $258 million, due to settled labor contract costs exceeding planning estimates, Councilmember Rob Saka expressed some reluctance to use the JumpStart tax to fill in the General Fund deficit, and other councilmembers also expressed interest in staying true to the original purpose of the tax, which was codified in the JumpStart spending plan that allocates money to affordable housing, green new deal investments, equitable development, and small businesses. They were also concerned about the tax’s potential volatility when considering using it as a permanent General Fund fix. 

Ballard Food Bank’s 2023 annual report was recently released, and it showed the number of household shopping visits and deliveries in 2023 was more than double the number in 2019.  Emergency financial assistance in 2023 was 4 times what it was in 2021.  

KUOW uncovered the secret donor behind the kid playground at Denny Blaine Park that would have potentially displaced the nude beach that is currently located there. Wealthy resident Stuart Sloan, who lives near the park, texted Mayor Bruce Harrell directly to complain about the park and offered to foot at least part of the bill for the proposed playground. As KUOW reported, “The playground plans showcase how the ultra-wealthy can exert influence in Seattle city government, and how the city’s policy of accepting anonymous gifts allows it to keep contributors secret.”

On Homelessness in the Region:

The 2024 King County Point-In-Time count was released this week, and it showed that 16,385 individuals on any given night in King County are experiencing homelessness. This number has increased 23% from the same estimate done in 2022, and is the largest number ever found in these reports. Homelessness in King County continues to impact communities of color disproportionately, with 19% of those unhoused identifying as Black and 7% as Indigenous while only 6% of King County’s total population identifies as Black and only 1% identifies as Indigenous, although there is a possibility that the disparity for Indigenous communities is even worse than these numbers due to counting methods.

As The Seattle Times reports, this news comes at a time when Seattle has asked the King County Regional Homelessness Authority to cut its funding ask for 2025: “The current proposed budget would eliminate hundreds of shelter beds, among other services, which are often used to move people from the street and get them ready for permanent housing.”

A more detailed article from The Seattle Times elucidates that the net loss for 2024 would be $21 million, which is about a 19% decrease. This would cut “about 300 emergency shelter beds, a 125-bed shelter for Black men in the Central District, homelessness diversion funding for 265 households, and a reduction in behavioral health services or beds at tiny home villages.”

The article quotes Alison Eisinger, the executive director of the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness: “I defy you to find me one person in the city of Seattle who thinks that reducing the number of shelter beds available in this city is the right move,” she said.

Recent Headlines:

Homelessness up 23% while Seattle plans to cut funding for homelessness by 19% Read More »

Are $230 Million in Seattle Budget Cuts Even Possible? Budget Director Says No.

/

Seattle News:

This week at Seattle’s Public Safety committee meeting, the committee discussed SPD testing, recruiting, and retention. Then on Thursday night, Mayor Harrell hosted a public safety forum at the Seattle Public Library. He plans to hold more informal public safety forums by precinct in the month of April.

Fascinating things were said at both of these meetings, and I’m currently working on a longer piece analyzing them more thoroughly. More on this, hopefully next week! 

City Council is teed up to vote on a resolution at next week’s 3/19 meeting that appear to eliminate several Statements of Legislative Intent (SLI) passed by last year’s Council. One of the SLIs not appearing on the new list is the request for an evaluation of Seattle’s current gun violence prevention programs. More specifically, the SLI requested that “HSD and CSCC/CARE perform a gap analysis of the City’s current and priority investments in gun violence prevention as compared to the recommendations in the King County Regional Community Safety and Wellbeing (RCSWB) Plan, and identify complementary, duplicative, or gaps in services provided by the City and King County.” 

It is ironic that at a time when the city is trying to pressure through three concerning surveillance technologies with the justification that the city is struggling with gun violence, they are not willing to even finish a basic evaluation of already existing investments that won’t cost a penny.

Following up on the news about the City Attorney trying to disqualify Judge Vaddadi from hearing cases, the Seattle Times reports that certain defense attorneys are independently trying to find a way to fight back by having Vaddadi sign subpoenas and then arguing her signature on these documents means she shouldn’t be unilaterally removed from hearing the cases:

“In an interview, Vaddadi confirmed attorneys had sent her “fewer than a hundred” subpoenas to sign, which she did, but said she was unaware of any strategy by attorneys to get her back on the calendar. She, and at least some of her colleagues, interpret the court’s rules to mean that any judge can sign any subpoena sent to them.

“I would never strategize with one party or another, that would be incredibly unethical,” she said.”

Regarding Seattle’s upcoming enormous budget deficit, Crosscut recently reported that Julie Dingley, the city’s budget director, had said they will not be able to make $230 million worth of cuts by the beginning of 2025, and has suggested they will have to come up with one-time strategies to stagger implementation of such a large amount of cuts. It’s worth noting that Seattle is required by law to have a balanced budget. 

The same article reports that Councilmember Kettle supports having JumpStart tax funds go directly to the general fund to help balance it instead of honoring the spending plan for the tax that is currently in city statute. The JumpStart tax is currently the top source of funding for affordable housing in the city, so redirecting it in such a way would have consequences to the already meager store of affordable housing. 

Election News:

Tanya Woo has officially declared her candidacy for the Seattle City Council seat that she currently holds as an interim appointee. No other candidates for the seat have yet filed.

Perennial state lawmaker Frank Chopp has announced his retirement, and Shaun Scott has announced his candidacy to take over the 43rd Legislative District seat. And he is coming out swinging! Here is the first paragraph of his press release announcing his candidacy:

“The past four years have dealt a lifetime of challenges to residents of the 43rd Legislative District. The working class has seen costs of living increase, while major corporations dominate local elections and evade taxes. Renters can’t afford rent. For young people, the reality of a permanently altered climate lingers like smoke. Students are punished for attending state universities with a life sentence of debt. Disabled and immunocompromised Washingtonians enjoy few public accommodations, and Long COVID looms as a public health emergency. While Washingtonians hope a Democrat-controlled State Legislature and Governor’s office will support staple programs such as special education funding and the resumption of free meals in public schools, MAGA Republicans in cahoots with the billionaire class have launched initiatives to rollback recent state-level wins on climate sustainability and fair taxes.”

Scott is the Policy Lead at the Statewide Poverty Action Network, which is the advocacy arm of Solid Ground, which was founded by his predecessor Chopp. He is known for his run for City Council for D4 in 2019, a race he lost to Alex Pedersen by 4 points while being wildly outspent. Scott also authored the state-level guaranteed basic income (GBI) pilot in 2022.

King County News:

The Washington State Bar Association recently passed new standards for public defenders that will reduce their caseloads. While these standards will affect the entire state, they particularly impact King County because attorneys in King County are required to follow standards that the WSBA adopts.

Publicola reported that Executive Constantine was “alarmed enough” about this possibility that he had his general counsel send a letter to the WSBA asking them not to adopt these new standards. It is likely he is concerned about how this will impact funding for public defense, given the County is currently facing a two-year $100 million budget deficit. 

Publicola said: “According to DPD director Anita Khandelwal, that means the county must either hire enough attorneys—along with support staff like paralegals, social workers, and investigators—to meet the new standards or invest in alternatives to prosecution and incarceration, reducing caseloads by reducing the number of cases.” But Khandelwal argues it doesn’t have to be a budget question, as the County has three years to potentially ramp up alternative programming that would reduce their dependence on the traditional criminal legal system.

Recent Headlines:

 

Are $230 Million in Seattle Budget Cuts Even Possible? Budget Director Says No. Read More »